Praying for the President

I am praying that our President will be converted by the power of God to salvation and the knowledge of the truth:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. - 1 Timothy 2:1-4 (ESV)

This misguided "minister" has a different idea. Where does he get the Scriptural support for that? How is that "godly and dignified in every way"?

Ted Kennedy deserves more attention than any Republican?

Even living Presidents? That is what this "journalist" thinks:

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This might just be true. How many Republicans:

• Murdered a woman.
• Committed treason in order to further political aims.

Oh wait, they weren't talking about these things in the halls of the MSM this past week.

We are going for a ride!

Whee!



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Does this guy belong anywhere near the White House?

But in jail, he said, "I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'" Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. "I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary." In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist." Van Jones, Obama administration "Green Jobs" Czar.

This guy is scary, and shouldn't be within 10 million miles of the White House, let alone a close advisor to the President. I am afraid that the "enemies domestic" are more dangerous than the "enemies foreign" these days.

William Wilberforce

Today is the 250th birthday of William Wilberforce.

"So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition."

Send in the Marines

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"Stay away from my kids!"

Do You Have Two Minutes?

Watch this video. It could make an eternal difference.



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Honor Killings in America?

"I want to be free, I want to worship Jesus, I want to go to church on Sundays, and read my Bible and say that Jesus is alive... I don't have that."

Please pray for Rifqa and for others in her situation.

Rev. Ike goes to his reward

Prosperity preacher "Rev Ike" dies at age 74 on July 28, 2009.

“If it’s that difficult for a rich man to get into heaven,” he would often say, citing Matthew, “think how terrible it must be for a poor man to get in. He doesn’t even have a bribe for the gatekeeper.”

I don't imagine that he had any success bribing the gatekeeper, even with his many Rolls Royces.

An Important Birthday Today

And the world would never again be the same.

William Carey August 17, 1761 - June 9, 1834

"Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God."

Just wait...

...until the Federal Government is "paying" for your health care.

If they can't even manage the "Cash for Clunkers" program why would anyone think that they can manage a program that has life and death consequences? Only 2% of car dealers paid so far, and 4 out of 5 claims denied for "minor oversight"? Not enough staffing, complicated forms and requirements? It sounds like normal bureaucratic bungling. No one is going to die if the clunkers don't get paid on time, but what happens when you can't get needed surgery or cancer treatment?

A Cup of Cold Water

Regardless of one's views on illegal immigration it would be hard for me to believe that anyone would see this article as anything but troubling. There is something wrong when someone is punished for providing water for travelers in the southwest desert.

"And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward." - Matthew 10:42 (ESV)

Christian Freedom

"We must now discuss Christian freedom." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 edition, pg. 176.

You don't know how happy I was to read those words the other day.

As part of my year long celebration of John Calvin's 500th birthday on July 19th I have been reading from and about John Calvin. I had previously read the 1559 Institutes but wanted to compare Calvin's thought as a young man. What is remarkable is the fact that the Calvin of 1536 is very much the same man in 1559. I know that I have changed greatly, especially in theological matters, in the past 23 years, and especially since I was age 27, the age that Calvin was when the Institutes was first published.

The happiness that I express above was due to the fact that I have come to what I consider to be the most important part of Calvin's work, his treatise on Christian freedom. Truthfully, the past several weeks reading left me cold. Not that Calvin's argument against the errors of Roman Catholic sacramental system wasn't both excellent and important, it just wasn't that important to me. Having never been subject to that system as a Baptist, and possibly because we live in a post-counter-reformation, post-Vatican II world, I haven't lost much sleep worrying about sacramentalism.

Yet, it is because of the above that Calvin's material on Christian freedom is so important. The world he lived in was very much different, both politically and religiously than ours today. Men are still the same now as then, but the majority of Calvin's readers had no experience with the political and religious freedom that we have come to know today. Calvin's writings opened up new possibilities, leading to new ways of thinking and eventually to new forms of government. It is no exaggeration to call Calvin the "spiritual father" of America, so radical was his thought.

Maybe it is time, once again, for us to seriously discuss Christian freedom.

Islam once again demonstrates that it is the "Religion of Peace"

Three Nigerian pastors beheaded by Islamic extremists in Nigeria.

I expect that "moderate" Muslims world-wide will quickly denounce this act.........Not.

9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 “Therefore they are before the throne of God,
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.

- Revelation 7:9-15 (ESV)

Easy Believism Kills

From the online blog of mass murderer George Sodini:

Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.

We do not what he was actually told, and it might be that Sodini distorted the gospel message that he received in the church he attended. However, one can only wonder if we are seeing the fruit of a "gospel" that says "pray this prayer" instead of "repent and follow Jesus". Yes, Sodini was a disturbed, delusional, outcast, but one has to wonder if belief in an easy believism didn't embolden him in this massacre.

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. -Romans 6:1-14 (ESV)

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. - 1 John 1:5-10 (ESV)

1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. - 1 John 2:1-6 (ESV)

Letting people believe that anything is an acceptable substitute for true new birth conversion resulting in obedience to Christ, whether it be a prayer, a baptism, a walk down a church aisle, the handshake of a preacher, or anything else, leads to false converts and sometimes horrific events like this.

Followup:

“Cheap grace is the enemy of the church. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth . . . an intellectual assent to that idea is held to be sufficient to secure remission of sins. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without repentance. . . grace without discipleship, grace without a cross . . . Costly grace is the gospel [of the church] . . . It is costly because it costs a man his life, and grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his son . . . it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God . . . When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York, NY: MacMillan, 1959), 45-48.

Grasping at Straws

I am tempted to say "so what?" about this news story. This is about as relevant as a news story that said something like the following:

Police have revealed today that last night's drunk driver was driving an automobile manufactured by the same company that sold a car to the driver of last month's horrific tragedy. More at 11:00.

Accessories? He bought accessories? What, like maybe a holster? An extra magazine? A gunbelt? Shooting glasses and earmuffs?

Journalism, don't you love it?

More from the "Religion of Peace"

Christian Family burned alive in Pakistan.

Pray for your persecuted brothers and sisters.

It's August...

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