I am the Bible.
I am God's wonderful library.
I make known to all, Him who is Truth.
To the weary pilgrim, I am a good, strong staff.
To the one who sits in black gloom, [like the Dalit or Untouchable in India, or the drug or porn addict or the victim of abuse or neglect, or the tortured Christian in Laos or China or Burma or Nepal, or the Sudanese Christian slave abducted from Darfur, or the well-off American enslaved by materialism and self-indulgment and self-centeredness and ease] I am glorious light.
To those who stoop beneath many burdens, I am sweet rest.
To him who has lost his way, I am a safe guide.
To those who have been hurt by sin, I am healing balm.
To the discouraged, I whisper a glad message of hope.
To those who are distressed by the storms of life,
I am an anchor, sure and steadfast.
To those who suffer in lonely solitude,
I am as a cool, soft hand resting on a fevered brow.
Oh, child of man, to best defend me, JUST USE ME.
The Bible is God's road map as you travel through life.--from Faith Magazine, Author Unknown
"In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not the less than my own...No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency.
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God."--George Washington
How precious then is a Bible, more precious indeed than all the gold and jewels on earth, when printed in one's own language, and the freedom to read it, without fearing arrest, imprisonment, torture, and death! But our forefathers did not have it so good, for in Great Britain, as we said, it once was a capital crime to render the Bible into English that the common people, that is us, could understand. The history of this time is recorded in sites such as this (and you don't need to buy anything to access the history offered):
Next, I had been reading the Master, William Shakespeare, all along through college training in literature, and Hamlet, King Lear, and other immortal plays by the Stratford-on-Avon genius convinced me that man has honor and meaning to his existence. This too secularism and humanism had destroyed in me, but Shakespeare restored it for me. So now, added to my belief in a moral order in the Universe (and a respect for the Bible, particularly Job), was my belief that man is not meaningless as taught by the Existentialists and the secularists and other great thinkers in their books, plays, philosophies, and dramas. To the contrary, man is a meaningful being! He has a future and a hope. But what were they? Next "it happened" one day that someone left a Gospel of John on a bannister of the staircase in the dorm which I routinely used to get to my room on the second floor. I picked it up and took it along to my room, then opened it like any book of literature or philosophy and began reading attentively and seriously. I had never read it before like this, but I read it through in one sitting, giving it my critical attention. As I read it, I saw that the case it was presenting was perfectly credible, well-evidenced and set forth, and when I closed the book, I said to myself, having come to my inescapable conclusion at the end of the events of Jesus's Crucifixion and Resurrection: "He's the Son of God!"
I realized that the book told the truth, and I was convinced by its case and evidence for that belief, and I thought no more of it that day. But that opened the door to God I had closed fifteen years previously when I set off on the prodigal's path to self-destruction. When I ended my reading of the Gospel of John, I had testified to myself (I thought I was alone) that I believed that I had accepted the truth presented in the Gospel of John, that Jesus is the Son of God. But Someone else must have been there with me! I did not guess that just doing that brought not merely God, but Jesus Christ back into my heart and life to be my Savior and Lord. But it did! I began hearing from the Spirit, and being urged to leave on graduation and take work in Minneapolis with my Christian uncle and aunt in their landscaping business, I left Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Washington (a once small college town in the Potholes/Palouse Wheat Country of Eastern Washington) and moved to Minneapolis. I immediately was ushered into a new life in Christ, taken to a real, living, Bible-based church of the Lord, where I could begin to grow in the knowledge and stature of the Lord Jesus under Bible-based preaching and study and prayer and fellowship with the church.
I had lost fifteen years of my life in terrible folly and sin and spiritual apostasy, yet God restored me to himself and his kingdom, and saved me from death and destruction where I was surely headed. I could not remake the past, nor redeem the shameful deeds of my sinfulness, but Christ could! It doesn't all happen at once, but He makes all things new as the scripture says. I became, due to the grace of Christ and his power to save and restore, a Christian, something I had fifteen years before this vowed not to be again! I gladly ate those foolish words, as I wouldn't dream of returning to a life of sin and self-serving indulgment of this world and its pleasures and poisons. That was death, not life, I found. That was error, not truth. I had taken a wrong path and now had been set back on the path to life. I am so glad Christ saved me--again! I want the truth, I want life, I want the happiness and light that only Jesus can give. The bumper stickers you used to see were wrong, in my experience. I didn't find "it". "It" found me! That makes all the difference in the world.--Ronald Ginther
"I recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scripture and proven by all history that those nations only are blest whose God is the Lord.
