Who Are Jesus Contemporaries?

To me blogging is a matter of what the Holy Spirit leads me to, lately my job has been very busy and I've felt led to concentrate on that, yesterday was quiet, dad's home from the hospital and not taking well to his liquid diet (he tried to convince mom that cheese is really a liquid) and in my prayers and devotions the Holy Spirit let me rest. Today He made up for it. 

He led me to articles where Christians claim that Jesus endorsed homosexual relationships (Matthew 8:5-13), to articles where Christians convinced themselves that dangerous destructive civil disobedience was following God's will (the attack on Seymour Johnson AFB in '93) both worthy of blog articles, but the one that the Holy Spirit led me to and then slammed my forehead into the monitor was this quote:

We can date Abraham’s birth to about 2000 BC, in modern-day Iraq, near present-day Nasarif. Like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad—and like us—Abraham was was raised in a pluralistic, polytheistic world. During his lifetime, he lived side by side with others who honored many different gods and praticed many different religions.

And during his lifetime, Abraham—like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad—had an encounter with God that distinguished him from his contemporaries and propelled him into a mission, introducing a new way of life that changed the world… How appropriate that the three Abrahamic religions begin with a journey into the unknown. - Brian McLaren, Finding Our Way Again

Memorial Day

I like to spend time on every Memorial Day both in prayer and reciting the words that hold me in bond with my fallen brothers.

I, ______________, do solemnly swear  that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

The Next Sound You Hear...

...may most likely be the sound of ice tinkling in my glass of lemonade. I'm spending a couple of weeks in the tropics, which is kind of a stupid thing for a cold weather body like me to do, we tend to save our runs to the tropics for the winter so we when we return our tan really stands out in a church full of pasty driveway shovelers. It's our way of silently shouting "I'm As Cold As Heck And I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!!!" Believe me, if you live north of Mason City Iowa, Global Warming is a long sought after myth.

But I'm down here in Florida braving the late spring heat with the folks taking care of mom while dad is getting fixed up. We tried, really tried to get my Dad to have his surgery done during the winter, it would have been much more convenient for us northern children. Oh well, when life hands you lemons you make lemonade, grab a shady hammock, and put some Radio Cubana on Pandora. 

I'm blessed to have a "snowbird church", a home church away from home church, a place where I can worship with some Bereans here in the summer heat. So between errands with Ma while I ponder God's greatness underneath swaying palms and classical Spanish guitar lulls me into believing that it's a cold winter back home I wonder if the purveyors of the Gospel of Prosperity and Profit have 1 Timothy in their bible:

3 If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-5)

That last word, gain, is originally the Greek porismos, which literally means to make money or acquire money. I also wonder why it took me so long to see this. But now when I see a preacher with big hair, a big grin and a big palace full of goats teaches us the Gospel of Prosperity and Profit I know that our sadness at these false teachings is just and proper.

10 Ways To Love

Joy

A genuine revival without joy in the Lord is as impossible as spring without flowers, or day-dawn without light. Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Atheism's Objections to Christianity in Science

Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph
Édouard Lemaître

I love history, as far as I'm concerned history is the easiest subject because it's already written, there's nothing new to discover... but there's a lot of old stuff to discover. J History is something that makes the bible interesting, God could have made His word a text book full of dry equations and rules, but He didn't, He made it an epic masterful piece of literature that spans all of history, from the very beginning, climaxing with Christ's resurrection at the height of the Roman empire, then continuing on to the very end of the world as we know it. 

For years archaeologists used the bible as a reference when starting their digs, with great success. In more recent times archaeologists have been digging to disprove the bible, with great failure. The same pattern is being seen in the other sciences too - once God was used at great success to lead to scientific discovery, now it seems like science is being used in a never ending failed attempt to disprove God.

My favorite part is when those tired old atheist fallacies get dragged out to support modern atheist 'sensibilities' in an attempt to make God and His loved look stupid. It's unfortunate that our 'best and brightest' scientists are better at proving that they failed history than that they passed physics. Recently Neil deGrasse Tyson whom I used to admire took to the airwaves and used his new show Cosmos as vehicle for his personal vendetta against God. deGrasse mourned the fate of Giordano Bruno, imprisoned and burned at the stake in 1600 for preaching Copernicus' heliocentric solar system and daring to mention an infinate universe filled with suns orbited by planets. Unfortunately for Giordano Bruno almost everything that Neil deGrasse Tyson said about him was false. 

Random Bits

    For this world is not our home;
we are looking forward to our city
in heaven, which is yet to come. (Hebrews 13:14)

As we race closer to the glorious day our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, returns to take us home, the battle lines are being drawn, sides are being chosen, teams are being selected. It's becoming shockingly apparent on whose side the once respectable Democrat party has aligned themselves with. Unfortunately the stone that the Democrats are rejecting was once the cornerstone of the nation they are busy destroying.

Speaking of hating the bible, a Florida teacher attempted to embarrass a student in front of his class for reading the bible and now has involved her school district in a (well deserved) firestorm of indignation. It appears that in Mrs. Thomas class reading the Bible during "Free Reading Time" requires public humiliation.

Boko Haram, proud representatives of the Religion of Peace, attacked another Nigerian village, this time instead of kidnapping Christian school girls like they did three weeks ago, they slaughtered 300 Christian villagers.

As if that wasn't enough, eleven more girls have been kidnapped in Nigeria, instead of a school invasion this time they were taken from their homes by representatives of the Religion of Peace. These Muslim gentlemen, whose primary concern is to love God and live in peace, fully intend to sell these girls into sexual slavery.

