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Archive for the ‘Bible’ Category

I received this Omega Letter in Saturday’s email, but just read it a few minutes ago. It bears posting:

The Great American Experiment is now two-hundred and thirty-three years old. It’s been a heck of a ride. There has never been a country so blessed in all human history.

One might add the fact that there has never been a country more worthy of her blessings than America has been, from the very beginning. America’s first European immigrants came to her shores in pursuit, not of gold, but of God.

The Pilgrims who first set foot upon Plymouth Rock in 1620 were members of a religious separatist group who refused to join and give allegiance to the Church of England.
Under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, not being a member of the Church of England was a crime — as was not attending weekly services.

The fine for missing a Sunday service or high holy day was the equivalent to about ten dollars. The penalties for conducting an unauthorized worship service included much larger fines, imprisonment, or worse. In 1593 Puritan leaders Harry Barrowe and John Greenwood were charged with sedition and executed by the Crown.

The Puritans had high hopes for King James I when he assumed the throne, but other than authorizing an English translation of the Bible (the KJV 1611) King James denied all other requests for religious concessions.

In 1607 the Puritans attempted to relocate to Amsterdam in search of religious freedom but were intercepted by the British and imprisoned for more than a month.

A second attempt to flee to Amsterdam the following year was also intercepted and broken up by the King’s men. In all, about 150 Puritans managed to make their way to Holland.

The congregation realized their children were growing more Dutch as the years passed and they feared eventual extinction if they remained.

At the same time, if they returned to England, they would be forced to join the state Church. So they cut a deal with King James. He granted them a charter to set up a colony in the New World north of the existing Virginia territory to be called “New England.”

There were one hundred and two passengers aboard the Mayflower when she set sail from England on September 16, 1620. By the time land was sighted on November 10, they had lost one crew member and one passenger.

Six months later, only forty-seven colonists had survived, together with about half the Mayflower crew.

From those humble beginnings in that tiny New England colony emerged the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever seen.

Despite historical revisionism, the Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly Christian. The so called ’separation clause’ was never intended to ban religion from the public arena. It was to prevent the imposition of a state religion which was, after all, the whole reason for coming to America in the first place.

The 1st Amendment says “Congress shall make no laws regarding the establishment of religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof.” Given the historical context in which the 1st Amendment was drafted, it is IMPOSSIBLE to believe the Founders intended to banish Jesus, God and the Bible from American life.

It is darned hard to read it that way even today. It forbids Congress from enacting laws establishing religion. But it also forbids Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

In addition, the 1st Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of people to peaceably assemble and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

It is worth noting that interpreting freedom OF religion as freedom FROM religion actually impinges on every other right guaranteed by the 1st Amendment, effectively nullifying both its application and intent.

If I am not free to preach from the Bible on public property, I am not free. Legal theory notwithstanding, in point of fact I am prohibited from the free exercise of religion. It also impinges on my right to free speech and my right to peaceably assemble.

The fact that these restrictions are limited to public lands is irrelevant and makes the prohibitions even more egregious since ‘public land’ — by definition — belongs to all of us.
(Indeed, public places are the ONLY places covered by the 1st Amendment. What is done on private property is protected by the Fourth Amendment, not the First.)

The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence specifically says my rights under the 1st Amendment are God-given and outside of the governments authority.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Notice that the Founders not only believed in the Creator, they were echoing Paul’s letter to the Romans, saying the existence of the Creator is ’self-evident’.
“For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, [because they are self-evident] being understood by the things that are made, [including the Founders] even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they [and all of us who came afterward] are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

America’s reliance on the Creator was the secret to her greatness. President John Adams said of the Constitution that it was “designed for a moral and religious people and wholly unsuited to any other.”

An immoral and irreligious people would find too much of it objectionable for it to long survive.

Assessment:
The Fourth of July is America’s birthday and a time of celebration unlike any other in the Republic. It used to be the day we thanked God for our blessings, before thanking God became illegal under certain circumstances, especially for students at graduations.
“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” (Romans 1:28)
Fast forward two-hundred and thirty-three years to July 4th, 2009. Things aren’t looking so good. There is no doubt that America is in decline. How did that happen? When did it start? What can we do about it?

A look at the high points and low points of American history is instructive in this regard. America was founded by men seeking freedom to worship God directly instead of worshipping the state masquerading itself as God. America prospered but her continuing existence was threatened by the immorality of slavery.

America’s lowest point was also her highest. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the preservation of the Union was still very much in doubt. But from the moment slavery was abolished, her fortunes began to turn.

By the end of the 19th century, America had begun to be numbered among the world’s great nations. By the middle of the 20th century, America was the greatest single nation on the face of the earth.

England, which had been the world’s only superpower for four hundred years, lost the title as a consequence of the Second World War. But it sowed the seeds of its own decline twenty years earlier.

In 1917, Lord Balfour issued his famous proclamation granting the newly-captured territory of Palestine to the Jews as a “Jewish homeland.” At the time of the Balfour Declaration, the outcome of WWI was still very much in doubt.

Within a year, the Kaiser was vanquished and England owned most of the Middle East, including the Holy Land.

Once in possession, however, the Crown turned on the Jews, took away most of the Balfour land grant and severely restricted Jewish immigration.

Twenty years later, the British Empire stood in ruins as America was joined by only the second nation on earth to acknowledge God as the midwife responsible for its birth.
As America’s support for Israel increased, both nations prospered.

By the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, both nations had peaked. Israel had become one of the ten wealthiest and most militarily powerful nations on earth.

The First Gulf War established America as the worlds’s undisputed leader and only superpower. Her lopsided victory over what had been considered the world’s fifth largest standing army in Iraq in 1991 led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the end of that same year.

In 1991,the world was in awe of America and her fortunes couldn’t have been higher. It is hard to recapture the feeling, but remember when the biggest worry facing America was how best to spend the ‘peace dividend?’

Then, in 1993 Bill Clinton involved the United States in the Oslo Land for Peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

On September 13, 1993 Bill Clinton urged Yitzhak Rabin to take the blood-stained hand of Yasser Arafat on the Rose Garden lawn, setting into motion the systematic dismantling of Eretz Yisrael.

“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” (Zechariah 12:3)

It is no coincidence that 1993 also the year that terror first came to America’s shores with the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Later that same year, the United States was forced to withdraw from Somalia after one of the most humiliating defeats in US history.

As America withdrew from Somalia in disarray, Osama bin Laden began the construction of terrorist training camps in Sudan.

Two days short of the eight year anniversary of that Rose Garden signing ceremony, 19 Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 35 hijacked four domestic aircraft and destroyed NY’s Twin Towers and severely damaged the US Pentagon.

The final death toll from the attack was 2,985 civilians — more than the number of US casualties at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Eight years later, America is still at war. Her infrastructure is crumbling, her cities in disrepair. Her industrial base is imploding, her economy is in shambles. On this 4th of July, one in ten Americans is out of work and one in five is underemployed.
Sixteen years after Oslo, the Middle East is more volatile than it was when we starting backing Israel’s dismemberment as a viable peace plan. America’s standing among the nations has never been lower.

The country stands on the brink of economic depression, friendless, in debt and hopelessly entangled in a war specifically sparked by America’s involvement in Oslo, according to bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war against the West
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This is easily the most depressing 4th of July message I’ve ever presented. I am so very sorry for that.

(Part of the reason today’s OL went out so late was because I kept trying to come up with a different message for today. But this is the only one the Lord would give me.)
I pray that someway, somehow, America will again heed the promise of 2nd Chronicles 7:14:
“If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

But with Barack Obama in the White House, humbling ourselves as a nation before God seems pretty unlikely.

There HAS to be some good news for this 4th of July, something to hang on to as we enjoy the hot dogs and ice cream and fireworks. And there is.

As bad as things are, they also serve as evidence that our God is still on the Throne and that He keeps His Word.

He promised to bless them that blessed Israel and curse them that curse Israel. He promised that any nation who involved itself with Jerusalem would be cut in pieces.
We did. And we are.

But He also promised that when those things prophesied for the last days began to come to pass, that it was a signal to look up and lift up our heads, for our redemption draws near.

When its bad news, God keeps His promises. He also keeps His promises when it is good news. The Lord is coming. He’s coming soon. He promised.

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.”

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Books, to the reading child, are so much more than books — they are dreams and knowledge, they are a future, and a past.
~ Esther Meynell ~

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader C. S. Lewis describes Eustace Scrubb, the insufferable cousin of the Pevensies, as a child who hadn’t read “the right sort of books”.

As a child I was fortunate enough to read those sort of books!  These are the books that capture the imagination and build a world in which a child can delight and roam.  As they do so, the very best of the right sort of books touch a child’s heart–-they touched my heart–-because integral to the story were the deep truths of goodness, love, friends, home, reunion, courage and perseverance in failure and the overcoming of evil.

Tolkien in his essay, “On Fairy-Stories”, wrote (The Tolkien Reader; 85-86, 87, 88):

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn”…does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe , of sorrow and failure:  the possibility of those is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy.  Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

…In such stories, when the sudden “turn” comes, we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.

…in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater–it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.

In a letter to his son Tolkien explains his term eucatastrophe (Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien,  100):

I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy-stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of Truth, your whole nature chained in material cause and effect, the chain of death, feels a sudden relief as if a major limb out of joint had suddenly snapped back. It perceives – if the story has literary ‘truth’ on the second plane (for which see the essay) – that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made.

C. S. Lewis and Tolkien are the masters at this. I read Lewis as a child although I discovered Tolkien as an adult. However, there were numerous other authors I read growing up that also interwove their stories with pictures of truth, ranging from P. L. Travers and her Mary Poppins books to Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Little House books and Louisa May Alcott.

Why were these books important and profound? I knew enough sorrow and evil as a child and these books placed that pain within a larger context of joy and truth. They saved my mind and heart and strengthened the kindness and goodness that I did see and know.

I became a Christian the summer after my freshman year in college. I found I knew God in a relationship that was a reality grounded in reason.

I met the One who is Truth. I met the One who is Joy.

The evangelium gleam I had only glimpsed before, I met in the person of Jesus Christ.

It was then that I realized, as Tolkien had written (The Tolkien Reader, 88-89):

The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation.  This story begins and ends in joy.

There is only one book that I have ever seen simply referred to The Book.   The Bible is the center of my world view. Other books have brought insight and discernment and refreshment to me–but none like God’s Word because it is the Living Word of the Living God.  It is the one book in which every time you read it, you can meet the Author heart to heart and discuss the pages with Him.

I wrote this post as a labour of love and gratitude to C. S. Lewis and to the other authors of my childhood who gave me many hours of happiness and hope as their words unknowingly prepared my heart for the lasting Hope of the Gospel.

I thank the Author who gave them talents and inspiration through which they gave a glimpse of joy to a little girl.
__________
Meynell quote from the Richmond Public Schools’ Reading Quotes webpage.

Crossposted to RedState Members Diaries.

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As addition to the series I did on Easter weekend, Why I Believe, I want to discuss my beliefs as a Christian is regards to the Bible.  Any person whether Christian or not, can start at number one.  For background reading, go back to the first post in the Easter series:  Why I Believe:  Reason.

1. The New Testament is a set of valid historical documents which tell the truth about a man named Jesus Christ.

2. From these documents it is possible to observe what He did and what He said, to understand the claims He made about Himself, and to make a decision about who He is.

3.  Those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Son of God are inexorably drawn to examine and believe His words in all matters–not to do so is a denial of confessing Him as Lord.

4.  His continual use of the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative to define and validate His teaching regarding God, man and His own personal ministry, clearly show He regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as the authoritative, inerrant Word of God.

5.  He claimed God’s authority for His own words and told His apostles the Holy Spirit would come to further teach them, thereby giving the promise of revelation of God’s Word in what we now call the New Testament.

6.  We can therefore conclude that Jesus taught that the Bible is the truthful and authoritative (verbal, plenary, infallible, inerrant, unlimited* inspiration) Word of God.

7.  Those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord are thus compelled to the conclusion of St. Augustine, “When Scripture speaks, God speaks.”

___

*See: John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Ready with an Answer.

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Reading stories like this just makes me shake my head at scoffers and smile at earthly confirmation God is revealing more and more to unbelievers that He is real and so is His Holy Word, the Bible.

HIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel — An Israeli archaeologist digging at a hilltop south of Jerusalem believes a ceramic shard found in the ruins of an ancient town bears the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered, a find that could provide an important glimpse into the culture and language of the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.

The five lines of faded characters written 3,000 years ago, and the ruins of the fortified settlement where they were found, are indications that a powerful Israelite kingdom existed at the time of the Old Testament’s King David, says Yossi Garfinkel, the Hebrew University archaeologist in charge of the new dig at Hirbet Qeiyafa.

Other scholars are hesitant to embrace Garfinkel’s interpretation of the finds, made public on Thursday.

Why is it such a surprise to learn Jews lived in Israel when the Bible says they did?

I am constantly told by non-believers the Bible is just a collection of stories written by unknown men and is not literal. Then they insist I “prove” God exists. Duh! Look out the window and take in nature. Try to tell me it all happened by chance.

A couple of weeks ago I read that scientists now believe (at least some of them) that there is a void around the earth and that void is protecting us from objects in space. I immediately thought of Genesis 1, the story of creation and the first two verses of that book: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

If you want to know more about past, present and future happenings in the world just go to the Bible. The answers are all there if you have the eyes to read and the open mind and heart to understand.

None of these things surprise me. It only surprises me that I seem to be in the minority of people in this world, and getting that way in our country, who believes God and His Word. It disappoints me more than surprising me because I hate for someone to die and not know Christ and our Wonderful God Who loved us so much He became man while still God and shed His Godly and righteous blood that you and I can have the fellowship with Him that He has always wanted with us, but will not force upon us. We have the free will to accept or reject His message of love and salvation.

There can be no compromises. There is one God and only one way to heaven. That one way is through confession of our sins and acceptance of Jesus as God’s begotten Son, Who gave up His physical life, went to the depths of Hades, and rescued the righteous and took those souls to heaven. Until then they had been in a “holding area” of Hades because the souls couldn’t go to heaven until Jesus shed His blood.

If there is no God then we have been fooled for all our history. If I’m wrong what will happen other than I will die as a pet does and just rot in the earth? If I’m right, and I’m positive I am, I’m on my way to a place much more beautiful than this planet in all its glory.

If you are not a believer and you are right then you, too, will just rot after you die and become fertilizer. But if you are wrong…You will spend the rest of eternity in torment reserved for Satan for his rebellion. And don’t think you’ll see your buddies there because they will be in the same torment and pain and won’t have the energy to recognize you, if there is any light for them to see you. Think about it, and then pray and go to your Bible or to Bible Gateway and read the Book of John, first.

May the Holy Spirit of God open your eyes and your hearts. You’ll never again agonize over what’s going to happen because you will know there is a plan of God for everything.

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Last night I joined hundreds of others at First Evangelical Free Church in Manchester, Mo., to hear and meet Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man and president of the Christian Research Institute. Hank, as he’s usually called, is known by millions of Christians as a man with answers and a lion of the faith. He has a passion for the word of God that is rarely equaled in this age.

He’s made a lot of enemies within the faith because he practices what he preaches: Hank tests everything others preach in light of scripture. And quite often, what others preach is found wanting. Word-of-faith preachers, faith healers, end-times apocalyptics, slain-in-the-Spirit babblers and pure heretics and apostates have all come under criticism from Hank and CRI, and consequently, he is hated and persecuted and told he is going to hell.

There’s too much for me to talk about in a simple blog post, so you’d have to tune in to his Bible Answer Man radio broadcast or go to www.equip.org to learn more. I didn’t have time to stand in line to actually meet him and get his autograph, but I did get a halfway decent picture or two (though they’re a little blurry).

Last night, Hank hit on one major, overriding theme: Christians MUST know scripture and must have “a ready defense” for their faith. Otherwise, they fall for the fads of the heretics and apostates, or have no answers for the attacks of the scoffers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

“Jesus had an extraordinarily high view of scripture,” said Hank, “but in our culture, it is seriously and continually being challenged.”

For example, Hank described militant agnostic Bart D. Ehrman, in Misquoting Jesus, pointing to the passage in Mark 4 where Jesus Christ uses the parable of the mustard seed to describe how the church will go from the smallest speck to spread far and wide. Here’s the passage:

Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”

Ehrman takes this passage and twists it to make the ridiculous claim that Jesus couldn’t possibly be God because God would know that the mustard seed is not the smallest seed. Well, DUH! That wasn’t Jesus’ point. The smallest seed that a 1st century farmer in Palestine would know of was the mustard seed, and Jesus Christ would naturally use the most common frame of reference. What’s more, He was using an analogy to illustrate how the church would start tiny, like the mustard seed, and grow to immense proportions, like the full-grown mustard tree.

Hank’s point was to demonstrate that Christians can easily shut down such objections and criticisms but only if we read and study the Bible for all that it is worth. We need to know who, what, when, where, how and why. We need to know context. We need to know history.

We need to be able to demonstrate, with confidence, that the Bible is divine, not human, in origin. Keep in mind, Hank says, that God supernaturally preserved the Bible. The manuscript evidence has proven conclusively that there are differences in style and spelling between various ancient copies, but absolutely no differences in substance. Any mistakes we have today are errors in modern translations.

I’ll talk more in-depth about that another time. But Hank, as some may know, is not a believer in the popular view of the end times that has gripped much of the evangelical church. My understanding is mostly in line with his, and this is yet another area where Christians really need to study their Bible for all that it is worth—and do so without today’s headlines in mind. I know many Christians hold to the end times scenario promoted by many leading evangelicals, including John MacArthur, but I am increasingly convinced that it comes from a fundamental misreading of scripture. I’m preparing a series of posts to that effect, but I’ll just use Hank’s example from last night that illustrates holding to a high standard of reading the Bible for all that it’s worth.

A frequent example the atheist scoffers cite to disclaim the deity of Jesus Christ is His description of the description of Jerusalem in Matthew 24. If that chapter speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem with all of the horrible things accompanying it, AND the “Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn” and “they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory” AND “this generation will not pass away until all of these things have happened,” the scoffers claim that Jesus is a false prophet. Why? They say that Jesus did not return as He promised before “this generation” died, so therefore He is not God.

Latter-day Christians have compounded the problem by taking that passage, and combining it with other passages from Revelation and Daniel, to say that the entire chapter applies to the Second Coming.

Neither reading is correct, says Hank, and I totally agree. Jesus was forecasting the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and was using apocalyptic metaphors to describe the coming judgment upon the current generation because it was rejecting and would reject Him, the messiah. The Lord, says Hank, was employing the same kind of language that the Old Testament prophets used when prophesying judgment upon Israel, peoples and nations. Why would the Lord speak any differently than His own prophets?

Hank argues that Christians need to understand what kind of language is being used, and recognize when Jesus is speaking literally and speaking with prophetic hyperbole. I totally agree. While I don’t believe that end times debates are something to divide over (Hank says this is one of the things to debate over within the pale of orthodoxy, and not divide over) it is something that needs serious re-evaluation within evangelical circles.

So, anyway, there are more things that he said that I’ll save for another time. To sum: Christians must read scripture for all that it’s worth. If they do that, they’ll be much better “prepared to give and answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15)

Cross-posted at Crisis Christianity.

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All my life I’ve heard about the Neanderthal Man, Homo erectus and Homo habilis being the ancestors of man.

The story went like this: First we had Homo habilis which eventually evolved into Homo erectus, which eventually evolved into Neanderthal Man, which eventually evolved into Homo sapiens or humans.

I could never quite understand why these species died out and we survived as Homo sapiens. It seemed logical to me that even though there was an evolution period some of the creatures from which we evolved would have still been around.

Like, why do we still have gorillas which look a lot to me like Neanderthal Man?

Well, bless my soul! Now comes a study that says remains of Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived within walking distance of each other at the same time!

Surprising fossils dug up in Africa are creating messy kinks in the iconic straight line of human evolution with its knuckle-dragging ape and briefcase-carrying man.

The new research by famed paleontologist Meave Leakey in Kenya shows our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, calling into question the evolution of our ancestors.

The old theory was that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens.

But those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years, Leakey and colleagues report in a paper published in Thursday’s journal Nature.

In 2000 Leakey found an old H. erectus complete skull within walking distance of an upper jaw of the H. habilis, and both dated from the same general time period.

That makes it unlikely that H. erectus evolved from H. habilis, researchers said.

It’s the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London.

The two species lived near each other, but probably didn’t interact with each other, each having their own “ecological niche,” Spoor said.

Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian and Homo erectus ate some meat, he said.

Like chimps and gorillas, “they’d just avoid each other, they don’t feel comfortable in each other’s company,” he said.

Well, glory be! I didn’t come from a monkey after all!

I have a better idea:

25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

God didn’t say, “Let’s tool around with this and see what we come out with in the end as far as man is concerned.” He said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…”

Now, if you believe God looks like any of these other creatures then I guess this evolution garbage could be correct, but there’s a problem with that. Jesus is God Incarnate and when He came to earth He looked exactly like us! Imagine that!

Of course you have to believe in God to believe that, but that can’t be much harder than believing you came from a knuckle-dragging being that simply vanished.

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This is the guy conservatives love to quote when it comes to MM.

Summer beach-reading season is just beginning, and already several books have broken out from the pack, such as Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein, and Conn and Hal Iggulden’s “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”

But the biggest surprise is a blazing attack on God and religion that is flying off bookshelves, even in the Bible Belt. “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” by Christopher Hitchens, wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster. Its publisher, Twelve, a fledgling imprint owned by France’s Lagardère SCA, initially printed a modest 40,000 copies. Today, seven weeks after the book went on sale, there are 296,000 copies in print. Demand has been so strong that booksellers and wholesalers were unable to get copies a short time after it hit stores, creating what the publishing industry calls a “dark week.” One experienced publishing veteran suggests that Mr. Hitchens will likely earn more than $1 million on this book.

A spin-off is already in the works. Rival publisher Da Capo Press, which is owned by Perseus Books LLC, got in touch with Mr. Hitchens and signed him up to edit, “The Portable Atheist,” a compilation of essays by such writers as Mark Twain and Charles Darwin that will be published in the fall.

“This is atheism’s moment,” says David Steinberger, Perseus’s CEO. “Mr. Hitchens has written the category killer, and we’re excited about having the next book.”

Mr. Hitchens, 58 years old, is well-known in media and political circles as an erudite raconteur and essayist; his Vanity Fair columns and frequent TV appearances on political shows have raised his profile. More recently, his loud support for the Iraq war has infuriated many of his former compatriots. His unabashed affection for alcohol and tobacco has been widely chronicled — sometimes by himself. “I smoke, sure, and I can take a drink when offered,” he says. “It’s impolite to decline.”

Now he has turned his caustic gaze on God and organized religion. “A heavenly dictatorship would be like living in a celestial North Korea, except it would be worse because they could read your thoughts even when you were asleep,” said Mr. Hitchens in an interview. “At least when you die you get out of North Korea, which is the most religious state I’ve ever seen.”

Story

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I have in the past 45 minutes returned from church. I did not attend Sunday School because the sermon seemed to have touched me so deeply I didn’t want to be distracted from it.

I wanted to think and pray about it and a situation that has been very painful to me.

The sermon series is about our need for friends and our need to be friends to others.

All I could think of was my former blogging partner telling me in her last email to me that she did not accept my offer of forgiveness for what she had done to me because she felt she had done nothing.

I wasn’t totally innocent in the matter, but I did ask her forgiveness for any real or perceived hurt I had caused her. She has refused to forgive me and told me God told her to do it.

She thought I was trying to make peace with God when I was trying to make peace with her. I am at peace with God.

When I responded to her very long email she wrote these words back to me:

FYI – I knew you couldn’t do it!

My husband is right. You aren’t a Christian.

That’s why appealing to your Christian spirit won’t work.

I did not read this email. Nor will I – Get thee behind me, Satan!

These words cut to my very soul and have hurt me more than anything else in my life has ever hurt me, and I must get over them.

Riding home from church in tears, two verses came to me:

“Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. Matthew 7:6 NASB

I tried to give my friendship and was slapped away numerous times. I was casting my pearls before swine and allowing them to be trampled under their feet by my many efforts at reconciliation.

She is neither a dog nor a swine, but using the analogy that’s exactly what I was doing.

God does not command us to be enemies, and my offer of friendship and reconciliation were sincere. She refused my offers.

The other verse is also from Matthew:

“Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. Matthew 10:14 NASB

I shall now shake the dust off my feet and let the Lord sort it out whether it be here or in Heaven. Either way, He has shown me there is no fruit on that tree.

Cross-posted at The Barb Wire

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As I was growing up I remember reading Bible stories from the Bible and discussing them in Sunday School or Bible School, but I don’t ever remember reading of gore in there at a young age.

Yes, I read about the parting of the Red Sea and the Pharaoh and his army all being drowned, along with their horses. Yes I read about the walls of Jericho tumbling down but I never thought of it at the time as having a big death toll.

I read of Noah’s Ark and knew all but 8 people and pairs of animals perished. I read about Isaac taking his only son Jacob up to the mountains, gathering wood and getting ready to slay him on God’s command until the angel of God stopped him.

I read all those stories and more. I read of the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Only God. It did not make me happy, but no one went into deep detail as to what happened and it was only until I saw Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” that I fully realized the suffering our Lord did for me and for you.

I was never traumatized by it and I’ll wager I was just as normal a kid as any other and my teaching was just as normal as the teachings of today are.

That’s why this story is so disturbing to me.

The Good Book isn’t clean enough for Hong Kong.

At least 838 complaints had been registered Wednesday with the city’s Television and Entertainment Licensing authority after an anonymous Web site, truthbible.net, said the Bible “made one tremble” with its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest, the news agency reports.

[...]
If the Bible is labeled indecent in Hong Kong, people over the age of 18 will be the only ones able to purchase the book, and it would have to be sold with a warning label wrapped around the book.

The Web site truthbible.net already includes an English-language warning: “Legal Disclaimer Warning: This Web site contains Bible material which may offend and may not be distributed, circulated, sold, hired, given, lent, shown, played or projected to a person under the age of 18 years.”

[...]
“If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn’t mean it encourages those activities,” Reuters quoted Reverend Wu Chi-wai, Protestant minister, as saying. “It’s just common sense … I don’t think that criticism will have strong support from the public.”

Those things are in the Bible for a purpose, and that purpose is to show us how not to live in some instances and how to live in others.

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