"I believe that it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to include the influence of His Holy Spirit to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentence will lead to mercy and pardon...
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But, we have forgotten God"--Abraham Lincoln
1. Christian Education
2. Prayer
3. Holy Spirit
4. Biblical Science
5. Foundational Principles
6. Witnessing (includes Apologetics) and Discipleship
7. Types of Christ (OT)
8. Bible Covenants/Israel/Bible Atlas
9. Christian Hope and Character
10. The Prophetic Calling
I have often thought that when the economic crunch comes, when there is a true melt-down of the U.S. economy, these mega-ministries will be the first to go belly up. A day is coming when the leaders of these "faith ministries" will be sitting in their million dollar mansions (one of the several they have) and be unable to pay the light and heat bills. What then? Who will want to buy such white elephants even if they choose to sell the mansions and downsize a bit? In a real depression, nobody! They will be left to starve in those mansions, if they don't get out and find some real work to do. That will be hard for most of them--as they have lived so high on the hog for years, they won't be able to adjust easily to doing manual labor just to survive with the rest of us common workers and laborers. What will their teachings on seed-faith and prosperity do for them then? It will be interesting to see! But I don't want to see their fall. It is coming, but there is no delight in seeing what the Word of God warns us will happen to all who take the path they have taken. The bubble they are riding is going to burst, sooner or later. The bubble that once was so glorious, that a while back burst under Tammy and Jim Baker, it is going to burst under Joyce Meyer, Mike Murdock, Jesse Duplantis, Richard Roberts, Paula White, etc., and a host of music makers with them. There is no point in trying to separate chaff from wheat at this time. Time will show what these ministries are really made of at the root, and if the root is bad, the whole plant is going to collapse, wither, and blow away as if it had never existed--when the Big Crunch comes. We're going to see it--only I hope these people, and smaller fry of this numerous tribe, have something real that will not perish in the coming hard times.
This can be a needed warning to us all. On what foundation are we building? Are we riding a bubble of our own making? If so, it is not going to last. Bubbles never do, however beautiful they are, or how high they fly.
Near the spot where his blood was spilled, two Kabyle men were having morning coffee in a cafe. One was visibly disturbed. For the night before, he had a vivid dream, like a vision. He told his friend about a Man in white who stood before him, saying, 'I am Jesus. I am the way, the truth, and the life. If You want to know God, you must know Me.'
As he shared his story, the jaw of his friend dropped and his eyes grew wide. Stunned, he was certain that his friend thought him crazy. I suppose he might have feared he could have reacted against him violently.
Instead, his astonished friend leaned over the table and said, 'I had exactly the same dream last night!' Others in the cafe had been listening. One by ne, each reported they had had the same dream! Eventually, it was learned that every man, woman and child in that little town had seen the risen Christ in a dream!
During the next six months, the people of the town sought out the gospel and 400 people gave their lives to Jesus and were baptized. From this little town alone there resulted an 18-fold increase in the number of Christians in the entire nation!"
After this incident in the cafe took place, transforming the town, almost 700 years had passed since the lone Spanish missionary had died after being stoned in that small town on the seacoast of Algeria. Just two years afterwards the "JESUS" film was completed! This film is going out to the entire world, reaching not just hundreds of millions but billions of the formerly unreached, including those in the Muslim world.
Is there a connection? In the Kingdom of God, no drop of blood spilled by any man, woman, or child slain for Christ's sake will ever cease having a great effect, as this incident proved.--Ed.
I join with millions of Christians in asking you to NOT sacrifice Israel on the altar of appeasement.
The Word of God says this about Israel:
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee."--Psalm 122:6.
"I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee."--Genesis 12:3
Mr. President, based on the above scriptures, I believe that the future of America lies in our support of Israel. I prayerfully beg you to boldly stand with the Jewish people and oppose those countries who seek to destroy the Bible Land by dividing it and bring great suffering and pain to all of God's children, Jewish, Arab and Christian alike. Division is not the answer, or it would have solved the problem long before this time, either there or anywhere else that can be named. The land in question was divided--was it not?--back in 1948 by the British authorities in Palestine, and fierce, all-out war immediately erupted, unleashed by five neighboring Arab states allied to the Arab Palestinians, which they waged against the Jews who had just declared, legitimately, an independent state of Israel in their own territory under the British and United Nations mandate. The Arabs have never changed their position since that time when they first repudiated the UN mandate dividing the land into an Arab or Arab Palestinian territory and a much smaller Jewish Palestinian territory. That same repudiation is written into the Palestinian charter and espoused by all the neighboring Arab states, as well as Iran. Clearly, division is a roadmap to war and continual aggression against Israel, to get all the land back allotted by Great Britain to the Jews under the United Nation's mandate.
We have all seen clearly, repeatedly, that religious divisions cannot be healed politically, however well-intentioned our State Department is in promoting "land for peace" and a Palestinian State along side of Israel. Whatever treaties are signed only serve as mere pretexts for gaining time and military advantage in order to launch the next all-out attacks against Israel to wipe it out of existence.
Mr. President, this is not a problem that can be solved by human means--it is God's to solve. That is the cold, stark reality that must be faced by all human government and their agencies. It is, indeed, an act of hubris to think that humanity can solve the world's ills, much less the Mideast's Arab-Jewish conflict. Human governments and agencies and the United Nations have altogether failed to "solve" the Mideast Arab's conflict with Israel in the past, and they will always fail. I am praying for wisdom for you in your office of President, and may God bless America, may God bless Israel, and may God bless the oppressed Arab people, and may God bless you.
Sincerely,
_____________________________________Signature
The website will give you his email address at the Whitehouse.
Chicago once gave us the illustrous Moody Bible Institute and the unadulterated preaching of the Gospel, but now we get the Witch of the North, Ms. Oprah Winfrey! She has created the biggest church for the New Age Religion in the world! Her membership is something over 20 million--but she greatly influences many more millions than that. America is under her spell, with Dr. Phil assisting her like an altar boy.
"EVOLUTION'S DENIAL OF BIBLE AUTHORITY TO SPEARHEAD THE SPIRIT OF ATHEISM IN THE SEVENTIES.
On June 17, 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that it would be unconstitutional for any school to authorize Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's prayer. But nothing was said against the teaching of evolution in the schools, a teaching which implies the Genesis record of creation to be a myth, while claiming that man sprang from the brute beast. This rank hoax, the religion of atheists and infidels is being taught in the schools and colleges. Parents who believe the Bible should find out if the Christian college or public school to which they send their children uses these textbooks. Such teaching can rob their children's faith in God." (page 27)
In other words, a man in black, looking like a harmless, little old grandpa turned out to be our own American version of Genghis Khan, or a a fellow mass murderer, Tamerlane, who destroyed something like 50,000 cities and villages in Asia, murdering five million people, a disaster from which Asia did not recover. Multiply that by ten at least, and you get the number of Americans this kindly-looking "grandpa" figure murdered with the stroke of his pen (just as the kindly, grandpa-ish Pol Pot, commander of the Khmer Rouge, murdered millions of his own fellow Cambodians in the most horrible, brutal ways with the stroke of his pen as supreme authority and leader of his benighted country). You don't have to throw bombs or shoot anyone to be a mass murderer these days. Just be a judge, a Supreme Court justice with a pivotal vote like Justice Blackmun utilized, and you can wipe out over one third of a generation with your little black pen! He even thought Roe vs. Wade and its companion atrocity were his chief legacy from his years on the bench! For every single innocent life he signed away, may his name be spat upon, execrated, debased, abhorred, and consigned to everlasting infamy! It would have been better if some men had not been born. Immorality is bad enough, and most of us must admit we have "been there, done that." But killing helpless, human lives in the womb, never giving them a chance to be born and grow up, experience life, play, go to school, get married, work at jobs, develop talents, travel, get married, have children and families of their own, live to be grandparents, etc--to deny life and all that makes up human life in all its complexity and challenges and triumphs and failures...for the sake of "reproductive rights" and "Privacy," to deny what we the living have to others who have already been conceived and are on their way to entering our world, to yet voiceless in the womb human beings who had the misfortune to be in the womb, unable to vote or speak out for themselves, well, wouldn't the mother of such a one suffer regret for having given birth to him or her?
I know nothing about the mother or the parents of Mr. Blackmun. I know just a little about his background, from Pat Robertson's book. He was a lawyer representing the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for some years, a most prestigious job. Then he went from there to the bench of the Supreme Court, to play his part in an anti-human rights conspiracy and usurpation of powers not given it under the Constitution of the United States by passing rulings on abortion that unleashed the worst genocide in human history that we have recorded.
How did Justice Blackmun happen to go down this road to perdition, taking our nation with him and over fifty million murdered fellow Americans? We may never find out, but at least he must be made to serve as a warning. He died in 1999, so he did not live to see the horror of 9/11, a Muslim terrorist attack on a chief icon and financial center of this nation (which was part of a fundamentalist Muslim, masterful, many-pronged strategy, to strike down New York City's finances and transportation system, and even the government in Congress, the White House, and Defense Department in Washington simultaneously).
Every day, thanks to the late Justice Blackmun's legacy in the Supreme Court, we suffer the deaths of over 4,000 innocent human unborns, or one 9/ll daily. This is just half the real number, as 50% of the murders in the abortion clinics are not reported, according to an abortion clinic owner and operator I have watched interviewed. Our nation is drenched with the blood of these innocents, and that blood is crying out every minute of every hour of the day and night unto God for justice, you can be sure. Innocent blood has a voice and reaches the ears of God! Abel's blood is still crying out to God, the scriptures say, even after thousands of years passing from the time his brother murdered him. God is just. Mercy is meaningless if there is no divine justice. To let all criminals go indefinitely would make a mockery of a Just God. That cannot happen. Our Just God is merciful, but he must punish us and our nation for these deaths if we continue to refuse to repent and stop the killings. All these murdered souls are alive in heaven, and there they all demand our punishment for the crime of murder, which in God's justice system requires capital punishment, or death, eternal death. They have a right to demand justice for our killing them. Yes, Christ died for all our sins, including the murders of 50 to 100 million unborn Americans, but if we are not saved and born-again, can we be forgiven? If we refuse to repent and stop the killings, can we be forgiven, even if we are saved and born again? We will be held responsible, to the degree that we are guilty.
Christ provided forgiveness for all murderers when he died on the cross for their sins, but they still go to hell if they do not repent and gain the gift of grace and forgiveness. It is not their right, it is a gift, which we must access through forgiveness, as it does not automatically go to us--whether we repent or not.
Again, since we are so confused as evangelicals, Christ forgave all murderers on the Cross even those who crucified him (and who among us did not crucify him by our own sins and rebellion against God?), but murderers and anyone who commited any sin still pay a penalty, or should, of death by execution. Sin is that terrible in God's eyes--sorry! He is holy, and cannot condone sin--not every! Thus the Bible says that the penalty of sin is death--period. The guilty cannot blame their environments, though they do in modern America's law courts. Cain was held responsible by God for killing Abel his brother, even when there were no law courts, other than the one presided over by God, the Divine Judge himself. If Cain with the absence of a written law code and court system with lawyers did not escape the judgment of law for his crime of murder, how can we, who have all these curbs to human crime and the laws on the books to remind us what is legal and what is not? We can point to these decisions of the Supreme Court to justify the killings, but that does not change the Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill, or supercede or annul it in any way or degree. God's commandment against murder existed before the crime was ever known to be a crime, as we found out in the Cain vs. Almighty God case in Genesis. God did not kill Cain on the spot, it is true, and there was no maximum security prison to put him in--and let him run off from his own family to the land of Nob, but he did not get away from his guilt, he was an exile, a renegade, living beyond the law the rest of his days, branded with God's mark to keep other people from putting him to death for his crime. That living death was God's punishment--since he could never rectify the crime however long he lived and busied himself with things to try to forget it, and he would have to suffer guilt and remorse the rest of his days, always wondering if somebody would do to him what he had done to his innocent brother. Death on the spot would have been more merciful. But God allowed him to live, so that he could learn to see the full extent of the crime he had committed against his brother and against his Creator.
How then can we escape blame for killing all these unborn Americans? Did our environment cause us to do this? Passing the blame game, or playing the victim, both will not work for us. We are accountable in God's eyes, and He is the Supreme Judge, not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. God is the Supreme Court too--not the high court of kangeroos in Washington that carries that exalted title, and hardly deserves it.
We really should repent as soon as we can--or suffer the consequences, the deserved judgment and destruction of our nation and people. We do not deserve to continue as a nation and people, while perpetrating such crimes of inhumanity as mass infanticide and genocide against innocent unborns. We are living on borrowed time in an age of grace, but grace, as the Bible testifies, runs out eventually. It is not unlimited--for justice still exists, and it must exact the penalty awarded anyone who breaks divine law.
Will we fail to repent and change our ways--change by repealing these horrendous, barbaric, criminally murderous rulings of the Supreme Court and shutting down the abortion/infanticide/eugenics mills from coast to coast in time to avert the full force of God's punishment for our crime? Do we have another day, or a week, or a month to do so? Will we stop the killings, or will we go defiantly on, meanwhile indulging our lunatic orgies of self-gratification, drug use, violence, perverted sex, TV voyeurism, pornography, and defiance of law, and ridiculing of anything moral and Christian, rejecting the very concept of right and wrong as we teach children to adopt a lifestyle what is completely contrary to a normal life?
Even as I write this, I have to wonder if our enemies, China and Russia, and their confederates such as Iran and Venezuela and the Muslim dictatorships, are not plotting in conferences the destruction of America, through a surprise attack on us from all sides--sending missiles and nuclear-armed warplanes in from east and west, north and south to strike all our major cities and ports and reduce us to chaos and radioactive embers in a single day? It happened once to Nineveh, the greatest power on earth at one time--the glorious capital of an empire infamous for military preeminence, violence, wealth, cruelty, and arrogance. It was a juggernaut--a Soviet Union and America combined. Nobody could seriously challenge its war machine up to the day of its destruction. But its enemies nursed their grievances and secretly gathered strength on the edges of the Assyrian empire, then at the right moment they were all watching for swept in on Nineveh and the heartland of Assyria and wiped that all-powerful, haughty superpower off the map in a single day! It happened before, many times in history to other superpowers. It can happen to us and our beloved America. We are the next Assyria to fall. We are fattened for the kill.
Justice Blackmun, like Cain, had years to think over his terrible, terrible crime, and repent and get it right with God. Did he? We can only hope he did. I do not know if he instead died congratulating himself for his crime, instead of repenting it. But the statistics were rolling in, about the epidemic of abortions that had spread all across the country, amounting to tens of thousands, then hundreds, then million, long before he finally drew his last breath. He had ample time and opportunity to reflect and entertain second thoughts about what he did on the bench regarding the sanctity of human life. He had more than enough time. Did he use it wisely, or did he not? Eternity may tell us, we will have to wait to see.
Meanwhile, heaven has become a gigantic nursery, where the multiplied millions of aborted children are cared for most lovingly by angels and the saints. Most are Chinese babies and childrten, reports have it, as China's one-child policy has murdered even more millions than America, though we cannot be far behind the Communist genocidalists ruling that country. The aborted/murdered babies are being raised through childhood to adulthood. They will never know their lives on earth that God had planned speciall for each of them. I know they are in a perfect place, with much happiness and beauty and peace, but still there is the loss of missing the experience of having parents and family and what could have been if they had been allowed, as was their basic human right, to live once they had been conceived.
On earth the right to life (is a life human at birth? at conception? and so on, ad nauseum) is a highly profitable legal argument ACLU lawyers can test their casuistic skills on for millions in lawyers' fees. In heaven there is no debate whatsoever. Human life began at conception, because the souls were formed even before conception, and were implanted in every newly conceived individual. God created these souls prior to conception, and then implanted them by the Holy Spirit's wonderful ability. No evolutionary or physical process could possibly create a wondrous, unique individual human being created in God's image. Physical, natural process may create an animal soul (and I doubt that too very much), but never a soul stamped with God's divine image and created to live for eternity, whether in heaven or hell, as the case would be. Again, lawyers confuse the issue, and the Bible is quite plain, clear, and abundant on this "issue," which is no issue at all in the Creator's eyes. But we do not have to rely on the lawyers and the ACLU for what the truth is, thanks be to God and His everlasting Word in the Bible! We can know the truth, whereas they will debate the laws in man-made courts and legislatures until the cows come home, and never, as the Bible says, come to a knowledge of the truth.
Despite all the scriptures warning us about the great temptations of riches, the televangelists who ignore the scriptures plunged on in their extravagance, forgetting Jim Baker's fall, and others as well after him. "Prophetess" Juanita Bynum's wedding gala, aired on Christian TV, was surely one of the most vulgar and sickening displays of this kind, exhibiting an extravagance you could not have imagined a Christian would indulge in, accompanied with Ms. Bynum's immodest, unbridelike behavior. Dancing around at the altar, running down the aisle after the ceremony--really! It was Hollywood in the church! Carnal Christianity, at its ripest. She and her fashionable bishop husband are now in the scandal-mongering business, exchanging charges against each other on secular interviews as the watching world laughs and says, "I told you so! These Christians are all about money!" Well, these were--obviously. She is claimed to be a prophetess, but she obviously had no foreknowledge of the 100 mph smashup of this union nor of the smash-up of her high-flying, spectacular television ministry! I have to wonder if she ever was a true witness of Christ from the beginning--to get married in the way she did, lavishing, reportedly, a million dollars on her own lust for luxury and show and the world's approval. That sent up a big red flag for me--but I had been wondering at her preaching before this, I think--it just didn't minister to me, and I could not make sense of her message and her prophecies.Doing my own investigation on a televangelist whose fixation on money and wealth building and his continual appeals for contributions bothered me, I went to internet sources and found more than
enough information to make me wonder how Prosperity Preacher Mike Murdoch can get away with his extravagant lifestyle, spending millions on his mansion, property, vehicles, jet, and
personal adornments such as Rolex watches, and still be allowed to solicit even more millions via such handy Christian networks as TBN and DAYSTAR (networks I love and support, by the way!) God isn't against His children having Rollex watches--but if people have to go without so you can satisfy your own vanity and taste for luxury--well, that is clearly wrong, and has the appearance of evil (vanity, luxury-loving, pride, conspicuous consumption, etc.) to boot. Best not play with such temptations, dear friends! We don't need to play with fire, for there is plenty of fire around without our fanning it with our own hands!
All Joel Osteen does is improve the ugly, rotten old, carnal flesh--the flesh is not crucified in his theology and preaching--just buffed up, polished, dressed in designer clothes that give a positive, upbeat impression and look to the old you! But inside the fine exterior, despite your appearance, you are still the old you, unfortunately. Nothing really has changed. You haven't been transformed, from the inside out. You are not carrying your cross, you are letting it carry you--in style! Yours is a carnal, worldly Christian walk not worthy of the name of Christ attached to it, but you are doing it with thousands like you, so it seems to be right and okay. But it does not square with the Bible, with the examples of tried and tested saints portrayed in the Word, and the Lord's example himself. Doesn't that bother you a bit? You can be like Joel Osteen, but wouldn't you rather be like them, and especially like Jesus? Jesus wasn't like Joel Osteen--try as he does to make the comparison stick before his TV audience and his mega-church congregation. Jesus was the real thing--so to speak. But Joel Osteen? In his interview of Joel Osteen, the poster child of the latest televangelism scene and the megachurches of America, Larry King, a fallen man of the fallen world, could see right through this Muppet of Mammon, masquerading as an evangelical Christian when he is really a New Age guru. Why can't Christians see through his trappings? It is because they do not know their Bible. They accept what false shepherds like Joel Osteen tell them about it, without knowing the Lord well enough and listening to the Holy Spirit and finding out for themselves what it really teaches and doesn't teach. They are set up for a fall, and are easily beguiled and enticed and led away by false shepherds and wolves. They sit there by the thousands in that arena-church of Joel Osteen's with pen and notebook ready to take down more of the soap-bubble gospel of this false leader, and all they get is fluff from him--but they can't seem to get enough. And he turns it out in abundance, without fail, like Lawrence Welk's old champagne music and his bubble machine!
The good and the better are the enemies of the best. If you want the best, you are going to have to make the journey into the unknown."--John Hagee, Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, Texas
Businesses that go the fatal secular humanist route are also going to exploit people, including their own workers. They will justify it too--while throwing tons of money into conspicuous, politically correct celebrity-studded charities and causes here and world-wide. Meanwhile, they are running sweat shops over in Southeast Asia, paying pennies to people for a whole day's work, employing actual slave labor, even prisoners, and outsourcing jobs to areas where they can best exploit the desperate poor. Yes, pennies are more than nothing--but they do not have to pay pennies (less than $1 a day to laborers) in order to make a huge profit.
We have mentioned this monster before, but it merits another: Royal Dutch Shell Oil (a multinational, British-Dutch founded octopus) is one of the world's worst in exploiting the poorest countries and their labor forces while polluting vast areas that are inhabited by both people and wild animals, even promoting tribal warfare in Nigeria in West Africa if it suits the company's interests. Shell Oil is world-wide, and its filling stations are a national chain in America (please try not to tank up there if there is another station available). This is a particularly nasty case of greed, exploitation, and devilishness. Nobody will do anything about Shell Oil. It is just too big to rein in, apparently. There are no more Teddy Roosevelts. This unabashed Christian President dared to take on the greatest magnates and robber barons of his day, and he whipped them!
Back in the days when real poets, and great ones, still walked the earth:
Walking with Alfred (Lord) Tennyson in his garden, a friend asked him, "What do you think of Christ?" The great poet, stooping to examine a flower at his feet, replied: "What sunshine is to that flower, the Lord Jesus Christ is to my soul!"
Lord Alfred Tennyson, England's poet laureate in the late 19th century, wrote "Idylls of the King," dealing with King Arthur, "In Memoriam," a tribute to Arthur Hallam his dearest boyhood friend who died while a young man, "The Lady of Shalott," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," and many other outstanding poems that are included in every standard anthology and text of English literature. I can read his poems and am always reminded how great his thoughts were, and his ability to express them beyond that of most any poet you can name. It was not fashionable, when Darwin's theory was circulating in intellectual circles, to declare faith in Jesus any longer--but Lord Alfred Tennyson did--not caring what it might do to affect his reputation as England's finest poet of the time. We in America and Britain have had no poets of his stature and sensitivity since his time that I can think of--though some fine poetry has been written by Robert Frost and a few others. You need a grand world-view, coupled with extreme sensitivity and high character, which only Judaeo-Christian civilization can impart along with genuine, Bible-based Christian faith, and that is almost non-existent today. Another Milton is unthinkable today--we simply could not produce his intellectual greatness, moral authority, and poetic ability (we have probably killed him anyway, in the over 50 million aborted babies since 1973's Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling!). Shakespeare? One such would not be possible for another thousand years at least--as we slowly recuperate from this age of secular humanism. I imagine that only during the Millennium will there be a recovery in literature, and great poets and painters and musicians and writers and thinkers will again arise, comparable to or even greater possibly than the geniuses of the last two- three thousand years of Judaeo-Christian civilization.
Why didn't it end well, even though there was a collision with an iceberg. Other ships had recently rammed straight into icebergs, then were towed to a safe haven, without sinking and losing many lives. Other ships were in the area, doubtless, and could come and save the passengers. Other ships had heard about it and were on the way, to rescue them. Certainly, it could all turn out right--but it did not, we know. It turned out to be a terrible, tragic disaster the world still considers one of the greatest disasters at sea that ever happened.
All sorts of variables existed, chances that a possible disaster could be averted even after the collision. But each chance slipped away, and the ship took on more and more water and finally broke up and sank in two main sections, casting all the souls aboard into the water or dragging them down in the stern or in the forward portion. We have sustained a fatal collision too, as a nation and society. I believe it happened in 1973 with the opening of the abortion/infanticide floodgate with Roe vs. Wade, and a bit earlier too, with the earlier notorious decisions of the Supreme Court prohibiting public display of the Ten Commandments and prayer in public schools. I have the proof--the Congressional Record published by Congress, detailing each year's decline of our nation in every major category. Our decline has been, without exaggeration, catastrophic. It is straight down--just like the Titanic, which sank over two miles to the bottom of the North Atlantic just off Newfoundland. All sorts of things can be blamed for the ship's sinking--but clearly it was not the hull's brittle, sulphur-rich iron, or the glancing blow of the iceberg that tore a hole across a fatal number of iron plates covering airtight compartments, or the bad management decisions by Ismay and Smith, or the S.S. California's lazy, incompetent, irresponsible, self-serving captain who didn't heed the signs of distress or the white rocket flares or the radio transmissions of the doomed liner--or anything else like that, though they certainly contributed to the disaster.
People will debate all the factors that led up to or contributed to the disaster--and it is an endless debate that will probably never be settled. But what really caused the great Titanic to be utterly destroyed? Genesis will tell you. Man has not changed, nor has the Devil. Pride took down Lucifer, and made a doomed devil of him, and pride doomed Adam and Eve. Their descendants are also doomed by pride. Pride came at the Fall and before each of our own falls. Satan tempted Eve with special knowledge, to become "as God," and she took the bait, out of pride. We know all the rest (and that includes the Titanic, which was conceived, designed, built, and launched with all the earmarks of the old sin of pride by Lucifer as well as Adam and Eve, our First Parents.
Now who, in his right mind, would turn away a Christmas wrapped box of useful items and goodies put together with love and given in love and without any strings attached? NOBODY--not even atheists and free thinkers, nor Muslims either! They all love the Christmas gift boxes--and like the Grace of Christ that goes with them, they are FREE to the recipient.
"We distributed your gifts around the world (not in one night). Thank you for your generosity to be able to give ovr 1400 Christmas packages to seafarers from over 20 nations of the world. We gave to grateful men and women from Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece, Romania, Germany, Egypt, England, Italy, India, China, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, Ukraine and the Philippines. Seafarers from all religions gladly received your gifts, including Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Free Thinkers (no religion, no commitments). Here are some stories of our encournters with seafarers."
Two articles from the Mooring Lines tell of the giving of over 1400 Christmas gift boxes by the center to seafarers in 2007, and the first on-line here tells about a special gift, a Christmas tree (cut living on a tree farm), presented to a ship full of Ukrainians!
With all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling:
One Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
But, gnat-straining Grassley aside, what is Joyce Meyer's gospel? Is it truly the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Does it in any way compare with Paul's? Yes, it maybe helps people adjust to the modern consumerist culture of America and become better wives and mothers and Christians, but does it lead them to the Cross on a daily basis, and does it truly produce the self-sacrificing life of Jesus in people? Or is it like Joel Osteen's, a carefully tailored sales pitch to the old Adamic flesh, remaking it in a nicer format, but leaving the nasty, stinky stuff inside still in charge of heart, mind, soul, and spirit? This is sad. By her own account, she fought and clawed her way to where she is (all the while looking as if she doesn't have one hair out of place)--but where is she really? Did Jesus raise her up to her present exalted position, or did Joyce Meyers do it on her own power and perservance? The Lord knows. But the fruits--what are they? They tell what she really is about. Does her gospel produce what the true Gospel of Jesus Christ is supposed to bring forth? That will tell us what she is really about. Jesus says: "You shall know them by their fruits." What are her fruits?
Jesus Christ first, and all the rest will fall into line.
He shall call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, that He may judge His people.
"Gather My saints together to Me, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice."