I'm a pastor and blogger from Connecticut who enjoys writing and keeping up on current events, tech issues, and theology.
Daily Spurgeon devotional blog:
http://www.TheDailySpurgeon.com
My church:
http://www.HTchurch.com
Pray Connecticut blog:
http://www.PrayCT.org
The Barna Group has a really interesting new bit of polling out about how different generations use and view the Bible. I'd love to share some of it with you but Barna's copyright is so onerous I'll probably get sued just for sharing this link.
Dear ____________,
The word "bamah" means high places in the sense of high places of idolatry or elevated physical places such as mountainous areas.
A 5-minute word study would show anyone that the only place "bamah" is used to refer to the sky is in the Isa.14 passage, and he speaks about the high places of the clouds. There is no other place in the Hebrew Bible where "bamah" has any reference to the sky. The word "shemayim" is used to refer to the heavens. This video is not helpful as it makes all of us who are premillenial look like cranks and can serve to inoculate people against seeing the actual signs of the real Antichrist.
This teaching can indeed be shot down even in five minutes by someone like myself who has no formal Hebrew education. All we need to do is simply refer to the wealth of Bible study materials available for free in 2009 on the Web.
In a world full of antichrists with a small "a," this is a supremely unhelpful video which Christians have no business helping "go viral." All you are doing is engendering additional ill will against a segment of society that has already become marginalized and mistrusted - us!
Here's one for the prophecy buffs - the Temple Institute has begun construction of the altar for the future Temple, in Jericho. I read that it's being made of the smallest possible size so that it can be relocated to the Temple Mount more easily. The event took place on Tisha b'Av, the day when the Jews recall to mind the destruction of the first two Temples. While clothing and perhaps some pieces of furniture have been prepared for the Third Temple, to my knowledge this is the first time those involved have begun to make such a key component of the Temple sacrificial system.
Psalm 2 Alert from Scotland:
A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity.
The show includes a video of a woman ripping pages from the Bible and stuffing them into her bra, knickers and mouth.
The open Bible is a central part of Made in God’s Image, an exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow. By the book is a container of pens and a notice saying: “If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.”
The exhibit, Untitled 2009, was proposed by the Metropolitan Community Church, which said that the idea was to reclaim the Bible as a sacred text. But to the horror of many Christians, including the community church, visitors have daubed its pages with comments such as “This is all sexist pish, so disregard it all.” A contributor wrote on the first page of Genesis: “I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this....”
One writer has altered the first line of the Old Testament from “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth” to “In the beginning, God (me) I created religion.” Another has written “The Gospel According to Luke Skywalker”. The main sentiment, however, is rage at Christianity. “F*** the Bible”, one message says.
Tough times in Iraq.
The New York Times in this article recognizes this as a sign from the Book of Revelation, Rev. 16:12.
On Tuesday, June 23rd 2009, an American Christian worker named Chris Leggett was gunned down by Al Qaeda for the alleged “crime” of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. To give you an idea of what kind of man Chris Legget was, the 39-year old native of Cleveland, Tennessee not only taught computer science in a low-class neighborhood in the capital city of Nouakchott, he also, according to the Cleveland Daily Banner, worked with the prison systems to train and equip women and young boys to re-enter society, directed a training center providing training in computer skills, sewing, and literacy, and oversaw a micro-loan program which fostered the growth of hundreds of small businesses.
Although the miniscule media coverage has been fairly straightforward, I was saddened to see some of the nasty comments on the Huffington Post when Ahmed Mohammed posted the Associated Press story on the site. Although a few of the comments unequivocally condemned Leggett’s murder for what it is, a cowardly act of violence motivated by extremists, far too many seemed to think that Leggett was somehow “asking for it” because of the nature of his work in a Muslim land, as if Chris Leggett somehow deserved to die because of his passion for sharing his faith.
One commenter wrote, “Well, you know, it is their country. You go walking around with arrogant disregard of their laws, you better be prepared to pay the consequences. Non-story.” Another commenter cut from the same cloth replied, “I agree. It doesn't take much intelligence for non-military Americans to keep out of these countries. You not only go there at your own risk - you ask for it.”
My beef isn’t so much with the Huffington Post (who likely has little control over what people comment on the site), but to the people who made those nasty comments (there were some that were far worse) I would like to say feel free to criticize Christian missionaries working in Muslims lands, but I hope you realize that you’re criticizing from a position of privilege. Many of you live in countries that allow you to choose your religious beliefs without fear of torture, imprisonment, or death. Hundreds of millions of Muslims live in countries that deny them that right. How do you know that out of the worlds’ roughly 1.2 billion Muslims, that some of them don’t want to hear another perspective?
Chris Leggett most likely wasn’t banging the Bible over anyone’s head, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few curious Muslims quietly asked him about his religious beliefs. After all, most Muslims I know-unlike most Westerners I know-like to discuss religion in every day conversation and enjoy hearing other people’s perspectives. If a few of these same Muslims through peaceful dialogue came to the conclusion that Chris’s beliefs were correct, where’s the crime in that? If Chris Leggett did break Mauritanian law, then it was an unjust law that he broke. Last time I checked, breaking unjust laws is called civil disobedience. Acts of civil disobedience have been crucial to every major advance in human rights.
Article by Aaron Taylor. Yes, it's easy to trumpet the cry of "human rights" but this is usually done on premises which honor them to some degree. Still no churches in the Kingdom of Saud.
Why?
The one and only David Virtue eviscerates the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA after her comments that individual salvation is the "great Western heresy."
In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori said it was a "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ acknowledged in a prayer of repentance.
She said that view is 'caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus.'
According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual's prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy."
Ms. Jefferts Schori is dead wrong.
The entire message of both Old and New Testaments is God's pursuit of man, not man's search for Ubuntu.
Her ridiculing of personal salvation in favor of social amelioration through Millennium Development Goals is little more than a rehash of the Social Gospel of the Sixties that has seen a massive hemorrhaging of mainline denominations in America.
Jefferts Schori is on the wrong side of history. Her, and the church's understanding of mission - to save the world for God - is arrogance and hubris. No one human being, organization or ministry has that capacity. God alone has the power to save the world. Jesus himself admitted that the poor would always be with us.
We are called to be obedient to The Great Commission, "to go into all the world and preach the gospel" of God's grace, inviting people into his kingdom based on the very (and personal) call to repentance.
It is not about a "formula", as Jefferts Schori caricatures it. The Sinner's Prayer is not a recitation of the Four Spiritual Laws. Formula faith is not real faith; it never has been and never will be.
Many of those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ have wrestled with that call. St. Paul's Damascus Road experience was no "Ubuntu" moment. Neither was the experience of John Bunyan of Pilgrim's Progress, an everyman character, which centers itself on his journey from his hometown, the "City of Destruction" ("this world"), to the "Celestial City" ("that which is to come": Heaven) atop Mt. Zion. He is only and finally freed from the weight of his burden - the knowledge of his sin - when he repents of his sin at the foot of the cross.
Jefferts Schori will have none of that kind of faith or talk.
Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, began championing a theory several years ago that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a powerful, unified monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are essentially false. The scientific methods for his assumptions, called a "lower dating" which essentially pushes archaeological evidence into a later century and thus erases all evidence of a Davidic monarchy, were laughed off by traditional archaeologists. But his book, The Bible Unearthed, wound up on the New York Times' best-seller list and he became the darling of a sympathetic media. He concluded that David and Solomon, if they existed at all, were merely "hill-country chieftains" and Jerusalem a poor, small tribal village. He claims that the myth of King David was the creation of a cult of priests trying to create for themselves a glorious history.But the debunkers of Jewish biblical history got some bad news recently, when a spunky, dedicated archaeologist began her latest dig. Dr. Eilat Mazar, world authority on Jerusalem's past, has taken King David out of the pages of the Bible and put him back into living history. Mazar's latest excavation in the City of David, in the southern shadow of the Temple Mount, has shaken up the archaeological world. For lying undisturbed for over 3,000 years is a massive building which Mazar believes is King David's palace.
Complete with pottery shards from the 11th century B.C. Follow the link to Aish.com - very interesting.
“It may be a reflection on human nature,” Madison wrote in a famous passage in Federalist No. 51, “that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
How did the Founders come to know man as they did? They had broad practical experience that exposed them to humanity in its glory and its folly: as lawyers, military officers, and — especially important — legislators. Some knew hardship. Try, like Alexander Hamilton, making your way as a penniless, orphaned bastard from the West Indies and see if you don’t pick up a few hard-boiled lessons about how the world works.
They also picked up more than just a thing or two from the Protestantism of their day, as evidenced by the percentage of Army officers who were Presbyterian ministers - and not retired ones, mind you. The separation of powers in all its wisdom comes from Isaiah 33:22: "For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us."
Thank God our Founders knew that only God Himself is wise enough to carry all three of those roles in His own Person.
A press conference is scheduled in Rome tomorrow... is this legitimate?
Abuna Pauolos, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, was in Rome this week to meet with Pope Benedict XVI. While there, he told reporters that the time had come to reveal before the world the Holy Ark. He said that the holy container has been in the custody of his church for hundreds of years.
Paulous said he would make the full announcement this Friday, June 26, 2 PM local time (3 PM Israel time, 8 AM New York time) at a press conference in Rome.
The claim that the Biblical Holy Ark has been kept at the Church, in the city of Axum, is an old one, but this is the first time that the Church plans to actually reveal the actual container, or news of it. It is not known whether the Church claims that the actual Tablets of the Law are inside it.
Copies of the alleged Ark are kept in many other churches in Ethiopia.
The news of the impending announcement was first reported by the Italian news agency Adnkronos. Pauolos told the news outlet, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that G-d delivered to Moses, and the center of searches and studies for centuries."
Pauolos said "The Ark of the Covenant has been in Ethiopia for many centuries. As Patriarch, I have seen it with my own eyes, and only a few, highly-qualified persons could do the same - until now."
Read more here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132067#