In more Religion of Peace news - the new in-thing with the overeager jihaddi is crucifixions.

And what is the Obama administration doing to help the thousands upon thousands of Christians that are facing persecution around the world? Nothing.

Allowing babies to be born healthy and whole is torture according to the United Nations. Seriously. Any anyone that sinks as low as to advocate a pro-life stance is Promoting Torture according to them. They go so far as to say that just being pro-life and taking a stand against the murder of unborn babies "amounts to psychological torture of women". Right now the UN is aiming their Molech worship inspired vitriol against the Catholic church, but they will more than likely expand their reach to bible believing Christians in the near future.

The UN must be overjoyed with China with their atheist society and their one child forced abortion policy. Unfortunately Chinese women are not all that happy, in 2009 500 women a day killed themselves in China. How may lives could have been saved if Jesus were allowed in China?

Hawaii is the most recent state to fall to the fallacy of faux-marriage. Good news for lawyers however, if you're in a pretend-marriage, it still takes a real divorce to get you out of it, even if you are supposedly a "Man of God" (Remember when church shopping was easy, when you could count on a Christian community to have leadership that followed biblical standards?)

Speaking of faux-marriages... this. I weep for the unsaved.

WARNING: Fox and Lifetime are jumping on the Jesus Bandwagon and coming up with shows that depict Jesus' life between the age of 13 and 30. Other than heretical ancient fan fiction such as The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, nothing is written about Jesus life during that time. We do know however that He is without sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) and that he is both Man and God so a show that deviates from or denies these two items must be avoided.

Get the feeling that protecting your family from explicit pornography is hard in today's society? It's even harder than you think especially if you live in Gifford NH where William Baer was dragged out of a school board meeting in handcuffs and arrested for trying to protect his fourteen year old daughter from a pornographic reading assignment that the Gifford school board thought was age appropriate even though they were too embarrassed to read the material aloud in public. (BTW - to knowingly transfer obscene material to an individual under the age of 16 is a felony punishable by not more than 10 years of imprisonment and a fine, or both)

Cross-dressing, handing out condoms to passersby, gay marriage, gay divorce, transgender people dressing like clergy, cheating scandals (and gay cheating scandals too) Friday night in San Francisco's notorious Tenderloin district? No, This is today's Episcopal Church! How can we as Christians tolerate the behavior of this "church"? The minute presiding bishoptrix Katharine Jefferts Schori used the term "Our Mother Jesus" in a sermon they should have closed the doors and thrown away the keys. This twisted androgyny is the satanic core of Gnosticism which is the heart of feminism. All we can do is reach out to the few remaining Christians in the remnants of what was once George Washington's church and gather them to us.

Sunrise In A Troubled Land

Sometimes a reminder helps

Why do Unbelievers Hate The Bible?

Many Christians have heard it, and I'm pretty sure almost all Christian bloggers have heard it; an unbeliever prefacing his/her claim to why they don't believe the bible with "I've read the bible and..." I used to challenge those remarks with "What part of the bible in particular do you have problems with understanding?" but the response was generally the same: "The whole thing!" followed by a long confused screed that generally contains the words "... and that whole bacon thing, what's up with that?"

I just had a comment on my review of H2's "The Bible Rules" by a fiercely liberal Canadian woman who suggests that the ungodly, heretical "The Bible Rules" is a pretty good show and the reasons why Christians don't like it is because 

"The truth is, most of them have very little understanding of their own "holy book"; they certainly don't have much actual education in the matter... Whether ignorance is by accident or deliberate, it's equally appalling, in this day and age."

I did invite the lass to join me in bible study and maybe with the help of the Holy Spirit some light will be shed on the Gospel for her, I truly hope. But in researching the atheists all encompassing hate for the Gospel I found words that do not give me a lot of hope for her enlightenment:

15 To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. 16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed. (Titus 1:15-16)

That pretty much sums up why atheists hate the bible, and why blasphemous shows like H2's "The Bible Rules" and movies like the Russel Crowe "Noah" are filmed. 

Timeless Quotes from C.H. Spurgeon

“Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.”

If you hear a man rail at the Bible, you can usually conclude that he never reads it 

(Answering a student’s question, “Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?”) thus, it is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.

 Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself

The doctrine of justification itself, as preached by an Arminian, is nothing but the doctrine of salvation by works

Strange that there should be men so vile as to use the pen-knife of Jehoiakim, to cut passages of the Word, because they are unpalatable. Oh ye who dislike certain portions of the Holy Writ, rest assured that your taste is corrupt, and that God will not stay for your little opinion. Your dislike is the very reason God wrote it, because you ought not to be suited; you have no right to be pleased. God wrote what you do not like; he wrote the truth.

Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounties. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps or Heaven, or rule the waves of the evermoving ocean; but when He ascends His throne, His creatures then gnash their teeth, and we proclaim an enthroned God, and His right to do as He wills with His own, to dispose of His creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter; then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on His throne is not the God they love.

This shall be an infallible test to you concerning anyone’s ministry. If it is man-praising, and man-honouring, it is not of God. 

Sing Along With Joel Osteen

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt - Erma Bombeck

When you see the goats lined up around the block, check books in hand, to be fed tares by blatantly false teachers and wolves of the first order it's hard whether to know to laugh, cry, or shout for joy, because the punchline/cause/truth is all the same: God was RIGHT!

1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (2 Peter 2:1-3)

That being said, let's enjoy one of the finest bits of sarcasm/humor/honesty I've seen in a very, very long time: