Why Study The Bible?

From Calvinistic Cartoons:

Friday Funnies: Fish With Feet

Ever see those evangelical evolutionists with the little icthys (fish) symbols on their cars that Christians use to identify themselves? Inside the pagan fish symbol is the words DARWIN or EVOLVE and the little fishy symbol has little stick feet. Which is very cute because, besides my little buddy Fred illustrated here, those cartoon fish are the only fish to ever have feet.

This is very important because fish with feet is the most important animal on earth to the evangelical evolutionist. A fish with feet is the holy grail of Darwinian Evolution and finding fossilized evidence of a fish with feet would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that evolution is real and that man is just hairless monkeys. The truth is that except on the back of Volvo's in Boulder Colorado, there are no fish with feet and there never have been fish with feet.

Witnessing To An Unbeliever In The Family

For a Christian there's little more painful than a family member whose turned their back on God. Recently a christian blogger watched as his daughter posted a screed on the internet about how God and her father ruined her life and now she's an atheist. The cause for her life being a shambles? She was uncomfortable fornicating with random hookups in college knowing that she was sinning. Her fix was to dump God and Dad. No more God, no more sin. She can now joyfully put herself at risk for debilitating venereal disease and perform human sacrifice abort unwanted babies all she wants secure in the notion that when she did away with God she did away with hell too. How does a father deal with that?

I've heard it said that families are God's way of teaching us to love people we normally wouldn't give the time of day. Family members can be a great source of love or a tremendous source of exasperation. You can tell your brother a thousand times over that the world is round and he'd laugh in your face, but one of his buddies at the gym will say the same thing and his response will be "You don't say! I never knew that." This is just the way peoples minds work, but accepting that, how do you witness to a family member? 

Taking My Lumps

Last week Pastor Lovejoy used a term in his sermon that cracked me up a bit, more out of nostalgia than humor. The point that he was getting across was that when Jesus wants you to do something, that something is going to get done. He's going to make sure one way or another that the particular something will happen even if it takes a spanking. 

Both Pastor Lovejoy and I are both what the bible calls "A man under authority" - military veterans, so we both know what it means when the commander say jump. If your response is anything but "How high sir?" on the way up, that commander is well within his rights to take corrective action. Regardless of what that corrective action is, from a gentle reminder to full blown courts martial, this corrective action is called to those under authority "a spanking" which is the term he used in his sermon. 

But what if "the boss" has a task for you that you don't want to? I suppose the choice comes down between your personal selfish desire and your love in Jesus. Is that cold? Yes it is, but only because it's honest. 

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. (John 1415)

O.T. Tuesday: Vision of the Four Beasts

The first six chapters of Daniel were a brief rundown of the history of Daniel's life. Now we are going to see the prophesys that God gave Daniel. The first one we see is in chapter 7 which chronologically falls between chapter 5 and chapter 6. In his sleep Daniel was given a vision which he describes as: 

² Daniel said, “I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. ³ And four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another. ⁴ The first was like a lion and had the wings of an eagle. I kept looking until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man; a human mind also was given to it. ⁵ And behold, another beast, a second one, resembling a bear. And it was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth; and thus they said to it, ‘Arise, devour much meat!’ ⁶ After this I kept looking, and behold, another one, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird; the beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it. ⁷ After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. ⁸ While I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it; and behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth uttering great boasts. (Daniel 7:2-9)

The coolest thing about this vision is that it's similar to the one given to Nebuchadnezzar years ago in Daniel 2:31-36, now Daniel is seeing it himself, but it's presented in a whole new light.

Emergent Monday: Joel Osteen - Pantheist, Pagan, Agent of Satan

“If you develop an image of success, health, abundance, joy, peace, happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you,” - Joel Osteen Your Best Life Is Now

Peace, joy, happiness, wealth... I wish Joel Osteen would point out in the bible where this is promised. No, wait - I think I found it:

⁸ Again, the devil *took Him to a very high mountain and *showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; ⁹ and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8-9)

Joel Osteen and his fellow Word-Faith charlatans have taken Satan's litany of temptation and twisted it around to sound like heavenly blessings. Just the same as a tire-iron twisted around to look like a pretzel is no more a pretzel than Satan's gospel of temptation twisted around to sound like blessing. How can the leader of the biggest church in America be so ignorant to allow this kind of heresy to escape his mouth? Several reasons. First of all, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Random Stuff... and Things!

This World Is Not My Home

Betcha one of those awards isn't for "Best Use Of Discernment" - The History Channel, best known for insuring that we all know that the most important people in history are aliens, just received 3 Emmy nominations for their fictionalized version of the Bible. I think replacing the angels who visited Lot in Sodom with ninjas was what got them the nomination. Ninjas rool!

Civilians Fighting For The Military - If you haven't heard by now, the US Military, once a bastion of hard men and hard core Christianity, has become so Obamafied that just showing up to duty with a sack of Chick-fil-A is considered Christian evangelism and violators must be persecuted. Civilians are finally pushing back.

Another Hollywood Star Comes Out Of The Closet - this time as pro-life. What are the chances that the "tolerant" left embraces her and accepts her choice of life style? (Sorry to anyone who I caused to spray coffee on their monitor)

It's The Religion Of Peace, Not The Religion Of Sanity - A Christian man in Pakistan has been held without charge, tortured, beaten, then sentenced to life in prison for blasphemy without any evidence being presented.

Mega Church Mega Failure - Since when is the failure to properly steward the resources God gave you a 'failure of the economy'? They own about 700 square feet of land for every man, woman, and child in that church - why?

Secular Solutions for Christian Problems? - No, but God told us to Stand Up, not Shut Up. I like this one, I'm going to blog it

But They Can Marry! - There is no law anywhere in the US that a gay person from getting married. However we do have laws as to who you can and cannot marry and they apply to everyone. Why does the choice of a particular sin make a person think they're above the law/

It's All About Tolerance, yeah right - While evangelical atheism can stuff their false religion down the throats of unsuspecting school children with the blessing of the court, their primary goal is to prevent competition from other religions. Make no mistake, they're not fighting for separation of church and state, they're fighting to create a theist monopoly based on their own religious views.

Hell's Best Kept Secret

If I've been blessed with any gifts, talents, or special abilities by the Holy Spirit I believe that the most important of these gifts is that of discernment. When I hear something good and right and biblical I just know, and when something isn't biblical (but claims to be) I tend to feel bad about it. I may not know why I feel good or bad about something but it drives me to do the Berean thing and find out why I'm being nudged in that direction. For example I've never felt right about the Douay-Rheims bible, I eventually found out that it's not a bad translation, but it's not translated from original documents like our modern bibles. It's a fair translation of a fair translation (The latin vulgate) and when you run a document through that many translations which always gets messed up. Try it for yourself - go to www.Babelfish.com and translate something a few times. Here's an example: I took Matthew 17:19 and translated it from English, to German, German to Italian, back and forth between a few languages. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” eventually became "Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said: "could not but why we still going?"

Although it's not the 16th Century version of The Message, it feels that way to me.

Reflections In A Big Church

I don't like crowds, to me a crowd is just an angry mob waiting to happen. To me little good comes from huge crowds, huge good comes from little crowds. Where do you think you could find justice: a jury of 12 or a mob of 12,000?

And when you take a huge crowd and put them in a church many things can happen, some of them good: my 'bible study partner',  John MacArthur, is in a big church. Raul Reis, whom I truly admire and firmly believe God is guiding, is in a big church. Greg Laurie, huge church. Chuck Smith started a HUGE church, he started by preaching the Word of God to hippies and surfers and even facing death continues with the same fervor he had during the Jesus movement. 

On the other hand, big churches, really big churches, contain people I don't trust so much at all: Tony Campolo, Joel Osteen, Rodney Howard-Brown, Rick Warren, Joyce Meyers, C. Peter Wagner, T.D. Jakes, Steven Furtic...  None of these people I would follow to a free buffet. However I've met pastors glowing with the love of God in small churches I'd follow into a mine field to retrieve a live grenade. 

OT Tuesday: Herding Cats

The Medes and Persians are now in charge of Babylon, and the king of Persia, Cyrus, appointed a new boss, Darius (also known in historical documentation as Gubaru) who appointed 120 satraps (provincial governors) to rule over the territories of Babylon. Over them Darius placed three commissioners that the satraps would be accountable to. One of those commissioners was Daniel.

It appears that Darius had heard of Daniel's interpretation of the handwriting on the wall and his appointment by Belshazzar as co-ruler of Babylon and appointed him to this group of commissioners. By now Daniel is an old man with a good spirit and a close relationship with God, and Darius saw that Daniel was trustworthy and loyal and planned to place him in charge of the entire kingdom of Babylon. This, of course, made the other commissioners and satraps jealous and they tried to dig up dirt on the old prophet but they couldn't find a single thing they could accuse him of. They found him to be as faithful and incorruptable as Darius had found him, which angered them even more.

Then these men said, “We will not find any ground of accusation against this Daniel unless we find it against him with regard to the law of his God.” (Daniel 5:6)

Emergent Monday: Heresy du Jur - Binding Satan

I know that the charismatic church is not the emergent church, but both being ear ticklers and both emerging as the leading form of goat herding, I lump them together otherwise I'd get nothing done around here. And besides, it's getting kind of boring reporting on Rob Bell and his never ending Apostasypalooza.

The Heresy du Jur is something I just stumbled upon and didn't realize mankind could be so arrogant or so stupid to fall for this one of Satan's most heinous pranks: Binding Satan. Binding Satan is one of the more insidious heresies that come out of the charismatic movement. An escapee from the charismatic movement wrote a letter to my "bible study partner" Dr. John MacArthur and described her situation: 

Random Stuff... and Things!

This World Is Not My Home

The Pro "Choice" movement finally came out of the closet and revealed to the world where their actual allegiances lie. The truth came out during a Pro "Choice" rally in Texas. This leads to an interesting question - is abortion actually child sacrifice? I used to wonder, now thanks to the pro "choice" movement I know beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that abortion is human sacrifice. And thanks to the "peaceful" pagans among us, it's considered a holy sacrament.

Dr. Gareth Fraser is a biologist at the University of Sheffield informs us that humans will eventually evolve beaks, like puffer fish. You know about evolution, it's that 'science' that gave us a legacy of honesty and detailed scientific research that makes the operators of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor look good. Real good.

The best loved hymns? Thanks to my catholic upbringing I only know a couple of these hymns, and only one of them was ever sang in our church. L I'm trying to make up for lost time however.

Focus On The Family Starts Its Slide Into Heresy

³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

I expect nonsense, muddled thinking, and idle idol worship from the likes of Joel Osteen, Rodney Howard-Browne, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, but Focus On The Family? According to Elliott Nesch of Holy Bible Prophecy, Focus on the Family aired a conversation with Bono and followed up with an article titled  “Why Orthodox Christians Should Appreciate an Unorthodox Bono” Daly says:

“Bono may at times be a bit unorthodox in his approach, but he is quite orthodox in the areas that matter most – loving God and loving people.”

What does Jim Daly base his theory that Bono is a Christian? Because Bono was quoted as saying "I believe that Jesus was, you know, the Son of God."  So what? Even Satan knows that Jesus is the Son of God:

 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. (James 2:19)

Knowing that potatoes grow in dirt doesn't make you a farmer any more than knowing that three strikes makes an out doesn't make you a major league ball player, and knowing that Jesus is the Son of God doesn't make you a Christian. Turning your life over to Jesus makes you a Christian, acknowledging with your mouth that Jesus is your Lord and Savior makes you a Christian. Simply stating that Jesus is the Son of God doesn't make you anything other than someone who is repeating a truth. 

What Is The Sevenfold Spirit of God?

I started this blog to track the answers that I find as I explore my relationship with my loving adopted brother, my savior, my Lord, my King; Jesus Christ. Quite often I find that the enemy has placed agents here on earth to drive me off track. Their antics are puzzling, unbiblical, heretical, but always quite entertaining, and they even come with their own bartender. But their nonsense has one purpose only; to distract the believer away from the true Word of God. So to point out what they do I reserve one day a week to vent (Emergent Monday) and spend the rest of the week thanking God for the discernment he's blessed me with.

To be honest it feels good to put them on the shelf and concentrate on Him, and try to delve into His mysteries. Ever notice how you can read the bible and something hits you, something you've read before and didn't seem to notice now seems to demand attention or more information? Last night while reading Revelation again, and this was probably the 3rd time this year alone I've been though John's final work, the term "Sevenfold Spirit of God" leaped out at me and demanded my full attention. 

What is the sevenfold spirit or the seven spirits of God? They're mentioned in Revelation 1:4, Revelation 3:1, Revelation 4:5, Revelation 5:6. Seven spirits? I thought the trinity was tough to understand! 

OT Tuesday: Daniel Reads The Writing On The Wall

The ancient kingdom of Babylon ended not with a bang, nor a whimper, but a drunken free-for-all. After the death of Nebuchadnezzar rule of the Babylonian empire finally fell to his descendant Nabonidus  As Chapter 5 of the book of Daniel opens Nabonidus' son Belshazzar is throwing a drunken party for one thousand of his closest friends. After Belshazzar got a good snootfull  of wine he ordered that the cups and bowls that Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple in Jerusalem be brought out so that his party guests can knock back a few cold ones in style with him. As they downed the wine they praised the pagan gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. 

Random Bits

Why aren't faith healers donating their time to children's hospitals? And why aren't their followers asking them this question? If Benny Hinn is so awesome why are there pediatric oncologists at all?

Let's face it, if the New Apostolic Reformation really could bestow Gods powers on someone by decree why is there the nation destroying financial nightmare called Obamacare? Why aren't there armies of faith healers moving through hospitals, hospices, and clinics healing the sick?

Emergent Monday: Let's ALL Make Our Own Bibles!!!

Just when you thought it can't get any weirder our friends in the New Apostolic Reformation just went over the top. The NAR is quickly becoming the poster child for heresy and I'll bet if Anton La Vey were alive he'd be cheering the sheer audacity of the NAR.

The NAR has taken a page from the emergent playbook, they've been tired of being accused of being unbiblical so they resorted to what's been working for other sects. Do you have a New Age unbiblical view of the world? Eugene Peterson fixed that by making up the Message perVersion of the bible. Have a favorite sin that you'd like changed from sin to sacrement? We got the Queen James bible for you. Have a doomsday cult that's missed the doomsdate multiple times? We have the New World Translation to help while away the hours handing out Watchtower magazines door to door. Wanna spread a new version of the word with your multiple wives while waiting to take over for God? Try the Joseph Smith version. Have a money grubbing, goat herding, snakeoil selling road show called a church that John MacArthur is ready to lower the boom on? Just wip up your own version of the bible to justify your heresy. And the NAR has their own now - it's called "The Passion" which I will abbreviate to TP.