In recent days, the so-called religious left have increased their chatter about how people who believe in end-times prophecies are a real danger to peace in this world. The following article reveals to just what extent this is going on and shows us just how close we are to the coming of the King!
Excerpts from Lighthousetrailsresearch.com
Brian McLaren wants end-time believing Christians "robustly" confronted
May 4, 2009
Source article: HERE
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"[B]eloved, I now write unto you; in both which I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming?" II Peter 3:1-4
If you are a Christian who believes that the Bible is God's inspired Word and believe that Jesus Christ will be coming again, you are being marginalized. And you might not even know it. It may surprise you to know where this marginalization is coming from. We're not speaking of the world today . . . we are talking about people who say they are Christians and who happen to be very influential. In fact, one of them, Rick Warren, was just named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the entire world.1
In an April 2009 article in Sojourner's magazine by emerging church leader, Brian McLaren, McLaren clearly has targeted Christians. But not just any Christians. McLaren is talking about Christians who believe Jesus Christ is coming back again, suggesting that these type of Christians are the reason there is no peace in the Middle East. He says what these end-time believing Christians are doing is "terrible," "deadly," and "distorted."
McLaren says that he grew up with a dispensational view (the belief that Jesus Christ will return and establish his kingdom on earth) but has come to realize this view is "morally and ethically harmful." He likens this belief system to racism in the 50s and 60s and says:
"These doctrinal formulations often use a bogus end-of-the-world scenario to create a kind of death-wish for World War III, which -- unless it is confronted more robustly by the rest of us--could too easily create a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Anyone who is familiar with the writings of occultist Alice Bailey or New Age author and futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard knows that they believe this very thing. In fact, McLaren is sounding more and more like them all the time, and his article in Sojourners is further proof of that.
It isn't just Bible-believing Christians who McLaren is upset with - he's also angry about Israel and the very idea that she is a special nation in the eyes of God. This is why he names Christian Zionists and Dispensationalists in particularly, because they tend to be two groups who hold fast to the belief that Israel is indeed a special nation to the Lord.
It is ironic that just a week ago, the House of Representatives passed the HR1913 hate crimes bill, which is supposed to deter hateful behavior toward others. Here, McLaren, who was chosen to be an advisor to Obama (a strong proponent of hate crime legislation), is speaking so hatefully about those who hold to biblical beliefs saying they must be robustly confronted by "the rest of us" [all human beings except the biblical ones].
Others have joined McLaren in this effort to silence and marginalize biblical Christians. Rick Warren's chief apologist (and we were told, a staff member at Saddleback) recently posted an article on the Internet that said ministries that defend the faith (he referenced Lighthouse Trails) were like mentally unstable cultists, "who are not normal people, average complainers, critics and typical dissidents who are generally unhappy about life itself . . . they are deadly." (Please contact Saddleback Church if you wish to verify this: (949) 609-8000.)
Tony Campolo, in his book Speaking My Mind, says that "'rigid' Christians who believe in the possibility of Jesus' soon return" are "the real problem for the whole world." According to Campolo, they are to blame for wars, and a host of other evils in the world. This is what Alice Bailey and Barbara Marx Hubbard believe--and their obvious hostility towards believers shouts out from the pages of their writings.
There are others too who speak in derogatory language about Christians who believe Titus 2:13, which is: "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." In Mark Driscoll's book Vintage Jesus, he ridicules Christians who believe there will be an Armageddon and a rapture (pp. 44, 157).
Perhaps one of the more serious attacks on Christians waiting for Christ's return (serious primarily because of his huge influence) comes from Rick Warren where he states in The Purpose Driven Life that those who study Bible prophecy are not fit for the kingdom of God. Most readers may have missed this because of the way the passage is organized, but if one studies this carefully, with a Bible by their side, it is not difficult to see. Roger Oakland explains:
"Warren tells readers to think about something other than Bible prophecy: 'If you want Jesus to come back sooner, focus on fulfilling your mission, not figuring out prophecy.'
"Warren ends this section of his book by stating that Satan would have you 'sidetracked from your mission' and by quoting Jesus out of context, Warren says, 'Anyone who lets himself be distracted [by studying Bible prophecy] from the work I plan for him is not fit for the kingdom of God' (Living Bible). But Jesus was not referring to His return when He made that statement, which in the King James Version says: 'No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God' (Luke 9:62). The Purpose Driven kingdom of God leaves no room for Bible prophecy, and in fact, condemns those who study it. The apostle Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had a different view. He writes:
'We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.' (II Peter 1:19)
"Christians are called to witness and be watchmen. No Scripture exists that tells us to ignore the events that have been pointed out as signposts indicating the return of Jesus. If we do, we might be like the foolish virgins who fell asleep waiting for the bridegroom" (Matthew 25:1-13).(from Faith Undone, pp. 154-157
In Warren Smith's book, Reinventing Jesus Christ, Smith discusses something Barbara Marx Hubbard calls the Selection Process. This is a process that New Agers believe in which Armageddon will only have to happen if those who believe in it (biblical Christians) remain on the earth for thus there would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. She believes, as does Alice Bailey (the woman who coined the term New Age), that the world cannot evolve, and there cannot be peace until it is rid of these kind of people. If it is, then there can be what is termed an Alternative to Armageddon. Sound far-fetched? Just keep in mind that Barbara Marx Hubbard is a respected author -- in fact, she was instrumental in the early stages of what is now the lobbying group for the soon-to-be Department of Peace that over 60 Congressmen are supporting.
We believe that this effort to put labels like cultist on believers will only grow. Another example is emerging church writer Thomas Hohstadt, who asked in a recent article: "How Do We Know We Are Not in a Cult?" He answered this question by basically saying that you are a cult if you believe you have all the answers and if you believe truth can be contained or absolutely defined. You see, in emerging spirituality doubt and uncertainty are exalted, and the opposite "virtues,"--certainty and faith -- are condemned. Incredible as it seems, those who stand on the Word of God will, in the end, be called evil, deadly, and cultish.
The growing hostility against Bible-believing Christians continues. And yet, in Matthew 24:6, Jesus comforts us with these words:
"[S]ee that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."
Let us remember and take heed to the words Jesus told his disciples:
"I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work" (John 9:4). As believers we will stand for the truth, but we will continue to love those who persecute. We are inspired by the many saints who have gone before and courageously, by His grace and strength, stood. "Therefore, brethren, stand fast." (II Thessalonians 2:15)
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Source article: http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=1465&more=1&c=1"
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Urgent!
From The Family Research Council:
President Obama, fresh from a government takeover of General Motors, now has his sights set on your medical coverage. On Saturday, he told Congress it was "time to deliver" on his massive health care overhaul. One version of the President's plan, crafted by Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was circulated throughout the Hill on Friday. In it, all Americans are guaranteed some form of basic health care, and employers are ordered to provide coverage--or else. Of course the biggest hiccup is that Kennedy's committee has no idea how Congress would pay for such a plan, particularly since the U.S. is already borrowing almost 50 cents for every dollar it spends.
FRC's chief complaint with ObamaCare, apart from the trillions it would cost, is that this plan would force taxpayers to provide abortion coverage for the first time in U.S. history. When I met with a series of Senators last week, they too were concerned that the President wants to make "reproductive health care," including abortion, an essential part of his government-controlled system.
While the administration would force you to pay for abortions, it also leaves relatively no options for those faced with having to perform or promote them. The current plan lacks any clear conscience protections for medical workers, leaving the health care field exposed to even greater attacks. If the bill refuses to address the freedom of conscience, more of our doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will be forced to choose between their convictions and their careers.
President Obama, fresh from a government takeover of General Motors, now has his sights set on your medical coverage. On Saturday, he told Congress it was "time to deliver" on his massive health care overhaul. One version of the President's plan, crafted by Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was circulated throughout the Hill on Friday. In it, all Americans are guaranteed some form of basic health care, and employers are ordered to provide coverage--or else. Of course the biggest hiccup is that Kennedy's committee has no idea how Congress would pay for such a plan, particularly since the U.S. is already borrowing almost 50 cents for every dollar it spends.
FRC's chief complaint with ObamaCare, apart from the trillions it would cost, is that this plan would force taxpayers to provide abortion coverage for the first time in U.S. history. When I met with a series of Senators last week, they too were concerned that the President wants to make "reproductive health care," including abortion, an essential part of his government-controlled system.
While the administration would force you to pay for abortions, it also leaves relatively no options for those faced with having to perform or promote them. The current plan lacks any clear conscience protections for medical workers, leaving the health care field exposed to even greater attacks. If the bill refuses to address the freedom of conscience, more of our doctors, nurses, and pharmacists will be forced to choose between their convictions and their careers.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Double Standards
Good Morning...The way that people are treated in this country by our news media and even the current administration is and for sometime now has been one of double standards...it has been really brought home by the recent treatmenst of the killer of Dr. George Tiller and the killer of the Army recruiters in Arkansas in the very next day...the following is an article by Michelle Malkin that makes for an interesting read:
Climate of hate, world of double standards
Michelle Malkin - Syndicated Columnist - 6/3/2009 10:05:00 AM
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.
Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
President Obama issued a statement condemning "heinous acts of violence" within hours of Tiller's death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs, and Fox News in reporting Tiller's activities.
By contrast, Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon -- more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark. -- Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.
But Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of Tiller. Obama's omission, it should be noted, comes just a few weeks after he failed to mention the Bronx jihadi plot to bomb synagogues and a National Guard airbase during his speech on homeland security.
Why the silence? Politically and religiously motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase "lone shooter" is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild -- think convicted "Jeep Jihadist" Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq, who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet, who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter -- but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence.
Even Jeffrey Goldberg of the left-leaning Atlantic magazine noticed the double standards. He called attention to a National Public Radio report on the military recruiter attack that failed to mention the religion and anti-military animus of the suspect. Wrote Goldberg: "Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller's alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?"
The truth is that the "climate of hate" doesn't have just one hemisphere. But you won't hear the Council on American-Islamic Relations acknowledging the national security risks of jihadi infiltrators who despise our military and have plotted against our troops from within the ranks -- including convicted fragging killer Hasan Akbar and terror plotters Ali Mohamed, Jeffrey Battle, and Semi Osman.
You won't hear about the escalating war on military recruitment centers on the op-ed pages of The New York Times -- from vandalism to obstruction to Molotov cocktail attacks on campus stations across the country; to the shutdown of a Pittsburgh military recruitment office by zealots holding signs that read "Recruiters are Child Predators"; to the prolonged harassment campaign against the Marine recruiting center in Berkeley, where Code Pink protesters called America soldiers assassins; to the bomb blast at the Times Square recruiting center last March.
And you'll certainly hear little about the most recent left-wing calls to violence by a Playboy magazine writer who published a vulgar list of conservative female writers and commentators he said he'd like to rape (the obscene slang word he used is not printable). The list was hyped by the magazine's publicity team and light-heartedly promoted by mainstream publications such as Politico.com (founded by Washington Post reporters).
Is it too much to ask the media cartographers in charge of mapping the "climate of hate" to do their jobs with both eyes open?
Climate of hate, world of double standards
Michelle Malkin - Syndicated Columnist - 6/3/2009 10:05:00 AM
When a right-wing Christian vigilante kills, millions of fingers pull the trigger. When a left-wing Muslim vigilante kills, he kills alone. These are the instantly ossifying narratives in the Sunday shooting death of late-term abortion provider George Tiller of Kansas versus the Monday shootings of two Arkansas military recruiters.
Tiller's suspected murderer, Scott Roeder, is white, Christian, anti-government and anti-abortion. The gunman in the military recruitment center attack, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, is black, a Muslim convert, anti-military and anti-American.
Both crimes are despicable, cowardly acts of domestic terrorism. But the disparate treatment of the two brutal cases by both the White House and the media is striking.
President Obama issued a statement condemning "heinous acts of violence" within hours of Tiller's death. The Justice Department issued its own statement and sent federal marshals to protect abortion clinics. News anchors and headline writers abandoned all qualms about labeling the gunman a terrorist. An almost gleeful excess of mainstream commentary poured forth on the climate of hate and fear created by conservative talk radio, blogs, and Fox News in reporting Tiller's activities.
By contrast, Obama was silent about the military recruiter attacks that left 24-year-old Pvt. William Long dead and 18-year-old Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula gravely wounded. On Tuesday afternoon -- more than 24 hours after the attack on the military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark. -- Obama held a press conference to announce his pick for Army secretary. It would have been exactly the right moment to express condolences for the families of the targeted Army recruiters and to condemn heinous acts of violence against our troops.
But Obama said nothing. The Justice Department was mum. And so were the legions of finger-pointing pundits happily convicting the pro-life movement and every right-leaning writer on the planet of contributing to the murder of Tiller. Obama's omission, it should be noted, comes just a few weeks after he failed to mention the Bronx jihadi plot to bomb synagogues and a National Guard airbase during his speech on homeland security.
Why the silence? Politically and religiously motivated violence, it seems, is only worth lamenting when it demonizes opponents. Which also helps explain why the phrase "lone shooter" is ubiquitous in media coverage of jihadi shooters gone wild -- think convicted "Jeep Jihadist" Mohammed Taheri-Azar at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill or Israel-bashing gunman Naveed Haq, who targeted a Seattle Jewish charity or Los Angeles International Airport shooter Hesham Hedayet, who opened fire at the El Al Israeli airline ticket counter -- but not in cases involving rare acts of anti-abortion violence.
Even Jeffrey Goldberg of the left-leaning Atlantic magazine noticed the double standards. He called attention to a National Public Radio report on the military recruiter attack that failed to mention the religion and anti-military animus of the suspect. Wrote Goldberg: "Why not tell people what is actually happening in the world? We saw this a couple of weeks ago, when the press only gingerly acknowledged that the malevolent though incompetent suspects in the synagogue bombing-conspiracy case in New York were converts to Islam. How is the public served by this kind of silence? The extremist Christian beliefs of George Tiller's alleged murderer are certainly relevant to that case, and no one in my profession is hesitant to discuss them. Why the hesitancy to talk about the motivations of the man who allegedly killed Pvt. William Long?"
The truth is that the "climate of hate" doesn't have just one hemisphere. But you won't hear the Council on American-Islamic Relations acknowledging the national security risks of jihadi infiltrators who despise our military and have plotted against our troops from within the ranks -- including convicted fragging killer Hasan Akbar and terror plotters Ali Mohamed, Jeffrey Battle, and Semi Osman.
You won't hear about the escalating war on military recruitment centers on the op-ed pages of The New York Times -- from vandalism to obstruction to Molotov cocktail attacks on campus stations across the country; to the shutdown of a Pittsburgh military recruitment office by zealots holding signs that read "Recruiters are Child Predators"; to the prolonged harassment campaign against the Marine recruiting center in Berkeley, where Code Pink protesters called America soldiers assassins; to the bomb blast at the Times Square recruiting center last March.
And you'll certainly hear little about the most recent left-wing calls to violence by a Playboy magazine writer who published a vulgar list of conservative female writers and commentators he said he'd like to rape (the obscene slang word he used is not printable). The list was hyped by the magazine's publicity team and light-heartedly promoted by mainstream publications such as Politico.com (founded by Washington Post reporters).
Is it too much to ask the media cartographers in charge of mapping the "climate of hate" to do their jobs with both eyes open?
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Dr. Tiller
Good Morning...
On Sunday morning, May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in Kansas. You may be asking why is his murder, and yes, it was murder, is so note worthy. Dr. Tiller was one of a handful of doctors in this country who was willing to perform late-term abortions. He was indeed an evil man who personally killed untold numbers of human beings within the womb of their mothers. However, and let me be perfectly clear here, the murder of Dr. Tiller WAS WRONG! In any civilized society, we are forbidden from taking the law into our own hands. God has placed the civil authority in power as His instrument for the carrying out of justice. Even when that authority fails to bring about justice, even when that authority fails to protect the most innocent and helpless among us, we do not have the right to kill abortion doctors....
Last night I was watching some of the liberal talk shows on the liberal MSNBC network to see the reactions coming from them and without fail, they continued to talk about extremists Christians who continue to foment violence on doctors of abortion, clinics where abortions are performed and so forth in an effort to intimdate them into stopping their work. What bothered me the most is the thinking that we must kill in order to stop abortions, which some of the groups mentioned were advocating...as I went to bed last night, the Lord would not let me sleep until this posting was formulated within my heart and mind...and here is that result:
If you are part of some group that believes that we must kill abortion doctors or bomb abortion clinics, STOP IT NOW! Do you not realize what damage you are doing to the cause of Jesus Christ? Do you not realize how many people will never give place to a hearing of the good news that Jesus saves because of what you are doing? On the one hand, there are multitudes of ministries who are trying to meet peoples needs and share that good news with them, but every time something like this happens, we are painted with the same brush...for every step forward we make, this action knocks us back several...and on the other hand, we have people who are mistakenly believing that they must meet the violence that occurs in the womb with killing and bombing...My mother used to always say, "Two wrongs do not make a right" and truer words were never spoken...I pray with all my heart that this land will be healed and turn to God before it is too late, but the only way that will happen is through Jesus Christ touching hearts and changing them, but without a hearing...that will not happen...
One of my favorite theologians is Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, who wrote a tremendous piece on this event:
A Wicked Deed in Wichita -- A Test for the Pro-Life Movement
Posted: Monday, June 01, 2009 at 3:58 am ET
The cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday morning presents the pro-life movement in America with a crucial moral test -- will we condemn this murder in unqualified terms?
For many years, Dr. George Tiller has represented the horrific reality of the abortion industry in this nation. Infamously known to the pro-life movement in America, Tiller was known as "Tiller the Killer" because of his well-known willingness to perform late-term abortions almost no other doctor in the nation would perform. Because of Dr. George Tiller, Wichita became the destination of choice for women seeking abortions in the late third trimester.
In 1993 Tiller was shot in both arms by an assailant. His clinic was regularly protested and was once bombed. Tiller had many brushes with the law, and just weeks ago he was acquitted of charges that he had colluded with another physician to illegally justify late-term abortions.
George Tiller was shot to death Sunday morning as he was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Witnesses said that a lone assailant entered the church, shot Dr. Tiller with a single shot, threatened two others, and then fled the scene. A suspect was arrested hours later. Wichita police said that the unnamed suspect would likely face multiple charges as early as Monday.
Violence in response to the horror of abortion is rare, but not new. According to some news reports, Dr. Tiller was the fifth physician to be murdered by abortion opponents. In other cases, abortion clinics have been bombed and workers have been hurt or killed.
Proponents of abortion rights often charge that the rhetoric of the pro-life movement leads to violence. After all, we describe abortion as murder and point to the business of abortion as the murder of the unborn. We make clear that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and that what goes on in abortion clinics is the business of death.
We make these arguments because we know they are true. Abortion is murder. What goes on in those clinics is institutionalized homicide, often for financial profit. Abortion is a moral scandal and a national tragedy and a blight upon the American conscience.
But violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal -- not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.
We have no right to take the law into our own hands in an act of criminal violence. We are not given the right to take this power into our own hands, for God has granted this power to governing authorities. The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy. This is not merely a legal technicality -- it is a vital test of the morality of the pro-life movement.
The Christian church has been forced by historical necessity to think through these issues again and again. The church has reached a basic moral consensus on issues of violence and governmental obedience, and this consensus requires that Christian citizens work within legal, judicial, and political means to persuade governing authorities concerning what is good, right, just, and honoring to God. Those who operate outside of this consensus and perform acts of violence are rightly understood to arrogate authority to themselves in a way that violates not only the laws of men but the law of God. Civil disobedience may be justified so long as the Christian is willing to suffer at the hands of the governing authorities, but is not justified if the citizen employs violence against the state or against other citizens.
In the case of Dr. George Tiller, the governing authorities failed again and again to fulfill their responsibility to protect all citizens, including those yet unborn. The law is dishonoring to God in its disrespect for human life. The law failed to bring George Tiller to account for what should have been seen as crimes against humanity. But this failure does not authorize others to act in the place of the government, much less in the place of God. The government must now act to prosecute and punish the murderer of Dr. George Tiller.
In October of 1859, John Brown led a violent attack upon the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. A radical abolitionist, Brown had already proved himself capable of violence for his cause. In 1856 he had led a gang that brutally killed several pro-slavery figures in Kansas. The raid on Harpers Ferry led to more deaths before Brown and his surviving rebels were arrested, charged with treason, and executed.
When John Brown was arrested, Henry David Thoreau defended the man and his violence, asking: "Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good?"
Those are the very questions some are tempted to ask now, but these weighty questions cannot justify violence in the name of an honorable cause. Thoreau was right about the fact that the laws allowing slavery in the United States were immoral and unjustifiable. John Brown was right when he claimed that slavery was a blight upon the nation's conscience -- a wrong that had to be ended. Brown's logic led him to treason, and he was found guilty in a court of law and punished. Thoreau would refer to Brown as an "angel of light," but Thoreau never had to live with the consequences of his own attempt to justify murder, nor did he ever acknowledge the true character of the man.
The pro-life movement in America must not wage war against abortion by following the example of John Brown. Nor can we allow ourselves the luxury of the logic of defending the indefensible along the lines of Thoreau. We must confront this great evil of abortion from a higher plane, and know that the battle is ultimately in God's hands.
Murder is murder. The law rightly affirms that the killing of Dr. George Tiller is murder. In this we must agree. We cannot rest until the law also recognizes the killing of the unborn as murder. The killing of Dr. George Tiller makes that challenge all the more difficult.
On Sunday morning, May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in Kansas. You may be asking why is his murder, and yes, it was murder, is so note worthy. Dr. Tiller was one of a handful of doctors in this country who was willing to perform late-term abortions. He was indeed an evil man who personally killed untold numbers of human beings within the womb of their mothers. However, and let me be perfectly clear here, the murder of Dr. Tiller WAS WRONG! In any civilized society, we are forbidden from taking the law into our own hands. God has placed the civil authority in power as His instrument for the carrying out of justice. Even when that authority fails to bring about justice, even when that authority fails to protect the most innocent and helpless among us, we do not have the right to kill abortion doctors....
Last night I was watching some of the liberal talk shows on the liberal MSNBC network to see the reactions coming from them and without fail, they continued to talk about extremists Christians who continue to foment violence on doctors of abortion, clinics where abortions are performed and so forth in an effort to intimdate them into stopping their work. What bothered me the most is the thinking that we must kill in order to stop abortions, which some of the groups mentioned were advocating...as I went to bed last night, the Lord would not let me sleep until this posting was formulated within my heart and mind...and here is that result:
If you are part of some group that believes that we must kill abortion doctors or bomb abortion clinics, STOP IT NOW! Do you not realize what damage you are doing to the cause of Jesus Christ? Do you not realize how many people will never give place to a hearing of the good news that Jesus saves because of what you are doing? On the one hand, there are multitudes of ministries who are trying to meet peoples needs and share that good news with them, but every time something like this happens, we are painted with the same brush...for every step forward we make, this action knocks us back several...and on the other hand, we have people who are mistakenly believing that they must meet the violence that occurs in the womb with killing and bombing...My mother used to always say, "Two wrongs do not make a right" and truer words were never spoken...I pray with all my heart that this land will be healed and turn to God before it is too late, but the only way that will happen is through Jesus Christ touching hearts and changing them, but without a hearing...that will not happen...
One of my favorite theologians is Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, who wrote a tremendous piece on this event:
A Wicked Deed in Wichita -- A Test for the Pro-Life Movement
Posted: Monday, June 01, 2009 at 3:58 am ET
The cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday morning presents the pro-life movement in America with a crucial moral test -- will we condemn this murder in unqualified terms?
