For Such A Time as This

Freedom to Fascism

2009-08-22T22:18:00.005-04:00

WARNING: The following film is thought provoking and true. Watch at your own discretion. You will not look at your country the same. Try to remain calm. Do not over-react, just watch, think, then do. I am not advocating anything. I am simply informing.

Transparency in Government

2009-08-15T20:21:00.006-04:00

On the campaign trail BHO promised "transparency in US Government". On the surface we see on THIS WEBSITE the precise accounting of every dollar spent by the government. Good start. Kudos, BHO. But when we scratch beneath the service slightly we see a different story. For example, read this news story from Propublica.com:

"Back in July, a software company named Smartronix [1] landed an $18 million contract to build a Web site where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money. It was just another part of the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to bring transparency to stimulus spending, we were told.
But it seems the drive for transparency doesn’t cover the contract itself.
After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the General Services Administration released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless.
Don’t believe us? Take a look. [2]
ProPublica sought the contract under the Freedom of Information Act to find out what kind of site Smartronix planned to build and to assess whether it justified the cost, which Republican critics of the stimulus plan called “unreal.” [3]
Ed Pound, the director of communications for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, defended the redactions as “legitimate.” The Web site Smartronix is to build will replace Recovery.gov [4], the existing stimulus Web portal run by the transparency board.
“I’m not concerned about whether journalists are concerned about this,” Pound said. “We have been very transparent.”
The GSA declined to comment, but said in its response to ProPublica’s FOIA request that such redactions were allowed if material “involves substantial risk of competitive injury” to a contractor.
But the blacked-out information includes material that seems harmless to the company, such as the names and backgrounds of key personnel [2] and the number of visitors expected [5] by the site during traffic spikes.
Some sections of the contract were redacted in their entirety. They include:

the project’s management structure [17];
something called the “Strategic Advisory Council [18]”;

q u ality assurance [19] procedures;
five pages on user experience [20];
site navigation [21];
fou r unidentified pages [22] on which everything, even section headings, have been redacted;
every single piece of information in the document’s pricing table [23], including function, vendor, model, part ID, detail and quantity;
the contract’s warranty agreement [24].

In all, 25 pages of a 59-page technical proposal — the main document in the package — were redacted completely. Of the remaining pages, 14 had half or more of their content blacked out.

The secrecy drew criticism from government transparency watchdogs.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press [6], noted that information labeled “contractor proposed deliverables [7]” had been completely redacted.
“I think it’s on the one hand funny, but on the other hand frightening,” said Dalglish. “How are you going to keep these people’s feet to the fire? You can’t evaluate whether or not they delivered on the contract unless you know what they promised to deliver. That’s just nuts.”
Dave Levinthal, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics [8], agreed. “It’s difficult to make an accurate comparison with any other potential services when you can’t even see what the rates are for different types of programming services and job functions,” he said. “Sure, you get the overall number, but could there be a better deal out there? We don’t know.”
A spokeswoman for Smartronix, headquartered in Maryland, confirmed that the company was given the chance to propose redactions in the documents, as allowed by the Freedom of Information Act.
However, Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition [9], faulted the GSA for allowing the documents to be redacted so extensively.
“The government should have come back at the redaction and said, ‘Oh, for the love of God, nobody can tell anything from what you’ve redacted here,’” said Davis. “If you’re going to create a system designed ostensibly to provide greater transparency around a piece of the federal government, it would certainly be a great start to provide some transparency in the contract itself.”
Clay Johnson, the director of the Sunlight Labs [10] project at the Sunlight Foundation [11], called the level of redaction in the documents remarkable.
“I think the people have a right to know what their money is being spent on,” he said. “We still don’t really know what the government’s buying here, other than that it’s a Web site.”
The criticism from the Sunlight Foundation is notable. Smartronix says in its proposal that it has “engaged the Sunlight Foundation as advisers on government transparency [12],” adding that the foundation “is willing to advise Team Smartronix on transparency [2].”
Johnson disputed that characterization. He said that while he had spoken with one of Smartronix’s subcontractors and agreed to have Sunlight listed as an adviser, he had never spoken with anyone from the company itself and isn’t involved in the contract.
“We’re willing to advise anybody on transparency,” said Johnson.
ProPublica has filed an appeal with the GSA, arguing that the redactions were excessive and requesting that more of the information in the Smartronix documents be released. We’ll let you know what it says."

This is no joke! The following are screen shots from the contract obtained by freedom of information act.

How's that for change you can believe in? I say keep the change.

How much is your life worth?

2009-08-12T09:07:00.002-04:00

What is the worth of a human life? Read this article from Human events and see where American health care is going under government run health care:

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33100

I have printed this article by Newt Gingrich below:

How much is one additional year of your life worth?

Or one more year of life for your father or your wife? For your child?

In Great Britain, the government has settled on a number: $45,000.

That’s how much a government commission with the Orwellian acronym NICE has decided British government-run health care will pay for one additional year of life for a British subject.

Think it could never happen here? Then you need to pay closer attention to what Washington is planning for your health care.

British Government Bureaucrats Literally Decide if Your Life is Worth Living

The British single-payer bureaucrats arrived at the price of an additional year of life in the same way they decide how much health care all British people will get, through a formula called “quality-adjusted life years.”

That means that if you’re sick in Great Britain, government bureaucrats literally decide if your life is worth living and, if so, how much longer and at what cost.

If it’s more than $45,000, you’re out of luck.

A Well-Connected White House Advocate for Allocating Health Care Based on Perceived Societal Worth

In the highest levels of the Obama Administration there is a theory of how to ration health care that is troublingly reminiscent of the British system of “quality-adjusted life years.”

Dr. Ezekial Emanuel is a key health care advisor to President Obama and the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Earlier this year, Dr. Emanuel wrote an article that advocated what he called “the complete lives system” as a method for rationing health care. You can read it here.

The system advocated by Dr. Emanuel would allocate health care based on the government’s perception of the societal worth of the patients. Accordingly, the very young and the very old would receive less care since the former have received less societal investment and the latter have less left to contribute.

“Forstall[ing] the Concern that Disproportionate Amounts of Resources Will be Directed to Young People with Poor Prognosis”

“The Complete Lives System” would also consider the prognosis of the individual.

Quoting Dr. Emanuel: “A young person with a poor prognosis has had few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern that disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognosis.”

When fully implemented, Dr. Emanuel’s system, in his words, “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

“Chances that are attenuated” is a nice way of saying the young and the old are considered less worthy of health care and, under this system, will get less.

Once Government Becomes the Provider of Health Care, Personal Decisions Become Public Decisions

The point is not that a health care rationing system like the one favored by Dr. Emmanuel will be implemented in the United States tomorrow.

The point is that, as in the British system, once government becomes the single payer or even the main payer of health care, what were once intensely personal decisions become public decisions. And as costs rise, government will look for ways to contain them.

The inevitable result of this pressure to control costs will be rationing, whether it occurs during this administration or the next. At some point, the government will be forced to deny care to those who don’t meet the latest “quality-adjusted life years” cost-benefit analysis.

So the decision on what treatment to pursue that once would have been made by you and your doctor is now made for you by a bureaucrat using a formula -- a formula to literally determine if your life is worth saving.

The Camel’s Nose Under the Tent of Health Care Rationing

Societies don’t arrive at this point overnight.

British health care was nationalized soon after World War II, but NICE, the health care rationing agency, wasn’t created until the late 1990s as a way to control costs.

Today NICE routinely denies Britons life-prolonging drugs that are deemed not “cost effective” -- drugs that are widely prescribed in America to treat cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other serious conditions.

The result, studies show, is that Great Britain’s cancer survival rates are among the worst in Europe and lag behind the United States.

In America, Rationing Begins with Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER)

In our country, the road to dehumanizing, bureaucratic health care rationing begins with something called comparative effectiveness research (CER). It sounds completely innocent. In practice, CER means comparing different treatments for diseases to see which works best. And what doctor or patient would object to that, right?

The problem is that, in the context of a government-run health care system, comparative effectiveness research becomes a way to find a cheaper, one-size-fits-all approach to medicine that will limit health care choices for patients.

But don’t just take my word for it. Congressional Democrats included $1.1 billion in the Stimulus Bill for CER. Report language explaining the bill noted that the treatments found to be “more expensive” as result of the research “will no longer be prescribed” and that “guidelines” should be developed to manage doctors.

Congressional Democrats also killed several amendments to the current health care bill that would have prevented CER from being used to ration care. (To learn more about the common-sense amendments to the bill that have been blocked, click here).

The Government Has Determined You Must Take the Blue Pill

President Obama innocuously described the intended result of comparative effectiveness research like this: “If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?”

Listen to what the President is saying here. He’s saying that the government is capable of determining which pill works best for you and should therefore only pay for that pill.

But this one-size-fits-all approach goes against everything modern medicine is learning about the genetics of the human body. Different individuals and members of different ethnic and age groups respond differently to treatments. More and more, treatment of diseases like cancer is highly individualized and based on a genetic analysis of both the patient and her disease. Science is leading us in one direction and the administration and the Congress are taking us in the other.

What if you get sick and your doctor says you need the red pill, but the government has determined that the blue pill is what works best for its budget? In a single payer health world, what do you do then?

Creating a Commission to do the Dirty Work

Government bureaucrats limiting health care choices is terribly unpopular of course, which is why politicians use terms like “comparative effectiveness research” instead of “rationing.”

Another method Washington uses to avoid complicity in health care rationing is the creation of government boards or commissions -- like Britain’s NICE -- to do the job for them.

President Obama has expressed his support for using the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a commission created to advise Congress on Medicare, to achieve cost savings under health care reform.

Because the commission’s decisions could only be over-ridden by a joint resolution of Congress, it would be virtually unaccountable to the people -- and nervous members of Congress could blame the commission for unpopular decisions.

Combine this kind of a commission with the “complete lives system” advocated by White House health care advisor Dr. Ezekial Emanuel and you end up with a government rationing board literally determining which Americans should live and which should die.

Just Trust the Government

Supporters of government-run health care dismiss these worries as alarmist. They argue that because their big government health care bill doesn’t overtly call for rationing, it is somehow illegitimate to talk about this danger.

But it is always legitimate to consider the long-term consequences of a government program. By refusing to have an honest debate of this issue -- to explore honestly the consequences of the “painful choices” that all supporters of government health care say must be made -- their argument boils down to nothing more than this:

Trust the government.

Trust the politicians who are passing 1000-page bills they haven’t read.

Trust the leaders who are demonizing the citizens seeking to express their disagreement by calling them “un-American.”

Trust the advisors who advocate sacrificing the weak and the old and then hide in the shadows.

Trust the government to know what’s best for the most intimate, most personal part of you and your family’s life: your health.

Go ask a British citizen if it’s worth it.

To just shut up and trust the government.

Newt Gingrich

Words forbidden in Newspeak:

2009-08-10T22:30:00.001-04:00

This would be ridiculous and funny if it were not true. The masters of political correctness are at it again:

Health Care companies do not really care.

2009-06-17T09:52:00.003-04:00

In this age of hypocrisy and duplicity, is it any wonder we are a sick nation? We see contradictions on every hand. On one hand we want to preserve life by abolishing the death penalty. On the other we want to abort life through the third trimester in the mother's womb. On one hand we protest against drunk drivers. On the other hand we sell liquor like water in the desert and even go to absurd extreme of drive in liquor stores.

Now I find an article from the Scientific American stating that HMOs are invested heavily in tobbacco companies. Read for yourself here and comment.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=health-insurers-want-you-to-keep-sm-2009-06-03&sc=WR_20090609

Christians Wake-UP!!!

2009-05-01T22:48:00.000-04:00

Signs of the End Times

2008-10-16T00:46:00.011-04:00

We are living in exciting times! The crisis in world financial markets are marking the end of the world economic system as we know it. The actions of government are unprecedented. The US has taken over banks to "shore up" the US banking system. This is leading to a one world economic system supported by the world economic leaders called the G8. Many would say the economy is running its cycles. The government will not allow the cycles to run. Instead the Federal Reserve announced it would infuse hundreds of billions of fiat money into the banking system. If you do not know what fiat money is, just google it. (or click here.)
The coming of the Lord is drawing nigh. Nobody living has ever seen a global financial crisis such as we are seeing today.

This is only the beginning of the end times signs. Now Jewish settlers are making plans to fulfill a great Bible prophecy. Jesus said,

Matthew 24:14-15 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

Recently, Jewish settlers have begun to hold prayer in a "lost" synagogue near the temple mount. This is very significant because this is where the temple will be rebuilt before Messiah returns.

Restoration began with the return and rebuilding of the Second Temple under Zerubbabel in 515 B.C. (Ezra 1-6), but because of continued covenant violations (cf. Ezra 9; Neh. 13; Mal. 1-4) the Millennial restoration envisioned by the Prophets (cf. Ezek. 40-48) was postponed (cf. Hag. 2:1-9).

Half a millennia later, perhaps a decade before Jesus was born in Judea, the Second Temple was in such severe need of repairs that the reigning king Herod the Great refurbished it completely, even expanding its size. Although newly restored, it was still subject to the old terms of the covenantal contract, and with the Nation's rejection of Jesus as Messiah the Temple was again doomed to desolation.

All of Jesus pronouncements of the Temple's destruction (Matt. 24:2/Mk. 13:2; Lk. 21:6, 20-24) must be viewed in this light, and not as a rejection or replacement of the Temple as a legitimate institution. In fact joined immediately to Jesus' own pronouncement of the Temple's desolation (Matt. 21:38) is His promise (in the word "until") of Israel (and the Temple's) restoration (Matt. 23:39). This and Jesus' positive statements concerning the Temple elsewhere (Matt. 12: 4; 17:24-27; 23:16-21; Jn. 2:16-17) and especially in His Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24:15; Mk. 13:14) hold out the prophetic promise that the history of the Temple would be continued in the future.

The plan, according to Tuvia Sagiv's Research Papers is to rebuild the temple at the temple mount location. Locations A, B & C show the proposed sights.

We are in the season of the Lords return and all eyes are upon Israel for this momentous event.

Are you ready for the Lord's return? Have you repented of your sin and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour? Why not receive Him today? Write to me and I will send you a free correspondence Bible study course.

Are you a Baptist Brider?

2008-07-30T08:29:00.006-04:00

I am a Baptist and have been for 28 years. I make no apology for my stand as a Born again Baptist. Evangelist Al Lacy once said,"Every drop of blood in me is Baptist blood! If I ever find a drop that is not, I'll get a transfusion!" Amen! I know God has led me to the New Testament Church and we have found the organization that Jesus established during His personal earthly ministry. He placed me into the body as it pleased Him.

There is a position among Baptist they call "Baptist Briders". I do not care much for titles unless they are biblically based. Phrases like born again, saved, sanctified, saint, church, member, washed are all examples of scriptural titles.
There are pejoratives given by the world. Christian, Bible thumpers, etc. There are also perjoratives given by other baptists e.g. Baptist briders.
Not long ago I was accused of being a Baptist Brider by some well meaning Christian. I also came across the title when answering a questionnaire to be listed on a famous independent Baptist church directory. Here is a direct quote from Brother David Cloud's Church Directory Questionnaire:

Do you reject Baptist briderism?
Do you believe a born again believer who is not a member of a "proper Baptist church" is a part of or will be a part of the Bride of Christ?

All through my Bible college days I heard of Baptist briders but never really studied the doctrine. I know what I believe about the New Testament church is Biblically based and sound scripturally. Now I am challenged to understand what we mean by Baptist Bride. Consider this definition from biblebelievers.com:

A "Baptist Brider" is an extreme Baptist who believes that "The Baptist Church" is the Bride of Christ. All other Christians supposedly make up the FAMILY of God, but are not part of THE BRIDE. The details of this heresy differ from one group to the next, but the general teaching is that The Baptist Church(whatever that is!) has existed since the time of Christ (some say John the Baptist) and that "approved" water baptism actually places a believer into the bride. Water baptisms that are not approved are considered "alien" baptisms and are not honored by the Baptist Bride churches. This leaves "aliens" like Bob Jones Sr., John Wesley, George Whitfield, and Martin Luther out of the bride, while the Bridegroom rides off into the sunset with His proud and conceited Baptist sweetheart. However, finding someone who will ADMIT to being a "brider" is not an easy task. Just like the Campbellites, they hate the name, but love the doctrine.

Can you feel the vehemence and distain for the Baptist bride position? Comparing a Baptist Brider with a Campbellite? Such heresy! I want to describe my position on the Bride of Christ (a biblical term). If I am off please try to correct me. Let's keep the discussion in a Christian tone. If it is not your comments will not be published.

Read this article first: http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/areyou.htm

I agree with David Cloud's position on the Church:

"I believe the church began during the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, that it was empowered on the day of Pentecost, and that it was organized and established by the apostles as recorded in the book of Acts and the Epistles. Why do I believe the church began during the earthly ministry of Christ? (1) There is no statement in Scripture that supports the common view that the church started on the day of Pentecost. (2) In Matthew 16:18, Christ said he would build His church. Christ is the Founder and Rock of the church. I can see no biblical reason for not assuming that He began building the church during His earthly ministry. (3) Matthew 18:17 implies that the church already existed during Christ’s earthly ministry. (4) Acts 2:41 says those saved on the day of Pentecost were “added unto” the congregation which already existed. I believe Pentecost was not the birth of the church, but was the anointing of the church. I also do not see this as a fundamental issue one way or the other."

I also quote Brother Cloud here in describing the Bride:

"There is endless speculation about the bride of Christ, but the Bible says very little about it. It appears to me that there are five passages that deal with the “bride” in the New Testament, though only three actually use the term. One of these is in the Gospel accounts in which Christ is called the bridegroom of the bride (John 3:29). In this passage, John the Baptist calls himself the friend of the bridegroom. It appears, therefore, that John the Baptist and other Jewish saints prior to the establishment of the church, were not a part of the bride. Ephesians 5:32 says the husband and wife picture Christ and the church. This language obviously implies a bride and tells us that the church is the bride. Whatever the church is, both now and in eternity, that is what the bride is. Revelation 19 describes the “marriage of the Lamb,” which refers to a bride, the Lamb’s wife (v. 7). The passage doesn’t say anything more about who the bride is. She is adorned in fine linen, which “is the righteousness of the saints.” In Revelation 21:9 the term “bride” is applied to the eternal city. This does not mean that the city itself is Christ’s bride. It means that the city is the dwelling place for His bride and not only for the bride but for Israel (the names of the 12 tribes of Israel are written in the 12 gates, Rev. 21:12) and the saved of all ages. It is the bride’s city, but all of the saints of all ages are at home there. The final passage is Revelation 22:17, where the bride invites sinners to God’s free salvation in Jesus Christ."

I believe the Bride of Christ is made up of only FAITHFUL, Born again, members of a scriptural New Testament church. The bride must be faithful. She must be chaste, she must be a virgin.

2 Corinthians 11:2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

Consider this from Barnes notes:
"That I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. The allusion here, according to Doddridge, is to the custom among the Greeks "of having an officer whose business it was to educate and form young women, especially those of rank and figure, designed for marriage, and then to present them to those who were to be their husbands; and if this officer through negligence permitted them to be corrupted between the espousals and the consummation of the marriage, great blame would fall upon him." Such a responsibility Paul felt. So anxious was he for the entire purity of that church which was to constitute "the bride, the Lamb's wife;" so anxious that all who were connected with that church should be presented pure in heaven."

Ephesians 5:27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

Is the Bride a Baptist bride? I do not think she has the name "Baptist." She is simply called the "Bride of Christ" so that she does not take any of the glory from the King of Kings. She is made up of Born again, Blood bought, faithful, chaste, obedient, baptized believers. The preceding statement says alot about the bride.

Born again-Regenerate Bride
Blood bought - Redeemed Bride
Faithful- Reliable Bride
Chaste- Respectable Bride
Obedient- Restrained Bride-

The very idea of the bride being comprised of all church members is un-scriptural.
A backsliding, or unfaithful, or even unregenerate church member could never fulfill this requirement of the Bride. There are unregenerate members in the body. Jesus had one in His day-Judas. So not all members will be in the bride. The word bride is exclusive by definition.

There have been churches faithful to the Word of God throughout all ages as Jesus promised. Were all these Baptist churches? They were called Paulicians, Waldenses, etc. in early church history.

Rabbit Trails.

2008-07-10T22:10:00.003-04:00

Some things I learn while researching for other things. I call them rabbit trails because these things lead to who know where?

The expression "Son of man" is used eighty-eight times in the New Testament, and always means the Messiah, and not man generally.
It comes from:

Daniel 7:13-14 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

The Pharisees know this verse sufficiently. That is why they were filled with "madness":

Luke 6:11 And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus.

Forgiving ones self?

2008-06-28T07:22:00.002-04:00

This an interesting article I came across while doing research for a sermon last week. You may find the complete article here:

Forgiving One's Self? It May Not Be A Big Deal, But... by Jerry D. Locke, Pastor Lake Worth Baptist Church 4445 Hodgkins Road Fort Worth, TX 76136

It may not be a big deal (and if it is not I will probably get straightened out), but something has been bugging me. I assure you I am not trying to win an argument or to straighten someone out. It is really a genuine concern of mine that little by little we are getting further and further away from the Bible without even realizing it. Here is what I am talking about.

I received a publication in the mail recently from a sound fundamental Baptist church with an article by a deceased preacher entitled, Be Forgiving, Both of Yourself and of Others. This preacher was quoted, "Learn to forgive yourself. Everybody makes mistakes. The problem is not failing, but failing to take advantage of the provision God has made for our failures." He then quotes 1 John 1:9 and continued, "When we confess our sin to Christ, we may know that we're forgiven and cleansed, because that is exactly what He promises in I John 1:9. Once God has forgiven you, then forgive yourself. Assure yourself that God not only forgave you but cleansed you, and the wrong no longer exists; it is gone. So why keep punishing yourself for something that God has forgiven and forgotten?"

Another well-known and respected Baptist "pastor-TV preacher" has written a booklet distributed by Focus on the Family entitled, Freedom Through Forgiveness, the last half of which is given to the idea of learning to "forgive one's self."

Several people with whom I have talked in my years of pastoral counseling have expressed a feeling of shortcoming and their need to somehow forgive themselves. "I know the Bible says God has forgiven me. My husband says he has forgiven me. But I cannot seem to forgive myself!"

Before going any further let me say I am all for people getting out from under the guilt of their sin, unhooking themselves from the emotional chains that blind them, and leaving the baggage of the past behind them. Yet, what I am about to say goes against the grain of a lot of current Christian preaching and teaching. It may surprise you. It seems to me that this idea of...

Forgiving One's Self is Unscriptural!

Look through your Bible. Read it from cover to cover. This is what you will find. There is not a single scripture in the Bible that incites, invites, or implies the act or need of self forgiveness. There is not a single story in the Bible that even remotely points to such a thing.

Someone might say, "But it sounds so Christian. After all, forgiveness is a good thing." Now, be careful. Biblical words can be used without confining them to their biblical definitions. What can be found in the Bible? In the Bible you will find people receiving God's forgiveness. There are mountains of people who accepted God's offer of forgiveness. You will also find people responding to others with God's forgiveness. There are people in the Bible record who were for given by other people. And in the Bible you will find people seeking forgiveness from others when they sinned against them. But, among all the verses in the Bible, I am yet to find one verse on forgiving ourselves.

It is revealing that the preachers of the past who are now considered great men of their times never speak of forgiving one's self. Not Spurgeon, Moody, Torrey, Beecher, Brooks, Finney, Carroll, Robertson, or Scarborough. Not a single sermon, not a sentence in a sermon is given to this idea. Before our present generation, the idea of forgiving one's self seems to have been unknown in Christian theology.

Further the idea of...

Forgiving One's Self is Unreasonable.

It seems to be a misuse of energy. It addresses the wrong problem and seeks a solution in a wrong source. Forgiving one's self is not a real. It is not attainable. It is not reasonable.

Consider this about forgiveness.

When I sin against God, who is the sin against and who forgives? When I sin against God, God forgives me.

When I sin against others, who is the sin against and who forgives? When I sin against others, others forgive me.

When others sin against me, who is the sin against and who forgives? When others sin against me, I forgive them.

But can a person sin against himself and then forgive himself?

Baptists are people of the Bible. We say if it is in the Bible, we believe it. If it is not supported by the teaching of the Bible, Baptists do not believe it. Some subtle changes have entered into current theology. They have crept in through repeated cliches and catchy words. And, they can be passed on from generation to generation with no biblical basis whatsoever!

Allow me to attempt to uncover the root problem and hopefully point to the real solution. What is it that people are trying to deal with?

It is GUILT.

Guilt is a horrible thing. Since it is mental, emotional, and spiritual, coming at us from the inside, it is impossible to escape its unrelenting abuse. Day and night, when you are feeling good or when you are feeling bad, it bears down on you. You have never been on a trip, until you go on an extended "guilt trip." It is definitely not traveling first class!

But all guilt is not bad and harmful. It can be a powerful motivation for responsible behavior. A husband goes to work, instead of fishing, simply because he knows his wife and children need the money. The process of Christian conversion begins with a sense of guilt.

There seems to be three levels of guilt when our sins are unforgiven, or when we are not sure they are forgiven.

First, there is conscience-level guilt produced by the human conscience. A poll was taken among children ages five through nine on the question, "What is the conscience? One 6-year-old girl said a conscience is the spot inside that "burns if you're not good." A 6-year-old boy said he didn't know, but thought "it had something to do with feeling bad when you kicked girls or little dogs." And a 9-year-old explained it was a voice inside that says "NO" when you want to do something like beating up your little brother. She said her conscience had "saved him a lot of times!" Actually, the conscience is the nerve-center of the soul. Even the most backward native has a conscience (Romans 2:15). The conscience is like a thermometer, registering the conditions, not a thermostat, which controls or modifies its atmosphere.

Second, there is conviction- level guilt produced by the Holy Spirit as man is exposed to the Word of God. Jesus said in John 16:7-11 that the Holy Spirit would make mankind aware of sin, righteousness, and judgment. THE SIN which the Spirit of God reveals is the attitude of unbelief and rejection of Jesus Christ. In concert with the Word of God, the Spirit of God compels the sinner to make a choice between his sin and the Saviour. The Holy Spirit also convicts the believer of his sins after salvation.

Third, there is condemnation-level guilt produced by Satan, the unholy spirit. 2 Corinthians 11:14 informs us that Satan pawns himself off as representing God. And in the name of God, Satan uses the conscience to accuse, torment, and berate his victims. It is like the little boy whose pet cat died. He put the dead cat in a shoe box, got all the neighborhood children together, and had a funeral for the cat. They enjoyed the cat's funeral so much they decided to leave the cat's tail sticking out of the grave so every few days they could pull it up and have another funeral. That went on for some time, until finally, one day when the boy pulled, the tail broke off, and the dead cat stayed buried. That is what Satan does to us--he digs up our sins, reminds us of how bad we are, and condemns us with them. Satan accuses us before God, Revelation 12:10. But God will not hear it, I John 2:1,2. Romans 8:1, 34. Jesus is our Advocate and He has never lost a case! The devil is always trying to reopen cases God has closed for us on Calvary's cross. That does not work, so the devil moves on by accusing us before others, 1 Timothy 3:11. Christians should not be a part of doing the devil's work. As a last-ditch effort, Satan accuses us to ourselves. What better weapon for spiritual discouragement could there be than feelings of guilt which need not to be forgiven because they do not represent genuine disapproval from God?

People need to experience GRACE.

Mark 2:5-7 declares only God can forgive sin. Even the Pharisees had this right. Do you know that? There are so many great verses on God's forgiveness: Psalm 32:5; Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 38:17; Isaiah 44:22; Jeremiah 31:34; Micah 7:19. According to these Scriptures God carries away, cast off, covers up, cleanses away, and cancels out our sin by Jesus Christ.

"But, I don't feel forgiven sometimes?" What must God do to convince you? That may be part of the problem. We are working off our "feelings" instead of our "faith" in the promises of God.

Forgiveness is really about GOD, not about you!

I am not going to fall out with people who insist on the idea of forgiving one's self, but forgiving one's self is really a phantom--something that exists only in the mind, an illusion. The need is not to give your time to some illusionary concept of forgiving yourself, but rather to seek God's forgiveness His way. And then, to live in the blessing of the realization of God's forgiveness.

Believe the Facts. God has forgiven you! Joseph's brothers would not believe that Joseph had truly forgiven them, Genesis 50:15-19. Did they need to forgive themselves? No. They just needed to believe Joseph had truly forgiven them, as he had said. Psalm 86:5 assures us, "For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive."

Receive God's On-Going Forgiveness. 1 John 1:9 teaches, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Accept what God does for you when you confess your sins. Can you explain it? Maybe not. Can you experience it? Absolutely. What God condemns, we confess. What we confess, God forgives. What God forgives, He forgets. What God forgets, we have no need to remember.

Build your life on solid biblical Theology instead of shaky humanistic Psychology. Forgiving one's self is a philosophy of man, influenced by psychology and psychiatry. It is fantasy, not fact. Don't measure God's Word by your beliefs, measure your beliefs by the Word of God! And don't twist God's Word to make it agree with such pseudo-truths.

If we need to do anything, it is to confess, "Lord, I have a better memory of my confessed sins than you do. Lord, I have more rigid requirements for forgiveness than you do. Lord, I am harder on myself than you are on me. How foolish of me. Lord, all I need to do is experience and enjoy your forgiveness. It is complete. And instead of focusing on my failure, from now on, I am going to focus on your forgiveness!"

The Baptist Muse

2008-03-31T08:52:00.002-04:00

Friends:

To conserve the space, please see the rest of the debate below HERE:

http://www.baptistmuse.com/forum/

Check the Debate and Discussion section. My User name is Jude.

A Debate with a Muslim:

2008-03-27T23:00:00.003-04:00

I have had an ongoing debate with a Muslim scholar on another internet forum. I am posting it here for a wider audience. Please comment. My off debate interjection will be in RED.

Here is the first installment by the Muslim who goes by Adam. I am going by my user name Jude.

Hi
we should first know that when we express ourselves,we often have a background of our attitudes.But what is important is to look for the truth in spite of the background.The passages you mention is true.But not of all non muslims.It is for those non beleivers who were fighting our prophet.because our prophet when he started to tell about his message,he was strongly fighted and they killed his follows.At that moment god asked him to fight those who wanted to stop his message.
But if you think that i have right to hate you or kill you because you are non muslims then you are wrong.
Islam do not ask us to do that.I want you to understand that the verses you mean is only when muslims were killed.So they have right to defend themselves as God said.Defending youself is a nutural instinct.But becarful there is bad interpretation of quran which want show that Islam is a violent relegion.
i would like to answer my question.do u beleive that quran is a book from God? I thinks its better to discuss basic things.I dont mean that what you said is a basic.But lets start from the top.

do u beleive that quran is a book from God?
Adam

Here is my response:

When two ideas oppose each other, they both cannot be truth. One is a lie and the other is truth. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ arose from the dead, the Koran says He did not. Which is true? There is evidence both empirical and circumstantial that support the facts of Gods Holy Word the Bible. I put my faith in the Holy Bible. Not the Koran. The Koran can contain truth but does not actually make the entire book true. We must consider the evidence. Jesus Christ was either GOD in the flesh or He is the biggest fake phony and fraud, liar, lunatic that ever walked the earth. He claimed to be GOD. He said where He would die and by what means. He declared Himself to be God and was crucified, risen and coming again for all who believe. That friends is the truth. Nobody has or ever will successfully refute that fact of history.

Oops. Your boat has a hole in it.

I think I may have hit a nerve because now the debate heats up:

hi
we moslims we beleive in the bible.but there is a great part of it was rewritten.and our schoolars proved that when they have debate with yours schoolars.and those schoolars confess that it is true.so since its true that the bible is rewritten in a certain time,why we dont say that its them who say that jesus in the son of god?
i read about the bible but nothing touched me to it.and the langauge it is wretten is bad.that means human hands.i have question about ur relegion that i dont understand and its impossible to be understood.Why should God have a son?!!when you say that,it means that you look to God as human being.but Godness can never be humanity.if jesus is the son of God,why he is the only son.He should have 2/3 or 4 children.i notice that in the bible jesus is more important then God?!!and a preist want to convert someone all he says,you have to love jesus.but love here is metaphore.because you can never love someone you have never seen.love here means to follow what he asked us to do?so do christian do what the bible say to them?
you say that God sacrifies his son.why God wait all this time to send his son to forgive the sins?since the sin is commited God must send his son after the si directly.what about the people lived before jesus.how their sins would be forgaven?why God waited this long time?!!!and there is no way God forgave the sins only to let savage human kill his son?!!!a God crucified on the cross?!!is this god?!!!!!!
god watching on his son crucified?!!!!!!!!!!!!
there is no logic in the bible.only a mixture of illusions.i am sure you have never read the quran.you will never find answers of this question if you dont read quran.the bible makes a person very cunfused simply there is no logic?
Can you tell me why islam is the only relegion, people convert to?
can you tell me why a lot of preist and preachers who spent their life teaching the bible and in a moment they convert to islam?!!!!!!!!are they mad?
can you tell me why chritians are abetting people to convert.most of them give money?!!!take money but please convert to chritainity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the quran will help you to understand the universe and the truth of the bible
at least this may help you
http://www.islam-guide.com/
http://www.islamreligion.com/
if you think my boat has a hole in it. i tell you think twice

note:suppose your son was playing at home and by accident he killed himself by a knife, will you keep this knife and make it a symbol to you?instead you hate the cross you put on you necks!!!!!
Adam

My response:
My dear friend:
It is you who are deceived by your lack of true logic. You speak out of both sides of your mouth when you say "we muslims believe the bible." then you say "the Bible is rewritten so it cannot be true." How do you reconcile this dizziness? You have no record of any debate where true Christian scholars ever admit to believing a rewritten Bible. The fact of the matter is the Bible has been perfectly preserved through the centuries by people to whom the Bible was entrusted. It is the Koran that was written 600 years after the death, burial and Resurrection of the LORD Jesus Christ. How could the prophet know these things when he was so far removed from the actual events? The Bible was written by eye witnesses to the actual events. This very fact proves the Koran false and the Bible to be the Word of Almighty Jehovah GOD!

Nothing touches you in the Bible because you have the preconceived notion that the Bible is false. You do not have any evidence. Just suspicion, superstition and conjecture.

God sent His only begotten Son into the world to save the world from their sin. Ever since the Garden of Eden God began promising His Son. See Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
The reason for this because all of mankind are sinners.(Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;) This sin must be paid for. (Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.) Since you nor I could ever make the atonement God sent His Son to make the sacrifice.(Titus 3:5-6 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour;) It is this sacrifice that was prophesied throughout the entire Old Testament into the time of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament people looked to God for atonement by offering the blood of animals. When Jesus came, the sacrifice ceased because He became the once and for all redemption for our sins. He was 100% man and 100% God. It is the only way to have our sins forgiven. If you do not accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour you must make the payment for your sins. This you could never do. Those who reject this will be cast into the Lake of Fire where their worm dieth not and the flesh is burned for ever and ever. We are all deserving of punishment but God is merciful and loving to send His Only Begotten Son to take away the sins of the world.

Most people that convert to Christianity for money are not true converts to Christ and will be punished for their misdeeds.
Maybe you live in a country or nation where Christianity is unlawful and not in the majority. I can tell you where I live, we see converts coming to Jesus Christ all the time. Yea some Muslims are converting to Christianity. See here: http://jude3kjb.blogspot.com/

The cross is a symbol. I do not worship the cross or wear one around my neck. It symbolizes the love of God had for me. I will cherish that old cross as a memory of His great sacrifice. I hope you can understand this. My prayer is that the darkness of your eyes will be enlightened to receive this wonderful gift of Salvation through the shed Blood of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings to be worshipped and adored forever and ever.

