We Need Some Isaiah

God has had enough

Celebrate Your Persecution

Many see the recent SCOTUS ruling as government permission to persecute the Christian church. They may be right, but is that a bad thing?

... persecution in the Christian church acts like a winnowing fan to the heaps gathered on the threshing-floor. In these soft and silken days any man may be a Christian professor. Oftentimes it pays well to make a profession of godliness. Men think the better of you: it brings customers to the shop. No one knows how many conveniences may attach to the profession of religion: albeit, if it be pretense without pretext, everlasting destruction awaits such violation of truth, for God will surely avenge hypocrisy. 

But in days of persecution, to profess Christ is very inconvenient. Then to be baptised in water may involve a baptism of blood. Then for the soul to burn with zeal for Christ would probably be followed with the body being burnt at the stake. Then a word for Jesus would bring a word of conviction from the judge's mouth, and, close at the heels of that word, death. Then they who loved not Christ betook themselves to the other side; the cowards and the spies shrunk away. Demas went, and Judas went, and all of that brood, to their own company, and then only the true and the brave, the regenerate, the elect of God were left.

They stood fast and firm—all the stronger for losing such ill company. Then in those days the church was like a heap of golden wheat, all winnowed and clean grain, fit for a burnt offering to the Most High, to be offered up as a meat offering upon his altar. Her martyrs were amongst her noblest sons, the very glory of the church and of the Lord Jesus Christ. - CH Spurgeon

Our 500th Post

"Our" meaning the Holy Spirit of our Lord and myself, and I'm just here to actuate the keyboard. He's here to teach me the way home to Him. Sometimes I'm best taught by sight, sometimes by doing, most often by reading but sometimes through song. I Praise the Lord that He led me to a church home that still believes that praising God Almighty comes best by the songs that have passed the test of time

Hey SCOTUS!

Marriage is not a legal Frisbee to be tossed around carelessly, you know, like Obamacare. A special note to the Dread Justice Roberts - even with your arrogance you can't rewrite law (it's not your job) and you can't rewrite the Bible. That last one is above your pay grade.

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

Republican John Kasich takes Mr. Pope to school about his pantheistic ecomania.

Sin can strike anywhere. There's 10 things we can learn from this heartbreaking scandal

Gay Marriage Rally - this one you'll like.

Religion of Peace Update #1 - Don't blame Islam, it's our own fault for ignoring the "chronic distemper” that afflicts the middle east.

Religion of Peace Update #2 - Former Muslim, now Christian, gay, faces extradition to certain death. Only thing for certain is that Canada won't deport criminals to the US if they face a death penalty but they'll send a Christian to certain death at the hands of Hamas. Canada is a lost, hypocritical nation.

Religion of Peace Update #3 - Memorize some Koran verses, win a captured teenage Yazidi sex slave for your very own! Christian: with your silence you are supporting THIS and THIS and THIS. If you thought ISIS was Satan's own agents on earth, you were right.

Do Not Be Embarassed

Thanks to Elisabeth and Tim

ISIS: Satan's Agents Of Death Walk The Earth

ISIS has proudly released a new video touting their unheard of animalistic barbarity. ISIS had in their clutches sixteen men, all of which were accused of "spying". 

By ISIS penal rules ISIS can "legally" execute people for Sodomy, Adultery, and Murder, along with the following "crimes": Blasphemy against Allah, Blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed, Blasphemy against Islam, Apostasy, and Spying for Unbelievers. This means that IF they followed their own rules the men that ISIS murdered for spying were Jews, Christians, or Muslims that were working with Jews or Christians.

Why I Post About False Teachers So Much

This is why I post about false teachers so much:

Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. (Matthew 7:15)

²² Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:22-23)

 And Jesus said to them, “Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” (Matthew 16:6) 

When is Fear Not Fear?

I was driving down a rural Colorado road and ended up behind a crude oil tanker with Proverbs 9:10 scrawled in the grime on the back of the tank. I love that verse,

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

At that particular moment my main fear was picking up a rock chip or the main dump gate on the tank letting go giving my car a lube job the likes of which would be fabled in legend and song. I realized I have much more to fear from the Lord than from a potentially leaky old tank truck. If I were a new age follower of wildly popular prosperity "preaching" I would know that God wouldn't let something like that happen to me, he's my friend. I'm cool, my car is cool, and God digs us both because He is love and He loves me and nothing else matters to Him. There's a lot of people out there that actually think like that. I see quite often see things splattered across the internet like this:

A Heart Felt Thank You

This isn't them, but you get the idea

Several months ago I was diagnosed with several medical conditions which often happens under the well known medical phenomenon WIRIP (When It Rains It Pours). As a result I had to be put on blood thinners. Anyone who has had to take Warfarin or Cumadin knows that your blood "viscosity" needs to be checked on a regular basis, and the best folks to see to insure that it's done correctly are the nurses at the anticoagulation clinic at National Jewish Health.

I feel sorry for them, I really do, because many people on these drugs don't want to be on them. They don't like having to come in weekly and have blood drawn, they don't like having the level of cumadin or warfarin changed constantly, they don't like the fact that changes in diet or medication may mean changes in their blood. It's kind of annoying and they tend to take it out on these nurses. More than once I've seen these professionals nearly in tears because of the treatment they received from the grouch ahead of me.

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

A young hate (and drug) filled man  opens fire in a Charleston SC church and kills nine worshipers. Please, please pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ during their time of tribulation no matter where they be.

Probably not the best response to the Charleston shooting

Men Of The Church: Especially those of us in Baptist or Non-Denominational - It's time we started taking our security responsibilities more seriously. Church attacks are not rare and when looking at all denominations and religions in the US, over 44% of church attacks are in Baptist and Non-Denominational Christian churches.

With false teachers front and center, mega churches preaching a gospel of self and Mr. Pope spending more time on fairy tales than on the bible when you step back and look at the big picture the results of Satan's plan of damnation become very clear.

Religion of Peace Update #1 - What happens to Christians captured by ISIS? The men get killed, for the women it is just too heartbreaking for me to write. PLEASE pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ during their time of tribulation no matter where they be.

Religion of Peace Update #2 - Evil always triumphs when good people do not oppose it.

Having failed at theology, Mr Pope tries his hand at politics. (I warned you he was going to do this)

The World Watch List of Christian persecution.

I Love It When An Actor Comes Out Of The Closet!

To be honest, the first time I saw Chris Pratt was in Guardians of the Galaxy (yes, my guilty pleasure is Marvel films), but I knew of his wife Anna Faris, a very funny and cute comedian. Chris is not ashamed of his faith and speaks openly about it, something that Hollywood tends to frown on. When Chris and Anna's son Jack was born 9 weeks premature they turned to God for help

"We were scared for a long time. We prayed a lot... It restored my faith in God, not that it needed to be restored, but it really redefined it... the baby was so beautiful to us, and I look back at the photos of him and it must have been jarring for other people to come in and see him, but to us he was so beautiful and perfect.”

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

Poverty pimp, race hustler, tax cheat, and societal vulture "Reverand" Al Sharpton receives a smack down from a real pastor.

Yay! Seriously, YAY!

Sigh.

Religion of Peace Update #1 - Sexual slavery is now ISIS' primary form of entertainment. I know it's not very Christian of me to ask, but members of my family fought and died to end slavery and as a veteran with over 20 years of service to the US Constitution and mankind I have to as: why are we not bombing these people into oblivion?

Religion of Peace Update #2 - The widow of a Christian shot to death by suspected hard-line Muslims in eastern Uganda fears for her life after receiving several death threats.

Religion of Peace Update #3 - Maxine Waters, the dullest knife in the silverware drawer of the Democratic party, believes that Sharia law is compatible with the US Constitution and if you disagree with her then you are a racist. Maxine Waters is clearly coming out in support of slavery and sexual slavery, a large part of the Sharia is dedicated to the practice. Franklin Graham disagrees with Maxine.

Religion of Peace Update #4 - Life under sharia law

The attack on Christianity in the US Military continues to gain momentum in the most twisted ways imaginable

More Spurgeon

He Who Now Restrains

I was reading Glenn Chatfield's roundup in The Watchman's Bagpipes and something struck me. It was the article about the Bible not condemning soldiers or war and I was reflecting on my decades of service in the military. The military has always been a refuge for the Godly. Some of the most Godly men I know were senior ranking NCOs and many men I know went into the military not really caring one way or another and came out dedicated men of God. 

As an NCO I spent a huge amount of time training young troops because that's what an NCO does; prepare his future replacements. NCOs are immortal in some respect because I trained young troops using knowledge that was passed to me by old NCOs and those young troops are now training their subordinates using knowledge I passed on to them. The faithful were always easiest to train because they understood subordination to a higher authority. They had restraint because they understood what a higher authority is, and they understood the need to respect that authority. Kids who were raised in a "progressive" environment had trouble with the concepts of rank, respect, authority, subordination, submission, experience, and 'shut up and listen to your betters' (a very valuable skill to have in the military).

And that's when it struck me, this thought hit my brain and exploded, so I'm throwing this out to the world and if I'm wrong please please please please correct me (Pastor Paratus - I'll be in for the early tomorrow just in case) So here goes: 

Red Letter Christians - Denial In The New Age

So a Red Letter Christian walks into a newspaper that he doesn't have the courage to name and suddenly has a desire to explain to their account rep who and what they are. The following conversation ensues:

"We’re the opposite of  The Christian Right,”

“Oh so it’s just the Gospel,” he said, “none of this Leviticus and Revelation stuff.” 

"Pretty much," we said. "We like the red words. Haha!”

Yes, the Red Letter Christians love the words in the bible that are printed in red, the rest of the bible not so much. If you pay attention to a Red Letter Christian you'll get the idea that the rest of the bible needs to be ignored. When confronted with Timothy 3:16-17 the response of the Red Letter Christian is: 

That's all great and everything. Paul said that. Jesus said, "The sum of the law and all the prophets is to love God and love your neighbor as you do yourself." Not only that, he said it several times.

and my favorite, rejecting historical fact and getting their theology from Wikipedia:

2 Timothy is one of the pseudepigraphical epistles. Paul didn't actually write that one; one could call it a forgery

The Red Letter Christians are saying 'we ignore Timothy because we think it's a forgery, Wikipedia says so. We will ignore the fact that Clement, the Bishop of Rome (100 A.D.), Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch (67-110 A.D.), and Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna (69-156 A.D.) were contemporary with the apostles or contemporary with Timothy and were familiar with the letters. They accepted 1 and 2 Timothy as genuine letters from the apostle Paul. As further evidence that their authorship was never in doubt, the Pastoral Epistles were found in the early Latin and Syriac versions of the New Testament. We trust Wikipedia over people who were there and know better and we certainly trust Wikipedia over the Holy Spirit.'

So why am I writing this post about the Red Letter Christians? As any Christian blogger will tell you, sometimes you just have to write something on a particular subject. While not wanting to wax Pentecostal, I believe that the Holy Spirit occasionally wants a subject to be broadcast and I've noticed that when I feel His push to write about a subject I often see that several other Bloggers will write about the same subject too. I had never heard about Red Letter Christians until this weekend but after seeing a post at Eternity Matters (an awesome blog) I started feeling that push. Then yesterday I found out why the Holy Spirit wanted a broadcast message sent out. More on that later. What I found out about Red Letter Christians made me weep for Christianity.

Emergent Monday - Spurgeon is Broccoli, Osteen is Cheetos.

It's Too Easy Bein' Cheesey 

1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able (1 Corinthians 3:1-2)

Paul could not have said "...I gave you Cheetos to munch on, not broccoli..." even thought he's talking kid food vs real food, Paul was talking to people that could handle the basic elements of the Gospel, but they weren't strong enough to take the deeper mysteries of the Gospel of Jesus Christ such as those spelled out in Ephesians 3. The followers of the prosperity gospel don't even measure up to this category. If solid food is the deeper mysteries of the gospel and milk is the basic elements of sin and salvation, then anything less is empty calories.

Sadly the largest "church" in America can't even handle milk, they get snack food. They're fed morsels of crunchy goodness that feel filling but are made of empty calories and have almost no nutritional value at all. They're getting fed Cheetos and being told it's steak. They're most definitely not alone, but in this example I'm talking about the 43,500 starving souls of Lakewood Church and their goatherd Joel Osteen plus the millions that follow on TV, radio, and internet. Joel likes God a lot, as well he should, because mentioning God on occasion insures Joel a steady influx of cash. But Jesus? Not so much. 

Here's what I mean by Cheetos. Look for quotes on sin by Joel Osteen, the vast majority of what you'll find go along the lines of "There's worse sins than homosexuality, like pride." but beyond that all you get is Cheetos:

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

Street Preacher falsely accused of "homophobia" held for 11 hours for preaching the word of God

Societal Decomposition: In Mexico children are being kidnapped and murdered in the name of Satan. In Thailand a cafe dedicated to witchcraft has been opened. In the USA ABC/Disney plans a new sitcom in adoration of Christian bashing, mentally ill sodomite Dan Savage

Watching liberal ideologues attack each other is like watching a shark and a lawyer attack each other. You want to tear your eyes away but the entertainment value is much too high...

I mentioned last week that Fox Television was planning to premier a TV show that glorifies Satan. Sign the online petition to stop this foul thing from seeing the light of day

Some things cannot be unseen (yes that's Rick Warren holding hands with Elton John)

Can someone point out to me where in the bible Jesus referred to God as a female? Not even in the original Greek? Do these people realize what they are doing when they pervert holy scripture with their heretical humanist agenda?

Maybe THIS is why Paul wrote 1 Timothy 2:12 (Can I get an Amen?)

Spurgeon on Apostasy

Fun Fact #1

Isaiah 1:4