For many years, Dr. George Tiller has represented the horrific reality of the abortion industry in this nation. Infamously known to the pro-life movement in America, Tiller was known as "Tiller the Killer" because of his well-known willingness to perform late-term abortions almost no other doctor in the nation would perform. Because of Dr. George Tiller, Wichita became the destination of choice for women seeking abortions in the late third trimester.
In 1993 Tiller was shot in both arms by an assailant. His clinic was regularly protested and was once bombed. Tiller had many brushes with the law, and just weeks ago he was acquitted of charges that he had colluded with another physician to illegally justify late-term abortions.
George Tiller was shot to death Sunday morning as he was serving as an usher at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Witnesses said that a lone assailant entered the church, shot Dr. Tiller with a single shot, threatened two others, and then fled the scene. A suspect was arrested hours later. Wichita police said that the unnamed suspect would likely face multiple charges as early as Monday.
Violence in response to the horror of abortion is rare, but not new. According to some news reports, Dr. Tiller was the fifth physician to be murdered by abortion opponents. In other cases, abortion clinics have been bombed and workers have been hurt or killed.
Proponents of abortion rights often charge that the rhetoric of the pro-life movement leads to violence. After all, we describe abortion as murder and point to the business of abortion as the murder of the unborn. We make clear that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and that what goes on in abortion clinics is the business of death.
We make these arguments because we know they are true. Abortion is murder. What goes on in those clinics is institutionalized homicide, often for financial profit. Abortion is a moral scandal and a national tragedy and a blight upon the American conscience.
But violence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause. Now, the premeditated murder of Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of his church is the headline scandal -- not the abortions he performed and the cause he represented.
We have no right to take the law into our own hands in an act of criminal violence. We are not given the right to take this power into our own hands, for God has granted this power to governing authorities. The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy. This is not merely a legal technicality -- it is a vital test of the morality of the pro-life movement.
The Christian church has been forced by historical necessity to think through these issues again and again. The church has reached a basic moral consensus on issues of violence and governmental obedience, and this consensus requires that Christian citizens work within legal, judicial, and political means to persuade governing authorities concerning what is good, right, just, and honoring to God. Those who operate outside of this consensus and perform acts of violence are rightly understood to arrogate authority to themselves in a way that violates not only the laws of men but the law of God. Civil disobedience may be justified so long as the Christian is willing to suffer at the hands of the governing authorities, but is not justified if the citizen employs violence against the state or against other citizens.
In the case of Dr. George Tiller, the governing authorities failed again and again to fulfill their responsibility to protect all citizens, including those yet unborn. The law is dishonoring to God in its disrespect for human life. The law failed to bring George Tiller to account for what should have been seen as crimes against humanity. But this failure does not authorize others to act in the place of the government, much less in the place of God. The government must now act to prosecute and punish the murderer of Dr. George Tiller.
In October of 1859, John Brown led a violent attack upon the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. A radical abolitionist, Brown had already proved himself capable of violence for his cause. In 1856 he had led a gang that brutally killed several pro-slavery figures in Kansas. The raid on Harpers Ferry led to more deaths before Brown and his surviving rebels were arrested, charged with treason, and executed.
When John Brown was arrested, Henry David Thoreau defended the man and his violence, asking: "Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good?"
Those are the very questions some are tempted to ask now, but these weighty questions cannot justify violence in the name of an honorable cause. Thoreau was right about the fact that the laws allowing slavery in the United States were immoral and unjustifiable. John Brown was right when he claimed that slavery was a blight upon the nation's conscience -- a wrong that had to be ended. Brown's logic led him to treason, and he was found guilty in a court of law and punished. Thoreau would refer to Brown as an "angel of light," but Thoreau never had to live with the consequences of his own attempt to justify murder, nor did he ever acknowledge the true character of the man.
The pro-life movement in America must not wage war against abortion by following the example of John Brown. Nor can we allow ourselves the luxury of the logic of defending the indefensible along the lines of Thoreau. We must confront this great evil of abortion from a higher plane, and know that the battle is ultimately in God's hands.
Murder is murder. The law rightly affirms that the killing of Dr. George Tiller is murder. In this we must agree. We cannot rest until the law also recognizes the killing of the unborn as murder. The killing of Dr. George Tiller makes that challenge all the more difficult.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Supreme Court
Good Afternoon...
In recent days, Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court, announced his retirement...the President, eagar to make his mark on the Court (as all Presidents are) has named as his choice to succeed Souter, Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Court of Appeals in New York...She was enthusiastically endorsed by the two current Senators from that state...Now, in considering who should or should not be appointed, we, conservative Christian believers, must keep in mind that the President is allowed to nominate whomever he pleases...we certainly could not expect the President to nominate someone like Chief Justice Roberts or another Justice Anthony Scalia...we must understand that coming in, this President will appoint Judges whom he believes will be just as liberal as he is and one who holds as much disdain for the U.S. Constitution as he does...he made it clear leading up to this nomination that he wanted someone who will have "empathy" in making decisions for all those whose voices are not being heard...the problem with that line of thinking Mr. President is that we are a nation of laws and the law is supposed to be color blind and not show any bias towards anyone...this brings me back to Judge Sotomayor...she is quoted as saying that she would hope that a Laitina Woman, with the life experiences that she has had, would come to a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life...I can only imagine what kind of uproar we would hear if a white male judge had said the same thing about his qualifications!
I imagine that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed as our friendly Republican Senators will seat on their hands as usual and watch this travesty play out...We can only hope that what happened to President George H.W. Bush when he appointed Souter happens to Obama when naming his replacement....
Even So, Come Quickly Lord Jesus!
In recent days, Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court, announced his retirement...the President, eagar to make his mark on the Court (as all Presidents are) has named as his choice to succeed Souter, Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Court of Appeals in New York...She was enthusiastically endorsed by the two current Senators from that state...Now, in considering who should or should not be appointed, we, conservative Christian believers, must keep in mind that the President is allowed to nominate whomever he pleases...we certainly could not expect the President to nominate someone like Chief Justice Roberts or another Justice Anthony Scalia...we must understand that coming in, this President will appoint Judges whom he believes will be just as liberal as he is and one who holds as much disdain for the U.S. Constitution as he does...he made it clear leading up to this nomination that he wanted someone who will have "empathy" in making decisions for all those whose voices are not being heard...the problem with that line of thinking Mr. President is that we are a nation of laws and the law is supposed to be color blind and not show any bias towards anyone...this brings me back to Judge Sotomayor...she is quoted as saying that she would hope that a Laitina Woman, with the life experiences that she has had, would come to a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life...I can only imagine what kind of uproar we would hear if a white male judge had said the same thing about his qualifications!
I imagine that Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed as our friendly Republican Senators will seat on their hands as usual and watch this travesty play out...We can only hope that what happened to President George H.W. Bush when he appointed Souter happens to Obama when naming his replacement....
Even So, Come Quickly Lord Jesus!
Monday, May 18, 2009
The President & Abortion...
Good Morning!
Yesterday, the President of the United States, Barrack Obama, was the invited speaker at the commencement exercises at Notre Dame University. There was quite a bit of contraversy surrounding this choice for this honor at this school. Never-the-less, the President accepted the invitation. There was, as a result, a number of protesters to his being there and receiving an honarary doctorate.
My purpose here is to look at several things the President said and then offer commentary:
The Prseident said:
"Unfortunately, finding that common ground -- recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a "single garment of destiny" -- is not easy. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man _ our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times."
To say that "too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism" and then advocate abortion on demand for any reason seems contradictory. That is essentially what abortion is all about...Most abortions are for the convenience of the one seeking an abortion...yet the President stands with those who would have unfetterred abortion and has even exported this over-seas by sending U.S. Tax-Payer money to support it...
"The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved."
In the area of stem-cell research, embryonic stem cells have never shown to be an answer in fighting disease whereas, adult stem cells have...
"As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called "The Audacity of Hope." A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an e-mail from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that's not what was preventing him from voting for me.
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my Web site -- an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."
Fair-minded words.
After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my Web site. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that -- when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.
That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women."
The President speaks of "fair-minded words"...that we can find common ground...there is no common ground...we believe that abortion is murder and the President and those who push for policies like his do not...How can we reduce the number of abortions when you Mr. President advocate making it available under any circumstances? How can we reduce the number of abortions when you Mr. President promise to sign legislation that will over-turn every abortion limitation to include the abhorrent procedure known as Partial-Birth-Abortion? Or when you advocate that a child that survives a botched abortion should be left to die so as not to interfere with a woman's right to choose? He also tells us that "we can agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision"...DUH! Of course this is a heart-wrenching decision! This is so because a woman is contemplating destroying and murdering the growing life of her CHILD within her!
The fact is that the President holds the power...he has the congress firmly within his grasp and the time for payback to all his supporters has come...the problem is that there are human lives in the balance...human lives that will be murdered for the sake of convenience...God help us...
One last statement about the speech. The President claims that maybe these graduates will help us out with the problem of climate change:
"We must decide how to save God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it."
He says that he is a Christian and I am reminded of God's own word on the subject from Genesis 8:22, "While the earth remains,Seedtime and harvest,Cold and heat,Winter and summer,And day and night Shall not cease."
Either we believe God or...Al Gore?
Yesterday, the President of the United States, Barrack Obama, was the invited speaker at the commencement exercises at Notre Dame University. There was quite a bit of contraversy surrounding this choice for this honor at this school. Never-the-less, the President accepted the invitation. There was, as a result, a number of protesters to his being there and receiving an honarary doctorate.
My purpose here is to look at several things the President said and then offer commentary:
The Prseident said:
"Unfortunately, finding that common ground -- recognizing that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a "single garment of destiny" -- is not easy. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the imperfections of man _ our selfishness, our pride, our stubbornness, our acquisitiveness, our insecurities, our egos; all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin. We too often seek advantage over others. We cling to outworn prejudice and fear those who are unfamiliar. Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism; in which the world is necessarily a zero-sum game. The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice. And so, for all our technology and scientific advances, we see around the globe violence and want and strife that would seem sadly familiar to those in ancient times."
To say that "too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism" and then advocate abortion on demand for any reason seems contradictory. That is essentially what abortion is all about...Most abortions are for the convenience of the one seeking an abortion...yet the President stands with those who would have unfetterred abortion and has even exported this over-seas by sending U.S. Tax-Payer money to support it...
"The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved."
In the area of stem-cell research, embryonic stem cells have never shown to be an answer in fighting disease whereas, adult stem cells have...
"As I considered the controversy surrounding my visit here, I was reminded of an encounter I had during my Senate campaign, one that I describe in a book I wrote called "The Audacity of Hope." A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an e-mail from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. He described himself as a Christian who was strongly pro-life, but that's not what was preventing him from voting for me.
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my Web site -- an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. He wrote, "I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."
Fair-minded words.
After I read the doctor's letter, I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my Web site. And I said a prayer that night that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me. Because when we do that -- when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do -- that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground.
That's when we begin to say, "Maybe we won't agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women."
The President speaks of "fair-minded words"...that we can find common ground...there is no common ground...we believe that abortion is murder and the President and those who push for policies like his do not...How can we reduce the number of abortions when you Mr. President advocate making it available under any circumstances? How can we reduce the number of abortions when you Mr. President promise to sign legislation that will over-turn every abortion limitation to include the abhorrent procedure known as Partial-Birth-Abortion? Or when you advocate that a child that survives a botched abortion should be left to die so as not to interfere with a woman's right to choose? He also tells us that "we can agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision"...DUH! Of course this is a heart-wrenching decision! This is so because a woman is contemplating destroying and murdering the growing life of her CHILD within her!
The fact is that the President holds the power...he has the congress firmly within his grasp and the time for payback to all his supporters has come...the problem is that there are human lives in the balance...human lives that will be murdered for the sake of convenience...God help us...
One last statement about the speech. The President claims that maybe these graduates will help us out with the problem of climate change:
"We must decide how to save God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it."
He says that he is a Christian and I am reminded of God's own word on the subject from Genesis 8:22, "While the earth remains,Seedtime and harvest,Cold and heat,Winter and summer,And day and night Shall not cease."
Either we believe God or...Al Gore?
Friday, May 8, 2009
Who is Jesus?
Good Morning...many in our world today think that they know Jesus. The question of course is do they know the REAL Jesus! Jack Kelly has written a wonderful piece about Jesus that I would love to share with you today:
Seven Men Named Jesus
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A recent poll claimed that about half of all professing Christians don’t believe that Jesus is God, or that the Holy Spirit and Satan even exist. Smaller but still significant percentages don’t believe that Jesus lived a sin free life or that He is the only way to salvation. This has prompted questions about whether this means they aren’t really saved. I remembered an article on this subject that I wrote a number of years ago and in response to these questions I have updated and expanded it. I believe it will explain what you have to believe about Jesus to be saved. Let’s read it.
The Other Six
Ever suspect while talking with someone that you may have a mutual friend? Then as you get further into the conversation you realize that you are describing two different people who happen to have the same name? So it is with discussions of Jesus. The name’s the same but the descriptions vary widely. Over the years I’ve collected numerous descriptions of men named Jesus. Which one do you know?
First there’s the Jesus of Judaism. He’s known in Jewish writings as the illegitimate son of Miriam (Mary). He lived in the first century CE (they don’t use AD) and led people away from main stream Judaism into a cult. His followers were first called Netzerim (people of the branch) and later Christians. In his name Jews have been persecuted unmercifully over the centuries. Jews who admit to believing He was their Messiah are often considered dead to their families. Jews don’t believe in a second coming because they don’t believe there’s been a first one.
Then you have the Jesus of Islam. He was a prophet and teacher on a par with Mohammed. His role was to help prepare people for the great leader from Allah coming at the end of time to judge the world. He was born of a virgin but was not the son of God because the Quran says “God begets not, nor is he begotten.” He didn’t die for the sins of the people because in Islam salvation comes from good works. Neither was he resurrected. Instead, in a time of confusion God took him live into heaven and someone else was crucified. He will return at the end of the age to defeat the anti-Christ, call everyone to Islam, and prepare the world for judgment.
The Jesus of Mormonism is the spirit brother of Lucifer. Both are sons of a god who was once a man and one of his many wives. This Jesus became a human as the result of a sexual union between the Mormon god and an unmarried Jewish girl named Mary. He’s often called the Savior but never Lord, because although he’s one of god’s sons, he’s not god. If he determines that you’ve done everything you possibly can to earn your own salvation and are still short, he’ll graciously make up the difference. He’ll return at the End of the Age, having protected his saints through the time of Great Tribulation, to set up his kingdom.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a Jesus too. He’s a son of Jehovah, but He’s not God. Rather, he was a perfect man just like Adam originally was. Before he became a man he was the Archangel Michael, who The Witnesses believe to be Jehovah’s first created being. Just believing in Jesus is not enough to save us. we also have to become a Jehovah’s Witness, be baptized, and obey God’s laws all of our life to prove ourselves worthy. Their Jesus wasn’t physically resurrected, but came back to life in Spirit form. He returned to Earth in Spirit form in 1914 and will become a physical being again at Armageddon.
Then there’s the Jesus of the liberal denominations. He’s a first century man who lived an exemplary life of such gentleness and grace that it was almost as if he was God. He’ll see that everyone who joins their denominations gets accepted into heaven whether they’re born again or not. Some proponents of liberal theology claim that he’ll also see that everyone who was sincere in whatever other religion they practiced will get to heaven too. For the most part, liberal denominations don’t believe in the literal fulfillment of End Time events. For many, the 2nd Coming happened to each person when they first believed in Jesus.
The New Age Jesus is really one of the oldest. He originally appeared in first century Gnosticism. This Jesus was a man who like 40 other “ascended masters” holds the key to knowledge (gnosis) that when learned will bring about the next phase of human evolution, a spiritual growth that will finally make peace on earth possible. He didn’t die for our sins because there’s no need for us to be saved.
You’ll find variations on these six themes in nearly every major religion and cult around today. It seems every body wants you to think they know a man named Jesus, even if they have to redefine him to suit their beliefs.
The Real Jesus
But there is one more man named Jesus. He is not a created being. On the contrary He is our Creator. As Paul wrote in Colossians 1:16, By him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He’s not an angel and he’s not a mere man, because He created both. The archangel Michael might be the first created being, but if he is, Jesus is the one who created him. And Lucifer may have many brothers, but if he does, Jesus created them all.
This is the Jesus of the Bible. He claimed to be God in the form of man (John 10:30 and 14:9). Men who knew Him agreed. Paul taught the Deity of Jesus in Colossians 1:15-16. So did John (John 1:1-3). The writer of the Book of Hebrews also agreed (Hebr 1:3) and included a quote from Psalm 45:6-7 that shows God Himself addressing Jesus as God (Hebr 1:8). And this is not just a New Testament idea. In his prophecy of the Messiah’s birthplace, Micah said He was an eternal being whose goings forth were from days of eternity. Literally from before time and perpetual. (Micah 5:2) He is the eternal God.
Here’s where your knowledge of Scripture becomes really important, because in order to be all the Bible claims, Jesus has to be both 100% man and 100% God. If He isn’t a man He couldn’t have been made like us in every way and suffered our temptations as Hebr. 2:17-18 claim; he couldn’t be our High Priest as Hebr. 4:14-15 assert; and he can’t be our redeemer because he wouldn’t be our next of kin as required by Lev. 25:47-48 and explained in Rom 5:18-19. If He isn’t God He couldn’t be King David’s Lord (Matt 22:41-45) He couldn’t be sinless (Rom 3:20) and He couldn’t be our Savior (Mark 2:6-12 and 1 Ptr 1: 18-21).
Is This a Cult?
Three things distinguish Christian cult beliefs from orthodox theology. The cults deny the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. You have to earn at least part of the salvation they offer. They also deny the notion of eternal punishment for sin. Everyone goes to some kind of Heaven. And most importantly, they deny the deity of Jesus. They portray Him as a great man and role model; a great teacher, a prophet, even a social revolutionary, but certainly not God.
In truth Jesus was all of that. But He was also much more. He was God in the form of man; the Father dwelling in the Son (Col 1:19). To think of Jesus as anyone other than God is to reject the truth concerning Him revealed through out His Word, and to put yourself at risk of trusting in the wrong Jesus for your eternal destiny. The Jesus of the Bible is the only one of the seven men named Jesus who is able to save you. Selah 05-02-09
Seven Men Named Jesus
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A recent poll claimed that about half of all professing Christians don’t believe that Jesus is God, or that the Holy Spirit and Satan even exist. Smaller but still significant percentages don’t believe that Jesus lived a sin free life or that He is the only way to salvation. This has prompted questions about whether this means they aren’t really saved. I remembered an article on this subject that I wrote a number of years ago and in response to these questions I have updated and expanded it. I believe it will explain what you have to believe about Jesus to be saved. Let’s read it.
The Other Six
Ever suspect while talking with someone that you may have a mutual friend? Then as you get further into the conversation you realize that you are describing two different people who happen to have the same name? So it is with discussions of Jesus. The name’s the same but the descriptions vary widely. Over the years I’ve collected numerous descriptions of men named Jesus. Which one do you know?
First there’s the Jesus of Judaism. He’s known in Jewish writings as the illegitimate son of Miriam (Mary). He lived in the first century CE (they don’t use AD) and led people away from main stream Judaism into a cult. His followers were first called Netzerim (people of the branch) and later Christians. In his name Jews have been persecuted unmercifully over the centuries. Jews who admit to believing He was their Messiah are often considered dead to their families. Jews don’t believe in a second coming because they don’t believe there’s been a first one.
Then you have the Jesus of Islam. He was a prophet and teacher on a par with Mohammed. His role was to help prepare people for the great leader from Allah coming at the end of time to judge the world. He was born of a virgin but was not the son of God because the Quran says “God begets not, nor is he begotten.” He didn’t die for the sins of the people because in Islam salvation comes from good works. Neither was he resurrected. Instead, in a time of confusion God took him live into heaven and someone else was crucified. He will return at the end of the age to defeat the anti-Christ, call everyone to Islam, and prepare the world for judgment.
The Jesus of Mormonism is the spirit brother of Lucifer. Both are sons of a god who was once a man and one of his many wives. This Jesus became a human as the result of a sexual union between the Mormon god and an unmarried Jewish girl named Mary. He’s often called the Savior but never Lord, because although he’s one of god’s sons, he’s not god. If he determines that you’ve done everything you possibly can to earn your own salvation and are still short, he’ll graciously make up the difference. He’ll return at the End of the Age, having protected his saints through the time of Great Tribulation, to set up his kingdom.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a Jesus too. He’s a son of Jehovah, but He’s not God. Rather, he was a perfect man just like Adam originally was. Before he became a man he was the Archangel Michael, who The Witnesses believe to be Jehovah’s first created being. Just believing in Jesus is not enough to save us. we also have to become a Jehovah’s Witness, be baptized, and obey God’s laws all of our life to prove ourselves worthy. Their Jesus wasn’t physically resurrected, but came back to life in Spirit form. He returned to Earth in Spirit form in 1914 and will become a physical being again at Armageddon.
Then there’s the Jesus of the liberal denominations. He’s a first century man who lived an exemplary life of such gentleness and grace that it was almost as if he was God. He’ll see that everyone who joins their denominations gets accepted into heaven whether they’re born again or not. Some proponents of liberal theology claim that he’ll also see that everyone who was sincere in whatever other religion they practiced will get to heaven too. For the most part, liberal denominations don’t believe in the literal fulfillment of End Time events. For many, the 2nd Coming happened to each person when they first believed in Jesus.
The New Age Jesus is really one of the oldest. He originally appeared in first century Gnosticism. This Jesus was a man who like 40 other “ascended masters” holds the key to knowledge (gnosis) that when learned will bring about the next phase of human evolution, a spiritual growth that will finally make peace on earth possible. He didn’t die for our sins because there’s no need for us to be saved.
You’ll find variations on these six themes in nearly every major religion and cult around today. It seems every body wants you to think they know a man named Jesus, even if they have to redefine him to suit their beliefs.
The Real Jesus
But there is one more man named Jesus. He is not a created being. On the contrary He is our Creator. As Paul wrote in Colossians 1:16, By him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He’s not an angel and he’s not a mere man, because He created both. The archangel Michael might be the first created being, but if he is, Jesus is the one who created him. And Lucifer may have many brothers, but if he does, Jesus created them all.
This is the Jesus of the Bible. He claimed to be God in the form of man (John 10:30 and 14:9). Men who knew Him agreed. Paul taught the Deity of Jesus in Colossians 1:15-16. So did John (John 1:1-3). The writer of the Book of Hebrews also agreed (Hebr 1:3) and included a quote from Psalm 45:6-7 that shows God Himself addressing Jesus as God (Hebr 1:8). And this is not just a New Testament idea. In his prophecy of the Messiah’s birthplace, Micah said He was an eternal being whose goings forth were from days of eternity. Literally from before time and perpetual. (Micah 5:2) He is the eternal God.
Here’s where your knowledge of Scripture becomes really important, because in order to be all the Bible claims, Jesus has to be both 100% man and 100% God. If He isn’t a man He couldn’t have been made like us in every way and suffered our temptations as Hebr. 2:17-18 claim; he couldn’t be our High Priest as Hebr. 4:14-15 assert; and he can’t be our redeemer because he wouldn’t be our next of kin as required by Lev. 25:47-48 and explained in Rom 5:18-19. If He isn’t God He couldn’t be King David’s Lord (Matt 22:41-45) He couldn’t be sinless (Rom 3:20) and He couldn’t be our Savior (Mark 2:6-12 and 1 Ptr 1: 18-21).
Is This a Cult?
Three things distinguish Christian cult beliefs from orthodox theology. The cults deny the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. You have to earn at least part of the salvation they offer. They also deny the notion of eternal punishment for sin. Everyone goes to some kind of Heaven. And most importantly, they deny the deity of Jesus. They portray Him as a great man and role model; a great teacher, a prophet, even a social revolutionary, but certainly not God.
In truth Jesus was all of that. But He was also much more. He was God in the form of man; the Father dwelling in the Son (Col 1:19). To think of Jesus as anyone other than God is to reject the truth concerning Him revealed through out His Word, and to put yourself at risk of trusting in the wrong Jesus for your eternal destiny. The Jesus of the Bible is the only one of the seven men named Jesus who is able to save you. Selah 05-02-09
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The First 100 Days
Good Afternoon
Our President has been in office now for 100 days. What have we seen in these days? We have a bail-out of billions of dollars for Banks, Autos and I guess whomever gets in line next. The funny thing is, the majority of Americans never wanted these bailouts to begin with...and to think that W started this mess...and the money seems to hae "disappeared"...we were told that the stimulus bill was so important that it must be passed before anyone in Congress (except the authors) could even read it...the irony is that when it passed, the President went on a four day vacation and said he would sign it later...real important bill huh?
We have seen the President use his executive order to send money overseas to facilitate abortion...we are still waiting on the executive order to end the right of medical care providers to refuse abortions on religious grounds...
He has appointed men and women who refused to pay their own taxes, has Homeland Security officials who claim that returning military veterans are terrorist risks along with yours truly! That's right! Since I am against abortion and same-sex marriage (abominations both!) and teach end-times prophecies, I too am a risk to becoming a "home-grown terrorist" according to our government...And this is just for starters!
Its going to be a LONG four years!
Even So, Lord Jesus Come Quickly!!!!
P.S. By the way...if you see an add by Google on this Blog that would seem to be at odds with the views stated therein, its because they put it there...NOT ME!
Our President has been in office now for 100 days. What have we seen in these days? We have a bail-out of billions of dollars for Banks, Autos and I guess whomever gets in line next. The funny thing is, the majority of Americans never wanted these bailouts to begin with...and to think that W started this mess...and the money seems to hae "disappeared"...we were told that the stimulus bill was so important that it must be passed before anyone in Congress (except the authors) could even read it...the irony is that when it passed, the President went on a four day vacation and said he would sign it later...real important bill huh?
We have seen the President use his executive order to send money overseas to facilitate abortion...we are still waiting on the executive order to end the right of medical care providers to refuse abortions on religious grounds...
He has appointed men and women who refused to pay their own taxes, has Homeland Security officials who claim that returning military veterans are terrorist risks along with yours truly! That's right! Since I am against abortion and same-sex marriage (abominations both!) and teach end-times prophecies, I too am a risk to becoming a "home-grown terrorist" according to our government...And this is just for starters!
Its going to be a LONG four years!
Even So, Lord Jesus Come Quickly!!!!
P.S. By the way...if you see an add by Google on this Blog that would seem to be at odds with the views stated therein, its because they put it there...NOT ME!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Random Thoughts
Today is Wednesday, April 22, 2009 and I am sitting in my office examining some various news stories on the net...
Kudos to Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who stood true to her convictions that marriage is to be between one man and one woman...I wish that more people who claim to know Jesus Christ would have the same courage to stand and not retreat (Are you listening Rick Warren?) from the truths of God's Word...even in the firestorm that has followed, she has remained undeterred in her convictions!
Kudos to Gary Galeotti, my Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Dr. Galeotti is retiring after spending more than 30 years of teaching, the last 17 at SEBTS. He is a remarkable man of God and I am sure that the Seminary will miss him!
In a recent appearance on Keith Olbermann's program on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo stated that the TEA parties were just racism. She said that the parties were just people who did not like a black guy in the White House. Well, we really cannot expect anything any different from those of the liberal persuasion...just because someone disagrees with the President's policies does not make them a racist. The fact is that Government, under Bush, and now under Obama, has been and is spending too much money that the country does not have. the only way to recoup this money, according to their logic, is to increase taxes....I know, I know, Obama cut taxes for 95% of Americans...however, the second shoe is about to drop...it seems that Obama wants to change our behavior by a "cap & trade" bill that estimates say, will increase your energy costs some $3,000.00 per household per year, if this bill is passed...Obama himself has said that energy bills will skyrocket for the average consumer...so whenever you drive, turn on your a/c at home, use the blowdryer, wash your clothes, etc. you will certainly pay for it with a tax that is designed to make you quit doing those things in order to "save" the earth...Change we can believe in, Change...that's all that will be left in our wallets!
We had an interesting night in Columbus the other night...it seems that just as I was preparing my coffee maker to come on the next morning for my daily cup of joe, a loud voice came from outside saying that a tornado had been spotted in Phenix City, Alabama and that we should take cover...NOW! Then the siren went off...You should have seen 7 of us, plus one feline, huddled together in the hallway of our home (a small hallway!) with laptops at the ready to track the storm. The Lord was watching over us that night as the storm passed just to our west and north...the city experienced some damage, but, thankfully, no lives were lost...
Have a Great Day!
Kudos to Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who stood true to her convictions that marriage is to be between one man and one woman...I wish that more people who claim to know Jesus Christ would have the same courage to stand and not retreat (Are you listening Rick Warren?) from the truths of God's Word...even in the firestorm that has followed, she has remained undeterred in her convictions!
Kudos to Gary Galeotti, my Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Dr. Galeotti is retiring after spending more than 30 years of teaching, the last 17 at SEBTS. He is a remarkable man of God and I am sure that the Seminary will miss him!
In a recent appearance on Keith Olbermann's program on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo stated that the TEA parties were just racism. She said that the parties were just people who did not like a black guy in the White House. Well, we really cannot expect anything any different from those of the liberal persuasion...just because someone disagrees with the President's policies does not make them a racist. The fact is that Government, under Bush, and now under Obama, has been and is spending too much money that the country does not have. the only way to recoup this money, according to their logic, is to increase taxes....I know, I know, Obama cut taxes for 95% of Americans...however, the second shoe is about to drop...it seems that Obama wants to change our behavior by a "cap & trade" bill that estimates say, will increase your energy costs some $3,000.00 per household per year, if this bill is passed...Obama himself has said that energy bills will skyrocket for the average consumer...so whenever you drive, turn on your a/c at home, use the blowdryer, wash your clothes, etc. you will certainly pay for it with a tax that is designed to make you quit doing those things in order to "save" the earth...Change we can believe in, Change...that's all that will be left in our wallets!
We had an interesting night in Columbus the other night...it seems that just as I was preparing my coffee maker to come on the next morning for my daily cup of joe, a loud voice came from outside saying that a tornado had been spotted in Phenix City, Alabama and that we should take cover...NOW! Then the siren went off...You should have seen 7 of us, plus one feline, huddled together in the hallway of our home (a small hallway!) with laptops at the ready to track the storm. The Lord was watching over us that night as the storm passed just to our west and north...the city experienced some damage, but, thankfully, no lives were lost...
Have a Great Day!
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Wanted?
After serving in Law Enforcement for 15 years and having been an observer of the political scene for...well, longer than I care to admit, I finally know what those folks on the FBI most wanted list must feel like! In case you have had your head in the sand for the last several days, the Department of Homeland Security has released a report detailing their assessment of so-called "right-wing extremists". The report states that those who are of one issue like say abortion, or same-sex marriage or even a teacher of end times prophecies are likely to be terrorists! We are said to be recruiting new members because of the economic conditions, etc. We were also lumped in with returning military vets...A group I would gladly stand with, by the way...
So my government says that I am a risk to be a terrorist because I believe in the sanctity of human life, believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, and teach end times prophecies...I believe in law and order and I believe that there is a proper way to redress our government with our grievances, certainly not through terrorism...I have written a letter to Secretary Napolitano to express my disbelief...I can hear the sound of the approaching hoof-beats!
Even so, Lord Jesus come quickly!
So my government says that I am a risk to be a terrorist because I believe in the sanctity of human life, believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, and teach end times prophecies...I believe in law and order and I believe that there is a proper way to redress our government with our grievances, certainly not through terrorism...I have written a letter to Secretary Napolitano to express my disbelief...I can hear the sound of the approaching hoof-beats!
Even so, Lord Jesus come quickly!
Dirty Politics Taints All Elections
Good Morning...I am an American! I love this land that God lead our founding fathers to start. I get very upset and angry when those running for office don't play by the rules. I also get very upset when rules change after the election to tilt the final result to one candidate or another. The following article details what has happened in Minnesota and it is a scary thing that has happened. I trust that this election will encourage all of us to be ever more vigilant each election cycle:
Minnesota's Missing Votes
Some Senate absentee ballots are more equal than others..Articlemore in Opinion ».EmailPrinter FriendlyShare:
Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others.
AP.Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.
The Coleman camp pushed for resolution of these problems during the recount, but it was stymied by a state canvassing board that cared more about preserving its "Minnesota nice" reputation than about making tough calls. The state Supreme Court also punted difficult questions. The mess then landed with the three-judge panel overseeing Mr. Coleman's contest trial, a panel that seemed out of its depth.
Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact.
Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead.
During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials.
But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition.
If all this sounds familiar, think Florida 2000. In that Presidential recount, officials couldn't decide what counted as a legal vote, and so different counties used different standards. The Florida Supreme Court made things worse by changing the rules after the fact. In Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this violated Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, which require that every vote be accorded equal weight.
This will be a basis for Mr. Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should that body be reluctant to publicly rebuke their judicial colleagues who sat on the contest panel, Mr. Coleman could also take his appeal to federal court. This could take months.
Another solution is to hold a special Senate election. Minnesota law does not specifically provide for such a runoff. However, the U.S. Constitution's 17th amendment does provide states with a roadmap for filling "vacancies," which might be a legal starting point for a do-over. Even before the shifting standards of the contest trial, the St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the ballot-counting evidence and called for a revote. It could be that this is where the court case is leading in any event.
Democrats want to portray Mr. Coleman as a sore loser and make the Republican worry that he will ruin his chances for other political office. But Mr. Coleman has a legitimate grievance that not all votes have been treated equally. If the Franken standard of disparate absentee-voter treatment is allowed to stand, every close election will be settled by a legal scramble to change the vote-counting rules after Election Day. Minnesota should take the time to get this one right.
Minnesota's Missing Votes
Some Senate absentee ballots are more equal than others..Articlemore in Opinion ».EmailPrinter FriendlyShare:
Meanwhile, back in the Minnesota Senate recount, the three-judge panel reviewing the race has declared Democrat Al Franken the winner. Republican Norm Coleman intends to appeal to the state's Supreme Court, while Democrats and the press corps pressure him to surrender. We hope Mr. Coleman keeps fighting, because the outcome so far hangs on the fact that some votes have been counted differently from others.
AP.Even after the recount and panel-findings, the 312-vote margin separating the two men equals about .01% of the 2.9 million votes cast. Even without any irregularities, this is as close to a "tie" as it gets. And there have been plenty of irregularities. By the end of the recount, the state was awash with evidence of duplicate ballot counting, newly discovered ballots, missing ballots, illegal voting, and wildly diverse standards as to which votes were counted. Any one of these issues was enough to throw the outcome into doubt. Combined, they created a taint more worthy of New Jersey than Minnesota.
The Coleman camp pushed for resolution of these problems during the recount, but it was stymied by a state canvassing board that cared more about preserving its "Minnesota nice" reputation than about making tough calls. The state Supreme Court also punted difficult questions. The mess then landed with the three-judge panel overseeing Mr. Coleman's contest trial, a panel that seemed out of its depth.