Adam said:

dear freind
i wonder how you dont understand what i mean when i told that we beleive in the bible.i mean we moslims beleive in the bible that is from God.but when it was time to write it down on papers,here at this moment a lot of verses added by human hands and other verses delated.if you think that is impossible then you are deceiving yourself.why not impossible?
your answer about money given to people to convert to chritainity was not good.you all did is show me the result of people accepting money without real faith.no,i want you answer me why preachers give
money to people to convert to chritainity?!!if you convert we will give you money?!!!why money?
you should that when we give money,that means that we know already that the target person will not accept to do what we want him to do,sowe use moneymost preachers choose poor people to convertwhy?!!is chritainity only for poor people?!!you chritains dont beleive in our prophet.because it is not mentioned in the bible.is this a logic reason?!!our prophet is mentioned in the bible but as i told you, the bible is distorted.(distort is something and to deny all is somthine else)
Mohammad in the bible http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/6377/index.htm
and if mohamed is not a prophet, where did the Quran come from?!!what about scientific truth in the Quran?!!!http://www.islam-guide.com/. is mohamed able to say this truths 1400 years ago?!!!!!!!!!!!!
do you know what does it mean 1400 years ago?.this truths are discovered in the 20th centry!!!
but please be clear and explaine me?the prophet mohamed tell us about scintific truth.if you dont unswer me, i think there is no need to go forwards in our debate.
jesus is god according to you.the son og god.jesus himself said"i and the father is one.it means i am the father and the father is me.ok. when jesus god die for the tree days,who was controling and arranging the world?!!! who kept the three heavens to fall down?!!!

you say god and son and holy trinity is one.how can three things be one(3=1)?!!!!if you tell me that 1+1+1=1,then you must go to a psychologist.
if i put in front of you a glass of water and a glas of tea and a glass of cofee,then i tell you how many of them?
if you say it is one,i have also to tell you to go to a psychologist.and if you say that its three glasses, then i ask you how could 3 be 1.

if you say that god is compound.THEN WHO COMPOUND GOD BEFORE HE BECOMES COMPOUND,and he is the creator of the universe?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i think you dont beleive in logic.if you dont beleive in it.thats your problem.
thats why i advise you to read quran.you will find answers of all your delima question.
all people converted to islam say that we had bad image on islam and they say that the only source of information about islam was TV.and the channels which spread islamophobia are very known
brother i advise you to look for the truth but not from TV
may allah help you to know the truth
Adam

My response:

Dear Adam:

Sir, you give no evidence for your stand against the Bible. Just conjecture and opinion. It really means nothing. It seems you get all your information from youtube. I wonder why you will not debate in a logical manner. Where is your evidence for God's Word the Bible? What is your basis for your opinions about the Bible? Your premise is confusing. I concede it is very possible to add words to the Bible. Just like Mohammad did when he wrote the Satanic Verses. But my God preserves His Word to believers. Your god writes them, then rejects them as "satanic". I have in my possession, the 1611 Authorized King James translation that is proven to be historically accurate for the last 500 years. Before that they had the Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic manuscripts that were jealously guarded from any misquotes or mistranslations. I agree that there are many perverted texts out there but they were all from the Alexandrian texts that were polluted.

The devil is very clever to not only pollute God's Holy Word but also to counterfeit and dilute true Christianity. The devil has many of his disciples going to and fro, up and down in the earth to deceive many. Many masquerade as Christ's disciples but they are not.

Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

I am not aware of anyone anywhere that takes money to become a Christian. Perhaps in your country there are desperate few that will accept money to convert but not here the US. Those that give money to convert are not true preachers of the Gospel and will perish with their money.

Mohammad in the bible? More lies conjured up to try to legitimize your religion. I read the link. The Hebrew word here is

machmad

. It means exactly as the translation-LOVELY. But the verse is not talking about your prophet. That is absurd just because the word machmad and Mohammad sound the same does not make them equivalent. The context speaks about Solomon's beloved and prophetically the beauty of Jesus Christ. The Book is a divine allegory that describes Christ and His Beloved.

There are many vague scientific examples you have given. How about these absurd "scientific" findings in extra-Koranic writings? Muhammad said that upon awakening one must blow his nose three times to rid himself of the Devil, who spends the night in a man's nostrils (Sahih Bukhari IV, 516; Muslim I, 462), that yawning is from Satan (Bukhari IV, 509), that if a Muslim falls asleep praying Satan urinates in his ears (Bukhari II:245), and people who pray with their eyes lifted toward heaven might have their eyes snatched away (Muslim I, 863). Many of the "scientific" discoveries in the Koran were already understood and propagated through the Bible. Your hind sight is always 20/20. I would like to see the prophecies of the Koran come true. Where is the light of that proof. You have similar experience of the false prophet Nostradamas. You use vagueness but we use the Bible. It is true that ALL the prophecies of the Bible have come to pass or must shortly come to pass.

Jesus is GOD> He is God manifest in the flesh. You do not understand because you have a god in you mind. Let go of your notions to see the God that created the universe could certainly manifest Himself as a man and still control everything from Heaven. He is triune. You reject the true God because you have a finite understanding. God is infinite and may manifest Himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You may ridicule and mock me but your time is short because Jesus Christ will return to this earth again soon. If you have not received Jesus Christ you must be punished.

I became a Christian when I was in my 40s. I was a religious zealot like you but I had no knowledge of saving faith in Christ. When I understood my plight, I repented and believed upon Jesus Christ for my salvation.. This means I changed my mind about my false religion and turned to Jesus Christ for the keeping of my soul.

If you humble yourself and receive the Lord and acknowledge your error, you will be saved. You have watched youtube too long. Get out your Bible and READ!

I am awaiting Adam's response. I will post more as it develops. IF I hear from Adam again. Your comments are appreciated.

Salvation Testimony of Surit Mondal

2008-03-25T09:54:00.005-04:00

Friends:
Below is the testimony of Surit Mondal. I am publishing this testimony in his own words to preserve the hearts message. The english is not perfect but the heart is right. He is a convert by the ministry of my dear missionary friend Nathaniel Hazra, missionary to Bangladesh. See his blog here: http://suvationbd.blogspot.com/

The Testimony of Surit Mondal:

Last January 12th 2008 my own effort I arranged a meeting in my home. Purpose of that meeting was to my invited neighbor and parent the facts of my past life occurred and give my testimony that by the grace of God how I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Saviour. And the same time Bro. Nathaniel preached that what will be the last judgment seat of Jesus Christ. Those who are lost will be stand front of Him. First time Jesus came by grace and truth.

Now my life is a blessing life. But once time I had no hope in my life. My behavior was so bad that can not think about it. My heart was so dark and covered by scandal. I wanted to explain what was happened my past life before coming to Christ life. I have born in a Muslim family in 5th October 1977. Born in Choudhuray family and bearing this title means influential and extraordinary majesty and honors (Choudhurey is high class family title). But nothing happened any of those in my life. Though my father's was respected and renowned by his people, but my own condition was very low. My name was 'Afsarul Islam Choudhury', it is Muslim name. When my age was 6 my father turned out my Mother. My father insulted my mother front of every body and expelled her. That time my brother age was 6 month, and my mother took my bother with her and gone away, and my father kept me with him. My habit was slept with my mother. Every day my mother was kept me lull to sleep with her loving touch on my head. Be hurt or pained my mother caress and console me. But within a minute my mother's caress and console ceased. After my mother left next day my father did not keep me his house, sent me my uncle's house. I became alone, born too father and mother's blood that I have nobody. No bodies hear my crying, only blue sky can hear. Dark cloud covered my beautiful life. No body love me, caress me, affection me, every now and then my uncle lay hands on me, beat me. By the advice my father my uncle admitted me a orphans Madrasa (it is a muslin/Quranic orphans school). Many kind of and many manners boys are hear. There's many boys have no fathers and mothers or only have father or mother. But in my life both have but I did not got them in my life in my present. Like grow up like a vagabond. I used to go my uncle house when my Madrasa vacation or closed. One day I told my uncle that please kindly don't sent me again to Madrasa and admit me to regular school, then he angered and by forced he feed me his spittle and he bind/tie me with a rope and hang up me top of the roof beaten me front of his children. My father first wife's (My mother was my father's second wife Muslim can marry and keep with him four wives) children used to go good school, but they sent me Madrasa to be a Muslim priest, only the reason that I was born in Christian mother womb. One day I got a change to visit my father's new house. The house is very beautiful, and every person's have separate room but they arranged me to sleep in floor. I got silent and astonished about their behave to me. My father's first wife's children is his children and I am also his child, but my place is different then them. My step brother always complaint against me, and according to that accusation my father and my step mother time to time excessively beat me. Day by day I grow hated to my father. All everything I became entirely different. I understood I have no one of mine. When my age was twelve then to erase of my Father's identity I gone unknown way to left everything. When I got tried to walk in different place in Banani, Dhaka, I laid beside the road. At night I slept beside road, and in the morning I looking for food and some job. I got a job in house and after finished my job I ate those food full of stomach by tears of joy. I survived like this life about three years.

Suddenly I met a man of very close of father's. I scared, but he consoled me and told me that he will take me to my mother. I gladly revealed my zeal to go with him, and he took me to my uncle and aunt's house (my mother's brother and his wife) and it was 1992. When we gone their house, at first sight my aunt thought me that I am a bagger or street-boy and did not wanted to allow me into their house. After got my identity everybody of them joyfully accept me. My uncle called my mother and after nine year we both met together. My mother brings me to her peace at Jessore District where she worked in a School as a teacher. All we satisfied to get each other. In 1993 my mother took me a local church where I was teaching about Bible and Jesus Christ. But suddenly Devil became a wall between us, my father left his first wife and came to us in 2000. I could not accept him. But my mother and my brother accept him and for that I got pain and distressed. I lost many year in my life only the reason of that father and every of my family accept him! I could not accept it. My bother said that he never seen father, now he got his father. My mother said I got back my husband. For that reason the situation became too hard and worse between my mother and my brother. My mother forgot the past fact that her husband turn away to her with her six months baby, but I could not forget it. I became alone. I could not sleep and could not close attention to my study. My light of hope is becoming blowing out.

Last 2001 Bro. Nathaniel came in Jessore for preaching and got acquainted with. I was feeling very better to his preaching and teaching. I tried to change my life according to his preaching. I always was keeping relation with him. Several time he invite me to Dhaka and went there for group Bible study. I was good man but I never meet any good man like him. In my life nobody loved me, nobody wanted to hear and to listen my agony/heartache. I needed a man in my life like Bro. Nathaniel. Only God provided like this godlyman to me. I love very much to Bro. Nathaniel Hazra. But I acquainted with him by this time I got married. My wife's name is Ripa. Now I have a son and his name is Arnab. I love my wife and my son so much. I teach my son about Jesus and he knows His name. Any way my life condition suddenly causes to stop. I never and anyway I could forgive my father. Bro. Nathaniel said that I have to forgive him because God forgive all of us who believe Him. In this condition I became Godless and gone far away for Him. For that I could not get any peace in my mind and no joy in my heart, and filled my life with sorrow and evil day.

Suddenly postman came to me and gave me a big envelope. I open it and got "SUVATION" magazine published by Bro. Hazra. Very earnestly I was reading it and looked a article at the page number 4 the Bengali translation of "Dr. Law and Dr. Grace" by late Evangelist Lester Roloff, and the first paragraph writing was Titus 2:11-14. I like that Bible versus very much. At first my family matter was the main cause for me to separation from God. My father is Muslim and my mother is Christian and these points I always got shocked in my life and for that I did not get peace in my mind. But the Bible verse from the article of "Dr. Law and Dr. Grace" of Suvation magazine very clearly matched to my life taht "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way . . . Isaiah 53:6. That means I kept God to far from my life and I always blaming to my Muslim father and mother, and that thing is wrong thought and nonsense and that is the cause of my frustration. Actually main problem is my heart. I know myself. I know my work, my though and my acts. I could not blame myself, and should be blame myself. From "Meeting with Dr. Law" I knew that serious trouble is in my heart. I am suffering, and that is heart problem and I am seriously sick. My before old carnal condition that means not being spiritual man, without having Holy spirit I do not getting regain consciousness. My heart happened a serious damaged for that like it is happing. I felt most critical frustration stage. My father Muslim, my mother Christian, my heart is sinful. So I was looking a way of remedy or repair of it. And what is that way? To know of it to go Dr. Religion and associates, come back to Dr. Law than go Dr. Grace then I entered deep in my heart and saw my heart is blackest, so terrible, notorious, stink, stigmatized and ugly and know body knows of my family and friends but I know. After finished the reading this article "Dr. Law and Dr. Grace" I cried, I wept. To looked to my heart I noticed the main cause of my fickle-mindedness and impatience. Dr Law showed me my all improper acts and guilt and to make my life genuine, sincere and became new by Holy Spirit Dr. Grace Lord Jesus Christ regain consciousness. October 5th 2007 I closed my room door and started to pray and said my Lord that I do not wanted to die, though I can die in bodily but I wanted to live in spirit with you. Same day and same time I confess my sin to Lord Jesus Christ, I repented from my sin, I wanted forgive my own sin to Christ, and then by the Holy Spirit I understand I got saved. I believe by the grace of God the Father and precious blood of Jesus Christ same day I got saved. In my heart great excessive joy came to my heart, came peace in my heart. All my sin washed away, Amen. In the same time I called my Bro. Hazra in my cell phone. Spiritually I became strength to give my testimony publicly. Last January 12th 2008 Bro. Hazra came to our place and front of around 80 of my relative, friends and neighbors I gave my testimony that by the grace of God and through Lord Jesus Christ I got new life. Through me presence of Holy Spirit is revel. In my work, my righteous, my family, every side now my life in Christ is fulfilled joyful by God. I completed the lesson of "Now that you've believed" Very soon I am going to be baptized through Bro. Hazra

But my testimony day my father and my mother was not present, and they did not like this meeting and did not expected Bro. Hazra in hour house. Bro Hazra was one night in our house.

I am now God's new Creature, His Children and right of His realm. Amen

Did Jesus Die on a Friday?

2008-03-20T08:08:00.012-04:00

Good Friday is the day which many around the world observe as the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes Good Friday as "the Friday on which the Church keeps the anniversary of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ." Now, I really never could figure out how anyone could put Jesus' death on Friday. Do the math. Jesus was crucified on Wednesday, not Friday. Do not be deceived blind followers of the blind. Do your homework. I created the following timeline to help us understand:

	Wed 14	Thu 15	Fri 16	Sat 17	Sun 18
6:00 PM	Nisan 14 Starts Sunset 6:19 PM	Nisan 15 Starts Sunset 6:19 PM Passover	Nisan 16 Starts Sunset 6:20 PM	Nisan 17 Starts Sunset 6:21 PM	Nisan 18 Starts Sunset 6:22 PM *Jesus raises from the dead between now and sunrise.
7:00 PM	*Jesus has His Passover after sunset (Mar 14:17-25) (Matt 26:20)	Night 1 - Feast of Unleavened Bread a Sabbath (Num 28:18)	Night 2 -	Night 3 - the weekly Sabbath	Both Marys go and buy spices after sunset when the Sabbath ended (Mar 16:1)
8:00 PM
9:00 PM	*They go to Gethsemane (Mar 14:26-42) (Matt 26:30)
10:00 PM
11:00 PM
12:00 AM
1:00 AM	*After 3 hours Jesus is arrested (Mar 14:37-42)
2:00 AM	*Jesus is brought to the Sanhedrin and falsely judged
3:00 AM
4:00 AM					The women find Jesus is "taken" before sunrise. (Mar 16:2) Great Earthquake- The Veil is torn in two. (Matt 28:1)
5:00 AM	Sunrise 5:32 AM	Sunrise 5:31 AM	Sunrise 5:29 AM	Sunrise 5:28 AM	Sunrise 5:27 AM
6:00 AM	Day of Preparation - (John 18:28, 19:14) Jesus is brought to Pilate (Matt 27:1-2)	Day 1	Day 2 - Feast of First Fruits "...in the morrow after the Sabbath..." (Lev 23:11)	Day 3
7:00 AM
8:00 AM
9:00 AM	Jesus is Crucified (Mar 15:25)	*At some time after the Day of Preparation the Pharisees went to get Pilate to put guards at the tomb "until the third day". (Matt 27:62-66)			* This would have been the time when the guards would have left, if they hadn't witnessed the Resurection. The Pharisees' "Third day" (Matt:27:62-66)
10:00 AM
11:00 AM
12:00 PM	Darkness over the Earth (Luke 23:44) (Matt 27:42)
1:00 PM
2:00 PM
3:00 PM	Jesus yielded up the ghost (Mark 15:33-37) (Matt 27:46)
4:00 PM					Jesus meets with the two walking to Emmaus. (Luke 24:29-30)
5:00 PM	*Jesus is buried in haste (John 19:42)				*The two run back to the 11 and tell of their meeting with Jesus and Jesus appears to them all. (Luke 24:36) (John 20:19)

* These are approximate times as the times are not explicitly mentioned in scripture; mentioned to show the flow of events

So what's the big deal? So what if Jesus was crucified on Wednesday or Friday.? What does it matter? Just this: God wants us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. John 4:24

Apostasy begins in the slightest of error. We must be careful what we believe. Jesus admonished the Pharisees for this.
Matthew 15:3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

good parenting

2008-03-11T09:14:00.002-04:00

These are my rambling notes from a sermon I heard on Sunday March 2nd, 2008 at my church at Long Island Baptist. It was preached by Pastor John Graf:

Good parenting is not done by accident or happenstance. Good parenting is carefully calculated and strategically planned to bring our children to an expected end. A child by nature is rebellious, disobedient, deceitful lustful and altogether undone. (Mark 7:20) This nature is embedded in the heart and must be dealt with dutifully. Begin by teaching obedience to parental authority. If a child is taught to obey, he will please his parents. He is taught to abstain from sin and avoid fleshly lusts and flee from vice by teaching him obedience to God and His will.

