And So The End Begins

God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity

¹⁸ The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹ since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴ Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.


²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Romans 1:18-32

OT Tuesday: The Vision of the Tree

As I read chapter Daniel 4 it appears to me that the chapter is structured with a decree from Nebuchadnezzar at the beginning, then a parenthetical synopsis of the events in the middle, and then the chapter ends with the completion of the decree. So that's how I'm going to go through this chapter. To me at least this is the most logical way of of looking at this chapter, it  just doesn't make sense to me any other way. So if someone out there has another, more accurate or logical, way of interpreting this chapter PLEASE clue me in!

So here we go: At the beginning of Chapter 4 of the Book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar sends out a decree to his entire kingdom, he greets his people then says

² It is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the Most High God has performed for me. ³ How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation. (Daniel 4:2-3)

At first I noticed that Nebuchadnezzar's attitude toward God had changed, in previous chapters  Nebuchadnezzar considered God just another god in a huge collection of gods, it was like he was humoring Daniel when he was talking about God. Even after the furnace incident Nebuchadnezzar considered God just another god. But now he's seeing God as the most high God and marveling at His great and mighty wonders. What happened to change Nebuchadnezzar's mind about God? That's what Chapter 4 is all about. 

Emergent Monday: Holy Ghost Bartender

A while ago my bride and I were listening to a Christian fiction novel on audio book as we drove up to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The story wasn't too bad but the authors image of heaven was nonstop laughter, which to me is not heaven. I mean, I enjoy a good joke as much (if not more) than the next guy, but I don't see heaven, or God for that matter, as a joke. However when the book mentioned a vision of heaven the soundtrack was filled with laughter. It was maniacal laughter. It was unhinged laughter. It was totally unnerving. It was bizarre. It was the creepiest thing I ever heard. That is until I heard Todd Friel of Wretched Radio feature a bit of Rodney Howard-Browne.

Rodney Howard-Browne calls himself the "Holy Ghost Bartender" because he "serves the new wine and his goats followers get drunk with joy". RH-B was born in Port Elisabeth, South Africa and emigrated to the United States in 1987, the same year that Microsoft unleashed Windows on an unsuspecting world. (I'm not drawing any conclusions here, I'm just sayin'...) He claims to have committed his life to Christ at age 5, and also claims to have been filled with the Holy Spirit at age 8. At the age of 18 he claims that he was praying for hours seeking a deeper spiritual experience when he challenged God:

"'Either You come down here and touch me, or I will come up there and touch You,' he prayed in desperation. Suddenly, his whole body felt like it was on fire. He began to laugh uncontrollably. Then he wept and began to speak in tongues. 'I was plugged into heaven's electrical supply,' he later wrote in his book, The Touch of God. 'And since then my desire has been to go and plug other people in'" (Julia Dulin, "Praise the Lord and Pass the New Wine," 8/94, Charisma, p. 22).

I believe he was touched, but who was he touched by is the big question.

The Only Thing Evolving Is Their Story

We've all heard it before, chimpanzees and humans share 99% of their DNA so that means Bonzo is our closest living relative in the animal kingdom. Score one for evolution, right? So what if the whole theory of evolution is backed up with fraud and lies, comparing DNA is science and science is based on truth and integrity, right?

For example Carbon 14 dating is science. Carbon 14 is a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of common carbon that is created in the upper atmosphere and is absorbed by plants, animals eat those plants and absorb the carbon 14. when a plant dies it stops absorbing Carbon 14, and when an animal dies it stops absorbing plants. Since Carbon 14 has a known decay rate we can determine mathematically by seeing how much Carbon 14 is remaining in an object when a tree which has been converted to an Egyptian mummy case or when the mummy inside stopped eating salad. 

Carbon 14 dating has been in use for dating organic material since WWII, and since Carbon 14 decays, the oldest objects that can be accurately dated by this method are 50,000 years old. Maybe 100,000 years tops because Carbon 14 will decay away in 100,000 years. However when things "known" to be millions of years old, things like coal and carboniferous portions of dinosaur fossils, are tested for Carbon 14, Carbon 14 is found. Science is at a loss for words but it's obviously a problem with Carbon 14, it can't be a young earth, right? And that kind of thing can't happen with DNA testing, right? 

I And The Father Are One - Neither Is An Egg

I know a person who walks through life in some kind of dreamy, fluffy, stumble. It's almost like nothing is real to her until everything collapses down around her head. You know the type, they get all of their information from the 5:00 PM hyperventilation that passes for news, panic over what they're told to panic over, buy what they're told to buy, and ignore what they're ordered to ignore. I've witnessed to this person and her only response was "Nah, I don't think it's like that." Her responses made me a firm believer in Calvinism.

No matter what you say, her views on our Lord and Savior are "He was a nice guy, a smart man, a 'great moral teacher' and he lived a long time ago." At first I thought her views on Jesus were unique to her, but after talking to more people it seems her views are almost mainstream. To me (at least) it sounds like a lot of people believe in Jesus the man who was a nice Jewish rabbi that dispensed a lot of good advice along with loaves and fish.