Case in point: the panel's dismal handling of absentee ballots. Early in the recount, the Franken team howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. We warned at the time that this was dangerous territory, designed to pressure election officials into accepting rejected ballots after the fact.
Yet instead of shutting this Franken request down, or early on issuing a clear set of rules as to which absentees were valid, the state Supreme Court and the canvassing board oversaw a haphazard process by which some counties submitted new batches to be included in the tally, while other counties did not. The resulting additional 933 ballots were largely responsible for Mr. Franken's narrow lead.
During the contest trial, the Coleman team presented evidence of a further 6,500 absentees that it felt deserved to be included under the process that had produced the prior 933. The three judges then finally defined what constituted a "legal" absentee ballot. Countable ballots, for instance, had to contain the signature of the voter, complete registration information, and proper witness credentials.
But the panel only applied these standards going forward, severely reducing the universe of additional absentees that the Coleman team could hope to have included. In the end, the three judges allowed only about 350 additional absentees to be counted. The panel also did nothing about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of absentees that have already been legally included, yet are now "illegal" according to the panel's own ex-post definition.
If all this sounds familiar, think Florida 2000. In that Presidential recount, officials couldn't decide what counted as a legal vote, and so different counties used different standards. The Florida Supreme Court made things worse by changing the rules after the fact. In Bush v. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this violated Constitutional principles of equal protection and due process, which require that every vote be accorded equal weight.
This will be a basis for Mr. Coleman's appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. Should that body be reluctant to publicly rebuke their judicial colleagues who sat on the contest panel, Mr. Coleman could also take his appeal to federal court. This could take months.
Another solution is to hold a special Senate election. Minnesota law does not specifically provide for such a runoff. However, the U.S. Constitution's 17th amendment does provide states with a roadmap for filling "vacancies," which might be a legal starting point for a do-over. Even before the shifting standards of the contest trial, the St. Paul Pioneer Press looked at the ballot-counting evidence and called for a revote. It could be that this is where the court case is leading in any event.
Democrats want to portray Mr. Coleman as a sore loser and make the Republican worry that he will ruin his chances for other political office. But Mr. Coleman has a legitimate grievance that not all votes have been treated equally. If the Franken standard of disparate absentee-voter treatment is allowed to stand, every close election will be settled by a legal scramble to change the vote-counting rules after Election Day. Minnesota should take the time to get this one right.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Easter
Good morning...
This week is known as "Holy Week" in Christian circles. This week as Christians, we recognize the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Many in our world today believe that Jesus is a really nice guy! He was a "good teacher", a "prophet", a "moral man". Let me state with absolute confidence that Jesus is the Son of God who died for sin and rose from the dead! Many would say that they can agree that Jesus was a good man and a prophet but this "rising from the dead thing" is taking it too far. However, to say that Jesus was a good man, a prophet, or good teacher, but deny the resurrection is contradictory. How would a good teacher, prophet or moral man teach that He would die and rise from the dead if He could not do it? By definition, he could not be those things if he was lying about rising fromt he dead. He is either God in human form or He is not, and if not, then he is not a good man, moral man, or good teacher.
Some say that he really didn't die on the cross, that he just feined his death, so he never really died and never really rose from the dead; just recovered. Well, I find it hard to believe that the Roman Government didn't kill Jesus on the cross. These were professional killers so to speak. The Romans knew how to put people to death. Not too long before Jesus' death, the Romans put down the Macabean revolt and literally lined the streets with crucified rebels. Jesus was also scouraged; a horrible punishment where a "cat-o-nine tails" was used. The whip was filled with bone fragments that would slash the skin as it struck him on the back, wrapped around him in the front and dug into the skin pulling it loose as it was pulled back. The death on the cross was real indeed. Jesus claimed that He would rise from the dead and indeed the Bible declares that Jesus rose from the dead and appearred to the disciples at various times and even to a crowd of 500 at one time. Paul stated that many of those people were still alive meaning that they were available to be interviewed in that day. Also, this as just a couple of years after the fact meaning that this was not just some legend that was being repeated. Another factor to consider: What changed the disciples? When Jesus was arrested, they ran away in fear. Peter even denied Jesus three times that night. But after the resurrection, these same disciples became bold prclaimers of his resurrection. Peter even stood in Jerusalem, the city where Jesus died, and proclaimed the gospel story. So obviously, something changed. If Jesus had not risen, would these men have risked life and limb for a lie? I don't think so! These men were martyred for their faith and again, who would give their life for a lie? Don't know of any!
Let me encourage you today: The Bible declares that if we will confess with our mouth "Jesus is Lord", believe that He is the Son of God, believe that He rose from the dead, ask Him to forgive us of our sin and repent of it, that we will be "saved", that is we will be given new life, a life that will be spent in eternity with God in Heaven. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me."
Friends there is no other way to get to God than through Jesus. We are not all on the pathway to God; we are not all headed there just on a different road. The Bible declares that there are two roads: the broad road that leads to destruction, of which many are on it, and the narrow road that leads to life. Jesus is that narrow road! Let me encourage you to invite the Savior into your heart today! If you would like to ask questions, please comment on this posting with a way for me to contact you and I will be happy to share further.
This week is known as "Holy Week" in Christian circles. This week as Christians, we recognize the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Many in our world today believe that Jesus is a really nice guy! He was a "good teacher", a "prophet", a "moral man". Let me state with absolute confidence that Jesus is the Son of God who died for sin and rose from the dead! Many would say that they can agree that Jesus was a good man and a prophet but this "rising from the dead thing" is taking it too far. However, to say that Jesus was a good man, a prophet, or good teacher, but deny the resurrection is contradictory. How would a good teacher, prophet or moral man teach that He would die and rise from the dead if He could not do it? By definition, he could not be those things if he was lying about rising fromt he dead. He is either God in human form or He is not, and if not, then he is not a good man, moral man, or good teacher.
Some say that he really didn't die on the cross, that he just feined his death, so he never really died and never really rose from the dead; just recovered. Well, I find it hard to believe that the Roman Government didn't kill Jesus on the cross. These were professional killers so to speak. The Romans knew how to put people to death. Not too long before Jesus' death, the Romans put down the Macabean revolt and literally lined the streets with crucified rebels. Jesus was also scouraged; a horrible punishment where a "cat-o-nine tails" was used. The whip was filled with bone fragments that would slash the skin as it struck him on the back, wrapped around him in the front and dug into the skin pulling it loose as it was pulled back. The death on the cross was real indeed. Jesus claimed that He would rise from the dead and indeed the Bible declares that Jesus rose from the dead and appearred to the disciples at various times and even to a crowd of 500 at one time. Paul stated that many of those people were still alive meaning that they were available to be interviewed in that day. Also, this as just a couple of years after the fact meaning that this was not just some legend that was being repeated. Another factor to consider: What changed the disciples? When Jesus was arrested, they ran away in fear. Peter even denied Jesus three times that night. But after the resurrection, these same disciples became bold prclaimers of his resurrection. Peter even stood in Jerusalem, the city where Jesus died, and proclaimed the gospel story. So obviously, something changed. If Jesus had not risen, would these men have risked life and limb for a lie? I don't think so! These men were martyred for their faith and again, who would give their life for a lie? Don't know of any!
Let me encourage you today: The Bible declares that if we will confess with our mouth "Jesus is Lord", believe that He is the Son of God, believe that He rose from the dead, ask Him to forgive us of our sin and repent of it, that we will be "saved", that is we will be given new life, a life that will be spent in eternity with God in Heaven. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me."
Friends there is no other way to get to God than through Jesus. We are not all on the pathway to God; we are not all headed there just on a different road. The Bible declares that there are two roads: the broad road that leads to destruction, of which many are on it, and the narrow road that leads to life. Jesus is that narrow road! Let me encourage you to invite the Savior into your heart today! If you would like to ask questions, please comment on this posting with a way for me to contact you and I will be happy to share further.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Hunger Deaths In America
Good evening...in recent days, I was challenged by the statement that there are "hunger deaths. In america." The statement included a challenge to see for myself. Well, I have been looking for evidence of hunger deaths in America and whereas all these "hunger websites" give great information about world-wide hunger and even deaths in Africa and even Latin America, there just didn't seem to be any information about deaths in America attributed to hunger...so anyone out there in cyber land have anything definitive on hunger deaths in America? let me know...Thanks!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Truett/McConnell
Good evening...
I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Helen, Ga. writing to you while watching March Madness and the Sean Hannity programs. Why are you in Helen, you may be asking? Glad you asked! Today, as a trustee at Truett/McConnell colege in Cleveland, Ga., I attended the inauguaration (SP) of Dr. Emir Caner (my friend!) as the 8th President of this Georgia Baptist Convention affiliated school. It was a tremndously uplifting event. The college choir sang and muscians played and boy are they talented! The line-up of speakers was second to none. Dr. Johnny Hunt, President of the SBC and Senior Pastor of the First Baptist church of Woodstock, Ga. spoke first from the book of Titus. He was followed by Dr. Ergun Caner, President of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and brother of the new President, who spoke to the students and staff and faculty. He was followed by Dr. Paige Patterson, former president of the SBC and current President of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who spoke from II Kings 4.
The significance of a former sunni muslem who has discovered that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and who is in fact, the ONLY way to Heaven can not be underestimated. I am excited for what this development means for secondary religious education in the state of Georgia, and what it means for religious education in general. A new day has dawned in Georgia, a new day for the better!
May God richly bless Dr. Emir Caner and family!
I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Helen, Ga. writing to you while watching March Madness and the Sean Hannity programs. Why are you in Helen, you may be asking? Glad you asked! Today, as a trustee at Truett/McConnell colege in Cleveland, Ga., I attended the inauguaration (SP) of Dr. Emir Caner (my friend!) as the 8th President of this Georgia Baptist Convention affiliated school. It was a tremndously uplifting event. The college choir sang and muscians played and boy are they talented! The line-up of speakers was second to none. Dr. Johnny Hunt, President of the SBC and Senior Pastor of the First Baptist church of Woodstock, Ga. spoke first from the book of Titus. He was followed by Dr. Ergun Caner, President of the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and brother of the new President, who spoke to the students and staff and faculty. He was followed by Dr. Paige Patterson, former president of the SBC and current President of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary who spoke from II Kings 4.
The significance of a former sunni muslem who has discovered that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and who is in fact, the ONLY way to Heaven can not be underestimated. I am excited for what this development means for secondary religious education in the state of Georgia, and what it means for religious education in general. A new day has dawned in Georgia, a new day for the better!
May God richly bless Dr. Emir Caner and family!
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
St. Patrick's Day
Good Morning!
Today is Wednesday, March 18, 2009, the day after St. Patrick's day....What did you do for the day? Did you wear "Green"? I did...Having some Irish blood in me, causes me to think fondly of this particular day...but just who was St. Patrick?
Patrick, who lived between 389-461 A.D., was taken from Britain to Ireland by pirates at age 16. He lived there tending cattle for 6 years when he returned to Britain. He felt called to go back to Ireland and labor among them as a missionary. From 432 to 461, he worked among the Celts of Ireland and despite the efforts of the priests of the Druid religion, managed to make the island a strong center of Celtic Christianity. A center from which evangelistic efforts were launched all over Europe during even the dark ages and which some credit with re-establishing Christianity in England where it had previously been driven out.
So a day that is now celebrated by having outlandish drinking parties and extravagant parades in many locations all began when a young man answered the call of Christ and left his home to become a missionary spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ...
The response of Patrick to go is still going on today. All across our nation, men and women are still hearing the voice of God speaking to their hearts to go. Men and women who leave everything to spread the gospel, teach people how to clean their water, grow crops, care for the sick and a multitude of other life-saving advances that you and I take for granted here in the greatest country that God ever allowed to be formed...I hope it gives you pause to think about how gracious God has been to America and where we are headed in this country...I pray that we will as a nation repent, see the hand of revival sweep across this land and honor God with lives lived to please Him...
Today is Wednesday, March 18, 2009, the day after St. Patrick's day....What did you do for the day? Did you wear "Green"? I did...Having some Irish blood in me, causes me to think fondly of this particular day...but just who was St. Patrick?
Patrick, who lived between 389-461 A.D., was taken from Britain to Ireland by pirates at age 16. He lived there tending cattle for 6 years when he returned to Britain. He felt called to go back to Ireland and labor among them as a missionary. From 432 to 461, he worked among the Celts of Ireland and despite the efforts of the priests of the Druid religion, managed to make the island a strong center of Celtic Christianity. A center from which evangelistic efforts were launched all over Europe during even the dark ages and which some credit with re-establishing Christianity in England where it had previously been driven out.
So a day that is now celebrated by having outlandish drinking parties and extravagant parades in many locations all began when a young man answered the call of Christ and left his home to become a missionary spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ...
The response of Patrick to go is still going on today. All across our nation, men and women are still hearing the voice of God speaking to their hearts to go. Men and women who leave everything to spread the gospel, teach people how to clean their water, grow crops, care for the sick and a multitude of other life-saving advances that you and I take for granted here in the greatest country that God ever allowed to be formed...I hope it gives you pause to think about how gracious God has been to America and where we are headed in this country...I pray that we will as a nation repent, see the hand of revival sweep across this land and honor God with lives lived to please Him...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
For Micah & John
Good afternoon...
In my last post, I made reference to an on-going dialogue with another blogger and made some comments that would lend readers to believe that I questioned the salvation of said blogger...To Micah, I am sorry for what I wrote, no excuses, I was wrong in saying things like I did...I am not a perfected Christian by any stretch and at times I let my frustrations get the better of me...so having said that let me offer again my humblest apology to you and your family and anyone else that may have been offended by what was posted...
It has also been brought to my attention that some out there in blog reading land would rather read my thoughts about things than "cut and paste articles". In starting this blog, it was not necessarily my intent to place said articles on the blog as the sole content, but what happened is that I enjoy reading other things and then sharing them with as many people as possible...and I guess maybe that is with all 5 that read this blog! So, look forward to reading a little more of me rather than so many articles, but I reserve the right to continue to share the really good stuff or at least what I consider to be the good stuff...
Again, Micah & John, I am sorry for what I wrote in the previous blog. I pray that in your forgiven hearts from the Lord, you can see fit to forgive as well...
You know folks, Pastors are human too and we make mistakes and I certainly want to own up to mine and set the record straight...
One last thing: The intent from the beginning of this blog was to encourage people to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation and I have gotten away from that intent with the political postings and for anyone out there who also recognized that and would have issue with it, my apoligies and I will do better to get back to my original intent...
Have a blest day!
In my last post, I made reference to an on-going dialogue with another blogger and made some comments that would lend readers to believe that I questioned the salvation of said blogger...To Micah, I am sorry for what I wrote, no excuses, I was wrong in saying things like I did...I am not a perfected Christian by any stretch and at times I let my frustrations get the better of me...so having said that let me offer again my humblest apology to you and your family and anyone else that may have been offended by what was posted...
It has also been brought to my attention that some out there in blog reading land would rather read my thoughts about things than "cut and paste articles". In starting this blog, it was not necessarily my intent to place said articles on the blog as the sole content, but what happened is that I enjoy reading other things and then sharing them with as many people as possible...and I guess maybe that is with all 5 that read this blog! So, look forward to reading a little more of me rather than so many articles, but I reserve the right to continue to share the really good stuff or at least what I consider to be the good stuff...
Again, Micah & John, I am sorry for what I wrote in the previous blog. I pray that in your forgiven hearts from the Lord, you can see fit to forgive as well...
You know folks, Pastors are human too and we make mistakes and I certainly want to own up to mine and set the record straight...
One last thing: The intent from the beginning of this blog was to encourage people to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation and I have gotten away from that intent with the political postings and for anyone out there who also recognized that and would have issue with it, my apoligies and I will do better to get back to my original intent...
Have a blest day!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Bumpy Ride
Good Evening...
In recent days, I have been blogging back and forth with someone, who will remain nameless, who also has a blog...someone who claims to be a Christian, but certainly by what is written it would be difficult to ascertain that...Christians who use profanity and insults and condescending attitudes towards others, well it makes you wonder...
As Christians in this country in these days, we are in for a bumpy ride...the Bible tells us that in the last days, perilous times will come...that men will not endure sound doctrine, but will run to and listen to and follow teaching that will tickle the ears...The Christian life is not an easy path to follow, but with the help of Jesus Christ it can be done because He is the one living in and through us...Jesus describes it as the "narrow path" and there are few that find it whereas there are many that follow the wide path that leads to destruction...
Our President has lifted the ban on giving money to groups overseas who encourage abortion...he has lifted the ban on embryonic stem cell research...he is contemplating removing the ability of medical personnel from objecting to providing abortion because of religious grounds or personal objections...he is taking us down the path of socialism and national health care that will have bureaucrats in some government office deciding if and when someone gets medical care...
may God have mercy on our souls....
In recent days, I have been blogging back and forth with someone, who will remain nameless, who also has a blog...someone who claims to be a Christian, but certainly by what is written it would be difficult to ascertain that...Christians who use profanity and insults and condescending attitudes towards others, well it makes you wonder...
As Christians in this country in these days, we are in for a bumpy ride...the Bible tells us that in the last days, perilous times will come...that men will not endure sound doctrine, but will run to and listen to and follow teaching that will tickle the ears...The Christian life is not an easy path to follow, but with the help of Jesus Christ it can be done because He is the one living in and through us...Jesus describes it as the "narrow path" and there are few that find it whereas there are many that follow the wide path that leads to destruction...
Our President has lifted the ban on giving money to groups overseas who encourage abortion...he has lifted the ban on embryonic stem cell research...he is contemplating removing the ability of medical personnel from objecting to providing abortion because of religious grounds or personal objections...he is taking us down the path of socialism and national health care that will have bureaucrats in some government office deciding if and when someone gets medical care...
may God have mercy on our souls....
Sunday, March 1, 2009
I'M Tired!
Good Evening...
I'm tired! I'm tired of so-called Christians telling me that Obama is the next best thing since sliced bread...I'm tired of being told to shut up about abortion because after-all there is sooooo much more to being pro-life than abortions...after all, God didn't like GW killing all those 'innocent Iraqi citizens in the war"...and there are hungry children dying from lack of food...although there are many SBC missionaries working on these very things...we should just be quiet and let Obama do whatever he wants, because after-all we are in a crisis! A crisis, by the way, that the president continues to promote so we as Americans will give over all our freedoms just so he will "save" us...
The administration has now announced that the rule that allows medical personnel to refuse to perform abortion and its related services because it would violate their conscience, is under review...meaning that it will be rescinded...
This is the most Pro-death President ever elected and he will not rest until the blood of the innocents fills our streets...Let me remind you what God's Word says about this in II Kings 21, beginning in verse 10:
" And the Lord spoke by His servants the prophets, saying, "Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations (he has acted more wickedly than all the Amorites who were before him, and has also made Judah sin with his idols), therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel: 'Behold, I am bringing such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab; I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. So I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become victims of plunder to all their enemies, because they have done evil in My sight, and have provoked Me to anger since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.' " Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin by which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the Lord.
What does this say? It says that God judged the sin of Mannasseh who shed much innocent blood...The Bible also reminds us that God never changes...what God judged in Israel, He will also judge in America...I implore every Christian who reads this blog to contact their representatives in Congress and demand that this course of action by Obama be stopped...immediately...the lives of so many are dependent upon it! This is one American who has had enough, one American who will not be silenced any longer!
May God have mercy upon us...
I'm tired! I'm tired of so-called Christians telling me that Obama is the next best thing since sliced bread...I'm tired of being told to shut up about abortion because after-all there is sooooo much more to being pro-life than abortions...after all, God didn't like GW killing all those 'innocent Iraqi citizens in the war"...and there are hungry children dying from lack of food...although there are many SBC missionaries working on these very things...we should just be quiet and let Obama do whatever he wants, because after-all we are in a crisis! A crisis, by the way, that the president continues to promote so we as Americans will give over all our freedoms just so he will "save" us...
The administration has now announced that the rule that allows medical personnel to refuse to perform abortion and its related services because it would violate their conscience, is under review...meaning that it will be rescinded...
This is the most Pro-death President ever elected and he will not rest until the blood of the innocents fills our streets...Let me remind you what God's Word says about this in II Kings 21, beginning in verse 10:
" And the Lord spoke by His servants the prophets, saying, "Because Manasseh king of Judah has done these abominations (he has acted more wickedly than all the Amorites who were before him, and has also made Judah sin with his idols), therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel: 'Behold, I am bringing such calamity upon Jerusalem and Judah, that whoever hears of it, both his ears will tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria and the plummet of the house of Ahab; I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. So I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies; and they shall become victims of plunder to all their enemies, because they have done evil in My sight, and have provoked Me to anger since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.' " Moreover Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides his sin by which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the Lord.
What does this say? It says that God judged the sin of Mannasseh who shed much innocent blood...The Bible also reminds us that God never changes...what God judged in Israel, He will also judge in America...I implore every Christian who reads this blog to contact their representatives in Congress and demand that this course of action by Obama be stopped...immediately...the lives of so many are dependent upon it! This is one American who has had enough, one American who will not be silenced any longer!
May God have mercy upon us...
Friday, February 27, 2009
Marriage?
With all the talk of the "octomom" in recent days, the question has arisen, "is marriage necessary?" Drawing from K-House News, the following article tells the "other side of the story"...
IS MARRIAGE UNNECESSARY? - (Print)
A woman in California just gave birth to octuplets, an amazing and wonderful accomplishment. The problem? There's no father, not for these eight nor the six children the woman already has. When Gloria Steinem said that a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle, she voiced a feminist sentiment that would successfully unhinge the family in America and sentence millions of children to fatherlessness.
Now that the power has shifted in the White House, the feminists are filled with vim and vigor, working hard to get their goals accomplished in Congress. The National Organization for Women (NOW) has a long wish list of items to undo all the conservative pro-family work that has been done during the past 15 years. For instance, NOW wants ten billion tax dollars dedicated to public daycare, to make sure the kids grow up without Mommy too. They also want to stop funding pro-marriage and fatherhood programs, halt abstinence education in schools, and get Congress to pass the Freedom Of Choice Act, which would undo all pro-life legislation, from parental notification to the partial-birth abortion ban, in one single massive whack. The list goes on and on.
The Feminists are not alone in their efforts to destroy the Family in America. Normal Americans, who still like the idea of Mom Dad and Kids, have allowed destructive ideas into their world views, and have been digging their own marital graves without really meaning to.
Some call it "living together" or "cohabitating", others call it "shacking up." Yet no matter what terminology is used the fact remains that a rising number of couples are choosing not to get married. According to the US Census, the number of cohabiting couples in 2000 was ten times that in 1960. "In some sense, cohabitation is replacing dating," says Pamela Smock, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.
In recent years societal trends have moved away from traditional marriage. In 2005, the number of married couple households in America dropped below 50 percent for the first time. Correspondingly, the number of unmarried women bearing children rose to its highest level ever. Compare that to 1930, when about 84 percent of households were married couples.
Many young adults think it's a good idea to live together to "test drive" a potential spouse in order to insure that they are "compatible." While such logic may seem practical to some, statistics show that such relationships usually end in tears and heartache. While some of these couples intend to eventually get married, the reality is that cohabiting couples break up far more than married couples, and couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to get divorced after marriage. Research conducted by Rutgers University's National Marriage Project indicates that couples who live together before marriage are 46 percent more likely to divorce and significantly more likely to experience domestic violence within their relationships.
The Word of God is clear: "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Hebrews 13:4)." The Bible expressly condemns fornication (1Cor 6:9,18) and there are great reasons why. Sex is a physical, emotional and spiritual act of two people becoming one (Matt 19:5-6, 1 Cor 6:15-16). Any relationship will have a better start if both spouses are free of vast amounts of baggage from previous broken relationships. Besides the risk of disease, of children born out of wedlock, and other complications, it is simply spiritually and emotionally damaging to engage in a series (long or short) of sexual relationships. Waiting until marriage also involves practicing self-control, which is just as useful a virtue in the years after the wedding as it is before. Couples who have proven self-control also tend to trust and respect one another more than those who were sexually active before the wedding date.
In the scriptures husbands are exhorted to love their wives "even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." In other words, a Biblical marriage is one rooted in God's love rather than human love. C.S. Lewis calls this kind of love a "gift of love." Whereas, human love is a "need love." God's love is a gift because there are "no strings attached" to it. There are no conditions to fill, nothing to earn, nothing to do, and nothing to be. It just loves unconditionally, spontaneously, and continually.
Marriage is one of God's greatest inventions, offering us partners in the battle through life, to encourage us in times of discouragement, to help us up when we fall. Marriage offers us a constant friend and companion, a second head in trying to solve problems and a second set of hands in doing the work that needs to be done. Marriage is the foundational structure of a whole, happy family, where children can be raised in security and love.
If all marriages looked the way that God intended them to look, the Gloria Steinems of the world would never have been given a megaphone. To save marriage, we need to give the world something better, something desirable. We need to show the world that God's way is what we all dreamed marriage could be.
IS MARRIAGE UNNECESSARY? - (Print)
A woman in California just gave birth to octuplets, an amazing and wonderful accomplishment. The problem? There's no father, not for these eight nor the six children the woman already has. When Gloria Steinem said that a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle, she voiced a feminist sentiment that would successfully unhinge the family in America and sentence millions of children to fatherlessness.
Now that the power has shifted in the White House, the feminists are filled with vim and vigor, working hard to get their goals accomplished in Congress. The National Organization for Women (NOW) has a long wish list of items to undo all the conservative pro-family work that has been done during the past 15 years. For instance, NOW wants ten billion tax dollars dedicated to public daycare, to make sure the kids grow up without Mommy too. They also want to stop funding pro-marriage and fatherhood programs, halt abstinence education in schools, and get Congress to pass the Freedom Of Choice Act, which would undo all pro-life legislation, from parental notification to the partial-birth abortion ban, in one single massive whack. The list goes on and on.
The Feminists are not alone in their efforts to destroy the Family in America. Normal Americans, who still like the idea of Mom Dad and Kids, have allowed destructive ideas into their world views, and have been digging their own marital graves without really meaning to.
Some call it "living together" or "cohabitating", others call it "shacking up." Yet no matter what terminology is used the fact remains that a rising number of couples are choosing not to get married. According to the US Census, the number of cohabiting couples in 2000 was ten times that in 1960. "In some sense, cohabitation is replacing dating," says Pamela Smock, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.
In recent years societal trends have moved away from traditional marriage. In 2005, the number of married couple households in America dropped below 50 percent for the first time. Correspondingly, the number of unmarried women bearing children rose to its highest level ever. Compare that to 1930, when about 84 percent of households were married couples.
Many young adults think it's a good idea to live together to "test drive" a potential spouse in order to insure that they are "compatible." While such logic may seem practical to some, statistics show that such relationships usually end in tears and heartache. While some of these couples intend to eventually get married, the reality is that cohabiting couples break up far more than married couples, and couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to get divorced after marriage. Research conducted by Rutgers University's National Marriage Project indicates that couples who live together before marriage are 46 percent more likely to divorce and significantly more likely to experience domestic violence within their relationships.
The Word of God is clear: "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge (Hebrews 13:4)." The Bible expressly condemns fornication (1Cor 6:9,18) and there are great reasons why. Sex is a physical, emotional and spiritual act of two people becoming one (Matt 19:5-6, 1 Cor 6:15-16). Any relationship will have a better start if both spouses are free of vast amounts of baggage from previous broken relationships. Besides the risk of disease, of children born out of wedlock, and other complications, it is simply spiritually and emotionally damaging to engage in a series (long or short) of sexual relationships. Waiting until marriage also involves practicing self-control, which is just as useful a virtue in the years after the wedding as it is before. Couples who have proven self-control also tend to trust and respect one another more than those who were sexually active before the wedding date.
In the scriptures husbands are exhorted to love their wives "even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it." In other words, a Biblical marriage is one rooted in God's love rather than human love. C.S. Lewis calls this kind of love a "gift of love." Whereas, human love is a "need love." God's love is a gift because there are "no strings attached" to it. There are no conditions to fill, nothing to earn, nothing to do, and nothing to be. It just loves unconditionally, spontaneously, and continually.
Marriage is one of God's greatest inventions, offering us partners in the battle through life, to encourage us in times of discouragement, to help us up when we fall. Marriage offers us a constant friend and companion, a second head in trying to solve problems and a second set of hands in doing the work that needs to be done. Marriage is the foundational structure of a whole, happy family, where children can be raised in security and love.
If all marriages looked the way that God intended them to look, the Gloria Steinems of the world would never have been given a megaphone. To save marriage, we need to give the world something better, something desirable. We need to show the world that God's way is what we all dreamed marriage could be.
Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln
Good morning...our 44th President likes to compare himself with Abraham Lincoln...on February 12, we marked the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth...the following is a great and timely article from K-House News to mark the event:
On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room cabin in Kentucky. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, we remember the lanky self-taught lawyer who hated slavery, who pressed forward until he finally attained the highest office in the country – just in time for the bloodiest war in US history. But, even more, we remember the greatness of that man who loved true liberty, who dreamed in his day "of a place and time where America will once again be seen as the last, best hope on earth."
There are many things that can be said about Abraham Lincoln. He lost his mother when he was nine, and two of his four sons died before he did. He stood at the helm of America while it was torn in two, and he not only protected the Union, but managed to emancipate the slaves in the process. Yet, it was not just his humble beginnings or his ability to overcome personal tragedy that made Lincoln remarkable. Nor did the abolition of slavery or the survival of the United States alone make him a great man. Abraham Lincoln was a great man because of what he believed in and what he stood for. He was not only about the business of preserving a collection of states under one federal government. He was a man determined to protect America to be the haven for true liberty that that Founders intended it to be.
In his 1861 address at Independence Hall, which he described as, "a wholly unprepared speech" Lincoln said the following:
"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together.
"It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence."
Lincoln loved liberty. He loved true liberty in its good old-fashioned sense. Today the concept of liberty has been kidnapped, and the word has become a euphemism for humans to do whatever they like without legal repercussions. Liberty does not mean a blank check for immorality. True liberty is lifting "the weight" of tyranny, freeing men to govern themselves and take responsibility for themselves as men and not as slaves. The freedom of the black man was representative of the very freedom that all Americans embraced in the Declaration of Independence. No longer would they be called "boy" - told what to do and how to do it. They would henceforth be men, fully responsible for their own lives. That's true liberty.
It is the same with spiritual liberty. By the blood of Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, we are no longer slaves to sin. In fact, we are no longer under the letter of the Law. Yet, our freedom is one in which we serve God in holiness out of love, pushing closer to the heart of God than the Law could ever lead us. It is never a freedom that condones license to sin, but one in which we walk with God as sons and daughters.
"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." -2 Corinthians 3:17
"For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." -Galatians 5:13
But liberty is never free. It always comes with a price. In the case of our spiritual liberty, the only begotten Son of God was slaughtered on a Roman cross to win our freedom. In the case of America, our freedom was also bought with the blood of our forefathers. And it is now protected only with vigilance.
Our precious liberty is in danger of being taken away. Men (and women) who have abused their freedoms have brought financial destruction on the nation and the entire world. Men (and women) who have abused their social freedoms have torn apart the family, brought children into single family homes, and have spread disease, violence, substance abuse and crime. As we have replaced liberty with license, proving ourselves children instead of men, our government has stepped in to hold our hands; we're in serious danger of losing the very freedoms we love.
We are in the midst of another great civil war. This time it's a war of ideas and of values. It's a war that threatens to destroy us just as certainly as the war Lincoln faced nearly 150 years ago. His words from the Gettysburg Address seem just as fitting now as they were then:
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live…The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
That says it.
Happy 200th Birthday Abraham Lincoln. We're grateful to God for your tremendous service to America. May we not fail those who bled for us by treating their sacrifices as little in value. May we treat our freedoms with great regard, walking not as spoiled children but as righteous men. And may we fight so that this nation can have a new birth of freedom; one in which we truly behave as one nation under God.
On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room cabin in Kentucky. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, we remember the lanky self-taught lawyer who hated slavery, who pressed forward until he finally attained the highest office in the country – just in time for the bloodiest war in US history. But, even more, we remember the greatness of that man who loved true liberty, who dreamed in his day "of a place and time where America will once again be seen as the last, best hope on earth."
There are many things that can be said about Abraham Lincoln. He lost his mother when he was nine, and two of his four sons died before he did. He stood at the helm of America while it was torn in two, and he not only protected the Union, but managed to emancipate the slaves in the process. Yet, it was not just his humble beginnings or his ability to overcome personal tragedy that made Lincoln remarkable. Nor did the abolition of slavery or the survival of the United States alone make him a great man. Abraham Lincoln was a great man because of what he believed in and what he stood for. He was not only about the business of preserving a collection of states under one federal government. He was a man determined to protect America to be the haven for true liberty that that Founders intended it to be.
In his 1861 address at Independence Hall, which he described as, "a wholly unprepared speech" Lincoln said the following:
"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together.
"It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence."
Lincoln loved liberty. He loved true liberty in its good old-fashioned sense. Today the concept of liberty has been kidnapped, and the word has become a euphemism for humans to do whatever they like without legal repercussions. Liberty does not mean a blank check for immorality. True liberty is lifting "the weight" of tyranny, freeing men to govern themselves and take responsibility for themselves as men and not as slaves. The freedom of the black man was representative of the very freedom that all Americans embraced in the Declaration of Independence. No longer would they be called "boy" - told what to do and how to do it. They would henceforth be men, fully responsible for their own lives. That's true liberty.
It is the same with spiritual liberty. By the blood of Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, we are no longer slaves to sin. In fact, we are no longer under the letter of the Law. Yet, our freedom is one in which we serve God in holiness out of love, pushing closer to the heart of God than the Law could ever lead us. It is never a freedom that condones license to sin, but one in which we walk with God as sons and daughters.
"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." -2 Corinthians 3:17
"For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." -Galatians 5:13
But liberty is never free. It always comes with a price. In the case of our spiritual liberty, the only begotten Son of God was slaughtered on a Roman cross to win our freedom. In the case of America, our freedom was also bought with the blood of our forefathers. And it is now protected only with vigilance.
Our precious liberty is in danger of being taken away. Men (and women) who have abused their freedoms have brought financial destruction on the nation and the entire world. Men (and women) who have abused their social freedoms have torn apart the family, brought children into single family homes, and have spread disease, violence, substance abuse and crime. As we have replaced liberty with license, proving ourselves children instead of men, our government has stepped in to hold our hands; we're in serious danger of losing the very freedoms we love.
We are in the midst of another great civil war. This time it's a war of ideas and of values. It's a war that threatens to destroy us just as certainly as the war Lincoln faced nearly 150 years ago. His words from the Gettysburg Address seem just as fitting now as they were then:
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live…The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
That says it.
Happy 200th Birthday Abraham Lincoln. We're grateful to God for your tremendous service to America. May we not fail those who bled for us by treating their sacrifices as little in value. May we treat our freedoms with great regard, walking not as spoiled children but as righteous men. And may we fight so that this nation can have a new birth of freedom; one in which we truly behave as one nation under God.
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