This is done by planting the seeds of obedience. But just planting is not enough. It is the nurture and loving hands of guidance that rescue our children from the grips of rebellion and pride. By capturing our children's hearts and subduing them, we can then bring the child into obedience to Jesus Christ. The heart is captured by building the bridge of relationships that so many miss. These bridges are the ties that bind. It takes work and dedication and determination in the face of great difficulty to accomplish these lofty goals of relationship building. These bonds of relationships grow stronger with memories built and impressions made on young hearts that trigger hurt and heartache when the bond is broken by mistrust and unresolved issues. It takes dedication to prayer for our children. It takes determination to do whatever it takes to bring our children to an expected end.

Parents are not just babysitters. We are to be about the Father's business by forming and guiding our children to be above the norm. As an archer that forms his arrows so must we as parents form our children to fly straight and true. (Psalm 127:4) The arrows are to be aimed with precision and accuracy to hit the target. This is done by relating to our children in the most attentive and careful way. The arrow does not care how pretty the feathers are. Only that they are located and formed right. Children do not want us to buy them stuff. They want attention. My children want ME! Backyard baseball and hobbies and sports, reading a book and playing a game are all activities not wasted on our children.

Please post a comment.

Things to come?

2008-02-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

Is this a omen of things to come? It is if Mohammedans get their way.

From The Times

February 7, 2008

Religious police in Saudi Arabia arrest mother for sitting with a man

Sonia Verma in Dubai

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh.

Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police.

Her story offers a rare first-hand glimpse of the discrimination faced by women living in Saudi Arabia. In her first interview with the foreign press, Yara told The Times that she would remain in Saudi Arabia to challenge its harsh enforcement of conservative Islam rather than return to America.

“If I want to make a difference I have to stick around. If I leave they win. I can't just surrender to the terrorist acts of these people,” said Yara, who moved to Jeddah eight years ago with her husband, a prominent businessman.

Her ordeal began with a routine visit to the new Riyadh offices of her finance company, where she is a managing partner.

The electricity temporarily cut out, so Yara and her colleagues — who are all men — went to a nearby Starbucks to use its wireless internet.

She sat in a curtained booth with her business partner in the café's “family” area, the only seats where men and women are allowed to mix.

For Yara, it was a matter of convenience. But in Saudi Arabia, public contact between unrelated men and women is strictly prohibited.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara, whose parents are Jordanian and grew up in Salt Lake City, once believed that life in Saudi Arabia was becoming more liberal. But on Monday the religious police took her mobile phone, pushed her into a cab and drove her to Malaz prison in Riyadh. She was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime”.

“They took me into a filthy bathroom, full of water and dirt. They made me take off my clothes and squat and they threw my clothes in this slush and made me put them back on,” she said. Eventually she was taken before a judge.

“He said 'You are sinful and you are going to burn in hell'. I told him I was sorry. I was very submissive. I had given up. I felt hopeless,” she said.

Yara's husband, Hatim, used his political contacts in Jeddah to track her whereabouts. He was able to secure her release.

“I was lucky. I met other women in that prison who don't have the connections I did,” she said. Her story has received rare coverage in Saudi Arabia, where the press has been sharply critical of the police.

Yara was visited yesterday by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.

An embassy official told The Times that it was being treated as “an internal Saudi matter” and refused to comment on her case.

Tough justice

— Saudi Arabia’s Mutaween has 10,000 members in almost 500 offices

— Ahmad al-Bluwi, 50, died in custody in 2007 in the city of Tabuk after he invited a woman outside his immediate family into his car

— In 2007 the victim of a gang rape was sentenced to 200 lashes and six years in jail for having been in an unrelated man’s car at the time. She was pardoned by King Abdullah, although he maintained the sentence had been fair

Praying for your Pastor

2008-01-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

Another guest blog by Barry Greer. Barry is a great writer with wonderful insights to church and Christian issues.

Praying For Your Pastor

Do you pray for your pastor? Do you realize that HE is the most spiritual person in your life?

I understand that a spouse, parent, sibling, or other church members have a great influence in

your life concerning the things of God, but make no mistake; YOUR PASTOR is the only other

person, beside yourself, that will give an account to God for you! Think about that statement for

a moment. As we individually stand before the “Judgment Seat of Christ” giving an account of

our own lives (Romans 14:12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.), the

Lord will have your pastor give an account of you as well (Hebrews 13:17 Obey them that have

the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give

account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you). How powerful

and sobering!

I must confess, to my shame, I hadn’t always prayed for my pastor, as I should. This left him

more vulnerable to the attacks of the devil. As with any army, you disable the leadership, your

chances of winning increase. We are engaged in spiritual warfare. Souls, lives, eternities are at

stake. We all, as fellow soldiers with Christ, have a responsibility to the Lord of sabaoth (James

5:4) to pray for our pastor, the one who watches for OUR souls. That is why we are to put on

the “Whole Armour of God”, made complete by prayer (Ephesians 6:13,18 Wherefore take unto

you the whole armour of God… Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit….

Here are a few reasons to pray for your pastor.

1) The Gift of God: The Lord Jesus Christ (Jn 3:16), and eternal life (Rom 6:23) are gifts of God, but so is a pastor (Jeremiah 3:15 And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding). What great love our Father has for us, and wisely has given us a man who will feed us with knowledge and understanding. He needs our prayers.

2) The Gospel of God: This world is spiritually “hard of hearing” concerning the gospel, deafened by sin, self and Satan. The man of God needs wisdom and power to proclaim truth. (Colossians 4:3 Withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ…) My pastor, being led by the Spirit of God, knew exactly what to say to me the night I struggled to be saved. He needs our prayers.

3) The Glory of God: Individually, we are to bring glory to God (1 Corinthians 10:31 …whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.). Corporately, the Lord established His 3^rd institution for that very purpose (Ephesians 3:21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus…). Christ is the Head of every church, but has placed a man in an “office” to oversee each church (Ephesians 4:11 And he gave some…pastors and teachers). With that office, the pastor has a great responsibility. (Ephesians 4:12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.) He needs our prayers.

The Apostle Paul regularly instructed the churches to pray for those in leadership. He was very much aware of his own need for prayer (Rom 15:30, Eph 6:19, Phil 1:19, 1 Thess 5:25, 2 Thess 3:1). His ministry would not have been successful without the saturation of prayer.

Child of God, your pastor needs your prayers. Be assured, your pastor daily brings your name before the throne of grace. (2 Corinthians 11:28 … that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.) Time after time after time, my pastor has given testimony of praying for our church, and members in particular. Should we not also intercede on his behalf? Support your pastor in prayer and thank the Lord in the interest of His Gift, His Gospel, His Glory.

For Christ,

Barry J. Greer

Jer 32:27

Faith while in Action

2008-01-16T09:35:00.000-05:00

Readers: I came across this story from "The Baptist Muse".

It is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

On a cool, quiet January morning, Corporal Rick Garrett was shaving in the shower trailer at Camp Victory, Iraq. Wrapped in a towel and enjoying the energy he felt from a good night's sleep, he began thinking about the months he had left overseas. Many questions filled his mind: Would the war get even bloodier? Would any of his buddies be killed? Would he do his duty well? In fact, would he even survive?

Then another question - it was a prayer, really - formed itself in his mind: "God, are you able to protect me over here?"

The words had just become a conscious thought when Corporal Garrett heard a deafening crash. It was the sound of the trailer door shattering. An RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) had pierced the door and was now flying through the middle of the trailer. In an instant, the projectile flew past Corporal Garrett, lightly creasing his stomach en route, and embedded itself in the trailer wall opposite the door.

For a moment, Garrett was frozen in shock, expecting the RPG to explode. But it did not. Realizing he might have a moment to escape, the corporal ran to the gaping hole where the door had been and hurled himself through it to the ground several feet below. Jumping up as quickly as he could, he sprinted from the trailer while shouting a warning to those in the nearby trailers. Dozens of soldiers braced themselves for an explosion.

Yet nothing happened. The RPG never exploded. It was a dud. Garrett picked himself up from the ground and began laughing with relief. As a crowd gathered and began congratulating him for his luck, he remembered the question he had been asking God: "Can you protect me over here?" It seemed that God had answered.

In case the message hadn't been clear enough, though, there was something more. When the ordinance specialists examined the unexploded RPG, they found a message had been scratched onto it. This was not uncommon. Insurgents often painted or scratched some message on the missiles they fired as an added insult to their American enemy. But the message on this particular missile had a special meaning to Corporal Garrett.

It read simply, "From the God of the American Soldiers."

Apparently, an insurgent had intended the message as a cruel insult. Corporal Garrett knew better. Whatever the insurgents meant to say, he knew that his God was saying in dramatic terms, "Yes, I can protect you over here. For I am indeed, 'the God of the American Soldiers.'"

Taken from 'American Heroes' by Stephen Mansfield.

In the last days...

2008-01-07T10:42:00.000-05:00

In the last days, scorners and mockers will come…

Jude 1:14-15 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Acts 1:11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

We have heard it told for a long time that Jesus will soon return. It is the hope of every Christian that God will make a swift end of the ungodliness we see daily. There is coming a time when God will change this vile body and I will put on incorruption. Jesus is coming again soon as the verse above implies. At that time will be a judgement on earth the world has never seen. It is a horrible time where Gods wrath will be poured out without any mercy. Men will use their own name for a curse word then. The warnings of God are too plain to ignore.

There are those who mock and scorn Jesus Christ and His return.

2 Peter 3:3-5 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

Consider the irreligious and ungodly websites out there mocking and scorning the Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible. Any web search will produce hundreds of web sites built for the sole purpose of scorning the Bible and Jesus Christ. Consider also the comedy channels and movies made to mock Christianity and those who follow Christ. Try to find a movie or TV show that mocks and scorns Budda or Mohammad and Allah.

Jude 1:10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.

The most sobering words that can be spoken are words of impending judgement of Christ rejectors.

Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

2 Peter 2:9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:

Revelation 20:12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

One man said,“The wheels of Gods judgement grind slow, but they grind ever so fine.”

Be sure of this, God will have the last laugh. Please read the following portion carefully. Your soul depends upon your response.

Proverbs 1:23-33 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.

Those that would mock and make fun of God and the Bible are in for serious trouble. You are sinning away your day of grace. Please consider your plight before you turn away to mock another day. God is not finished with you yet.

Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

What's New?

2008-01-01T18:52:00.000-05:00

What’s New?

This is the New Year! People all over the world look to a fresh start. A new beginning that will last the whole year long. How refreshing is something that is new. I love the newness the new year brings and want to try to keep it new every day. Here are some things to keep new the whole year:

A New Strength

Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Knowing my power to live the Christian life is insufficient. I will wait upon the Lord.

Waiting, as in tarrying for and looking to and attending to the things of God in these last days.

A New Spirit

Psalms 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

The power of God is in the pure life we are commanded to keep. Endeavoring to keep my heart right and clean, I will set no wicked thing before my eyes to profane my heart. I will keep my heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.This is a secret to power in the Christian life.

A New Man

Ephesians 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

Here is the key to Christian life. To live daily in the new man God has created in me. The old man is done away with and is crucified with Christ. The victory is mine and I will possess it.

All Things New

Revelation 21:5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

The great and final coming of our Lord is something I can look forward to this year, What if Jesus were to return again today? Would you be ready for the final judgement on this life? Life is short and the time is at hand.

2007-12-20T09:50:00.001-05:00

Wise Men Worship Him

Readers:
Here in its entirety is an article by E.L.Bynum. Brother Bynum pastored Tabernacle Baptist Church for 44 years. He is still involved in many aspects of the ministry.

Wise Men Worship Him

By E. L. Bynum

"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." Matthew 2:1,2.

It is tragic that human traditions and pagan religious errors have robbed so many of the truths concerning the birth of Jesus Christ. No birth was ever so important to both God and man as this birth. This birth must be a fulfillment of God's promises of the Messiah, beginning with Genesis 3:15. This birth was the only one that could provide a Saviour for lost and fallen man. How important then, that we sweep aside human traditions and pagan errors, and seek the truth as it is to be found in the Bible.

The Time of His Birth

Even the year of His birth cannot be fixed with absolute certainty. Our calendar is off from 4 to 8 years at least. He was born while Herod was king and it is a well established fact that Herod died in 4 B.C.
Certainly He was not born on December 25th. For one thing, it is too cold in December for shepherds to keep their flocks by night in the open fields, as they were doing at the time of His birth. (Luke 2:8). He was born at a time when everyone had to go to their native city to be enrolled for taxation, and this would have been unlikely to have been scheduled in the middle of the winter. The winter was not a time to travel. (Matthew 24:20). December 25th was a pagan holiday long before the birth of Christ. It was established by Babylonian "sun-god" worshipers who looked upon this day as the birthday of the "Sun God." The worship of Baal was of course a part of the same false religion. The winter solstice comes on December 22, and is considered to be the shortest day of the year. As the days begin to lengthen, the "sun-god" worshipers would naturally rejoice. December 25th was a well-established day of revelry and licentious religious worship, long before anyone ever thought of making it Christ's birthday.
It was not until the 3rd Century that some Christians began to celebrate the birth of Christ on this date. It could be that those who established this date for the birth of Christ, really thought they could Christianize this pagan holiday. Needless to say, their efforts have tended to paganize Christianity. In 336 A.D. Emperor Constantine declared December 25th as a Roman holiday, because it was Christ's birthday.
The month and day of the passover, as well as other ancient festival days are well known. Why have we not learned that God has purposely concealed the date of Christ's birth for very good reasons? The reason is, that we might emphasize His death and resurrection. Why else did God allow us to know the month and day of His death and the day of His resurrection? Each Sunday we commemorate His resurrection when we come together to worship Him.
Certainly Santa Claus has nothing to do with the birth of Christ. Even the word "Christmas" is pagan for it is an abbreviated form of "Christ Mass" which came from the Roman Catholic Church.

When Did The Wise Men Worship Him?

Again human traditions have been substituted for the truth of God's Word. Over and over again we have viewed a manger scene showing the shepherds and the wise men worshiping the new born babe. This is contrary to the teaching of the Bible. The shepherds were notified the very day of His birth and they found the babe in a manger. (Luke 2:11-12). The wise men found the young child in a house. (Matthew 2:11). There is quite a difference between a babe in a manger and a young child in a house.
The wise men had seen His star in the east, and it would have taken them a long time to have traveled from Babylon or any other eastern area to Jerusalem. When they talked with Herod, he inquired "diligently what time the star appeared." The word here translated "diligently" means exactly and is elsewhere translated perfect and perfectly. (Matthew 2:7). When Herod ordered the children of Bethlehem slain, in order to kill Jesus, he ordered that all of them be slain, "from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men." (Matthew 2:16). So Jesus could have been anywhere from a few months up to two years of age at the time that the wise men came.
While we do not know the time of His birth, we do know that He was born at the right time. "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law . . ." (Galatians 4:4-5)

I. Wise Men Follow The Light

Men do not seek Jesus until the light of God has shined in their hearts. They did not seek Him who was born King of the Jews, until they had seen His star in the east. Remember that Daniel, Nehemiah and other true men of God had been carried captive into Assyria, Babylon and Persia. These devout Jews were witnesses in high governmental offices. Note that this was true of Daniel and Nehemiah. Daniel was even trained as a wise man among the Babylonians. With their devout testimony, and their Hebrew scriptures, they would have had ample opportunity of creating considerable interest in the prophecies of the coming Messiah.
Balaam had prophesied, "there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel . . ." (Numbers 24:17). Since this portion of the Word was written by Moses, it would have undoubtedly been carried into the captivity. It would be likely that copies of these scriptures so prized by the Jews would find their way into the libraries of the east.
The book of Daniel is rich in Messianic Prophecy and remember that it was written in Babylon. Daniel 9:24-26 gives the time table with absolute certainty for the appearance of "Messiah the Prince." Daniel describes this as 69 weeks or 483 years from the time of the commandment to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem. Since there were at least three such decrees made, the wise men might not have known which decree was meant. But at least they could have known approximately the time of the Messiah.
We hasten to say, that there is no scriptural proof that they knew anything about the prophecies of Balaam and Daniel. But we do believe that they followed the light that God gave them. They saw a star in the east that was different from anything they had seen before. However, seeing a star would not direct them to Jerusalem, unless they knew about the above scriptures or God spoke to them by a special revelation. God did speak to them in a dream after they arrived. (Matthew 2:12)
They did follow the light of God's Word when it was revealed unto them. (Matthew 2:5,6; Micah 5:2). They did follow the light of the star. (Matthew 2:9).
There are many men today with great knowledge, but unless they come to know Christ they will never be "wise men." "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom . . ." (Proverbs 9:10). "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God . . ." (James 1:5). According to James 3:15, there is a wisdom that is earthly, sensual and devilish.
Those who follow the light to Jesus Christ are the only ones who are truly wise.

II. Wise Men Worship Jesus

Many would have been satisfied with a visit with wicked King, Herod, but not these wise men! They inquired as to where the new born King could be found. We do not know how many wise men there were. We do not know from which country they came. But we do know that they would not be satisfied with anyone less than Jesus. They had studied the knowledge of the east. They no doubt had talked with kings and generals, but the greatest audience they ever had, was when they came into the presence of Jesus.
They "fell down, and worshipped Him." Today, men are worshiping the god of science. Others are worshiping the god of material things. Their pursuit of "things" leaves them no time for God. Many are worshiping the god of lust and pleasure. Theories, thrills and things occupy 20th century man, so that he has no time for the true and the living God. But eternity will reveal that they who worship Him, are the true wise men. A poorly educated man who worships Jesus Christ is wiser than an educated genius who rejects Him as Saviour.

III. Wise Men Give To Jesus

They gave Him "gold, and frankincense, and myrrh." These were gifts of great value, and no doubt had a typical meaning. GOLD was a fitting gift for a king, and particularly so in this case, since He is to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Frankincense was a fitting gift for a priest, for it was used in connection with sacrifice and priestly service. Since He was God manifest in the flesh, how fitting that they should offer frankincense unto Him. Myrrh was used in the embalming of the dead. (John 19:39). How correct that He who was to die for sin as a sacrifice should receive the myrrh.
Wise men will give their TIME, TALENT and TITHE to the Lord. In giving, it should be remembered that we should "first" give our "own selves to the Lord. "(II Cor. 8:5). God wants us to "present" our "bodies" as a "living sacrifice." (Romans 12:1). If we have done this, we will not mind giving our time and our tithes and offerings unto the Lord.
Many today are busy buying gifts for one another. How different the wise men, they gave to Him. Let us remember the lesson of the wise men, if we are truly wise we will give unto Him.

