The Book of Enoch - Is It The Word Of God?

As Christians the basis of our faith is summed up in the term 'Sola Scriptura' - "by scripture alone" meaning that we base our faith solely on the Word of God as it appears in the Holy Bible. Is the bible the entire content of God's knowledge? Hardly, at best the Bible can be called "The Beginners Guide To God". 

The concept of Sola Scriptura is nothing to be taken lightly, over the centuries thousands upon thousands of believers have been brutally tortured and murdered for the Bible. Keep in mind that the Inquisition was much much more than anti-semitism, the inquisition was meant to maintain control of holy scripture and keep it out of the hands of the layman. Scripture is God speaking to us, through the pens of scribes long past, long forgotten, all divinely inspired. That's why I take the sanctity of scripture so seriously, and why when deliberate attempts to putrify the Word of God like The Message, The Voice, and The Queen James come out, I get upset. 

When it comes to non-canonical books the waters get a bit muddy - were they divinely inspired? Should they be part of canon? if not, can they still be used by a good Christian to learn God's will? Gnostic gospels I have no problem with... I just ignore them. Any so-called Gospel that starts out with "These are the secret sayings..." (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas) may not be blasphemy or heretical, but at best they're Midrash, AKA biblical fan fiction. But the Book of Enoch poses a problem, what is it? Is it the Word of God? It's referred to in the New Testament, so why isn't it in the Old Testament? What's the deal with Enoch?

I Came Not To Send Peace, But A Sword

³⁴ “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to turn “ ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - ³⁶ a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ (Matthew 10:34-36)

Jesus is called the Prince of Peace but here in Matthew he's practically promising civil war, what's the deal?

⁴⁹ “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰ But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! ⁵¹ Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. ⁵² From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. ⁵³ They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:49-53)

How can we reconcile this with 

For unto us a Child is born,Unto us a Son is given;And the government will be upon His shoulder.And His name will be calledWonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

 and

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. (John 14:27)

Hell Update!

Last week Pope Carver Francis threw wide open the gates of heaven allowing everyone into heaven including atheists on a works based salvation plan whose only requirement is to "Do Good".

This morning Vatican Radio ( as reported by the UK Independent) announced that the Vatican has quietly returned to a "Catholics Only" plan of works based salvation:

Vatican spokesman Rev. Thomas Rosica said people who know about the Catholic church “cannot be saved” if they “refuse to enter her or remain in her.”

When asked about the Vatacan/Papal disagreement on Salvation God's response was "John 14:6" 

Memorial Day

John 15:13

Pope Francis Re-Writes The Bible

Not The Pope

On Wednesday Pope Elliot Carver Francis stood before the world, opened his mouth, and with all the power of his office got the Gospel completely and utterly wrong. One would guess that being the head of the largest organized religion on earth Pope Francis would be slightly familiar with the writings of Paul, or maybe even the words of Jesus, but obviously one would be wrong.

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart, do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can… “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!” We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

It's hard to open the bible and then come away with something as wrong as this. Of course the left, the Jesus haters, the godless and the unbelievers are overjoyed that the pope came around to their way of thinking, but that was pre-ordaned by 2 Timothy 4:3-4. Let's take a look at what Pope Carver Francis said to get the ear tickling started:

The Unpardonable Sin

²⁸ “Truly I say to you, all sins shall be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mark 3:28-29)

What is blaspheming the Holy Spirit? Can a Christian do it accidentally and thereby lose his or her salvation? Can a Christian be drawn into  or tricked into committing blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?   Bringing dishonor upon the Holy Spirit should make the thinking person tremble in terror. There are people who are terrified that they accidentally blasphemed the Holy Spirit and cannot be forgiven. Some fear that they blasphemed the name of Jesus and due to the triune nature of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit they blasphemed the Holy Spirit and cannot be forgiven. Is this something we need to be losing sleep over? Or as Christians are we safe from this?

To answer these questions we need to know two things, what is blasphemy and what is the role of the Holy Spirit.

OT Tuesday: Daniel, a Meandering Introduction

In 722 BC the ten northern tribes of Israel had been taken into captivity by the Assyrians leaving only the south of Israel, Judah, free. In 606 BC King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia invaded and conquered Judah and took all the vessels from the temple, he deported the healthiest of the Jews back to Babylonia to be slaves. Judah was left a vassal state, her king Jehoiakim was killed thrown off the walls of the palace, his son Jeconiah succeeded him but only lasted a few months followed by Zedekiah, who was just  a figurehead in reality. Meanwhile Egyptian pharaoh Hophra wanted to protect his eastern borders from Babylonian attack entered into a treaty with Zedekiah and sent Egyptian troops to Jerusalem. 

King Nebuchadnezzar II found out that his vassal state, Judah, had signed a treaty with his enemy, Egypt, and dispatched troops to Jerusalem. The Babylonian troops lay siege to Jerusalem for eighteen months, and eventually broke into the city destroying everything including the Egyptian troops. The temple was destroyed, the city walls torn down, the city was ransacked and burned, and King Zedekiah was hunted down like a dog. Zedekiah and his family was eventually captured and dragged off to the Babylonian encampment at Riblah. There Zedekiah watched his sons and other Jewish princes be slain, and to insure that this was the last sight Zedekiah would ever see, Nebuchadnezzar had Zedekiah's eyes gouged out then allowed Zedekiah to live.

Emergent Monday: Name that Tune

I love Country Gospel Music, I really do. Everything is better with good Country Gospel Music. Anyone that owns more than two dogs will tell you that there's some jobs that need to be done regularly that question the sanity of owning any dogs. But when I slap on the head phones and put on some good Country Gospel, the task of de-toxing the back yard becomes another way of glorifying God. All minor tasks that used to annoy me are now a joy to perform because I get to sing to the glory of my maker as I do them. These versions of "Me and God" and "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" can get me through any task, no matter how difficult, distasteful or degrading. 

You may think that these two songs are at the opposite end of the country spectrum and you're partially right. Closer Walk is old school country: Sara Evans did an incredible job of introducing today's audience to Patsy Klein, steel guitar, and blue grass fiddle, Me and God is much more modern, very bouncy, very happy. But the similarities are striking - both are talking about a real relationship with God, and God isn't some fluffy nothing, God is Ruler of All, our master and lord. This is a concept of which Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) will have no truck with.

IRS Demands Prayer Lists From Christians

If you're not upset you're not paying attention

Big Brother demands your prayer details

Was the same demand made from Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Wiccans, Jehovas Witnesses, Sufis, Whirling Dirvishes, Rastafarians, Unitarians, or Zoroasterians? Of course not, just Christians. The Obama administration has always and will continue to target Christianity for elimination.

But don't worry, don't lose heart, if we're hated by the world for our love for Jesus then we're doing it right!

Go on Uncle Obama, call me a terrorist again. You called me a terrorist for my faith before, you called me a terrorist for my political beliefs, and you called me a terrorist for my Twenty Years of military service, are you planning to call me a terrorist for the content of my prayers? Or maybe that I'm not registering my prayers with the IRS? Or maybe because I'm not praying to you.

Buzzwords in you Church!

Buzzwords in your church - maybe they make a spray or trap or maybe even something electronic like a Buzzword Zapper that would fry the nasty vermin the moment it's uttered with a satisfying sizzle, snap, and flash. A puff of acrid smoke would be too much to ask for, but it would be perfect. Buzzwords are rampant where I work, and now I'm being "blessed" with them where I worship. 

What is a buzzword? A buzzword is simply a word, term, or phrase that repackages an old concept in a description that sounds "new" or "edgy". Sometimes buzzwords are invented to promote a new concept or product, and that's the sign of a desperate development team or marketing genius trying to sell the unsellable. Other times buzzwords exist to hide heresy. Remember: buzzwords are not a spontaneous thing, they're invented for a purpose, and the primary purpose of a buzzword is to make the user sound "edgy", "hip", and "in the know" at the expense of the English language.

This is NOT my home

A roundup of links I wish never existed

I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger

I'm traveling through this world of woe

Yet there's no sickness, toil nor danger

In that bright land to which I go

He Wrote My Song

When confronted by evangelical atheists we're occasionally confronted with personal opinions often disguised as a question but are actually meant as an accusation. These opinions almost always come from a source that knows little about the bible. Sometimes it's tough to keep personal feelings at bay, especially when confronted with strange and false accusations, and few converts are made through angry confrontation. 

One of the complaints that the evangelical atheists have is that in their eyes the Bible encourages slavery, if they actually read the bible with an open mind they would see that the Bible is not encouraging slavery, but it does encourage slaves. As for slavery, the Bible has a different effect, which is a subject for a different blog entry, because today I want to talk about the effect the bible has had on a particular slaver who in turn had a particular effect on me. 

More Evidence of The End Times

Emergent Paganism

“I built myself a prayer room—a tiny sanctuary in a basement closet filled with books on spiritual disciplines, contemplative prayer, and Christian mysticism. In that space I lit candles, burned incense, hung rosaries, and listened to tapes of Benedictine Monks. I meditated for hours on words, images and sounds. I reached the point of being able to achieve alpha brain patterns, the state in which dreams occur, while still awake and meditating. I made many journal entries of my thoughts, dreams and prayers.” - Mike Perschon, Youth Specialties website, “Desert Youth Worker: Disciplines, Mystics and the Contemplative Life.”

Mike, whose mystic journey has led him to a sealed room in someone's basement, is an associate preacher at the Holyrood Mennonite Church in Edmonton Alberta. He teaches contemplative practices at youth retreats and describes entire nights “devoted to guided meditations, drum circles, and ‘soul labs’. Search the internet for drum circles and you'll see quickly that drum circles are now and always have been a pagan ritual for numerous purposes none of which are to glorify God. They have become quite a fad in the Roman Catholic church along with peace circles and prayer labyrinths and other neopagan gimics whose primary purpose is to distract the parishioner from the word of God.

This is what the Lord says: “Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them. (Jeremiah 10:2)

Here the term nations is not what we generally consider nations to be in modern parlance. We consider a nation to be a political entity like Canada or Russia, but the biblical word for that kind of nation is "kingdom". In fact a nation is a group of people bound together by a common descent, history, culture or language. In Jeremiah 10:2 the nations that are mentioned are pagan (or in the KJV 'heathen') groups. 

I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Evangelical Evolutionist

If I gave this 20 million years,
would it evolve into a snowman?

The late Carl Sagan said, “If we must worship a power greater than ourselves, does it not make sense to revere the Sun and stars?” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Random House, 1980), p.243.) Maybe Carl Sagan is right, but is the sun truly greater than me? The sun is bigger than me, and it is quite a bit hotter than me, but let's have a competition to see who is truly greater. Let's have a spelling bee. 

Let's see who can ice skate. Who passed the test and received an amateur radio license? Let's compare the Sun's blog against my blog and see who's more eloquent. What was the Sun's GPA, did it beat my 3.96? I'll bet it didn't even graduate. So by real count I'm five for five, Mentally I'm obviously more powerful than the sun, so besides that whole being dead thing why isn't Carl Sagan advocating that the whole world start revering me? 

Sometimes when I'm faced with an atheist, I am tempted to invite him to the greatest gourmet dinner that one could ever serve, and when we have finished eating that magnificent dinner, to ask him if he believes there's a cook. 

RONALD REAGAN, Speaking My Mind

Although atheists claim that they have no religion, many are in fact very devout followers of the religion of Evolution. They have their Saints (Darwin) their High Priests (Dawkins, Attenboro) and their acolytes (any university faculty), they have their sacred rituals (misinterpreting evidence) and they have their inquisitions (just ask any acolyte about intelligent design and watch the torture begin).

What About The Unbeliever?

Recently I was in the audience of a debate between two pastors who were discussing, in part, the topic of what to do with unbelievers. In that titanic theological battle two schools of thought emerged, Pastor Brimstone was of the "Shun the Unbeliever" opinion and believed it was best to remove the goat from the flock, while Pastor Lovejoy was of the "Love the Unbeliever" viewpoint and thought it was best to treat an unbeliever as a believer that doesn't realize they're a believer yet. The debate went on for quite a while, each pastor making salient, biblical points, and in the end the outcome was determined by who was least mercurial in their arguments. 

Both pastors were basing their arguments on Paul's writings, Pastor Brimstone quoting from 2 Corinthians and Pastor Lovejoy spoke from Colossians. Over time I have come to learn that Pastor Lovejoy has an awesome grasp on Paul (in fact I've begged him to take a few years of his time to beat Romans into my head) while Pastor Brimstone's strong suit is the writings of John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon. It was a fascinating battle of knowledge, articulation, and wills, but in the end the question remained in my mind, what does God really want us to do with unbelievers - love them until they can barely breath, or cast them out into the cold harsh night? As with everything in life, the answer lies somewhere in the middle

How Not To Read The Bible

Your bible isn't going to read itself which means that you're going to have to do it manually. You're also not going to absorb God's word by proximity, so getting you NIV down off the shelf or the King James off of that ornamental stand is vital.. 

You need to get in there and read, pray, meditate, and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the meaning of His word. I can go on and on about how to read your bible (and I already have, and I will again) but today let's talk about what not to do with your bible.

Don't Use Partial Verses - If you're going to take something out of context, using partial verses is the worst possible way to do it, and I've heard pastors do it more often than is comfortable. Take Luke 10:37 for example. This passage is the tag end of a long beautiful parable, however chopping to down to "Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same"" to justify anything other than what Jesus was teaching... imagine if  Pastor Brimstone said during service "The Hossenpheffer family has decided to double tithe from now on, and you all should follow suit. As it says in the bible, right there in Luke Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same" so y'all gotta start forking over the cash." I'm not sure if that's heresy or blasphemy. Probably heresy, but I've heard similar. Not as extreme, but similar. 

A Beginners Guide to Practical Holiness

The bible quite often tells us to be holy, but it never really says how to do it. Leviticus 11:44 tells us, so does Leviticus 11:45, and so does Leviticus 19:2, and 2 Corinthians 7:1 and of course 1 Peter 1:16 and many other verses. Of course none of them tell us to be perfect, but isn't being holy actually being perfect? Or is it being something else. What is being holy? What does "holy" really mean?

The dictionary isn't a lot of help at all. It tells me that Holy  means Belonging to, derived from, or associated with a divine power; sacred. That would make sense, since God is holy, holy, holy He is obviously associated with a divine power, power, power. But the bible is telling me to be holy, so how do I get sacred? There's got to be a better way (or at least a better definition).