The PCG announcement was not the only wacky thing going on this weekend. Maybe it’s just because it is Labor Day weekend and people have more time on their hands. More likely, it is because the fall holy days come earlier, so some of it is due to pre-holy day stirrings by the enemy. After all, these days picture Satan losing the battle against Jesus Christ and his imprisonment for 1,000 years. He hates what these days picture.
Anyhow, this weekend had all the wackiness, all the misunderstandings and all the bad news one could ask for.
Arizona Beheadings
Arizona Gov Jan Brewer now admits that she was wrong about finding beheaded bodies along the Mexican border.
When do you know a politician is lying? His or her lips are moving.
When Adam and Eve sinned against God, they removed some of the protection God was providing them. They would be left to experiment with their own societies, their own rules, their own governments and even their own religions. Now, they and their descendants have to learn the hard way instead of working from revealed knowledge the Creator gave them. It is implicit trust in the Creator that we must form now. That trust is called faith.
More about faith later.
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck has decided that he’s sorry about saying Obama is a racist, but instead he disagrees with liberation theology. Seems that Beck cannot keep his toe out of the religious world. After the flap over comparing the “gospel of social justice” to Marxism, you would think he would just stop.
Just as a reality check: Marxism and Communism were highly atheistic, if you will recall.
While I understand, and even agree – to a point—, that the Gospel itself is not about social justice or even feeding the poor, you have to admit that loving your neighbor as yourself and doing unto others as you would have them do to you were part of Jesus’ message. If you believe in a literal Kingdom of God, then you also have to believe that justice – social and otherwise – will prevail in the end.
It should also not be left unstated that in order to be part of the Kingdom of God, you will have to help out the helpless the best you can (Mt 25:31-46).
Physical and Spiritual
J over at Shadows has written a couple more articles about how to keep the law spiritually without keeping it physically. One is addressed to my article on the same topic. Nice try, but I’m afraid it isn’t convincing. Keeping the Sabbath spiritually without keeping it physically really is like saying you did not commit adultery because you were thinking about your wife the whole time.
When I read the Bible, I am amazed at how, cover to cover, God is consistent. Yet, dispensationalists and all flavors that result from the inconsistency of God, just don’t jive with a God Who states, “I change not…”
Back to the Sabbath, J’s other article takes Dr Robert Thiel to task for his comment about a CG7 article on the Sabbath. In doing so, J completely misses the point about faith, something that every Christian denomination supposedly understands and teaches. And, he says I don’t understand Protestantism?
J then goes on to that after Romans 18:6, there is no more mention of the Sabbath. Not only is that an argument from silence, but I would like to point out that Paul still taught in the synagogues (Ac 19:8), and it would be a stretch to say he was doing this willy-nilly whenever he desired. Shortly afterwards, he was a prisoner and so even going to a synagogue would have been severely difficult, and that’s probably the main reason for the lack of the mention of the Sabbath. I’m sure Paul kept it the best he could under the circumstances, but obviously he would not have been able to go to a synagogue.
8While he answered for himself, Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended any thing at all. (Acts 25:8, King James Version)
When you remember how confrontational the Jews were with Jesus because He did not keep the Sabbath their way (according to the law of the Jews) but rather the way it was intended, for Paul to make such a statement is phenomenal.
As Thiel points out, “So, the fact that it is not always easy to obey God does not justify disobedience.” I will remind you that the reason Paul was imprisoned was because he was being obedient. Jesus promised persecution by following His way of life. Right now, the persecution is more subtle and may involve a significant loss of pay.
Israel came out of Egypt and constantly complained about food, water, lack of meat, etc. They had their minds on the here and now. Adam and Eve justified their disobedience because it seemed better. They thought they knew better than God.
God wants us Christians to look at the bigger picture. He wants us to obey Him. He wants that obedience to not be begrudging. He often gives us hard times to test and see if we will obey Him even when the results don’t seem desirable.
On a side note: As far as Protestant minds go, even if J had not read my story previously and known my grandmother was a Baptist and we attended a Baptist church for a while, really all you have to do is turn on the radio and listen to what they say. They do not teach the keeping the law any more than J does. In fact, they usually only talk about “freedom in Christ”.
So, I am not going to back down from the assertion that they teach getting all warm and fuzzy about the Ten Commandments and then going about their business just like any carnal person does. After all, the “law has been done away”, so they really can do whatever they want whenever they want, choosing whatever fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they desire — and still be saved according to their theology.
What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them.
If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.
~ Martin Luther
And, yes, their form of Christianity really is cherry picking from the wrong tree. The end result is still death.
Stonings
I heard more on the news tonight about the Iranian woman who was sentenced to stoning for the crime of adultery. It seems that the Vatican is interested in the case now, describing stoning as “brutal”.
In an effort to get the appeal, though, a woman’s photograph was published. On Saturday, an Iranian judge further sentenced the woman to “99 lashes” because the picture had no head covering. The picture was published in London, BTW.
In another twist, the BBC reports:
The photograph was published on 28 August but several days later the Times newspaper published an apology, saying the photograph was not of Ms Ashtiani, but of another Iranian woman.
Anti-Muslim Sentiment: From New York to Tennessee to France
I heard an odd reference to Tennessee during a debate over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” being proposed in New York. It really had me scratching my head until I read on the Religion News Blog that “Far from Ground Zero, other plans for mosques run into vehement opposition” where a Muslim group in Murfreesboro ran into similar opposition when they wanted to build an Islamic center.
According to the article:
Although the overall level of anti-Muslim sentiment hasn’t shifted much since the uproar over the mosque near Ground Zero, the change in tone has been striking, religious scholars and other experts say.
Examples from the article include our old friend Pat Robertson pondering whether or not local officials could be bribed and whether or not “a Muslim takeover of America is imminent”. If you think false prophets are restricted to the Church of God movement, think again. If Robertson actually understood his Bible, he wouldn’t be worried so much about Muslims in our midst. Rather, he would be warning about the coming superpower in Europe.
The sentence of the Iranian woman who committed adultery isn’t doing much to spread good feelings about Islam, either. The French first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, came out in support of the Iranian woman. This angered Iran so much that the state media called her a “prostitute”, according to various news sources.
Where All This Negative Sentiment Will Lead
Even though efforts will continue to attempt to create a “one world government”, prophecy shows that the entire alliance will crumble. In particular, three factions will remain. One will be a superpower in Europe that Daniel refers to as the “King of the North”. Another one will be the “King of the South” who will likely be a confederation of Arab and other Muslim ruled nations whose headquarters will be south of Jerusalem.
Various false prophets don’t believe the Bible, however, and teach that Iran is the “King of the South”. I posted a map one time, but now I will just post a link to a map showing Iran is due east of the nation of Israel.
While Egypt was the King of the South in times past, it isn’t necessarily a requirement that the future one be. If the political landscape were to be radically altered, though, it isn’t unreasonable that it could be again. However, given the money that Saudi Arabia has, it is a much more likely location for the headquarters of a southern entity. Yemen might not seem like a power to be reckoned with, but let’s not forget that is where many terrorists are trained today. At very least, it is unlikely that all the nations surrounding the modern nation of Israel won’t be part of the alliance.
The Good News
Yes, there is a lot of wackiness, a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of bad news in the world.
Yet, it is going to get worse.
However, then it will get better.
How do I know?
That is the Good News, the Gospel, of the coming Kingdom of God. Jesus Christ Himself will return to the earth to put an end to the raging warfare at the time of the very end of this age. The Good News is that you also can partake in helping Jesus to rebuild a war-torn world. The earth can finally be like it was meant to be, and you can be a part of it!
Even better news is that Jesus will eventually destroy death itself. Then, God the Father will live with human beings on a new earth. Every tear will be dried.
But, there are some things you have to do. You have to change. You have to be willing to live God’s ways. You have to be so remorseful over the way you have lived that you ask God to help you to stop sinning, which is breaking His laws.
That first step is called repentance. It means you are done with yourself. You have tried it your way, and you have found it only leads to more problems – problems without solutions. You now want to try it God’s way.
To learn more about the real Good News, I invite you to read The Gospel of the Kingdom.