IV. Wise Men Go Back Another Way

"And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way." (Matthew 2:12). When men come to know Christ, there is a change made in their ways. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (II Cor. 5:17). Paul said that the Thessalonian believers had "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." (I Thess. 1:9).
It is sad that so many claim to know Christ, but go back to the same old way of sin and worldliness. Much modern Christianity has no cross, and no separation from the world. Christ came to save us from our sins, but many want to make salvation into a fire escape from hell. How foolish that some think they can have all the sin of this world, and all the salvation of the world to come. Wise men are changed. Wise men go back another way.

V. Wise Men Will Bring Others To Jesus

The Bible does not tell us what happened to these wise men after they went back to their own country. Perhaps eternity will reveal this story, if God be pleased to make it known. However, in the light of God's Holy Word, we know what true wise men should be doing today.
"The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and HE THAT WINNETH SOULS IS WISE." (Proverbs 11:30). "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." (Daniel 12:3). Paul said, ". . . I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." (I Cor. 9:22). If you know Christ, may I urge you to use every scriptural means to bring others to know Him. This is wise!

If some unsaved one should read this message, we urge you to repent and turn to Christ in faith. It will be the wisest thing you will ever do. Bow before Him, acknowledge your sin, and trust in His saving grace.

The day of your Death

2007-12-10T17:05:00.000-05:00

The Day of Your Death

Friend, will you ponder some words of truth, though you be up in years, or yet in your youth?
With each passing day your life spins by, Death creeps closer till it's your turn to die.

On your bed of death the thought comes to mind - all your dear loved ones you must leave behind.
They speak words of comfort and try not to cry, but there is no comfort; it's your turn to die.

As you reflect upon many wasted years, your poor heart saddens and your eyes fill with tears.
You spent so much time for family and friends, yet so little time being grieved for your sins.

You sped through your years consuming worldly pleasures, yet never investing in Heavenly treasures.
With these sobering thoughts you begin to grow scared; it's your turn to die, and you have not prepared!

Year after year you rejected God's Son; over and over the Gospel you would shun.
God's Spirit which spoke to your once tender heart has now been replaced with Satan's stinging dart.

Like a tale which is told, your life has flown by, your days are expired, and it's your turn to die.
A piercing chill suddenly fills the air while Death enters the room like a strange nightmare.

But this is no dream, the time has arrived; you'll die in a moment to never be revived.
All loved ones fade as Death closes in; your body lies helpless, and you cannot win.
With one final struggle you gasp for your breath to find your soul in the arms of Death!

As loved ones gaze upon your lifeless frame, your soul makes its journey to the Land of the Flame.
"Why me?" you cry, "I wasn't that bad!" But then you recall all the chances you had.

Time and time again God's humble servants came - offering you salvation in Jesus' name.
But you cared not for God's holy plan; you despised His servants, and from His truth you ran.

Now as your feet sink into the flame, all hope is gone to trust in His name.
Deeper you go into the fiery bath, having traded God's mercy for His never-ending wrath.

While horror fills your soul and the pain multiplies, your screams simply fade into the smoke-filled skies.
As you wade through the flames seeking consolation, those you encounter have the same condemnation.

There's no one to help, there's nowhere to turn; refuge has fled, and you're left here to burn!
As your loved ones back home in the world above comfort one another with words of love,

They're all unaware of your sad plight beneath, of your weeping, your wailing, and your gnashing teeth!
They'll soon gently lay your body in the ground, but of your screams below they won't hear a sound.

Never again will you see a smiling face, only faces of agony in this damnable place.
No children playing with whom to share your love, not another second with your sweetheart above.

No food to eat, no water in sight, forever you're a captive to Hell's dark night!
Sunsets have vanished, no mountains, no streams, only roaring flames and soul-piercing screams!
At last you now see your error so well: when you said "No" to Jesus, you said "Yes" to Hell.

By J.H. Melton

The Bridge Builder by Will Dromgoole

2007-12-09T17:28:00.000-05:00

THE BRIDGE BUILDER by Will Dromgoole

An old man, going a lone highway,

Came, at the evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;

The sullen stream had no fear for him;

But he turned, when safe on the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,

"You are wasting strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again will pass this way;

You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-

Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:

"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,

"There followeth after me today,

A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

Quoteable Quotes

2007-12-09T17:21:00.000-05:00

"When the devil reminds you of your past, just remind him of his future." C.R. Curtman

Book Review by Barry Greer

2007-11-28T09:07:00.000-05:00

Dear Blog friends,

Today I have a guest blogger. I have known this dear friend for 15 years. I have watched him through several phases of his life. Through all the ups and downs and ins and outs of life, Barry is an overcomer. He is a do-er and through perseverance of the truth and applying these truths, he is becoming a Christian that rests in the Lord. Barry is on the fast track to being what the Lord wants for his life.

Barry came to me a while ago and told me about the books he was reading. It was all about the classroom of Christ. He seemed more settled. There was an amazing calm over his tempestuous spirit. He was determined to do God's will by applying these practical truths. Here I present his "School of Obedience" recommended reading:

LIVING or EXISTING

Are you living or do you just exist? There is a difference. Jesus said of himself in John 14:6, “I AM…THE LIFE.” As creations made in the likeness of God, we are comprised of 3 parts: Body, Soul, and Spirit. Before salvation, we only utilize our body and soul. These make up the physical (the Son) and eternal (the Father) aspects of our existence. They determine the horizontal relationship between the rest of mankind and us. Since our spirits are dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1), we are missing the most important relationship that we can have, a vertical relationship with God. Until our spirit (the Holy Spirit) is made alive in Christ (Romans 6:11, 1 Corinthians 15:22), we just exist. Therefore, we can conclude that a person needs to be saved “to live”.

If not careful, even saints of God may find themselves in an “existing” mode by not fulfilling the very purpose that the Lord has created and saved them for. That is to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. This writer was saved on Dec.3, 2000, when turning to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thess. 1:9). The quickening of spirit enabled me to live “the Christian life”. Unfortunately, 35 years worth of false philosophy and religion, or should I say “baggage” accompanied me at salvation. Pride and self-sufficiency were sins that were repented of that day, but are sins that need to be mortified on an every day basis (1 Corinth 15:31; Gal 2:20).

Bible preaching, bible reading, and prayer are so vital for us to live like Christ. God promises to conform us in the image of His Son, and will use the tools necessary to show us His will for our lives. The Apostle Paul knew this and incites us to read. The Bible yes, but also spiritual books in which godly men, who in their own right have learned important biblical truths and are giving testimony of them through the written page.

So from the writer to the reader, I would like to encourage you that the abundant life that the Lord speaks of is obtainable by all of us. I recommend the following tools to assist you in finding God’s perfect will for your life. They are “easy reads” (Believe me, I am not an avid reader, nor a “super saint”, only a man seeking God’s perfect will for his life).

If you are frustrated with the roller coaster ride of life, and are willing to take the time to read and apply the truths of these books, I can assure you that the Lord will use them in your life for His glory.

I personally read the books in the order given, and you’ll see why.

In 2 Chron 7:14, God commands us to humble ourselves. We may not understand all that is required in humbling ourselves, or how pride is manifested in our lives.

Book #1: HUMILITY by Andrew Murray. I was bed ridden from back surgery when I read this one. I had a lot of time to contemplate my proud, arrogant heart before a thrice-holy God.

Book #2: HUMILITY by Wayne A. Mack. This brother took a deeper and more personal look at humility and pride. I was so “in awe” of this book that I told my pastor, “It seems like every time that I open my mouth, pride comes out.” He then proceeded to instruct me with what I thought would be a magnificent biblical exegesis, but rather told me kindly to “just keep my mouth shut.” Wow! How humbling! With these two books, I had a better understanding of pride and humility. I now was in a better position for the Lord to show me this “life”.

Book 3: How to Live the Victorious Life by an Unknown Christian. The writer speaks of victory through surrendering all to Christ. But how do I surrender?

Book 4: The Surrendered Life by James H. McConkey. He speaks of how the only way one can be surrendered is through obedience. O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E, as the song states, is the very best way to show that you believe. As Christ learned obedience (Heb 5:8), we also must learn obedience. And where can we learn?

Book 5: The School of Obedience by Andrew Murray.

Beloved, if you seriously desire a change, I beseech you, as Paul to the Romans, to renew your mind and stop thinking that the life you now live is “just the way it goes”, and that “it can’t be better”. My friend, I can assure you, that through Christ alone, you will succeed in living the abundant life. Don’t just exist, apply these “life altering” truths for the glory of God.

For Christ,

Barry Greer

Jer 32:27

Be Reasonable!

2007-11-25T00:17:00.000-05:00

I found this vid on the web:
Feel free to comment.

Repentance Blacklist

2007-11-18T15:39:00.000-05:00

A great controversy is stirring again in Christianity.

The idea of repentance is not new and neither is the controversy attached to it. Some say it is necessary for salvation, others say salvation is by faith without repentance. When the Pharisees came to John the Baptist to be baptized of him, John told them to bring forth fruit meet for repentance. The Pharisees thought they could join in the religious ritual of baptism to cleanse them from their sins. This is foreign to biblical salvation. We all know baptism does not save a person. I know that salvation is not of the works of righteousness which we have done. I know we are saved by grace. I realize salvation is all of God and not of man. I understand grace is a gift and all I have to do is receive Christ and He does ALL the saving ALL by Himself. Of course I believe we cannot add anything to salvation. Even the good works of repentance. Neither can we take away anything from salvation. Repentance is a work of God in the heart used to bring a person to proper faith in Him. Without repentance we have an empty shell of a “hope so, maybe so” religion that brings about dead works. Faith without works is a dead faith.

The heart of the matter is the heart.

Is repentance just a matter of giving up vices? Many have quit drinking, smoking and pornography without being a Christian. Many have pruned the branches of vice from their life but John the Baptist said, “…now the axe is laid to the root.” No man can produce these good works necessary without the Spirit of God dwelling in him. Repentance is a heart matter. If a man is not willing from the heart to turn, then he is like the man putting forth his hand to the plow and looking back. The Bible says this man is not fit for kingdom work.

I changed my Mind

Repentance is not a work of man. It is a work of God that brings a change of heart and attitude about something. Repentance is simply a change of mind. God repented. Back in the book of Genesis God decided He was going to destroy the man He created. God did not repent of sin. He is Holy. He cannot sin. He changed His mind about the creation of man.

Repentance is a given by God

Repentance is a gift. Man is confronted by God regarding trespasses and sins. When a person is made to realize he has offended God by breaking His law, guilt begins to make that man sorrowful for his wrongs. This guilt must be addressed. It can be suppressed by acts of contrition or self righteousness but these exercise not repentance.

How sorry are you?

There are two kinds of sorrow. Worldly sorrow toward sin is being sorry you got caught in sin. An apprehended criminal that has worldly sorrow will repeat his crimes over and over again without repentance. Contrast that with Godly sorrow which works a change of mind about sins. This Godly sorrow is what leads to true repentance. A repentant sinner will be careful not offend a Holy God. Consider Esau who had sought after repentance without faith. He sought it with tears but could not obtain the heart of repentance God requires for salvation. His was a work of repentance wrought by self and not the true repentance God gives.

2 Cor 7:10

Results of Repentance

Repentance results in a clear view of faith. It is towards God (the One we have offended) and turns to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. The jailer at Philippi experienced this repentance when he said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Paul experienced this gift of repentance on the road to Damascus when he said,"What wilt thou have me do?" Simon the Sorcerer did not "get it" in Acts 8 because he had other motives than faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was not repentant. Everyone that comes to Jesus must first come through the gate of repentance.

Repentance BLACKLIST

One well meaning preacher has a skewed understanding of repentance. He has a web site that has a blacklist of some very good men. He goes beyond an honest study and paints with a broad brush all of us who believe this Biblical doctrine as heretics. I tried to understand his position and there are two possible conclusions. He has not studied the Bible doctrine of repentance. He has listened to too many Jack Hyles sermons and opinions of men Another possible conclusion: When he made his profession as a six- year- old he did not understand the Biblical doctrine of repentance. Without a clear understanding of repentance how could a person possibly be saved?

Missed by 12 inches!

The approximate distance from the head to the heart is twelve inches. Now I am not talking about that beating organ in your chest. The heart I am speaking of is the soul of man. If a person has an intellectual knowledge of salvation but not a heart repentance, he is no different than any religious zealot. God is not interested in lip service. He wants the heart.

Mark 1:15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

"Funnymentalism"

2007-11-14T13:13:00.000-05:00

Peter Ruckman and UFOS

I have heard a lot over the years about Peter Ruckman but this takes the cake.

From a book review by David Cloud and according to the book "Black Is Beautiful" (1996), Peter Ruckman “…believes that some of the medieval plagues in Europe were caused by UFOs, that a B-52 bomber was downed by a UFO and that aliens disemboweled the crew members, and that a crew member of a US Navy ship was transported into the future. He believes the CIA has implanted brain transmitters in children, old people, blacks, and prisoners(p. 243) and operates underground alien breeding facilities (p. 256). He believes in Atlantis (p. 171) and the Bermuda Triangle, time warps (p. 160), creatures with one eye (p. 173), web footed aliens, blue aliens with blue blood (pp. 85, 86), black aliens with green blood (p. 244), and grey aliens with clear blood (pp. 310-11). He believes that Adam originally had water in his veins instead of blood (p. 185). He believes that the government is involved with UFO animal mutilations (p. 247). He believes that black helicopters carrying UN troops are "circling your homes" with the mission of attacking and imprisoning the populace (p. 233). He believes the U.S. federal government has kidnapped people and kept them alive in "amber liquid" (p. 230). He believes that the CIA flies around in space ships developed from technology gained when the government made a deal with aliens to allow them to kidnap children and use their organs as food and to experiment on U.S. citizens (pp. 291, 295-297).”

Wow! Where is that in the 1611 authorized version? This would be laughable if Dr. Ruckman's followers did not take him so seriously.

Matthew 24:11

Christianity or Christ?

2007-11-12T08:00:00.002-05:00

I read this article recently online from Baptist press. 562 baptisms in a parking lot? The dilution of true Christianity is in full swing! The rise of spurious conversions are astounding. My questions to the ministry are:

"What are the fruits of such converts?"
"What is the attendance of the church services on Wednesday night prayer meeting?"
"How about the Sunday School attendance or soul winning nights?"

My questions are not in regard to the number of people getting baptized. My question is more pinpointed, "How many are true conversions to our Lord Jesus Christ?"

In the late 80's, I went to a pastor's school at a famous fundamental Baptist church in the mid-west. It was my first time there and, as an observer, I did not like what I saw. The pastor had over 300 of the bus kids parade across the stage in demonstration of the "conversions" from the previous Sunday. "How many of these do you think are real?" asked the pastor. "Even if 10% were real, I still had more than you had!" he bragged. A bible verse entered my mind. Matthew 23:15: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves."

Twofold the children of hell- that was my immediate thought. 10% saved? That's 30 real conversions, hypothetically. 270 only think they're saved and will rest in a false profession for years, possibly never experiencing true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. 270 will go to their death with a false hope in Christianity. You read it right. Christianity does not save. Baptism does not save. Church membership does not save. Salvation is in a person. His Name is Jesus Christ. Without a personal appropriation of the shed blood of Jesus Christ for my sins, I am as hopeless as a Hindu. One preacher called this "easy prayer-ism." It is the modern equivalent to the Galatians controversy-preaching another Gospel. They are converting souls to Christianity, not to Christ. They are trying to force conversions as a rabid fundamentalists. This is no different than Mohammedanism or Romanism. It is as damning as childhood conversions. How many do you know who made a profession of faith at three-years-old and who cling to that profession all their lives? The testimony usually goes like this:

"I made a profession at 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 , grew up in the church, then I got away from God in my teen years. I lived a wild life until I was 19 or 20 or 30 , then I "re-dedicated" my life to Christ."

Where is that found in the Bible? John the Baptist told those coming to his baptism, "Bring forth fruits meet for repentance." The Pharisees in Jesus day gave tithes and prayed and went to temple. In reference to these hypocrites, Jesus asked His disciples, "What do ye more than others?" I heard of a man that adamantly claims to be a Christian. He makes his claim to Christianity as a result of a profession of faith he made over fifteen years ago. He has a date and time to prove it. He became a Christian and embraced "Christianity." He is cantankerous and mean. He has a bad testimony in the workplace and now his family is laying in ruins. Is this man saved? Maybe he just needs to re-dedicate his life to Jesus? I trow not.

The proof of the Christian life is Christian fruit. Is Christ living in you, producing the fruit only He can bring forth? Does the Spirit of God live in you? Are you sure you are saved? Do you read the Bible daily? Do you have a consistent prayer life? If I asked your wife or husband or mother or father, brother, sister, co-worker, or your boss if they thought you were a Christian, what would they answer? If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Christianity is more than creed and catechism. It is living daily by the Saviour's side. It is Christ living in me and me living for Christ.

We need converts to Christ, not to Christianity.

In the Beginning, GOD

2007-11-09T07:36:00.000-05:00

Former Atheist Darwinian Philosopher Explains his ‘Conversion’ in a New Book

By Hilary White

LONDON, November 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Former Darwinian atheist philosopher Antony Flew has published a new book, “There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind,” to explain his move from being one of the world’s leading exponents of the pure materialist Darwinian philosophy to belief in the existence of a personal deity who created the universe.

Flew, an Oxford educated philosopher described by some as “legendary”, first announced his discovery of “a god” in 2004. Flew had been one of the 20th century’s leading proponents of the pure atheistic Darwinian doctrines that categorically reject any possibility of a creative divine being. His ideas paved the way for thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, the UK’s most virulent opponent of religious belief.

The Darwinian view is embraced by most of the scientific and philosophical community and was recently declared the only acceptable viewpoint for Europeans by the European Council.

Flew has emphasized that his “discovery” of a god who created life was a result of relentlessly “following the evidence”. “It was empirical evidence,” he told an interviewer, “the evidence uncovered by the sciences. But it was a philosophical inference drawn from the evidence.”

Flew told Dr. Benjamin Wiker that two factors in particular “were decisive”. “One was my growing empathy,” he said, “with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source.”

More akin to the “watchmaker” god of the 18th century Deist philosophy, Flew’s god is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and St. Thomas Aquinas. Flew described the deity he believes exists as “the god of Aristotle.” He has inched further towards belief in the personal God of Christianity and Judaism, however, describing his god as “a person but not the sort of person with whom you can have a talk. It is the ultimate being, the Creator of the Universe.”

He told Wiker, “I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code.”

Flew answered Richard Dawkins’ argument that “the origin of life can be attributed to a ‘lucky chance.’” He said, “If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over.” Flew said, “I would add that Dawkins is selective to the point of dishonesty when he cites the views of scientists on the philosophical implications of the scientific data.”

Emphasizng that he remains a Deist, not a Christian, he told Wiker that he does not “accept any claim of divine revelation” but is continuing to study them, particularly those of Christianity.

The One-Eyed Monster

2007-11-06T11:17:00.000-05:00

A few months ago I announced to the family I was going to do an experiment.
"We are going to cancel the satellite TV subscriptions", I said.

I have to admit, part of it was economical because the cost was around $80 a month. So I phoned the dish company and told them we are taking a hiatus from TV. The withdrawls were heavy at first. The Yankees were in a winning season, I love the Military Channel, and all those cheesy movies were on. We were missing all the talking heads on Fox, the presidential debates were heating up and now the NFL season is on! We were missing all those re-runs of Law and Order too. So you see what we were giving up?

When friends came over the other night for fellowship, I had to apologize because their team was playing in the American League playoffs and guess what? I could not get the game on TV. So with a laptop and MLB.com we were able to catch the score and see my friends team lose. Sorry Josh.

The addiction was heavy at first. Then the sway of that medium began to fade. It was like a breath of fresh air to us as a family again. We actually sat in the living room and talked for a while.
We played games and read books. We play 20 questions and talk about our dreams. And my daughter plays the piano for us. We sing and actually interact. We have the internet. We write blogs and stories. My wife and I started a part time home based business that netted us a nice paycheck the first couple of months. We study and research important topics of our day. We spend time on each other rather than staring at the tube then going to bed bleary eyed. Oh, I must admit we do check out a movie now and then. The library has a bunch of old TV series we like. We just have to be careful of the content and theme of the show.

Years ago when we were a young family we did not have TV. We would rent a video back then. It used to be we had to have our parent's permission to watch TV. Now kids plop in front of the big screen high definition and watch till their hearts content. If that wasn't enough some put the tube in the kids bedroom. There they watch TV or play video games until 2 or 3 in the morning. Is it any wonder Johnny can't spell or perform well in school? Read this article on TV and kids.

Well, I am not down on TV here. I like it. A lot. Maybe too much. It can be good if you are alone and shut in. It can be OK with reasonable guidelines. But how many families have guidelines for TV today? What about all those channels one has to surf through before he can settle on a show? How about the MTV crowd or VH1 or Comedy Central? All these shows mock and ridicule everything a Christian stands for right and decency. What if your child "accidently" sees an R-rated movie and watches all the dirt and filth the world has to offer? I am bothered when I hear a 9 year old say their favorite movie is Gladiator. Gladiator? Not Cinderella or Anne of Green Gables but Gladiator. I am speechless.

I do not think it is a sin to own a TV. Even if you have a big screen high definition set. It is a sin if you cannot control your family with one or you cannot control yourself. The results of my experiment indicate we do better without it.

Readers: Please Comment

2007-11-05T07:12:00.000-05:00

The following is a post in response to my atheist article below. I will keep the author anonymous. The reader asks:

"So how does a Christian answer the question? Is it right for the parents of a little girl who has been raped and abducted to believe that an all-powerful and all loving God is looking over and watching her? (Emphasis placed on all powerful.) The question was never answered. I don't think the tone that Mr Harris uses is the issue, the question he asks is the issue. "

Please comment in comments section. I will post the relevant comments. Thank you.

The Problem with Suffering

2007-11-02T17:30:00.001-04:00

Not long ago, the question came up in a debate concerning the subject of suffering.
"If God is good, why is there so much suffering in the world?" That's an excellent question. Sam Harris, noted spokesman for the atheist religion, proposes this question in his search of the truth.

He asks, "Consider the suffering of the millions of unfortunate people who happen to live in sub-Saharan Africa. The wars in this part of the world are interminable. AIDS is epidemic there, killing around 3-million people each year. It is almost impossible to exaggerate how bad your luck is if you are born today in a country like Sudan. The question is, how does religion affect this problem?"

Good question. Although Mr. Harris suffers from a misunderstanding of what is real Christianity, he asks a reasonable question. I think the better question here is: "What political ideology or perversion of religion caused this suffering in the first place?"

Here is another hypothetical from Harris:
"Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl's parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? " Harris answers the question for the reader. He says, "No."

Harris goes on in his indictment of God:
"Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend. "

These were honest questions posed in a disingenuous way. An unbeliever is blinded by his own arrogance. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam had the same problem. He called the God of the Old Testament a "dirty bully" because he felt the suffering of the world was unjust. It is the same for everyone who rejects this attribute of God's Holiness. Without the understanding of who God is, we cannot understand suffering.

OK, so let's answer these questions honestly.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there suffering in the world? What is the meaning of all the evil in the world? These are honest questions. If the questions are asked from an honest heart, the answers are simple. They are not easy, but they are simple.
The Book of Job asked these very questions. God answered Job's questions out of the whirlwind. Jesus addressed the suffering issue in Luke 13:4. There was a tower in Jesus' time that fell and slew eighteen souls. The question among those who witnessed it was, "Why did they suffer?" Jesus answered, "Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? " Jesus does not address "why." He simply exhorts the hearers to repent lest they also perish. God is sovereign, that is the short answer. God does what pleases Him. He does not answer to anyone because He is the Supreme Potentate of the Universe.

The answer to these questions is voluminous. I will give a few simple answers. You apply them as you see fit.

1. Suffering comes because God ordained it to be so. Consider the examples of Job, Joseph, the children of Israel in bondage in Egypt, Paul and Silas in jail, and Jesus on the cross. These are all examples of God-ordained suffering. This does not impugn His justice or Holiness. It shows He is Sovereign. Through suffering we grow stronger. This fact is shown in nature. A devastating wildfire reseeds a forest to come back stronger. A strong wind or hurricane, as devastating as it seems, actually creates new shorelines and inlets of water that can be beneficial to the overall ecosystem. The earth is in a constant state of renewal all caused by suffering winds and erosion. An acorn must actually die before it grows into a mighty oak. This process brings about a forest of mighty trees all because one seed suffered and died.
Suffering also shows God's strength and our frailties. We are dependent upon God. Without Him,we can do nothing. We need God to help us through this journey called life.
Suffering also brings out God's plan for the ages. Through suffering I learn lessons that teach me God's plan and grant me wisdom for my life. Read the biographies of great men and women and you will find suffering along with the great conquerors in life.

2. Suffering comes from Sin
Rape, incest murder, greed, gluttony, wars, thefts, and the list goes on-and-on, all describe the depravity and wickedness of the heart of man. God is not the author of evil. Remember, God is Holy. He has put roadblocks to evil by codifying His laws to prevent evil. The indictment is handed down against man and the verdict is GUILTY. Some renegades are still in the denial stage. They deny their sin condition and miss the conviction that God uses to bring about repentance in the heart.

3. Sometimes suffering is self-inflicted. Oftentimes, we suffer because we get ourselves in debt, fail to plan for the future, make wrong decisions, and fail to seek the leadership of God in our lives. Soon, the laws of sowing and reaping begin to take effect. We sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind. We sow ungodliness and pray for a crop failure. Many suffer today for this very reason.

Suffering is meant to make us aware of our mortality. It is used to make us aware of our duty to our fellow man by aiding suffering and alleviating the causes of suffering. Those of us that have been born into God's kingdom by the Spirit of God understand this.

Questions for Atheists

2007-10-30T22:23:00.001-04:00

I recently read Joseph Farrah's Whisleblower Magazine entitled "The Rise of Atheism in America." What an eyeopener! Farrah is a brilliant man that takes on Christopher Hitchens, Dawkins, and Sam Harris. I am amazed that such intelligent men would try to argue against God. I am pleased to know that such arguments are held in derision by our Holy God. In my research and study of atheism and agnosticism, I find many flaws and inconsistencies. I see it in the arguments and in the character of the proponents of the religion of atheism. Within the soul of atheism I see the essence of rebellion. The arguments are tired and musty. It was at the Scopes trial where Darrow put the Bible on trial. The Word of God has been on trial since the Garden of Eden when the slithery serpent asked, "hath God said?"

Now I have some questions for Atheists. A reasonable person can plainly see that it takes as much faith to worship at the altar of Atheism as it does to worship at the cross of Jesus Christ. One major difference is that at the Cross there is redemption. Here are some questions to consider:

1. How can the universe explode into an organized system of complexity from nothing?

2. How does the second law of thermodynamics, that is everything tends to entropy, apply to everything except the Big Bang?

3. Where is evolution in process right now in the universe?

4. How could man allow such gross injustice and evil into a world of suffering?

5. Where does all of the incredibly complex information come from that is stored within DNA? Information doesn’t just appear by itself. Someone has to put it there.

6. Why does humanity seem to have an innate desire and need to worship something or someone? Why is there such a universal religious sense within humanity?

7. Isn’t it a bit extreme to assert, "God does not exist"? To make such a statement, you would have to have complete knowledge and to have been everywhere in the universe. Maybe God dwells somewhere in the universe you don’t know of or have not been to? Is that possible?

8. What about the evidence of design in all of creation? It's obvious that anything that is designed has to have an intelligent creator. For example, a computer never came about by mere accident, but had to have been thought out and planned by an intelligent designer. It is the same with creation, and more so, as the natural world is far more complicated than anything humanity can create.

9. How do you explain the changed lives of millions of people throughout history who testify to a life changing experience with Jesus Christ?

10. How do we account for the historical Person of Jesus Christ? He has made such an impact upon history that we even measure our calendar by Him. 2000 years on and millions still follow Him.

11. Are you seriously interested in discovering the truth or are you more interested in ridiculing religion in general and Christianity specifically?

12. Are you neglecting your duty to God by denying He exists?

13. The most important question you must consider is, "Where will you spend eternity?"

The problem with Suffering

2007-10-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

Not long ago, the question came up in a debate concerning the subject of suffering.
"If God is good, why is there so much suffering in the world?" That is an excellent question. Sam Harris, noted spokesman for the atheist religion, posits this question in his search of the truth.

He asks, "Consider the suffering of the millions of unfortunate people who happen to live in sub-Saharan Africa. The wars in this part of the world are interminable. AIDS is epidemic there, killing around 3 million people each year. It is almost impossible to exaggerate how bad your luck is if you are born today in a country like Sudan. The question is, how does religion affect this problem?"

Good question. Although Mr. Harris suffers from a misunderstanding of what is real Christianity, he asks a reasonable question. I think the better question here is this: "What political ideology or perversion of religion caused this suffering in the first place?"

Here is another hypothetical from Harris:
"Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture, and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of six billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl's parents believe -- at this very moment -- that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? " Harris answers the question for the reader. He says, "no".

Harris goes on in his indictment of God:
"Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend. "

Here is an honest question posed in a disingenuous way. This could be a problem with an unbeliever. He is blinded by his own arrogance. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam had the same problem. He called the God of the Old Testament a "dirty bully" because he felt the suffering of the world was unjust. It is the same for everyone who rejects this attribute of God's Holiness. Without the understanding of who God is, we cannot understand suffering.

OK, so let's answer these questions honestly.

Why do bad things happen to "good" people? Why is there suffering in the world? What is the meaning of all the evil in the world? These are honest questions. If the questions are asked from an honest heart, the answers are simple. The answers are not easy but they are simple.
The Book of Job asked these very questions. God answered out of the whirlwind. Jesus addressed the suffering issue in Luke 13:4. There was a tower in Jesus' time that fell and slew eighteen souls. The question is:, "Why did they suffer?" Were those that perished more sinners above everyone else? Jesus does not address "why". He simply exhorts the hearers to make their relationship with God right. The short answer is this: God is sovereign and does what pleases Him. He does not answer to anyone because He is the Supreme Potentate of the Universe. It is the natural revelation of God's existence that proves Him as Supreme.

The answer to these questions is voluminous. I will give a few simple answers. You apply them as you see fit.

1.Suffering comes because God ordained it to be so. Consider the example of Job, Joseph, the children of Israel in bondage in Egypt, Paul and Silas in jail, and Jesus on the cross are all examples of God ordained suffering. This does not impugn His justice or Holiness. It shows He is Sovereign.
Through suffering we grow stronger. It is shown in nature. A devastating wildfire reseeds a forest to come back stronger. A strong wind or hurricane, as devastating as it seems actually creates new shorelines and inlets of water that can be beneficial to the overall ecosystem. The earth is a constant state of renewal all caused by suffering winds and erosion. An acorn must actually die before it grows into a mighty oak. This process brings about the a forest of mighty oaks all because one seed suffered and died.
Suffering also shows God's strength and our frailties. We are dependant on God. Without Him I can do nothing. We need God to help us through this journey we call life.
Suffering also brings out God's plan for the ages. Through suffering I am made conformable to God's plan and wisdom for my life. Read the biographies of great men and women and you will find suffering and great conqourers in life.

2. Because we have broken God's laws.
Rape, incest murder, greed, gluttony, wars, thefts and on and on all describe the depravity and wickedness of the heart of man. God does not author any of evil. He cannot do evil. Remember God is Holy. He has put roadblocks to evil by codifying His laws to prevent evil. The indictment is handed down against man and the verdict is GUILTY. Some renegades are still in the denial stage. They deny their sin condition and miss the conviction that God uses to perform repentance in the heart.

3. Sometimes suffering is self inflicted. Sometimes we suffer because we get ourselves in debt, fail to plan for the future, make wrong decisions, and fail to seek the leadership of God in our lives. The laws of sowing and reaping begin to take effect. We sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind. We sow ungodliness and pray for a crop failure.

Suffering is meant to make us aware of our mortality. It is used to make us aware of our duty to our fellow man by aiding suffering and alleviating the causes.

2007-10-25T09:29:00.000-04:00

I know it is still early but here is a candidate for president I could support:

Google Ron Paul

Farewell Israel?

2007-10-23T08:01:00.000-04:00

There is a new film out called "Farewell Israel, Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam".
It is a stunning and provocative documentary by Joel Gilbert on the rise of Islam and the prophetic, cataclysmic defeat of Israel. It is a highly charged film that portrays the age old war between Isaac and Ishmael.
The director presents several slants to the truth. Consider the following quote from the Q and A section of the web site:

"In reality, "Western Peace" between Israel and Islam is unattainable. Peace can only be achieved in Islamic terms - "Peace with Justice" - which requires the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state."

Here is a blatant admission by Islam that peace is their way or the highway. The Muslim dialog is like dealing with one note Charlie. He plays one tune. He has been hanging with Bob Dylan too long. With that nasal twang he produces one note. That song goes like this: "Death to Israel, death to anyone that gets in the way of our agenda. (This includes you, USA)". There is no negotiated settlement. There is no room for getting along with your fellow man. There is no golden rule in Islam. There is no "love one another" in Islam.

Then Gilbert blames the west for the 9/11 attacks. Consider this quote from his Q&A:

What do you mean by "The Revolt of Islam"?

There is no such thing as "Radical Islam." Islamism is not a war against the West, it is an internal struggle for the revival of Islamic society - a "revolt" against their failed secular governments. The attacks of 9/11 are completely misunderstood by the West. In fact, 9/11 was only a provocation by a small group of Islamists, hoping to use the West's response to inspire the masses in Islam's internal struggle. The 9/11 attacks were successful only because George Bush played into the hands of the Al-Qaeda, by adopting Al-Qaeda's agenda for government reform across the Middle East - helping to pave the way for Islamist parties to come to power.

So rather than win their converts with the love of Allah, they start World War III by provoking a sleeping giant. It is an old trick. It was perpetuated by Japan at Pearl Harbor and now in the World Trade Centers attack. I smell world domination here.

I tell you that Islam and Israel are on a collision course. The outcome is written in Holy Writ. Oh, now the good news-Israel comes through alright. Jerusalem is restored to Israel. All of it. The LORD Messiah Jesus comes and takes vengence on those that have rejected HIM and destroys all of those that perpetuate this everlasting hatred.

Psalms 83:4-8 They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee: The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarenes; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah.

Ezekiel 35:3-9 And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD. Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end: Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth. And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword. I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

A Single and an Evil Eye by Charles G. Finney

2007-10-21T08:50:00.000-04:00

LECTURE XXIII.

December 2, 1840

A SINGLE AND AN EVIL EYE

by the Rev. Charles G. Finney

TEXT--Mat. 6:22, 23: 'The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light; but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.'

In this discussion I will show:

I. What is implied in singleness of eye.
II. What is implied in an evil eye.

III. That singleness of eye will insure a knowledge of truth and duty.

IV. An evil eye will insure darkness and delusion, both in regard to doctrine and duty.

I. What is implied in singleness of eye.

This language is of course figurative. By a single and an evil eye, we are to understand the Savior as representing a state of mind. "The light of the body," He says, "is the eye: If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." It is a matter of common knowledge, that the eye sometimes becomes so disordered as to discover objects double, and in a manner so obscure or fallacious, as naturally to deceive and mislead the person who possesses it. By a single eye, then, is meant, an eye in its perfect state, when it sees objects as they are, with such distinctness as to give the mind correct information with respect to the objects of vision.

When this figure is applied to the mind, it must represent the supreme and ultimate intention of the mind. When the ultimate end or intention of the mind is single, and just as it ought to be, the eye of the mind may then be said to be single. For the mind has its eye upon but one great absorbing object. This state of mind implies:

1. Supreme love to God. Of course, if the mind has but one great absorbing object or end in view, and that end is right, the end must be supremely to honor, please, and glorify God. This certainly implies supreme love to God.

2. It implies disinterested love to Him. Unless this love be disinterested; that is, unless God is loved for what He is, for his own sake, and not for the sake of making ourselves happy; to honor Him is not a supreme or ultimate end; but our own happiness is the end, and the love and service of God merely a means for the promotion of that end.

3. It implies a state of entire consecration. That Christ intended to be understood, by a single eye, to mean a state of entire consecration to God, is evident from what follows the text. He says-- "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." It is very plain, that the mind's eye is not right, unless the soul is supremely and only devoted to the love and service of God. Nothing less than a state of entire consecration to God can be intended by a single eye.

II. What is intended by an evil eye.

An evil eye is that which has more than one object before it, or sees objects double. When this figure is applied to the mind it means, that state of mind in which objects are seen through a selfish medium, or when the mind has two objects in view, a legal intention to serve God, but an ultimate intention to serve self. By a legal intention to serve God I mean, not that intention which is founded in supreme, disinterested love to God, which aims at honoring and glorifying Him, as an ultimate end; but an intention to serve God as the means of our own happiness, the ultimate intention being self-interest, and the intention to serve God, being a subordinate end.

III. Singleness of eye will insure a knowledge of truth and duty.

1. This is plainly taught in the text: "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Light means knowledge, truth. Now when Christ says, if your eye be single your whole body shall be full of light, what less can He mean than that the soul that has a single eye, shall be rightly instructed in all that is essential for it to know.

2. This will be the natural result of singleness of eye:

(1.) Because it will beget honest inquiry.

(2.) It will beget earnest, diligent inquiry.

(3.) It will secure the right and the best use of the necessary means of knowledge.

(4.) It will beget unfailing perseverance in the acquisition of knowledge.

(5.) The state of the will, will not prevent the perception of truth and evidence.

(6.) But the state of the will, will be such as to favor the perception, and insure the reception of evidence, when it is within its reach.

(7.) In this state of mind, the Spirit will not be resisted and quenched; but on the contrary, his influences will be sought and devoutly cherished.

(8.) His instructions will be obeyed, his slightest motions heeded, and the whole soul will be delivered up to his guidance.

(9.) Being in the same state of mind in which God, and Christ, and the inspired writers were, he will naturally understand them. If you have the same end in view, deeply sympathize with God, and are in the same state of mind in which He is, the language in which He expresses his own state of mind, will be to you the most intelligible language possible. Who does not know that persons possessing the same spirit, not only adopt the same or similar language, to express their ideas and feelings, but naturally understand each other's language perfectly? To each other they are perfectly intelligible, while to those in a different state of mind, they are unintelligible, in precise proportion to the diversity of their states of mind. Hence, the Bible is a very unintelligible and uninteresting book to an impenitent sinner. To a Christian of but little experience, who has but little religion, the Bible is in a great measure unintelligible, and he takes comparatively little interest in it; while to the Christian who lives in a state of entire consecration to God, it is not only one of the most intelligible, but altogether the most interesting book in the universe.

(10.) In this state of mind your experiences will be such as to make the teachings of the Bible, and especially the most spiritual portions of the Bible, plain to you. Whenever you are addressed upon a subject upon which you have experience, and in a manner and language that accords with your experience, you understand the speaker or writer with great ease and perfection; but in just as far as he departs from your experience, he is unintelligible to you, in the same manner and for the same reason, as if he spake to you in an unknown tongue. Because, you do not understand language, any farther than it accords with your experience. Words are only signs of ideas; and suppose words are used which are signs of ideas that are not in your mind, you do not get, and cannot possibly get any information from such teaching as this. For to you it is no teaching at all.

(11.) This state of mind will insure great communion and great power with God. The soul that lives in a state of entire consecration to God, can come to Him with as much confidence, and with indescribably more assurance than ever a child came to an earthly parent. This, if you have ever been in this state, you know from your own experience. When you live all the time in a state of such deep communion with God, you feel the strong confidence and assurance, that you know how He feels, by your own experience. Thus you know how Christ feels, from what motives and feelings He gave his life for sinners; and are conscious, that you are willing yourselves to make up in your bodies the sufferings that remain, and to lay down your lives for the world, and for the Church of God. In this state of mind, I say, you will naturally and certainly have great power with God, and will prevail.

IV. An evil eye will insure darkness and delusion, both in regard to doctrine and duty.

1. This is expressly taught in the text: "If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness." Mark--the whole body shall be full of darkness. Darkness means error and delusion. Now by such language as this the Savior must have intended to teach, that a selfish mind would be, and should be, full of error and delusion, on great questions of doctrine and duty. And by a selfish mind, in this connection, is intended, one that is not in a state of entire consecration to God; but is influenced by selfish considerations.

2. Darkness and delusion will be the natural and inevitable results of this state of mind:

(1.) Because selfishness will prevent inquiry; especially honest, diligent, and persevering inquiry.

(2.) Because the state of the will, will prevent the perception and reception of evidence. Few persons seem to be aware of the extent of the influence of the will, over the decisions of the understanding. I have, for many years, been so circumstanced as to have an opportunity, almost continually, to observe the developments of mind, in this respect; and have often been astonished to see, to what an extent the will influences human opinion. Almost every one has observed, that under circumstances of strong excitement, it is of little or no use to reason with a man, against his prejudices. I have had repeated opportunities to observe, with pain, that prejudice, a committed state of mind, and many other considerations, and things, will so influence the will, as wholly to exclude the light of truth from the understanding. On many subjects, it seems next to impossible to convince a man, against his will; while, on the other hand, a man will believe almost any thing which he is disposed to believe. And the credulity of mankind, on subjects that accord with the state of their will, and in regard to doctrines and things which they are strongly disposed to believe, is as surprising as their incredulity upon subjects opposed to their will. It is amazing to hear infidels and sceptics contend, that human belief is involuntary, and that men necessarily believe what they do, when the real palpable voluntariness of human opinion and belief, on almost every subject, is as striking and apparent to a considerate observer, as almost any fact of human history.

3. A man under the influence of an evil eye, or in other words, a selfish heart, will not practice the truth, and therefore he cannot teach it. There are multitudes of truths, which can be seen and understood no farther than other truths are first seen and understood. And multitudes of truths are never understood, any further than they are experienced. Take, for example, the subject of temperance. Suppose you preach strictly temperance principles to a man who has always been in the habit of drinking ardent spirits freely. Now there are certain things which you can make him understand. If he has been a habitual drunkard, by describing to him the feelings of a drunkard, he can understand you; because upon this subject he has experience. Words are signs of ideas; and to him they will mean nothing more, than the idea represented by the word in his mind. You can therefore make him understand something of the evil of drunkenness; and yet, if he has always been in habits of intoxication, from his earliest recollection, you cannot, in any language whatever, so contrast the experience, follies, and health of a drunkard, with those of a strictly temperate man, as to make him understand you. He knows not what temperance is. He knows not what health is. He knows not what that state of mind is, which is the natural result of temperance and good health. Peradventure, you can fasten conviction upon him, of the great evils of intemperance, from the fact, that he has experience upon that part of the subject; and in this way you can get so much light in upon his mind, as to break him off from his cups. Now in proportion as he becomes a sober man, temperate, and healthy, his experience will enable you so to contrast temperance with intemperance, as fully to impress his mind with both sides of the question; and thus lodge in his mind the full weight of the momentous considerations in favor of temperance. But in all this process, it is easy to see that he must necessarily begin with the A, B, C of both the doctrines and the experience of temperance. Break him off from ardent spirits, and after a time he is better prepared to see and feel the indispensable necessity of universal temperance. Break him off from every thing that intoxicates, and his experience will soon enable him to understand the importance and necessity of breaking off from all innutritious stimulants in diet. When he has abandoned all these, his experience will, in a little while, enable him to understand the importance of selecting the most bland unstimulating kinds of food. This experience will naturally prepare his mind to understand the importance of universal cleanliness and chastity, the strictest subjection of the appetites and propensities, to the great and universal law of temperance. And in short, as he goes from step to step in reform, and no farther than he does so, is he in circumstance, to see, feel, understand, and appreciate arguments in favor of farther reformation.

Now what is true on the subject of temperance, holds true on nearly every practical question; and especially is this true on subjects that pertain to personal holiness. If a man will not practice he cannot learn. Talk to an impenitent sinner of entire sanctification. Holiness is so entirely opposite to his experience, that he does not at all understand you. Talk with him about his sins, and his convictions, his fears, misgivings, and on every subject that is with him a matter of experience, and so far he will understand you; but talk to him of entire sanctification, and he gets no idea of what you mean. Therefore, the only possible way to deal with him is, to begin upon those subjects upon which he has experience, and bring him to see and to feel, that it is an evil and bitter thing to sin against God. This will lead him to see, admit, and experience the doctrine of repentance. Now proceed, from step to step, lead him forward, and as his experience enlarges, his capacity of understanding about sanctification, its desirableness, its indispensable necessity, will be perceived and felt by him. But no farther than he practices can he properly learn. When he stops and refuses to follow truth any farther in practice, right there the clouds of darkness will shut down, round about him. And it is only as he goes forward, from step to step, practicing or experiencing one truth after another, as it is presented, that he can, by any possibility, come to an understanding and knowledge of the truth. Let it be ever remembered, therefore, that he who will not practice will not learn. In other words, unless his eye be single, his whole body will be full of darkness.

4. Selfishness must render the Bible unintelligible to him who has an evil eye. To him it is a sealed book. It is uninteresting, enigmatical, self-contradictory, and any thing and every thing, but interesting and intelligible. The fact is, its Author and the inspired writers, were in states of mind the direct opposite of selfishness. To a selfish mind they must, therefore, of necessity, speak in an unknown tongue.

5. A selfish mind will not only find the Bible unintelligible, but in a great many instances, will naturally understand it as meaning the direct opposite of what it does mean. Nor is the fault at all in the Bible, or in its Author, but arises necessarily out of a selfish state of mind. For example--when God speaks of being angry with his enemies, as the sinner has never experienced any thing but a selfish anger, he naturally understands God's anger to be like his own. And whenever God speaks of having any state of mind, or doing any thing, sinners naturally interpret this language by their own experience. And thus it comes to pass, as God says, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself." Interpreting, as they naturally will, the language of the Bible by their own experience, they ascribe the same motives, affections, and passions to God, which they, themselves have experienced--not understanding at all, that all these states of mind in God are truly and infinitely benevolent.

It is a familiar and a true saying, that men judge others by themselves. To a truly holy mind, the Bible is not only the most interesting, but the most intelligible book in the world; while infidels exclaim, that it is blasphemy to ascribe such feelings and conduct to God; and therefore, that the Bible must be a libel upon his character. Now for this there can be no remedy, only as they become benevolent. If they will but begin to do the truth, so far as they can understand it, and practice one truth after another, until they come into the state of mind, in which the inspired writers were, they will then understand the Bible, and not till then.

6. A man who has an evil eye, will not have the Spirit of God to enlighten his mind in regard to truth, and will, therefore, never understand it.

REMARKS.

1. A selfish minister is a blind leader of the blind. This is the mildest language that truth or inspiration can use, in regard to an ambitious, a temporizing, a man-fearing, and, in short, a selfish minister. His eye is evil. His whole body, as Christ is true, or in other words, his whole mind, is full of darkness on spiritual subjects.

2. Such a minister will certainly, in many things, mislead his flock. He sees no truth spiritually, and therefore cannot safely be trusted as a spiritual guide. Nay, to trust him is ruin and death.

3. Selfish minds are very willing to be led, by selfish ministers, as they naturally see eye to eye. Having similar experiences, they will naturally understand each other. And a carnal church will naturally be pleased with a carnal minister. And a carnal minister will not see the defects of a carnal church. And thus they will be able to walk together, because they are agreed.

4. The doctrine of the text applies to the preparation and delivery of sermons. If a minister's eye is single he will naturally select those subjects of discourse that are suited to the state of his people. He will naturally discuss them in a way, and deliver them in a manner, that will be edifying to the people; simply because that is the object at which he aims. Having his eye single to the holiness of the Church, and the glory of God, it will be perfectly natural for him, in the preparation and delivery of sermons, to do every thing in a manner that will tend to edify and sanctify the people. But if, on the contrary, his object be to secure his salary, play the orator, or promote any selfish interest whatever, he will naturally, and of course, select subjects, prepare, and deliver them, in a manner suited to the end he has in view. If his eye be single, his whole mind will be full of light, in regard to the manner of doing his work. If his eye be evil, his whole mind will be full of darkness, and he will do any thing else, rather than edify and sanctify his people.

5. This doctrine applies to the decision of every question of duty. In selecting fields of labor, courses of life, a companion for life, or any other question of interest and duty, if the eye is single, the whole mind will be full of light. Those considerations only will be taken into the account, and suffered to have weight, that ought to influence the decision of the question. On the other hand, if the eye be evil, the whole body will be full of darkness; and the decision of the question will certainly turn upon considerations that ought to have no influence in deciding the question.

6. If you are not conscious of a single eye, you cannot safely go forward in any thing. If you have already made up your mind upon a question of doctrine or duty, and have not made it up under the influence of a single eye, you may be, and probably are, in some important respects, entirely wrong. If in selecting a course of life, a field of labor, a kind of business, a location; if you have made a bargain, or done any thing else, with a selfish intention, or under the influence of an evil eye; as certain as Christ is true, your whole body was full of darkness. The whole must be reviewed.

Perhaps it may be objected to this, that many individuals are very much enlightened, and hold true opinions, and are very orthodox, who are yet under the influence of selfishness. To this I answer both from my own experience and the word of God--that they hold the truth only in words. They know not what they say, nor whereof they affirm. They are deceived, and you who make the objection are deceived in respect to them, if you think they know the truth.

7. From this subject, it is easy to see why the Church and the ministry are so divided in their opinions. It is because they are so sectarian and selfish in their spirit. It is selfishness, and nothing but selfishness, that divides the Church. When the Church shall come to have a single eye, her watchmen and her members will then see eye to eye; because her body will then be full of light.

8. From this subject you can see the only true way of promoting real Christian Union. It is in vain to talk of destroying sectarianism by destroying creeds. Creeds may perpetuate, but they are not the cause of sectarianism. Selfishness, and nothing but selfishness is its cause. Let universal love and a single eye prevail, and sectarianism is no more. Destroy a sectarian spirit, let it be supplanted by love, and Christians would then be in a state of mind to examine their differences of opinion with candor--to come to such mutual explanations, and so honestly and thoroughly to weigh each others opinions and arguments, as to almost entirely coincide in opinion. But should there still be discrepancy of views, in relation to any points, it would be as far as possible from their thoughts, to withdraw from communion with each other, and to divide into sects and separate departments.

9. From this subject it is easy to see, why ministers feel as if they could not preach--feel as if they had nothing to say--are at a loss to know what to preach--no subject has any such interest as to enable them to preach upon it. When they have fallen into a selfish state of mind their whole body is full of darkness.

10. How infinitely important it is, that this truth should be continually remembered, that an evil eye, or selfish intention, invariably and necessarily brings the mind into great darkness. How many there are, even in the Christian Church, to whom the Bible is a sealed book, who are in great darkness in respect to truth, doctrine, and duty; whose minds resemble an ocean of darkness.

11. How many there are, who have great confidence in their own opinions, who are ready to hazard their souls upon the truth of them, who have made up their minds on the most important and solemn subjects, while under the influence of selfishness--have entered the Christian Church--are hugging their delusions--are following the guidance and instruction of those who are perhaps as much under the dominion of an evil eye, as they are themselves, and whose mind is as full of darkness as their own. And thus they go on, unsuspectingly, while Christ assures them in the most solemn manner, that if their eye is evil, their whole body is full of darkness. Still they believe it not. They have the highest confidence in their own opinions, and in the safety of their state; and thus rush on, with a kind of mad assurance, to the depths of hell!

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Questions for Atheist

2007-10-19T21:53:00.001-04:00

I recently read Joseph Farrah's Whisleblower Magazine entitled "The Rise of Atheism in America". What an eyeopener! Farrah is a brilliant man that takes on Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins and Sam Harris. I am amazed that such intelligent men could try to argue against God. I am pleased to know that such arguments are held in derision by a Holy God. In my research and study about the subject of atheism and agnosticism, I find many flaws and inconsistencies. I see it in the arguments and in the character of the proponents of the religion of atheism. I see in the soul of atheism the essence of rebellion. The arguments are tired and musty. It happened at the Scopes trial where Darrow put the Bible on trial. The Word of God has been on trial since the Garden of Eden when the slithery serpent asked, "hath God said?"

Now I have some questions for Atheists. A reasonable person can plainly see that it takes as much faith to worship at the altar of Atheism as it does to worship at the cross of Jesus Christ. One major difference is at the Cross is redemption. Here are some questions to consider:

1. How can the universe explode into an organized system of complexity from nothing?

2. How does the second law of thermodynamics, that is everything tends to entropy, apply to everything except the Big Bang?

3. Where is evolution in process right now in the universe?

4. How could man allow such gross injustice and evil into a world of suffering?

5. Where does all of the incredibly complex information come from that is stored within DNA? Information doesn’t just appear by itself. Someone has to put it there.

6. Why does humanity seem to have an innate desire and need to worship something, or someone? Why is there such a universal religious sense within humanity?

7. Isn’t it a bit extreme to assert "God does not exist"? To make such a statement you would have to have complete knowledge and to have been everywhere in the universe. Maybe God dwells somewhere in the universe you don’t know of or have not been to? Is that possible?

8. What about the evidence of design in all of creation? It is obvious that anything that is designed has to have an intelligent creator. For example, a computer never came about by mere accident, but had to have been thought out and planned by an intelligent designer. It is the same with creation, and more so, as the natural world is far more complicated than anything humanity can create.

9. How do you explain the changed lives of millions of people throughout history who testify to a life changing experience with Jesus Christ?

10. How do we account for the historical Person of Jesus Christ? He has made such an impact upon history that we even measure our calendar by Him. 2000 years on and millions still follow Him.

11. Are you seriously interested in discovering the truth or are you more interested in ridiculing religion in general and Christianity specifically?

12. Are you neglecting your duty to God by denying He exists?

13. The most important question you must consider is, "Where will you spend eternity?"

The Amazing Splash Fish

2007-10-19T08:23:00.000-04:00

(Friday Church News Notes, Oct. 19, 2007, www.wayoflife.org
fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

There is an interesting fish that lives in South America
called the splash tetra (Copella arnoldi). It is
a small elongated fish about 3 inches long and
lives near the banks of slow-moving rivers with
heavy vegetation. The male finds a suitable leaf
hanging over the water and waits for a female to
join him. They then position themselves side by
side and leap out of the water at exactly the
same time and stick to the leaf. The female lays
6 to 8 eggs and the male fertilizes them, and
they drop back into the water. This process
continues until they have laid and fertilized
about 200 eggs. The female then leaves, but the
male stays there for three days using his tail to
splash water onto the eggs every 10 or 15 minutes
so they won't dry out. He does this until the fry
hatch and fall into the water. There is only one
fish in the world that does this neat trick. I
would like someone to explain how this amazing
process could have evolved. First of all you
would have to evolve a male and female tetra fish
with the amazing capabilities of breathing
underwater and reproducing offspring and such,
all of the incredible complexity of the fish at
the genetic level. Then you would have to evolve
the splashing business. Assuming one fish learned
to jump out of the water and stick to a leaf, how
did two of them learn this at exactly the same
time? It would have been necessary that they
perfect the trick the very first time or it would
have been meaningless. If only the male jumped or
if only the female jumped or if they both jumped
but did not lay eggs and fertilize them or if
they jumped and laid and fertilized eggs but the
male didn't keep them wet -- nothing would have
happened. And how did that incredibly clever and
gymnastic pair then pass this amazing process
along to their offspring who were not around to
observe it?

How to Fire Your Pastor

2007-10-16T18:57:00.000-04:00

Years ago, I heard a sermon about how to fire your pastor. No, I’m not talking about firing your Pastor from his position. I’m talking about how to fire him up and let him know you are with him in the ministry of your church. It gives a pastor no greater joy to see the Lord’s converts walking in the Spirit. Here are some ways to fire your preacher:

1. Attend your church every time the doors are open. Sunday morning, Sunday school, evening services, Wednesday night prayer meeting, revival, special services, and church events are all meetings your Pastor schedules for the wellness of the flock. I remember when we were a young family living in North Dakota. My wife would bundle up our little babies and we went to church. Neither snow or sleet or rain... you get the idea.

2. Be on time to church—it shows you care. If you are late or don’t show up, it concerns the pastor. He knows when you’re not there. I know a couple in our church that phones the pastor if they are going to be late or would not be coming to church.

3. Highly esteem him for the work’s sake. Express great respect for your pastor. Call him by the proper title not "Pastor Paul" or "Brother Bill," but give him the respect he deserves. Most pastors I know like to be called, "Preacher" or "Pastor Lastname" or "Brother." If your pastor insists on a first name basis I wonder about his training and his call to the ministry. Familiarity can breed contempt. The office of pastor is a high calling and should not be downgraded to familiar terms. I knew my pastor for ten years before he was my pastor. I was on friendly and familiar ground. Our families fellowshipped together and we still vacation together. I still call him pastor or preacher.

4. Show enthusiasm at church and in the preaching. Be an encouragement by saying a loud, spirit-led “AMEN!” when the pastor makes a salient point in the message. Try not to distract with your amens, but do be a blessing. Say amen to the choir specials and special songs. Be an encouragement to your pastor!

5. Write your pastor little notes of encouragement. Let him know you are praying for him. Let him know you are thinking of him.

6. Be sensitive to your pastor's needs. If he needs something, try to supply it for him. I know people that are in trades who make sure the preacher’s needs are met in their particular fields. One man could do computer repairs and upgrades, another—carpentry, another—plumbing.

7. Remember special days in your pastor's life. His anniversary and birthday are both special days that should be remembered, as well as those of his family members. Have a special day for him. Surprise him!

8. Do good to the pastor’s children. Show them love and do not expect more out of the preacher's kids than you do from any one else’s. The same thing goes for his wife.

9. Protect your pastor from troublemakers in the church. Be on the watch for divisiveness and gossip. Do not criticize or find fault. Love covers a multitude of faults.

10. Let your pastor know about problems. He can help. In the multitude of counselors there is wisdom. Ladies, do not overburden your pastor with all the intimate details of your medical operation or marital problems. Be discreet. Pray about it, then speak. Do not approach the pastor right before he stands up to preach. Don't be a time hog or time waster. Be spirit-led.

11. The best way to fire your preacher is to live a Spirit-filled life. Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

Now go on and fire your pastor! Your life will be blessed and enriched because of your burning desire to see your pastor fired up.

Martin Luther, an anti-semite?

2007-10-15T21:16:00.000-04:00

Much could be said of the reformer Martin Luther. Some say he was a great man that came along and corrected the errors of the "church". (meaning the Roman Catholic Church. ) We know him to be zealous Catholic set out to reform the Roman Church. He never intended to begin a movement that today bears his name. He was a dyed in the wool Romanist.

I came across an article recently, written by ML called "The Jews and their lies." In the context we read the vitriolic nature of Luthers distaste for the Jews. Now some have defended Luther in this pamphlet but I cannot find any excuse for a Christian to justify such speech.

Consider these excerpts:

"I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's Word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen."

***

"He did not call them Abraham's children, but a 'brood of vipers' [Matt. 3:7]. Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, 'He has a demon' [Matt 11:18]. Our Lord calls them a 'brood of vipers'; furthermore in John 8 [:39,44] he states: 'If you were Abraham's children ye would do what Abraham did . . . You are of your father the devil.' It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today."

***

"They are the real liars and bloodhounds, who have not only perverted and falsified the entire Scriptures from beginning to end and without ceasing with their interpretations. And all of the anxious sighing, longing and hoping of their hearts is directed to the time when some day they would like to deal with us heathen as they dealt with the heathen in Persia at the time of Esther . . . "

***

"Oh how they love the book of Esther, which so nicely agrees with their bloodthirsty, revengeful and murderous desire and hope. The sun never did shine on a more bloodthirsty and revengeful people as they, who imagine to be the people of God, and who desire to and think they must murder and crush the heathen. And the foremost undertaking which they expect of their Messiah is that he should slay and murder the whole world with the sword. As they at first demonstrated against us Christians and would like to do now, if they only could; have also tried it often and have been repeatedly struck on their snouts . . ."

***

"Their breath stinks for the gold and silver of the heathen; since no people under the sun always have been, still are, and always will remain more avaricious than they, as can be noticed in their cursed usury. They also find comfort with this: 'When the Messiah comes, He shall take all the gold and silver in the world and distribute it among the Jews.' Thus, wherever they can direct Scripture to their insatiable avarice, they wickedly do so."
"Therefore know, my dear Christians, that next to the Devil, you have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement and enemy than a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a Jew. There may be some among them who believe what the cow or the goose believes. But all of them are surrounded with their blood and circumcision. In history, therefore, they are often accused of poisoning wells, stealing children and mutilating them; as in Trent, Weszensee and the like. Of course they deny this. Be it so or not, however, I know full well that the ready will is not lacking with them if they could only transform it into deeds, in secret or openly."
***

"A person who does not know the Devil, might wonder why they are so at enemity with the Christians above all others; for which they have no reason, since we only do good to them."

***

"They live among us in our homes, under our protection, use land and highways, market and streets. Princes and government sit by, snore and have their maws open, let the Jews take from their purse and chest, steal and rob whatever they will. That is, they permit themselves and their subjects to be abused and sucked dry and reduced to beggars with their own money, through the usury of the Jews. For the Jews, as foreigners, certainly should have nothing from us; and what they have certainly must be ours. They do not work, do not earn anything from us, neither do we donate or give it to them. Yet they have our money and goods and are lords in our land where they are supposed to be in exile!"

***

"If a thief steals ten gulden he must hang; if he robs people on the highway, his head is gone. But a Jew, when he steals ten tons of gold through his usury, is dearer than God himself!"

***

"Do not their TALMUD and rabbis write that it is no sin to kill if a Jew kills a heathen, but it is a sin if he kills a brother in Israel? It is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a heathen. Therefore, to steal and rob (as they do with their moneylending) from a heathen, is a divine service . . . And they are the masters of the world and we are their servants -- yea, their cattle!"

***

"I maintain that in three fables of Aesop there is more wisdom to be found than in all the books of the Talmudists and rabbis and more than ever could come into the hearts of the Jews . . ."

***

"Should someone think I am saying too much -- I am saying much too little! For I see in [their] writings how they curse us Goyim and wish as all evil in their schools and prayers. They rob us of our money through usury, and wherever they are able, they play us all manner of mean tricks . . . No heathen has done such things and none would to so except the Devil himself and those whom he possesses -- as he possesses the Jews."

***

"Burgensis, who was a very learned rabbi among them and by the grace of God became a Christian (which seldom occurs), is much moved that in their schools they so horribly curse us Christians (as Lyra also writes) and from that draws the conclusion that they must not be the people of God."

***

"Now behold what a nice, thick, fat lie it is when they complain about being captives among us! Jerusalem was destroyed more than 1,400 years ago during that time we Christians have been tortured and persecuted by the Jews in all the world. On top of that, we do not know to this day what Devil brought them into our country. We did not fetch them from Jerusalem! . . . Yes, we have and hold them captive, as I would like to keep my rheumatism, and all other diseases and misfortunes, who must wait as a poor servant, with money and property and everything I have! I wish they were in Jerusalem with the other Jews and whomsoever they would like to have with them."

***

"Therefore the blind Jews are truly stupid fools . . ."

***

"Now just behold these miserable, blind, and senseless people. "

***

". . . their blindness and arrogance are as solid as an iron mountain. "

***

"Learn from this, dear Christian, what you are doing if you permit the blind Jews to mislead you. Then the saying will truly apply, 'When a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into the pit' [cf. Luke 6:39]. You cannot learn anything from them except how to misunderstand the divine commandments . . ."

***

"Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and veheming his eyes on them."

***

"Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security."

***

However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath."

***

"If I had to refute all the other articles of the Jewish faith, I should be obliged to write against them as much and for as long a time as they have used for inventing their lies -- that is, longer than two thousand years."

***

". . . Christ and His Word can hardly be recognized because of the great vermin of human ordinances. However, let this suffice for the time being on their lies against doctrine or faith."

***

"Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience. Anyway, they have their reward for constantly giving God the lie."

***

"No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."

***

". . . but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"

***

"Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they suck the marrow from our bones."

***

"I brief, dear princes and lords, those of you who have Jews under your rule -- if my counsel does not please you, find better advice, so that you and we all can be rid of the unbearable, devilish burden of the Jews, lest we become guilty sharers before God in the lies, blasphemy, the defamation, and the curses which the mad Jews indulge in so freely and wantonly against the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, this dear mother, all Christians, all authority, and ourselves. Do not grant them protection, safe-conduct, or communion with us . . . With this faithful counsel and warning I wish to cleanse and exonerate my conscience."

***

"Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew."

***

"However, we must avoid confirming them in their wanton lying, slandering, cursing, and defaming. Nor dare we make ourselves partners in their devilish ranting and raving by shielding and protecting them, by giving them food, drink, and shelter, or by other neighborly deeds."

***

"Therefore we Christians, in turn, are obliged not to tolerate their wanton and conscious blasphemy."

***

"Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death."

***

"What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Let us apply the ordinary wisdom of other nations like France, Spain, Bohemia, et al., who made them give an account of what they had stolen through usury, and divided it evenly; but expelled them from their country; For as heard before, God's wrath is so great over them that through soft mercy they only become more wicked, through hard treatment, however, only a little better. Therefore, away with them!"

***

quot;How much more unbearable it is that we should permit the entire Christendom and all of us to be bought with our own money, be slandered and cursed by the Jews, who on top of all that be made rich and our lords, who laugh us to scorn and are tickled by their audacity!"

***

"What a joyful affair that would be for the Devil and his angels, and cause them to laugh through their snouts like a sow grinning at her little pigs, but deserving real wrath before God."

***

"What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming. If we do, we become sharers in their lies, cursing and blasphemy. Thus we cannot extinguish the unquenchable fire of divine wrath, of which the prophets speak, nor can we convert the Jews. With prayer and the fear of God we must pratice a sharp mercy to see whether we might save at least a few from the glowing flames. We dare not avenge ourselves. Vengenance a thousand times worse than we could wish them already has them by the throat. I shall give you my sincere advice:
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly -- and I myself was unaware of it -- will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. . . .

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuternomy 17 [:10 ff.]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: "what they teach you in accord with the Law of the Lord." Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people's obedience contrary to the law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison, cursing, and blasphemy. In the same way the pope also held us captive with the declaration in Matthew 16 {:18], "You are Peter," etc, inducing us to believe all the lies and deceptions that issued from his devilish mind. He did not teach in accord with the Word of God, and therefore he forfeited the righ to teach.

Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let they stay at home. . . If you princes and nobles do not close the road legally to such exploiters, then some troop ought to ride against them, for they will learn from this pamphlet what the Jews are and how to handle them and that they ought not to be protected. You ought not, you cannot protect them, unless in the eyes of God you want to share all their abomination.

Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. The reason for such a measure is that, as said above, they have no other means of earning a livelihood than usury, and by it they have stolen and robbed from us all they possess. Such money should now be used in no other way than the following: Whenever a Jew is sincerely converted, he should be handed one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred florins, as personal circumstances may suggest. With this he could set himself up in some occupation for the support of his poor wife and children, and the maintenance of the old or feeble. For such evil gains are cursed if they are not put to use with God's blessing in a good and worthy cause.

Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."

***

"But what will happen even if we do burn down the Jews' synagogues and forbid them publicly to praise God, to pray, to teach, to utter God's Name? They will still keep doing it in secret. If we know that they are doing this in secret, it is the same as if they were doing it publicly. For our knowledge of their secret doings and our toleration of them implies that they are not secret after all and thus our conscience is encumbered with it before God."

***

Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss in sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire. That would demonstrate to God our serious resolve and be evidence to all the world that it was in ignorance that we tolerated such houses, in which the Jews have reviled God, our dear Creator and Father, and his Son most shamefully up till now but that we have now given them their due reward."

"To sum up, dear princes and nobles who have Jews in your domains, if this advice of mine does not suit you, then find a better one so that you and we may all be free of this insufferable devilish burden -- the Jews . . ."

"Let the government deal with them in this respect, as I have suggested. But whether the government acts or not, let everyone at least be guided by his own conscience and form for himself a definition or image of a Jew. When you lay eyes on or think of a Jew you must say to yourself: Alas, that mouth which I there behold has cursed and execrated and maligned every Saturday my dear Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed me with His precious blood; in addition, it prayed and pleaded before God that I, my wife and children, and all Christians might be stabbed to death and perish miserably. And he himself would gladly do this if he were able, in order to appropriate our goods . . ."

"Such a desperate, thoroughly evil, poisonous, and devilish lot are these Jews, who for these fourteen hundred years have been and still are our plague, our pestilence, and our misfortune."

"I have read and heard many stories about the Jews which agree with this judgment of Christ, namely, how they have poisoned wells, made assassinations, kidnapped children, as related before. I have heard that one Jew sent another Jew, and this by means of a Christian, a pot of blood, together with a of wine, in which when drunk empty, a dead Jew was found. There are many other similar stories. For their kidnapping of children they have often been burned at the stake or banished (as we already heard). I am well aware that they deny all of this. However, it all coincides with the judgment of Christ which declares that they are venomous, bitter, vindictive, tricky serpents, assassins, and children of the devil, who sting and work harm stealthily wherever they cannot do it openly. For this reason, I would like to see them where there are no Christians. The Turks and other heathen do not tolerate what we Christians endure from these venomous serpents and young devils . . . next to the devil, a Christian has no more bitter and galling foe than a Jew. There is no other to whom we accord as many benefactions and from whom we suffer as much as we do from these base children of the devil, this brood of vipers."

***

"We are at fault for not slaying them."

***

"I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people, as suggested above, to see whether this might not help (though it is doubtful). They must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish. They surely do not know what they are doing; moreover, as people possessed, they do not wish to know it, hear it, or learn it. There it would be wrong to be merciful and confirm them in their conduct. If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated."

***

"They exalt themselves and praise God for separating them from the heathen. . . In order that their raving, frantic and foolish nonsense might be perfect, they praise and thank God, first, that they are human beings and not animals; secondly, that they are Israelites and not Goyim; thirdly, that they were created as Men and not as Women. Such foolishness they do not have from Israel, but from Goyim."

"For thus the historians write that the Greek PLATO daily gave such praise and thanks to God, if such blasphemy and haughtiness could be called the praise of God. For that man (Plato) also praised his gods for these three things, that he was a man and not an animal, a man and not a woman. a Greek and not a non-Greek or barbarian. Such is the praying of a fool and the praise of a blasphemous barbarian: just as the Mals imagine that they alone are human beings and all the rest of the world nothing but inhuman beings, ducks, or mice."

***

"My essay, I hope, will furnish a Christian (who in any case has no desire to become a Jew) with enough material not only to defend himself against the blind, venomous Jews, but also to become the foe of the Jews' malice, lying, and cursing, and to understand not only that their belief is false but that they are surely possessed by all devils. May Christ, our dear Lord, convert them mercifully and preserve us steadfastly and immovably in the knowledge of him, which is eternal life. Amen."

***

"Even with no further evidence than the Old Testament, I would maintain, and no person on earth could alter my opinion, that the Jews as they are today are veritably a mixture of all the depraved and malevolent knaves of the whole world over, who have then been dispersed in all countries, similarly to the Tartars, Gypsies and such folk."

Martin Luther, an anti-semite? You decide.

Jude 3 KJB

2007-10-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

Some of it this is mine and some is borrowed. I will give credit where credit is due.
It is my duty as a Christian to address these issues for such a time as this.

Jude 1:3 "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints."