Why You, Christian, Cannot Vote For Barack Obama

On Saturday, 3/29/2008, Barack Obama said at an event in Pennsylvania,

“When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include — which should include abstinence education and teaching the children - teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include - it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby…”

God forbid his daughters might take responsibility for their “mistake”. Good grief! If any young women were ever positioned in life to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, surely the Obama girls will be. Daughters of a wealthy, intact and loving family, there would be no reason for these girls to acquire an abortion other than convenience. Of course, it would not be difficult to conceive a young woman having an abortion when her father refers to the contents of her pregnant womb as some kind of cruel punishment or disease.

This is not Pro-Choice. This is Pro-Abortion.

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Sacred Sandwich

A good friend of mine just sent me a link to sacredsandwich.com. Very funny stuff. I found the above image under the “Advertisements” link.

Enjoy!

Faith Death

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,341869,00.html

The mother of an 11-year-old girl who died of untreated diabetes said Wednesday that she did not know her daughter was terminally ill as she prayed for her to get better.

Madeline Neumann died Sunday from a treatable form of diabetes.

…an autopsy determined Madeline died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body.

She had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness…

The family does not belong to an organized religion or faith, Leilani Neumann said.

“We just believe in the Bible, that’s all,” she said. “This is our faith.”

Her husband added that, “We believe the word of God and live according to its precepts.”

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I once heard Todd Bentley teach that a person’s lack of faith can forfeit a healing. He used the example of an individual being healed of some malady - I believe it was cancer - by a faith healer, and then being told the next day by a physician that the cancer was still present in the person’s body. Bentley argued that the individual now needed to decide who he would trust: man or God. If that individual allowed the physician to sow doubt in his heart, he would forfeit the healing.

So, when Benny, or Todd, or any number of other “faith healers” proclaim a healing over you, and it does not come to pass, it’s your fault.

Bentley & Co. are directly responsible for this girl’s unnecessary death. Anyone who teaches “God vs. Medicine” played a part and should repent. Shame on you, Todd.

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http://www.americaslastdays.com/?page=theyshall-leilani

The dead girl’s mother posted twice on the above site. This tragedy should awaken us to the necessity of local church membership. We need one another to bring correction and rebuke when we stray from the faith into all kinds of sillinesses that sometimes have very serious consequences.

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21st Century Apostles & A Mysterious Absence of Biblical Qualifications

I recently listened to a podcast from Bob Dewaay’s Critical Issues Commentary, The Roots and Fruits of the New Apostolic Reformation, Part 1. (You can locate a print copy here, and the mp3 here.) Whilst discussing the early church’s view on the office of apostle, Dewaay made a keen observation I had not previously considered:

If the apostles (this would include the vast majority of New Testament authors) intended to perpetuate the office and envisioned others taking their places, why are there no explicit instructions on how this would come to be (or that it would come to be at all), and why no qualifications?

When Paul established a church, he placed elders over it. And Paul gives us a substantial list of qualifications these men must conform to in I Timothy 3 and Titus. Clearly, Paul intends the local church to be governed by elders. If Paul or the other apostles intended for these local churches to also remain under the authority of a continuing apostolic office, why no qualifications?

And why do we never see this happen in the New Testament? Paul’s protégé, Timothy, is established as an elder or pastor, not an apostle. If such a significant role was to be continued and passed on, why does scripture leave us no clue as to how this should take place?

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To be fair, Scripture does seem to provide one qualification for an apostle:

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.

Acts 1:21-22

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord?

1 Corinthians 9:1

So, apostles are to have physically served with or seen the Lord. Unless one is willing to say he has physically seen the Lord, one cannot hold the office of apostle. Therefore, if one is going to accept the Five-Fold Ministry (or the Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles), one would have to accept that Christ continues to physically appear and teach. (Unfortunately, some do continue to claim to have had such encounters. Oddly, the more goofy and heretical an individual’s teaching gets, the more likely such an individual seems to be ready to claim a physical Christ-encounter.)

Yet, even if one accepts the above, it still remains perplexing that Scripture leaves us no guidelines for the continuation of this office. If the office is to continue, we are put in the position of accepting an individual’s unverifiable claim that the risen Christ has physically appeared to him and anointed him an apostle. I find it hard to believe Christ intended to leave such an influential role open to this kind of ambiguity.

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“Exhibit F” for a Swift and Expanded Implementation of Captial Punishment

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335951,00.html

They drugged, bludgeoned and strangled their 16-year-old victim to death then they knelt over her lifeless, bloody body to kiss before dumping her in a wheelbarrow.

Stasinowsky and Parashumti, who had been together just a month, have offered no explanation or motive for the killing other than that Stacey “annoyed” them.

Court hearings have been punctuated with laughter, smirking and smiling.

Even during sentencing submissions in January, the couple was told twice by Blaxell to stop their light-hearted behavior as the graphic details of the crime were read.

Prosecutor Dave Dempster described the killing as a sustained attack that lasted at least half an hour. He has demanded strict-security imprisonment — a non-parole period of at least 20 to 30 years.

 

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That a society would leave open the possibility for these murderers to taste decades of potential freedom is repugnant.

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

- Mary Wollstonecraft

Little Fella’s First Haircut

BEFORE

AFTER

Hardly recognize the young man! (Mommy cried…)

More Thoughts on Tom Cruise’s Scientology Video

I meant to post this a while ago. Well, better late than never…

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After posting on Tom Cruise’s Scientology video two months ago, I heard and read quite a few other reactions to it. While all of the reactions were negative, I was fascinated by the reasons for these reactions. Virtually all the commentary I encountered focused not on the sheer nuttiness of Cruise’s beliefs (my reason for posting on the topic), but on the passion with which he adhered to them.

I began to realize that I have more in common with Cruise than I would have previously imagined. The world hates Cruise for the same reason it hates me. Cruise and I are agents of intolerance, because we hold our beliefs to be objectively true. In a postmodern world, there are no silly beliefs or ideas. As long as belief X makes you happy or a better person, great! The truthfulness of the belief or idea is irrelevant in the age of postmodern relativity. However, once a believer believes too strongly - once he becomes convinced that his beliefs and ideas are objectively true, not just for him, but for everyone - then he’s in trouble.

Cruise has merited this universal disapprobation not by adhering to a religion that attributes humanity’s problems to Body thetans, unleashed 75 million years ago by the evil alien ruler, Xenu, by but by adhering to it with conviction and sincerity. In a weird way, I respect that. If Cruise believes these things to be objectively true, and believes it important for all humanity to understand and embrace these truths, then it would be both unkind and unreasonable for him to not proselytize.

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Cruise’s problem is not his passion. Cruise’s problem is his religion’s unwillingness to face (or allow) open examination and scrutiny. This unwillingness springs, I think, from a subconscious realization that LRH’s scam of a religion would crumble under very little critical weight.

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John Piper on Hal Lindsey & End-Times Speculation

Well, if I haven’t thoroughly outed myself as a “Piperite”, two posts in one day featuring my favorite pastor should do the trick.

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I read Piper’s 1974 essay on Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth this morning, and could not pass on the opportunity to forward it along.

Since reading Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ Left Behind and witnessing the ensuing marketing phenomenon more than a decade ago, I have been uncomfortable with the assurance, and often the stridency, with which some adhere to the Premillennial/Dispensational eschatological system.

I occasionally listen to a weekend radio program on the local Christian AM station that deals exclusively with this topic. While I do not doubt the sincerity of the host’s faith, I am often disturbed at the passion attached to such a tangential issue (the precise outworking of Biblical prophecy in current events). I am more disturbed by the passion with which this host often criticizes her brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t subscribe to this particular eschatological system (a system that has no history in the Church predating the 19th Century).

Piper writes:

This is the most important: among those who calculate about the time and sequence of the coming events and who try to give detailed descriptions of how it will be, there is, I think, a fundamentally wrong focus, a dislocation of our “blessed hope.” Throughout the New Testament the all-important focus of our hope is personal fellowship with God and our Lord Jesus Christ…

… But for the calculator of the end times this all-important personal focus of our hope gets blurred in a mass of secondary (often speculative) details.

Amen! This is my chief concern with so many Christian ministries wandering into various aberrant teachings. Dispensational end-times speculation, fixations on mystical experience and supernatural charismata, the Prosperity Gospel, the Megachurch self-improvement progams, and a myriad of other modern errors all have this in common: They are all a giant distraction from the main thing - Jesus Christ and His Gospel.

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John Piper & The Prosperity Gospel

I saw this at Greycoats yesterday and couldn’t resist posting it myself.

I love John Piper! (And I hate the Prosperity “Gospel”!)

Brett Favre, Overrated?

As a native Minnesotan, Vikings fan and Packers reviler, I always assumed my view of Brett Favre as a hugely overrated QB was a symptom of nativist bias.

Apparently not:

Ovehyped: Favre didn’t deliver in second half of career

Take that, Cheeseheads!

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