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American Christian Voice Volume 12 No. 1 ABOUT US 4.Yak Bak 27.Puzzle Page 47.What is the American Christian Voice? FROM THE COVER Love Your Enemies 10.Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction 14.The Force Seduction 20.Are There Limits to Loving My Enemies? 30.Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? 31.Stories of Great Awakenings 46.Muslims Turning to Christ in Denmark CENTERFOLD 24.Brammy Awards Pictures ECCLESIA RELEVANT 8.The Significance of Names in the Bible... Recovering the Lost Letter of Jacob 12.Captivating My Heart 42.As a Christian, What are Your Financial Priorities? 44.An Intimidating Opportunity
CULTURAL LIFE GUIDES 6.Young People and the Lure of Socialism 17.Prophetic Conference 7.Missouri Senate Bill SJR 39 Religious 19.Branson Women’s Conference Protection Measure Advances 26.While Paying Off Student Loans, Don’t 7.Trump’s Ex-Butler: He’s ‘Incredibly Forget About Retirement Generous’ 27.Puzzle Page!! 14.8 Interesting Facts About Ted Cruz You 36.Subscription Info Didn’t Know 38.Camp David 22.Peers Slam Researchers who see God’s 40.Dr. Hill’s Health Tip 43.Ask the Rabbi... Design in the Human Hand 28.Donald’s Trump’s Biggest Problems And 46.Question: “What are the Origins of Easter?” Why None of Them Matter 32.Stop Donating To The Wounded Warrior Project – They’re A Fraud 34.When Citizenship Was A Big Deal 36.White Poverty and Me 39.Christians Under Siege in Middle East RELATIONSHIPS 18.When Old Flames and Motherhood Collide 15.Beginnings – An End Is Only a Beginning in Disguise 16.Gary Smalley Remembered for www.ArtistryEntertainment.rocks Saving Marriages (417) 699-1838 Matt Duncan - DJ 37.Dear Karie
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. yak bak I was given a copy of American Christian Voice by a friend, and I really appreciate the magazine. There were some very good informative and inspirational articles. It is good to know that a high-quality Christian magazine is being published right in our area. I pray that God would enable you to make it a nationally known and respected voice. I was troubled by several degrading antiObama cartoons. I certainly do not agree with President Obama’s stand on same-sex marriage or abortion, but he is the president that God has allowed to come to that office, and we should honor him and pray for him. Cartoons that disparage, mock, and insult him have no place in a Christian magazine. I hope you will take a strong stand for moral and spiritual issues but stay away from politics. There are many conservative and moderate Democrats who could be blessed by American Christian Voice, but if it becomes politicized, they will not likely take advantage of it. One other suggestion: how about some articles on how we can win Muslims to faith in Christ? Many thousand Muslims are fleeing from their religion (some both physically and spiritually) as they have experienced the horror brought on by those who are following the teachings and example of their founder. If Christians treat them with fear and hatred, they will turn away from Christ also. But if Christians show them love and compassion, many of them will be won. There are many capable speakers and writers who have extensive experience working with Muslims. Just Google “How to win Muslims: and you will
Feed Back From Our Readers get plenty of names and ideas. In some places multitudes of Muslims are turning to faith as they are loved, blessed, and helped by Christ followers. We already have some Muslims in our area, and if President Obama has his way, for us to take in thousands of refugees from Syria, we will be getting many more. Help us to be ready to receive them and to minister to them in Christ’s name. Again, thank you for your magazine. Sincerely, in Christ, Ed and Greta Pinkston Harrison, AR please see page 47 for our position ed ________________________________________ I am reading Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes. The author spent most of life in Middle East, and provides some commentary on the David and Bathsheba incident. David’s actions are deplorable, for sure. However, modesty in the Middle East was huge. Bathing quarters were extremely private. It would have been impossible for David to “stumble” upon a bathing woman in this culture. Bathsheba “had” to place herself in this “view” of David in order for the encounter to be possible. She would have had to open doors, relieve drapes, or do some other purposeful measures in order to be “discovered” by the most powerful man in Jerusalem. The Jewish commentators did place some fair amount of blame on Bathsheba (including leaving her nameless in one of the NT genealogies). We shouldn’t dismiss older commentators
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as “sexist” too easily. Again, David still had full responsibility for his actions, and no excuses, but Bathsheba was not an innocent lamb, in the least, if we look at historical customs. —Steve H, Peoria, AZ ________________________________________ I panicked when I didn’t receive my copy of the American Christian Voice. When I called your offices, you reminded me that you only produce 10 issues each year with January and February being the down times. Although you make that clear in many different places in my subscription, I guess I just went into withdraws. Admittedly, there are things I do not agree with in almost every issue, I agree with at least 90% of the content. And what a powerful 90% it is. I have been a pastor for over 50 years (now retired) and am amazed at how the ACV educates me on so many important topics! Keep them coming and God bless what you all do! Rev. Paul McKee, Altoona, PA ______________________________________ Send your “letters to the editor” to: editor@americanchristianvoice.com or mail to:
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The American Christian Voice is published with the primary purpose is to edify the body of Christ through inspirational articles of Christian faith and courage, educate the body of Christ through informative articles and by promoting the message that disciples of Christ are not under the penalty of sin or condemnation of it. It is because of what Christ has done... not what we do. Our obedience to the law, and our good works, now is out of our gratitude for that precious gift of grace and salvation; not as a motivation to be in right standing with God. We are dedicated to be Kingdom builders as we realize that our unity can only represent God in our diversity as we
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cultural commentary
Young People and the Lure of Socialism
BY DR. THOMAS SOWELL
Many people of mature years are amazed at how many young people have voted for Senator Bernie Sanders, and are enthusiastic about the socialism he preaches. Many of those older people have lived long enough to have seen socialism fail, time and again, in countries around the world. Venezuela, with all its rich oil resources, is currently on the verge of economic collapse, after its heady fling with socialism. But, most of the young have missed all that, and their dumbed-down education is far more likely to present the inspiring rhetoric of socialism than to present its dismal track record.
All the people who grew the food, manufactured the clothing and built the housing used by this one professor, for at least two decades, had to be compensated for their efforts, or those efforts would not continue. And of course someone has to produce food, clothing and shelter for all the students in this one course, as well as books, computers and other requirements or amenities. Add up all these costs — and multiply by a hundred or so — and you have a rough idea of what going to college costs. Whether these costs are paid by using money in a capitalist economy or by some other mechanism in a feudal economy, a socialist economy, or whatever, there are heavy costs to pay.
Socialism is in fact a wonderful vision — a world of the imagination far better than any place anywhere in the real world, at any time over the thousands of years of recorded history. Even many conservatives would probably prefer to live in such a world, if they thought it was possible. Who would not want to live in a world where college was free, along with many other things, and where government protected us from the shocks of life and guaranteed our happiness? It would be Disneyland for adults! Free college of course has an appeal to the young, especially those who have never studied economics. But college cannot possibly be free. It would not be free even if there was no such thing as money. Consider the costs of just one professor teaching just one course. He or she has probably spent more than 20 years being educated, from kindergarten to the Ph.D., before ending up standing in front of a class and trying to convey some of the knowledge picked up in all those years. That means being fed, clothed and housed all those years, along with other expenses.
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Even the existing subsidies of college have led many people to go to college who have very little interest in, or benefit from, going to college, except for enjoying the social scene while postponing adult responsibilities for a few years. Whether judging by test results, by number of hours per week devoted to studying or by on-campus interviews, it is clear that today's college students learn a lot less than college students once did. If college becomes "free," even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated and without acquiring re any economically meaningful skills. More fundamentally, making all sorts of other things "free" means more of those things being wasted as well. Even worse, it means putting more and more of the decisions that shape our lives into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats who control the purse strings. Obamacare has given us a foretaste of what that means in reality, despite how wonderful it may sound in political rhetoric.
Moreover, under any economic system, those costs are either going to be paid or there are not going to be any colleges. Money is just an artificial device for getting real things done. Those young people who understand this, whether clearly or vaguely, are not likely to be deterred from wanting socialism. Because what they really want is for somebody else to pay for their decision to go to college. A market economy is one in which whoever makes a decision is the one who pays for that decision. It forces people to be sure that what they want to do is really worth what it is going to cost.
Worst of all, government giveaways polarize society into segments, each trying to get what it wants at somebody else's expense, creating mutual bitterness that can tear a society apart. Some seem to blithely assume that "the rich" can be taxed to pay for what they want — as if "the rich" don't see what is coming and take their wealth elsewhere. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at:
www.creators.com
news bites Missouri Senate Bill SJR 39 Religious Trump’s ExButler: Protection Measure Advances Generous’
He’s
‘Incredibly
JEFFERSON CITY, MO. CWS --
The proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution would prohibit government penalties against those who cite "a sincere religious belief" while declining to provide goods or services of "expressional or artistic creation" for same-sex marriage ceremonies or celebrations. The measure was revised to specifically state that florists and photographers would be protected and to clarify that it applies to services provided for a reception taking place around the same time as a wedding ceremony. The measure comes after bakers and florists have faced legal challenges in other states for declining to provide services for same-sex weddings due to their religious beliefs.
Donald Trump's ex-butler sang his praises as "incredibly generous," and a "nice guy" and patriot — calling his own long service proof of the brash billionaire's good character. Tony Senecal — who lauded Trump to Newsmax well before the businessman became a presidential primary candidate — defended the businessman in an interview with CNN's Carol Costello Thursday. And though the interview elicited mostly brief and to-the-point replies, Senecal did offer effusive praise at one point.
BY CATHY BURKE
Missouri's Senate recently proposed a greater religious protections bill to the state Constitution for some business owners and individuals opposed to gay marriage after Democrats stalled the vote for more than a day.
"He's an incredibly generous person," Senecal said. "He's been generous to his employees. He's generous to strangers. He's an entirely a nice guy. He's not the gruff person that people make him out to be." "Sure, you attack him, he's going to fight back," he continued. "But most of the time he's just a nice man. I lasted with him for 20 years, he had to be pretty good," Senecal said. He also insists Trump wants only what's best for America.
"No one should be compelled to make a work with their own hands that's offensive to their beliefs," Republican sponsor Sen. Bob Onder said during debate on the measure. If passed by both chambers, the proposal would appear before voters either on the August primary or November general election ballot. It would bypass Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon, who opposed the measure.
"His interest in the American people," he said. "His patriotism. The man was born on Flag Day. He's a very patriotic person — ahem, excuse me — and he wants what's best for this country."
Newsmax.com
"Rewriting our state's constitution to condone discrimination would be contrary to our values and harmful to our economy," Nixon said in an emailed statement. Missouri's largest statewide business organizations have taken no position on the measure, though the St. Louis Regional Chamber has raised concerns. Some businesses, including St. Louis agricultural giant Monsanto, have opposed it. Republican lawmakers in various states also have pushed religious protection measures following the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage. Onder said the Missouri measure is more narrowly crafted than some that have faced a backlash - for example, a proposal in Indiana that was criticized by businesses. "This bill does not in any way create any kind of broad religious exemption or any broad right to deny services," said Onder, of Lake St. Louis. "It's really only this very limited situation of wedding vendors." If approved by voters, critics said the proposal could be subject to court challenges.
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a rose is still a rose... or is it?
The Significance of Names in the Bible ... believe the primary purpose of Jesus’ ministry on earth was one of reconciliation. That is, Jesus’ primary purpose – His reason for coming into this world – was to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). I believe seeking and saving the lost is an umbrella statement that covers everything else Jesus said or did.
I
I do not believe His purpose was ultimately to preach the kingdom, fulfill Old Testament prophecy, perform miracles, or glorify God. When I say those things weren’t His purpose ultimately, what I mean is that they don’t represent the end goal Jesus had in mind. He did do all of those things and I in no way mean to minimize their importance, but the ultimate purpose behind each of those actions was salvation. Defeating sin and death in order to restore fellowship between a fallen world and the Father – eternally – was the end goal for Jesus. Have you ever thought about what the name “Jesus” means? Names are significant in the Bible, and they have a variety of functions. For instance, a biblical name could record some aspects of a person’s birth. Moses was given his name because his mother drew him out of a river (Exodus 2:10). His name literally means “to draw out.” Jacob and Samuel also serve as examples (Genesis 25:6; 1 Samuel 1:20). Biblical names sometimes expressed the parents’ reaction to the birth of their child. Examples include Isaac (Genesis 21:6) which means “laughter”, and Abimelech (Judges 8:31) which means “my father is king.” Biblical names were sometimes used to secure the solidarity of family ties. An example of this is found in Luke 1:59 when John the Baptist was nearly given the name of his father. Biblical names could be used to communicate God’s message. The prophet Isaiah named his first son Shear-jashub which means “a remnant shall return” (Isaiah 7:3). This was in line with God’s message to the Israelite people that they would be reduced to a mere remnant of
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what they once were, and would eventually return from exile to the promised land.
their sins.” Has Jesus saved you?
Biblical names were also used to establish affiliation with God. All the names ending with -jah or -el (and there are many of those) are saying “with the Lord” or “with God.” Then you have the giving of a new name. This was used to establish authority over another, or to indicate a new beginning or new direction in a person’s life. For instance, Pharaoh changed Joseph’s name to Zephenath-paneah when Joseph entered his service (Genesis 41:45), another Pharaoh changed the name of the Jewish king Eliakim’s name to Jehoiakim (2 Kings 23:24). While in Babylonian captivity, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were forced to change their names to Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 1:6-7). Name changes indicating a new life direction include Abram to Abraham (Genesis 17:5), Cephas to Peter (Mark 3:16), and some would say Saul to Paul (Acts 13:9). Here’s the really interesting part: names were often used to express the nature and function of a person. They were used to indicate a person’s purpose in the world, and the greatest example of this type of naming is Jesus. Check it out: Matthew 1:20-21 20 But after [Joseph] had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (NIV) “Because He will save people from their sins.” The name “Jesus” literally means “the Lord saves.” What’s His primary purpose? What’s the overarching mission that every action falls under? Just look to His name – “to save people from
Because the benefits of allowing Him into your life don’t begin in heaven – they begin now. If you want to chat about it, feel free to email me:
wes@campusministryunited.com outoftheoverflow.com
t is high time the English-speaking church recovers the long-lost letter of Jacob. For 500 years, we have wrongly called this the letter of James, despite the fact that the Greek does not say James, but rather Jacob (as in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), and despite the fact that in every other language, the letter of Jacob is rightly identified as such.
I
By calling this the letter of James, and by referring to the apostle James rather than the apostle Jacob (not to mention Jacob the brother of Jesus, also wrongly called James, who led the congregation in Jerusalem), we have produced theological confusion and cut off an important Jewish dimension to the roots of the Christian faith. Consider for a moment that in German or Dutch Bibles, this is the letter of Jakobus, while in French it is Jacques and in Polish, Jakub. Check this out in 50 different languages, and in every one, you will find a variation of Jacob. Even the Spanish name “Santiago” comes from San Diego (Saint Diego, which is also a variant of Jacob). Only our English Bibles say James, completely
Recovering the Lost Letter of Jacob Consider also that when English translators of the Bible saw the name of the patriarch Jacob in verses like Matthew 1:2, they did not translate it to James. Otherwise, we would have had absolutely bizarre statements like, “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of James, and James the father of Judah and his brothers,” or Jesus would have made reference to “the God of Abraham, Isaac and James” (see Matt. 22:32).
Yet, when it comes to the apostle Jacob or the letter of Jacob, virtually all English translations—with the primary exception of Messianic Jewish versions—refer to this Jacob as James. Why? Does it sound too Jewish? If so, what do you do with the names of the twelve apostles, as listed in Matthew 10:24, which originally sounded like this: “First, Shim‘on, called Kefa, and Andrew [Andrai] his brother, Ya‘akov Ben-Zavdai and Yochanan his brother, Philip [Philippos] and Bar-Talmai, T’oma and Mattityahu the tax-collector, Ya‘akov Bar-Halfai and Taddai, Shim‘on the Zealot, and Y’hudah from K’riot, who betrayed him” (Complete Jewish Bible).
To be perfectly clear, I have no problem a man comes into your meeting...” Or, in the rendering the Hebrew name Ya‘akov King James Version, “For if there come unto (Iakobus in Greek) with the English name your assembly...” In other words, since this Jacob. In fact, that is the correct English is a “Christian” context rather than a translation. But I “Jewish” context, have a real problem synagoges cannot I say it is high time for calling him James. possibly mean That is not who he Bible translators, seminary “synagogue.” was, and that is not Rather, we assume, and ministry school how he should be it has to mean professors, pastors, known. “meeting” or teachers and all believers, “assembly,” since Let’s look at the to expunge “James” from Christians don’t opening verse of his meet in synagogues. letter as rendered in our Bibles (I’m not talking a contemporary about King James) and go There’s only one English version: problem with this back to what the original line of reasoning: “James, a servant of This is the epistle of Greek text says: Jacob. God and Jacob, not James, of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the and it was written to Jewish believers, not twelve tribes scattered among Gentile believers. That’s why the Complete the nations: Greetings” (James Jewish Bible rightly renders this with, 1:1, NIV). You might take this as “Suppose a man comes into your saying, “This is the Christian synagogue...” while Kenneth Wuest’s leader James writing to Expanded Translation reads, “For if there Christians scattered around the comes into your synagogue [the meeting world, figuratively referred to as place of Christian-Jews]...” the twelve tribes.” How novel this sounds to most Christian But what if we rendered the ears: a Jewish epistle written to Jewish Greek literally, also rendering believers who met in Messianic other names in a way that synagogues. But that is clearly what the text reflects their Hebrew/Aramaic indicates, although it is not the way many background? It would sound like Christian teachers have interpreted the this: “Jacob, a servant of God and text. of the Lord Yeshua Messiah, to the twelve tribes scattered I say it is high time for Bible translators, among the nations: Shalom.” seminary and ministry school professors, Now what comes to mind? This is a letter pastors, teachers and all believers, to from a Jewish believer in the Messiah to expunge “James” from our Bibles (I’m not Jewish believers scattered around the talking about King James) and go back to world. And notice that one key word: what the original Greek text says: Jacob. Jewish. The New Testament is a very Jewish It might just start a revolution in our book! churches, a revolution of truth, along with a Let’s take this one step further: The Greek reconnection to the Jewish roots of our word synagoges, meaning “assembly, faith. Will you join me in recovering the meeting place, synagogue,” occurs 56 times letter of Jacob? in the Greek New Testament, being found most frequently in the Gospels and Acts (53 Michael Brown is the author of The Real times), where it is virtually always Kosher Jesus and the host of the nationally rendered with “synagogue.” And when you syndicated talk radio show The Line of Fire on the Salem Radio Network. He is also hear that word, you think, “Jewish.” president of FIRE School of Ministry and But there’s one time in our English Bibles director of the Coalition of Conscience. where synagoges is not translated Follow him at AskDrBrown on Facebook or “synagogue,” namely, James 2:2: “Suppose @drmichaellbrown on Twitter. VOL.12 #1 | WWW.AMERICAN CHRISTIAN VOICE.COM
BY DR. MICHAEL BROWN
without justification. (The name was corrupted as it passed from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, ultimately morphing into James.)
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deeper/harder grace
BY TIM CHALLIES
Messy Grace: M
essy Grace is Caleb’s story. It is part autobiography and part teaching tool. He tells his story of growing up in the LGBT community, of becoming a Christian, and of learning how to be a Christian who still loves and honors his parents. All the while he instructs the reader on how to love others without sacrificing conviction. He tells of how he saw Christians behave so badly around homosexuals and how, in many cases, the LGBT community fairly harbors terrible hurt and suspicion toward Christians. He tells of how it is possible to build bridges into the gay community without compromise. He even tells of how his long care and concern for his parents led each of them to make a profession of faith in Christ.
the gospel with him. He began to investigate the claims of the Bible and began to investigate the man who said he was the world’s only Savior. Over time he became persuaded that it was all true and put his faith in Jesus Christ. But then he had to tell his parents. He had to convince his parents that he still loved them, that he still
When he was a teenager, Caleb Kaltenbach came out to his parents. With fear and trembling, he told first his father and then his mother about a growing realization within, about his acceptance of a whole new identity. His parents responded coldly, they responded with disappointment, they responded with anger, they responded by telling Caleb that he had betrayed them and all they stood for. His is like many other coming out stories you have heard except for this: Caleb was coming out as a Christian to his gay parents. Caleb Kaltenbach’s parents, both accomplished academics, divorced when he was just 3. Shortly thereafter his mother fell in love with a woman and settled into life with her. His father began to live as a gay man, though it would take some time before Caleb understood that. His childhood, then, was split between his father’s home, where he experienced a watered-down, liberal version of the Christian faith, and his mother’s home where he heard only that the Bible was homophobic and irrelevant, that Jesus was for the weak and pathetic, and that Christians were hateful. His mother was active in the gay rights movement, serving on GLAAD’s board, marching in parades, and fighting hard for the rights of gay people to be fully accepted and fully integrated into every part of society. While Caleb grew up in this environment he had friends who were Christians and eventually those Christians began to share
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wanted to be their son, that he still wanted them to be part of his life, that his new religious convictions did nothing to change his love and respect for them. They would always be his parents and he would always love them.
he sees as the very core of his being. Many of our calls and convictions are too simplistic and, for that reason, not very compelling. But the beauty of the Christian faith is that it, too, offers an identity. It offers the much deeper and better identity of disciple of Christ. And this is where so many attempts at evangelism fall flat—we worry more about behavior than identity. We concern ourselves with a person’s sexuality, telling him he must change that, when really we should first concern ourselves with the man’s identity, showing him that Christ demands this change of identity of each one of his followers. No matter who we are, no matter our sin, no matter our past, we need a change at the deepest part of us. And only then do we start to talk about changing our sexuality, changing our behavior. Messy Grace is a sound introduction to matters related to homosexuality and the LGBT community. Kaltenbach manages to walk the line of grace and truth, to communicate both love for people and respect for the Word of God. I do not agree with every one of his conclusions—for example, he makes attendance at a gay wedding a matter of conscience where I would see the issue in closer to absolute terms—but he does not expect every reader to agree with every conclusion. I appreciate how Dr. Thomas Schreiner summarizes it: “The story is riveting and the gospel pulsates throughout the book. Kaltenbach charts out for us what it looks like to be people of grace and truth, to be people of mercy with a mission.” In that way, Messy Grace makes a valuable addition to an important conversation.
One of Messy Grace’s strengths is Kaltenbach’s description of just how much homosexuality provides an identity. For www.Challies.com that reason, when you tell a homosexual that he must renounce his homosexuality, you are not asking him to renounce mere beVisit our gift shop havior, but an entire 179 Expressway Lane • Branson, MO identity, an entire means of self-underMon Sat • 9 am 5 pm • Sunday hours vary standing. What we 417.337.7888 may see as behavior,
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Kindom Xperience
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BY DR. MARLA WOODMANSEE
eep down inside of each one of us is a desire to be loved.
I believe it is because we are made in the image of God. Gen 1:26-27 says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Being made in the image and likeness of God distinguishes us from the rest of creation and God’s creatures because humans have been given the ability to give and receive love. But, although we have the innate desire to give and receive love, we have the choice to either love others, or not to love others; to love God, or not to love God. First John chapters 4 and 5 describe God’s love. First John 4:8 says, “…God is love.” God is fundamentally, essentially, and completely full of love. And his love is captivating. There are many ways that God’s love is captivating. One of the ways God’s love is captivating is through His Son, Jesus. Jesus came to the earth to be God among us. He died on a cross and provided a way for us to receive propitiation, pardon, and forgiveness for our sins. When you choose to confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and your Savior, then God abides in you. And when God abides in you, then you abide in God. And when you abide in God, you abide in perfect love (1 John 4:16-17). When you abide in God, you become part of God’s family. God becomes your father and you become His child. First John 3:12 says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…Beloved, we are God’s children now…” God not only captivates our hearts through
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Captivating My Heart
Jesus and by including us into his family, but He also does it through creation. Creation is an act of God. God brought the world into existence out of nothing. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” When my youngest daughter, Lydia, was 9 years old we went on a walk in our neigh-
him and love him with all your heart, he will demonstrate his love for you in ways that are amazing. First Corinthians 2:9 says, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those that love him.” Jeremiah 29:11-13 reminds us, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’” ♥
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b o r hood. While we were walking, Lydia said, “Mama, I’ve never seen a shooting star.” Immediately, I said, “God, would you show Lydia a shooting star?” Within only a few minutes, blasted across the sky was a shooting star. We were ecstatic and amazed at how God displayed himself to us in such a wonderful way. Because of that experience, Psalm 8:23 has become very special to me, “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise…When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place.” That night, God answered our request and captivated our hearts with his splendor and glory. I told Lydia to never forget how God displayed himself to her in such an awesome way. God captivates our hearts in a variety of ways. His glory is displayed everywhere: in a magnificent sunrise or sunset, a multi-colored flower, or with an answered prayer: like an unbelievable shooting star. The word captivate is very fascinating. Captivate means to influence by some special charm, art, or trait with an irresistible appeal. Captivate also means to attract, allure, fascinate, or enchant. God’s love is captivating. When you seek
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Dr. Marla Woodmansee is a Bible Commu nicator, inspirational women’s conference speaker, magazine columnist, author, host for a daily Christian radio program on Branson’s KLFC 88.1 FM, and President of Kingdom Xperience, a nonforprofit Chris tian organization focused to: Inform*Em power*Transform. Contact Dr. Marla at: marla@marlawoodmansee.org or check out the website:
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just so you don’t think we are pro Trump
The Shocking/Sobering Reason There Are No Trump Supporters on Your Facebook Feed
Except for one glaring exception: the bewildering avalanche of articles denouncing Donald Trump and the mystifying absence of a single pro-Trump post. So what accounts for this? Why do we see in our feeds people posting pro and con on all the other candidates, but only negative things about Trump?
Your Facebook is a Mirror No it’s not a conspiracy. If Facebook isn’t showing my any pro-Trump posts from friends, it’s because it knows I probably don’t want to hear that message from those people. My patterns over the last ten years – whose baby pictures I’ve liked, whose articles I clicked on, who I “respectfully disagreed with,” what ads I’ve clicked, even the posts I scrolled to and paused on for a few moments without clicking anything – all of that has been recorded, analyzed, and processed in order to create something Facebook knows I’ll like.
When you think about it there are only a few options
That Facebook’s job. Figure out what I like, and keep it coming, so I’ll return again and again. This might be a time to trot out fun statements like, “If a service is free, you’re the product,” but in this case, I think something deeper is a work.
1) Trump supporters don’t actually exist
Who Are “Those People”?
2) I’m not Facebook friends with any Trump supporters
In his article, A Message from Trump’s America, Michael Cooper reminds us the majority of Trump supporters come from a large, neglected group of Americans – working class white people. They don’t make a lot of money, they are struggling to put food on the table, and they are frustrated that no one seems to be listening and no one seems to care. He writes:
Where Are All the Trump Supporters?
3) Facebook isn’t showing me any pro Trump news Yes, Let’s take these one at a time. A few months ago, the first option might have seemed plausible. Surely this is all just a fun stunt for Trump, and he might have some supporters, but he won’t actually get votes right? However, primary after primary has proven this to be yuuuugely wrong. Donald Trump has tens of millions of living, breathing, voting supporters. The are real, and they are making their voices and votes count. (Even if some are hiding it). Is it possible, then, that I (and presumably ‘we’) don’t have any Trump-supporting friends on Facebook and that’s why we don’t see any posts in his favor? In person, I’ve only heard one couple friend (or really acquaintance) of mine offer strong support of Trump, so it seems very likely that few of the Facebook friends I’ve accumulated over the years support him. But if there are Trump supporters among my 500+ friends, that leads to the third possibility — Facebook just isn’t showing me their posts. Is this a Zuckerbergian conspiracy or something else?
His supporters realize he’s a joke. They do not care. They know he’s authoritarian, nationalist, almost un-American, and they love him anyway, because he disrupts a broken political process and beats establishment candidates who’ve long ignored their interests. When you’re earning $32,000 a year and haven’t had a decent vacation in over a decade, it doesn’t matter who Trump appoints to the U.N., or if he poisons America’s standing in the world, you just want to win again, whoever the victim, whatever the price. It’s easy to say they are wrong, but the shocking and sobering reality of Trump’s rise is that it exposes how utterly cut off most of us are from an entire class of people in need. People in need of compassion and grace, not condescension and more anger. When I read the description above, it doesn’t sound like the kind of person I seek out regularly. And it certainly doesn’t sound
like the kind of person who could entertain me on Facebook, post an amazing photo on Instagram, or have a super interesting Periscope channel. We tend to see only what we want to see, and social media is very good and showing us what we want to see.
BY JOHN DYER
f you’re anything like me, you probably have Facebook friends across the political spectrum, and over the past few months you’ve seen the normal range of young idealists feeling the Bern to staunch conservatives behind who Trust Ted.
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The media we consume is so good at regurgitating the story we want hear, that an entire nation has been caught off guard by the presence of a class of people so desperate for change that they would support anyone – literally anyone – who will listen. — Post script: As Trump amasses more votes, he also seems to be getting more vocal supporters, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, a pastor in my area who seem to enjoy media attention, lots of embarrassed people, and probably a lot of this will continue right up to the nomination and possibly election. But don’t let that distract you from the strange truth that from July 2015 to March 2016, many, many people thought Trump didn’t have a chance, and they thought this because they (including me) weren’t aware of the feelings of a massive group of hurting people. And our media echoed that back to us so strongly that for a time we believed they didn’t exist. www.donteatthefruit.com
If you cannot understand the rise of Donald Trump, you do not understand the failures of Barack Obama. -Jonah Goldberg
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commentary
The Force Seduction s a Star Wars” fan. I was intrigued by the new movie – The Force Awakened. The big question is how could the child of Han Solo could and Princess Leia be seduced to the dark side. It is a question that has been asked by parents everywhere when their kids turned away from the Christian foundation they had tried to instill in their child. Did they raise their child right? Did they fight too much? Were they good enough? Han and Leia put Ben in the hands of the Jedi master, Luke Skywalker, just as so many parents put their children in the hands of a pastor or a good Christian College. The kid had leadership skills and somehow he got control of the discipleship group and broke the heart of the leader of the Force. Luke felt such a failure that he disappeared. How many pastors have quit because the people in their care failed to keep their focus on the Lord and were seduced by whatever weakness they entertained. In the movie, Ben sought power and listened to the legends of his grandfather, Darth Vader. He wanted to be stronger than Darth on the dark side. Being the bad boy of the galaxy was drawing him. Somewhere in the process, he had been offended by the Force and what it stood for. He was very divided and had a plan to be free. If you haven’t seen the movie, I will leave it there. But the question is how do you forgive your
child who has been seduced by the enemy? How can you release the kid that you loved with all your heart; who continually rejects you and won’t even let you speak about the Lord Whom you love with all your heart? The key word here is love. You will always love the child no matter what they have done – even if they do something so awful that they end up in jail. Your children often will not
8 Interesting Facts About Ted Cruz You Didn’t Know
Cruz served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist. He was also the first Hispanic to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States 5. Earned degrees from two Ivy League universities - Cruz graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University with a B.A. in Public Policy. His second degree is from Harvard Law School where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Juris Doctor degree. 6. Ted Cruz was born in Canada - Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, in 1970. His parents were working in the oil business in Canada. His father was born in Cuba and his mother was born in Delaware – and he is a U.S. citizen because his mother was born in the United States. He held dual citizenship in both the United States and Canada until he revoked his Canadian citizenship in 2014. 7. Cruz was a law professor - Before becoming a senator, Ted Cruz was an
BY KATHLEEN CARUSO
A
1. Ted Cruz set a few records as Texas solicitor general - He was the first Hispanic solicitor general of Texas. He was also the youngest person to become the solicitor general in the United States. 2. Cruz argued cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court - Cruz has argued nine cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. This record of having argued before the Supreme Court nine times is more than any practicing lawyer in Texas or any current member of Congress. 3. Running for the Senate was his first political campaign - Before running and winning his Senate seat in 2012, he had never held an elective office before. His win was the biggest upset of the 2012 election. 4. Ted Cruz was a law clerk for a chief justice of the Supreme Court - In 1996, Ted
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listen to you, no matter how much they know that you love them unconditionally. The best thing to do is to forgive them fully and completely and release them to the Lord and remove all expectations. You pray over them and call forth the right people to speak into their lives. Unlike the movies, we have a real Force to be reckoned
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with and He is concerned with that which concerns us. There is nothing too
difficult for Him and when we trust Him, the results are amazing.
adjunct law professor. From 2004 to 2009, Cruz taught U.S. Supreme Court Litigation at the University of Texas. 8. Won a debate national championship Cruz, along with his classmate David Panton, won the American Parliamentary Debate Association national championship while at Princeton. Cruz was also named Speaker of the Year.
commentary
ndings can be incapacitating and painful for a variety of reasons, most of which we never identify because we’re too caught up in the loss to see anything but the loss. We don’t really identify what we’re actually doing with whatever the ending is, or what the ending is actually doing to us because we’re too lost in the loss to even begin to consider any of that. The fact that something is ending becomes entirely consuming to the point that the ending is all that we can see. And because it’s all that we can see, the ending becomes an end in itself when directly ahead of us new beginnings are being forged from the very ending that we’re caught up in. And so, how do we learn to see a beginning being formed in the ashes of whatever end we’ve experienced? We might do that better by getting some obstructive thinking out of the way:
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First, We Don’t Want to Lose Something We tend to hate endings because many of our endings involve things that we don’t want to lose. Sure, there are many things that we’re glad to get rid of, but many times some ‘thing,’ or some person, or some lifephase played such a role in our lives that we can’t imagine going on without it. What we end up doing is seeing the loss within the agenda that we had created for that thing, or that person, or that life-phase, and we’ve not recognized a larger agenda that’s playing itself out so it can play other things in. Second, We Fear That Whatever We’ve Lost Can Never Be Replaced Then there’s the fear that what we’ve lost can never be replaced. There’s an
immediate sense that losing something demands that it be replaced. There’s that sense where we don’t want to disturb the continuity of our lives and the rhythm that we’ve created. Maybe there is no way we can stop that. What we tend to miss is that replacement only serves to perpetuate the repetition of the past, where creating space for something new creates space for something fresh.
New Beginning So what if this is an end and nothing more than an end? What if life doesn’t go on, or there are no opportunities beyond this, or it all dies here? It is this very fear that makes most of our endings so terribly frightening. Yet, it is looking at the nature and fabric of life, and in the looking realize that things always find a way to go forward because there is always a place to go forward to. An End as a Beginning in Disguise Life is a relentless perpetuation of things arising out of things that have passed. There is the coming and the going. The uprooting and the planting. There is an unrelenting exchange that makes things unrelentingly new. But loss is only a precursor to something that we will soon gain. It might be different, it could take us in an entirely new direction, it may well be unfamiliar, but it is the next step picking up where the previous step left off. An ending is only a beginning in disguise.
Third, Glorifying the End Because we have to tolerate endings, we want them to be good and even glorious. If something’s going to end and we can’t stop it, we want to send it off with some sort of recognition or appreciation or final ‘hurrah.’ We can’t hold on to that which we’re losing, but we can make the end glorious to the point that the memory of it all will always stay with us. There’s nothing inherently wrong about bringing something to a close in a manner that’s celebratory, unless this becomes our one and total focus. Fourth, We Fear That an Ending Might Be a Failure What if the ending is really a failure? What if whatever it is that ended wasn’t really supposed to end, but it did because somebody screwed up somewhere? And it may well be that the loss did not have to happen, and maybe should not have happened at all. Yet, life is big enough and has ample room to take the most tragic mistakes and weave them into the most wonderful of opportunities if we let it do so.
BY DR. CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH
Beginnings – An End Is Only a Beginning in Disguise
In addition, Craig has over ten years experience in pastoral ministry. He has served as youth pastor, associate pastor and senior pastor in churches both in Colorado and California. In these positions he has also provided leadership in both state and national denominational ministries. Furthermore, he has written for a wide variety of magazines and has published four books. He also hosted a Christian radio ministry for two years. He is a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors and Certified Professional Life Coach.
www.craiglpc.com
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in transition
Gary Smalley Remembered for Saving Marriages
BY SAMANTHA GOBBA
Christian author and speaker devoted his life to strengthening families (WNS)--Renowned Christian speaker and author Gary Smalley died Mar. 6 following a bout with heart complications and kidney disease. He was 75. The marriage champion, who for years was a fixture of Focus on the Family, and appeared on Oprah, NBC’s Today Show, and Fox and Friends, leaves a legacy of more than 60 best-sellers full of biblical advice on relationships. Healing marriages was Smalley’s calling. When his son, Greg Smalley, thinks about his dad, he recalls Isaiah 61:4: “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated.” “He saw those ‘cities long devastated’ as families and became passionate about restoring families,” Greg Smalley told me. For nearly 50 years, Smalley’s seminars, books, and other materials helped repair relationships by pointing people to godly principles of love and forgiveness. His books have sold more than 5 million copies, and his Hidden Keys to Loving Relationships videos have sold more than 9 million sets. That video series breathed life into the struggling marriage of Keith and Jean Porter, pastor and secretary duo of the Hillsdale Free Methodist Church in Michigan. Nearly a decade into their marriage, Keith was struggling to earn a living while Jean cared for their three children. They almost never saw each other. “It was a non-existent relationship,” Jean told me. “It was just living together.” In 1987, at a church-sponsored marriage retreat featuring Smalley’s “Keys,” Keith Porter realized a fundamental flaw in his approach to marriage: Men and women are not the same, but created different by God. “It just absolutely changed my life and helped me to become a much better husband, and understand how to be married to a woman a lot better,” Keith Porter told me. Now, Porter works with 12-15 couples every year in his 300-member church and uses the Smalley videos for pre-marital counseling. He has even seen the series help restore marriages threatened by an adulterous relationship. The videos continue to help him, even though he has seen them at least 200 times. “Jean can tell [if] I’ve recently watched the videos, because my level of relationship increases,” he said.
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Smalley and his wife Norma began leading marriage seminars in the 1970s while Smalley worked as a family pastor at Highland Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. He had taken over a Bible study of about a dozen students at Baylor University. That group eventually swelled to 600. The students loved him so much they went home during breaks and begged their pastors to host Smalley. Soon, Smalley and his family were traveling to churches around the state. “I remember Friday afternoon after school, we’d load up into this ratty old RV, and my dad would drive to these little cities, and we’d kind of hang out on the campground and play and he’d do a marriage seminar,” Greg said. Once, he recalls his dad writing two books in six weeks. Smalley cranked out For Better or for Best and If Only He Knew in a hotel room to fulfill the promises of an infomercial. To this day, Greg said, those two books are among Smalley’s top sellers. In 1979, the Smalleys formed Family Heritage Ministries. The family eventually moved to Phoenix, Ariz., to make traveling easier and renamed the ministry the Smalley Relationship Center. All three of the Smalley children—Kari, Greg, and Michael—now work in marriage and family ministries, with Greg Smalley serving as the vice president of family ministries at Focus on the Family. “[He] spent a lot of time with us,” Greg said. “I think that’s why we all have gone into ministry, is because we weren’t turned off to ministry, turned off to the church, turned off to God. He prioritized us.” The Smalley home was high-energy, full of banter and practical jokes. Once when their father fell asleep in his chair, Greg and Michael caught the family dog and removed its shock collar. “We took that Super Barker Breaker and put it under his throat, and then barked real loud,” Greg said. “He just shot up out of his chair, and then he literally ran out of the
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house.” Greg also remembers seeing his father on his knees in the early morning hours, bent over a Bible and deep in prayer. On their runs together, his father would pray out loud for the ministry, talking to God about his dreams for the future. “I don’t think there was a dream he had that didn’t come true,” Greg said. Behind his success was Norma, his polar opposite. Greg remembers hearing his dad describing a new idea and his mom saying, “Well, here’s why that won’t work.” Smalley strove to love his wife and kids, and if he made a mistake, was quick to apologize. Never satisfied with himself, Smalley was constantly working on improving his marriage, “which I think drove my mom crazy,” Greg said. “He was always working on the next thing in his life to grow in. … He would say, ‘I’ve never arrived. I’ll arrive when I get to heaven.’” He also saw the importance of a good relationship with his children. Having kids, he told his son, was like making a best friend. And he put it into practice. “I can honestly say that he was one of my best friends,” Greg said. As Smalley lay dying, Greg put his hand over his father’s heart and felt the beats begin to slow. He read 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” “To me, that epitomized him,” Greg said. “It was cool to see him really live that out and be able to speak that verse to him as he was entering heaven.”
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the hand that rocks the cradle...
BY AMBER LIA
is a mistake and that the “other” option would have been better, they are on the road to forsaking the real possibility of joy and happiness for a corrupt trade of certain pain and loss.
he was simply searching around on the internet. It was no big deal, she mused. A mindless escape from the sibling rivalry going on down the hall and the mounds of laundry piled high on the couch. When his picture popped up on her screen, all the memories of their former connection came into focus as clearly as his smiling profile. Of course, that was 15 years ago. By now it was water under the bridge and way out into the sea.
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Still, she dug around to see what his life, without her, looked like. Eventually, she clicked off the computer and walked down the hall to check on her kids before starting dinner, but try as she might, she couldn’t stop thinking about that special first date-the best one she had ever been on, with him. Her husband’s phone call jolted her back to reality. He would be late. As usual. What if? She wondered……. When Old Flames and Motherhood Collide via The MOB Society And that’s so often how it begins-the seemingly innocent day-dreams of relationships and days gone by caught in a mental time capsule of constant youth and happier times that rival sharply with cheerio encrusted floors and over-worked husbands. THE FANTASY DOESN’T GIVE REALITY A FIGHTING CHANCE. The ethereal nature of wishful thinking is a coy but dangerous mirage that is one of Satan's favorite tactics to destroy our families. When moms and wives begin to believe that the life they are currently living
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Moms, longing and lust are powerful emotions! You don’t have to look too far to find a family that has been torn apart by a spouse’s unfaithfulness. But it doesn’t even have to lead to an actual physical encounter for harm to be done to your family. Discontent in any form infects the way we parent and creates a barrier to true love and intimacy with our spouses. We can never be the moms we desire to be if we dabble in any kind of romantic thoughts that are outside of marriage. The acidic nature of discontent erodes the happy tone of our homes that are meant to be a safe and joyful atmosphere for raising our children. Look at what the Bible has to say about it: He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. Proverbs 6:32
the edges of our hearts, we need to silence the orchestra of thoughts that we are entertaining. God tells us that the way to combat temptation is to flee from it! If you are struggling with contentment and with your marriage, then the wise thing to do is to pray and to work towards strengthening your bond, not escaping from the vow you made before God. The harm that infidelity will do to your innocent children is reason enough to resist temptation. Letting our emotions take over our need for romance will only lead to manifold heartache-for us, our spouses, and our children. It’s in direct opposition to the stewardship that God has given us as mothers to love and nurture our children by creating for them a stable home life. Lust will always feel right but it couldn’t be more wrong. As mothers whose roles are to be both a model and a light to our children, let’s be very careful about living in an alternate reality that is bathed in darkness. A PRAYER FOR THE MOM WHO STRUGGLES WITH DISCONTENT Dear Heavenly Father,
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Mathew 5:28 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 1 Corinthians 6:18 So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God; for her house sinks down to death, and her paths to the departed; none who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life. Proverbs 2:16-19 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5 When temptations begin to dance around
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Keep me from temptation. Rid my heart of longing for anything or anyone that is not pure and true and right. Lord, create in me a new heart that seeks to do to others as I would have them do to me and replace my selfishness with humility. God, thank You for helping me to resist temptation. Help me to take every thought captive and to think on things that are good. Strengthen my marriage that my husband and I would be an example of sacrificial love to our children and may they feel secure in our bond. In Jesus Name, Amen!
www.themobsociety.com editor’s note: Most office affairs start with the false premise of what an individual is like. At the office or on the web we do not see slovenly habits, snoring, bad breath, dirty socks or frumpy clothes, past due bills od relational disconnections. At the office or on the web we see people only at their very best. Our attractions are to people whom we only see a fragment of the whole person.
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food for thought
Are There Limits to Loving My Enemies? saw the following post on Facebook that came from the article “What’s So Complicated About ‘Love Your Enemies’?” written by Benjamin L. Corey: BY GARY DeMAR
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“I’ve been trying to figure out why this is the case for quite some time. I must admit, out of all of the controversial topics I’ve tackled on the blog, I continue to be amazed at how infuriating the topic of enemy love is for people, and for the many ways folks will bend their theology into a pretzel to get around this requirement of following Jesus. I am growing more and more convinced that there is no teaching in all of scripture more offensive to American Christians as is the command of enemy love.” Corey appeals to a number of New Testament passages in the presentation of his argument. He cites Matthew 5:44. I quote more of the context than he does:
“You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” Somewhere along the line, “hate your enemy” was added to the Leviticus command contrary to Leviticus 19:17 where we find, “You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him.” This means that loving our neighbor and not hating our enemy does not include tolerating everything and anything our neighbors or our enemies do. Reproving my neighbor and by extension loving my enemies does not mean being passive when I am confronted by evil.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate Consider the following from the book of your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your Exodus: enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your “If the thief is caught while breaking in Father who is in heaven; for He causes His and is struck so that he dies, there will be sun to rise on the evil and the good, and no bloodguiltiness on his account. But if sends rain on the righteous and the the sun has risen on him, there will be unrighteous. For if you love those who bloodguiltiness on his account. He shall love you, what reward do you have? Do surely make restitution; if he owns not even the tax collectors nothing, then he shall be sold Is it “evil” to do the same? If you greet for his theft. If what he stole is only your brothers, what pursue justice? actually found alive in his more are you doing than What's wrong is to possession, whether an ox or others? Do not even the a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay back evil Gentiles do the same? pay double” (22:1-4). (something Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly immoral) with an It’s not hate to act justly. Jesus Father is perfect” (Matt. did not nullify the law by His equal dose of 5:44-48). correction of those who added immorality. to the law. The law of God is Corey also references the great love still valid when all of it is taken into chapter 1 Corinthians 13. account. Jesus is correcting a misreading of Leviticus 19:18; He is not overturning the Older Testament law:
I asked the following two questions in my comments on the Corey quotation: “If someone threatens to cut off my head,
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am I to love that person and still allow him to cut off my head? If I oppose him from trying to cut off my head, is that unloving?” As of this writing, I have not gotten a response. Following Corey’s logic, if someone breaks into his house, steals his stuff, urinates on his floor, and rapes his wife, he should not protest or try to stop him because he is to love his neighbor in an unqualified way. Should he just pray for the criminal who did these things since this is the epitome of “loving my enemy”? Is this what Jesus had in mind? All the Bible needs to be looked at when a general statement is made. There are often qualifiers elsewhere. For example, the Apostle Paul writes generally and with qualifiers in the following passage: “Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY’ [Deut. 32:35; Ps. 94:1; 1 Thess. 4:6; Heb. 10:30] says the Lord. ‘BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD’ [2 Kings 6:22; Prov. 25:21-22; Luke 6:27]. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:17-21). Is it "evil" to pursue justice? What's wrong is to pay back evil (something immoral) with an equal dose of immorality. Does respecting the right mean to disrespect the wrong? I believe it does. We are commanded to be at peace, but there are times when can’t be. While we are not to take personal vengeance, this does not mean that we should not pursue and seek justice in a righteous manner (13:3-4). Loving my enemies does not mean that I should be naïve about what my enemies might do to me and my family. That's why I lock the doors to my house and keep a watchful eye on my grandchildren.
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only a fool says there is no God
Peers Slam Researchers who see God’s Design in the Human Hand
BY JULIE BORG
(WNS)--A scientific journal has retracted an article about the complexity of the human hand after receiving backlash to the authors’ use of the C-word, “Creator.” “Hand coordination should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention,” researchers wrote for the online, peerreviewed journal, PLOS ONE, in January. The article also stated, “The mechanical architecture is the proper design by the Creator for dexterous performance of numerous functions following the evolutionary remodeling of the ancestral hand for millions of years.” In March, appalled readers and tweeters exploded in scathing responses on #Creatorgate and #HandofGod. The readers complained “Creator,” a term related to religious belief, had no place in a scientific journal. Commenters called the journal a joke. “Authors, editors, and journal should be deeply ashamed. This should never have happened! Now ID [intelligent design] guys have what they wished for decades!” one reader with the handle “paleosp” wrote in the comment section of the journal. Readers threatened to boycott, and editors threatened to resign if the article wasn’t immediately retracted.
Several experts said the science seemed credible even though they disagreed with using the word Creator. Even popular atheist biologist PZ Myers acknowledged on his blog, Pharyngula, there appeared to be nothing wrong with the data. The four Chinese authors of the study, whose native language is not English, pleaded for mercy on the grounds they were not creationists and their use of the word Creator was a linguistic mistake. Nonetheless, the journal quickly retracted the article, apologized for the inappropriate language, and said on closer evaluation there were also concerns with the scientific rationale and presentation. David Klinghoffer, author and senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, believes PLOS retracted, instead of simply editing the paper, to punish the authors. The incident shows “how the mechanism of intimidation works,” he said. “Retracting a paper is serious business; it can destroy careers. In such an oppressive atmosphere, honest investigation hardly stands a chance.” The scandal is turning into a witch hunt, Klinghoffer blogged on Evolution News and Views. It appears the academic editor of the article, Renzhi Han, had an affiliation with Chinese Evangelical Church in Iowa City, where he had previously worked, The Chronicle of Higher Education News
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reported. David Knutson, PLOS public relations manager, acknowledged PLOS had dismissed Han. “The academic editor who handled this paper has apologized to us for the oversight. He has been asked to step down,” Knutson told For Better Science. The incident highlights the dilemma faced by creationist scientists, according to Ken Ham, president of Answers In Genesis. Many secular journals will not publish creationists' papers regardless of the quality of their research and credentials simply because what they write isn’t based on the ideology of naturalism, he blogged. “If it in any way supports a Creator God (and it doesn’t even seem to matter which creator; it doesn’t even have to be the God of the Bible), they throw it out,” Ham wrote.
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2016 Brammy Awards
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While Paying Off Student Loans, Don’t Forget About Retirement ven if you’ve been out of school for a few years, you may still have a vivid reminder of college: your student loan debt. Since you’ve joined the workforce, you might be paying back your loans as best you can. But can you gradually reduce your debts while still putting money away for your long-term goals – such as retirement?
FROM EDWARD JONES FINANCIAL ADVISOR
E
Of course, you might think it’s premature to even think about retiring, since you probably have decades to go before you say goodbye to the working world. But the sooner you begin saving and investing for retirement, the more time you’ll have for your money to grow. Plus, your early start will help you avoid having to play “catch up” later. Still, it can be challenging to juggle payments for student loans and contributions to a retirement account, especially if your loans are sizable. How can you meet these two separate demands on your income? To begin with, you may have some flexibility in how you repay your student loan. Although you might have selected, or were assigned, a repayment plan when you first
begin repaying your student loan, you can typically change this plan to accommodate your financial situation. You’ll need to contact your loan servicer for details on adjusting your repayments. In any case, though, if you have a large student loan, it’s safe to say that you will be paying it back for quite some time. So, rather than wait for this debt to be cleared before you start saving for retirement, think about how you can take action now. For one thing, take full advantage of your 401(k) or similar employer-sponsored retirement plan. This type of plan certainly offers some key benefits: Your earnings can grow on a tax-deferred basis, and you typically contribute on a pretax basis, which means the more you put in, the lower your taxable income. Plus, you can fund your plan with a variety of investment choices.
But for you, perhaps the biggest benefit is that your employer simply takes the money from your paycheck before you get it and puts it into your account. You don’t have to pay all your bills first and then hope you still have something left to invest – it’s already been done for you. Ultimately, contributing to your 401(k) can be a “painless” way of investing, and it may make it easier, psychologically at least, for you to pursue the two goals of paying your college debts and saving for the future. If you don’t have a 401(k) or similar plan, you can still follow the same principle of essentially freeing yourself from initiating investment moves, simply by setting up a bank authorization to automatically transfer money from your checking or savings account into an IRA, which offers some of the same features as a 401(k). You can start with relatively small amounts – perhaps as little as $50 per month – and increase your contributions as your income rises. As you well remember, college wasn’t cheap. And you don’t want to make it even more costly by having your student loan payments interfere with progress you can make toward your retirement funding goals. So, think about “automating” the contributions to your retirement accounts. The effort – or rather, the effortlessness – on your part can be well worth it. This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Ad visor.
A short version of the history of Christianity: Christianity started in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America and became an enterprise.
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puzzle page Answers to CrossWord Puzzle on Page 42
ACROSS 1 Legume 4 Atlantic, for example 9 Tiny island 14 And so forth 15 __ ahead 16 Ball and mall, for example 17 Sever 18 Mr. Tuck in Robin Hood 19 Uncanny 20 How Judas betrayed Jesus 22 Ancient book form 24 Sea eagle 25 Time period 27 A name of God 29 Mexican food brand 32 General
Ireland green leprechaun
assembly 35 North American Indian 36 Islam's city 38 Wilting 40 Closed 42 Glides 44 Double-reed instrument 45 Fable writer 47 Santa __ 49 Frost 50 Mention 52 Book before Jeremiah 54 Heat unit 55 Pair 56 Tender loving care 59 Body of water parted by God 63 He built the ark 67 Island
March rainbow lucky
Answers to Sudoku Puzzle on Page 23
69 Make a payment 71 Expression of surprise 72 Son of Abraham 73 Type of acid 74 She 75 Large billed bird 76 Wee 77 Referee DOWN 1 Tap, like a bird 2 Decorative needle case 3 Book after Gospels 4 Disconnected 5 Dance flowers 6 Little Mermaid's love 7 Seaweed substance 8 A Roman emperor
gold clover Saint
Patrick Irish holiday
9 Land of the lucky 10 Her 11 Greek stringed instrument 12 Middle East ruler 13 Adolescent 21 Primed 23 Tell a tall tale 26 Radioactivity unit 28 Condiment 29 Remaining one 30 Recycle 31 In a tilted position 32 Wife of Abraham, originally 33 Shinbone 34 First son of Cain 35 North American country 37 California (abbr.) 39 Common
limerick pot-of-gold four-leafed-clover
interjection 41 Grave 43 Maintains 46 Patron saint of 9D 48 Beheld 51 Regret 53 Charged particle 56 Not that 57 Final 58 Goodbye! 60 Dreary 61 Very large truck 62 Shine 64 Tropical island 65 Excuse me! 66 David's musical instrument 68 Sticky black substance 70 Child's plaything
parade shamrock wish
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BY SCOTT MOREFIELD
to put it mildly
Donald Trump’s Biggest Problems And Why None of Them Matter eing a child of the 80’s raised in a very conservative household, I had five heroes growing up – Jesus Christ, my Dad, Ronald Reagan, Alex P. Keaton, and Donald Trump.
B
Problem: Christianity
The first three are obvious, right? I mean, Jesus and your Dad are a given, and what conservative 80’s kid didn’t want to be like Keaton, the good-natured, uberconservative, coat-and-tie wearing “know-it-all” eldest child from “Family Ties” played by Michael J. Fox? And Trump, well I just thought he was badass, although of course I would have never said the word “badass” then.
If he is indeed a sincere, Bible-believing Christian, Donald Trump certainly doesn’t know the lingo or seem to understand the doctrines very well, as evidenced by his recent appearance at Liberty University where he referred to Second Corinthians as “two” Corinthians and quoted that passage as the “whole ball game” because liberty and Liberty University and … what?
Those were the days when it was OK to admire rich people, and I certainly admired Trump’s brash, unapologetic approach to businesses and particularly his real-estate board game, where I could deal-make my way to unfathomable riches at the expense of my “non-winner” parents and sister, Alex P. Keaton style. I particularly loved the logo on the old game, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but whether you win!” We admired winners then, and Trump seemed to define the word. Fast-forward to 2016, and the very same Donald’s very real shot at the presidency. We need a win here, and bad. Lots of my conservative friends along with many commentators I respect have lots of legitimate problems with Trump’s candidacy, problems that an older, wiser “me” can certainly understand. After all, it’s one thing to respect one’s brashness and money-making acumen, but quite another to make that person the leader of the free world. Still, problems aside, my support for Donald Trump remains as steadfast as ever. I’d like to list several of those very real problems here, along with my reasons why those very real problems don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Read on – it’s gonna be huuuuge!
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If Trump is a Christian, he’s a nominal one at best. At worst, he’s faking it to get Christian votes.
Trump says he’s a Presbyterian. Great! So am I, but the Presbyterians I worship with all have a much firmer grasp of the doctrine of Grace than someone who apparently equates obtaining God’s forgiveness with drinking his “little wine” and having his “little cracker” on the Sundays when he does decide to attend church.
Why It Doesn’t Matter It’s a good thing Trump isn’t running for Pope or America’s Pastor, right? Because he’d be horrible at that. Thing is, Trump IS running for the president of the United States, an office in dire need of a strong, decisive, leader who is willing to make the hard decisions and put American interests first. America long ago made the collective decision to shift from Christianity to multiculturalism. I don’t agree with the shift, but I also am pragmatic enough to recognize the fact that gradual, incremental changes are much better than demanding the whole ball of wax. Let’s give a nominal Christian who at least seems to want to pay attention to his base a shot.
Problem: Abortion Trump says he’s pro-life, but he was demonstrably pro-choice as recently as the early 2000’s.
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Although he did publicly articulate a prolife stand well before this election in response to a personal situation he experienced (that “pivot point,” for Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere), that stance is still quite muddled. What about Supreme Court justices? What about the “exceptions?” What about Planned Parenthood?
Why It Doesn’t Matter First of all, except in the instance of appointing Supreme Court justices, a president’s position on abortion means very little. That doesn’t mean being pro-life isn’t important, because it is and I believe Donald Trump is pro-life, but I also believe his administration, advisors, and most of all a Republican Senate will keep him in line if he veers off the reservation and tries to appoint someone demonstrably pro-choice.
Problem: Libertarian Trump seems to have an authoritarian view of government and his proposals often seem unrealistic and unworkable and sometimes downright mean, such as his promise to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, or temporarily ban Muslim immigration. While many of the Trump proposals sound good to those of us who recognize that harsh measures are what it’s ultimately going to take to get our country on the right track, his views of government are hardly libertarian. What kinds of infrastructure and actions would it take to actually carry out his immigration proposals? What exactly would be involved in “closing that Internet up.”
Why It Doesn’t Matter We happen to be in an election-cycle where
flaws doesn’t mean deeper flaws don’t exist in the more “polished” candidates. I’d rather deal with a straight shooter who doesn’t say all the right things (but at least I know what I’m getting) than a smoothtalking politician who is likely lying every time his mouth is moving.
Problem: He’s a Liberal Trump was a liberal Hillary supporter and now he’s a “conservative?” Sure seems fishy to me!
Why It Doesn’t Matter the ONLY issue that really matters in the long run is immigration. Fail to fix this, and we will permanently alter the demographics of our country to the point where NO conservative will ever have a chance to be elected in a national election. Heck, we’re almost at that point now. Trump has made this issue the focal point of his campaign, which is why his supporters believe him. As far as the other issues are concerned, there isn’t a president in the last century who hasn’t been accused of overstepping his Constitutional bounds. Is it a problem? Yes. But the answer isn’t electing “the perfect candidate” for one cycle, but rather it’s in Congress and the Judiciary pushing back and reclaiming the power they should rightfully have. Even in an imperfect system it works to some degree. Consider all the things President Barack Obama would have LIKED to have done the past seven years but hasn’t been able to because of the Republican Congress.
Problem: Critical of Criticism
In 1980, a divorced, formerly liberal Hollywood actor ran against a Baptist church deacon and Sunday school teacher. The rest, of course, is history. People change, especially as they get older, wiser, and see life from different perspectives. Unfortunately, the ideal president that we as Christian conservatives all would prefer is someone who is completely unelectable in today’s society, especially given recent demographic shifts.
We have a chance in Trump’s unique background, personality, and celebrity to actually elect someone whose stated positions (and really, that’s all we can go by at the end of the day) happen to match what at this point in time is best for our country. He is fantastic on immigration, unlike the other candidates he actually addresses the horrific trade imbalance with China and other nations, and he is the only one (besides Rand Paul, who can’t win) who doesn’t seem to want to get us into a pointless, insane war with Russia. Is Donald Trump perfect? Of course not. He has many flaws and they bother me too. But at this point in history he’s the best chance we have to make America great again. A Christian husband of one and father of four, Scott Morefield's articles have also appeared on WND, Natural News, and many other sites, including AMorefieldLife.com, where he and his wife, Kim, share their marriage and parenting journey. Follow him on Twitter @SKMorefield. TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views. The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual author.
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opposing worldviews
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? BY NABEEL QURESHI
The Wheaton Controversy n December 15, 2015, Wheaton College, a flagship of evangelical educational institutions, placed one of its professors on administrative leave for “theological statements that seemed inconsistent with [their] doctrinal convictions.”
O
Five days prior, donning a hijab and staking her position on a variety of controversial matters, Larycia Hawkins had stated on Facebook, “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.” Wheaton’s decision to give Dr. Hawkins “more time to explore theological implications of her recent public statements” ignited a firestorm of controversy. One strong voice in the fray was that of the Chicago Tribune, which described Wheaton’s actions as “bigotry… disguised as theology.” This assessment was partially based on the input of Yale Professor Miroslav Volf, a theologian greatly respected for his contributions to Christian-Muslim dialogue, who said, “There isn’t any theological justification for Hawkins’s forced administrative leave. Her suspension is not about theology and orthodoxy. It is about enmity toward Muslims.” Such dialoguestifling judgmentalism is shocking from a highly acclaimed Ivy League scholar, but it serves to illustrate the enormous tensions in Christian-Muslim relations during this time when the nation is pulled between the poles of Muslim refugees pouring into Staten Island and Muslim terrorists massacring innocents in San Bernardino. In the past week, I have received dozens of requests to provide my input on the matter, especially from those who are aware that I do not have “enmity toward Muslims.” As a former Muslim, I have many Muslim family members and friends that I spend time with regularly, and I often adjure Christians to consider gestures of solidarity with the hope that, somehow, this affection will trickle down to the Muslims I know and love. I have even recommended that Christian women consider wearing the hijab in certain circumstances, as well as counseled Christian men to consider fasting with their Muslim neighbors during the month of Ramadan, as long as it is clear these gestures are out of Christian love and not submission to Islam.
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Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? With this desire for love in mind, I turn now to the question: Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? Like all good questions, the answer is more complex than most want, but I am confident of my position: Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God, but given the complexity of the matter we all ought to stop demonizing those who disagree with us. I should start by saying this: for years after leaving Islam and accepting Jesus as Lord, I believed that Muslims worshiped the same God as Christians but that they were simply wrong about what He is like and what He has done. After all, I had been taught as a young Muslim to worship the God who created Adam and Eve, who rescued Noah from the flood, who promised Abraham a vast progeny, who helped Moses escape Egypt, who made the Virgin Mary great with child, who sent Jesus into the world, who helped the disciples overcome, and who is still sovereign today. Is that not the God of the Bible? For that matter, the Quran asserts that the Torah and the Gospel are inspired scripture and that Jews and Christians are people of the Book. The Quran tells Muslims to say to them, “our God and your God is One, and unto Him we surrender” (29.46). If the Quran asserts that Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians, does that not settle the matter? For years I thought it did, but I no longer do. Now I believe that the phrase “Muslims and Christians worship the same God” is only true in a fairly uncontroversial sense: There is one Creator whom Muslims and Christians both attempt to worship. Apart from this banal observation, Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. I do not condemn those that think they do, but the deeper I delve into the Christian faith, the more I realize that this assertion is not only untrue but also subverts Christian orthodoxy in favor of Islamic assertions. Let’s start with the obvious: Christians believe Jesus is God, but the Quran is so opposed to this belief that it condemns Jesus worshipers to Hell (5.72). For Christians, Jesus is certainly God, and for Muslims Jesus is certainly not God. How can it be said that Christians and Muslims worship the same God? This fact alone is enough to settle the
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matter, but at the very least, no one should argue as Volf has that “there isn’t any theological justification” for believing Christians and Muslims worship different Gods. There certainly is, and it is the obvious position when we consider the person of Jesus. Another difference between the Islamic God and the Christian God that is quite personal to me is his Fatherhood. According to Jesus, God is our Father, yet the Quran very specifically denies that Allah is a father (112.1-4). In fact, in 5.18, the Quran tells Muslims to rebuke Jews and Christians for calling God their loving Father because humans are just things that God has created. The same is the case when we consider the doctrine of the Trinity. Islam roundly condemns worship of the Trinity (5.73), establishing in contrast its own core principle: Tawhid, the absolute oneness of God. Tawhid specifically denies the Trinity, so much so that it is safe to say the doctrine of God in Christianity is antithetical to the doctrine of God in Islam. Not just different but completely opposed to one another. There is much more to be said about the differences between the Christian God and the Muslim God, but this much can already be said with confidence: the Christian God, both in terms of what he is (Triune) and who he is (Father, Son, and Spirit) is not just different from the Muslim God; He is fundamentally incompatible. According to Islam, worshiping the Christian God is not just wrong; it sends you to Hell. They are not the same God. Why Do People Say Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God? So how can people argue that Muslims and Christians worship the same God? By unduly giving priority to the Islamic assertion that this is the same God. The Quran says that Allah is the God of the Bible, so He must be. The Quran says that Allah is the God of the Biblical prophets, so He must be. The Quran says that Muslims and Christians
worship the same God, so it must be the same God. Ultimately, this is the reasoning of those who believe, as I once did, that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, and it is flawed.
differ fundamentally on the latter. Volf’s challenge in response is that Christians believe they worship the same God as the Jews though the Jews do not worship the Trinity. How can Christians accuse Muslims of worshiping a different God without also indicting the Jews of doing the same? That would be inconsistent or hypocritical. The response should be obvious to those who have studied the three Abrahamic faiths: the Trinity is an elaboration of Jewish theology, not a rejection. By contrast, Tawhid is a categorical rejection of the Trinity, Jesus’ deity, and the Fatherhood of God, doctrines that are grounded in the pages of the New Testament and firmly established centuries before the advent of Islam. Most of the earliest Christians were Jews, incorporating their encounter with Jesus into their Jewish theology. Nothing of the sort is true of Muhammad, who was neither a Jew nor a Christian. Islam did not elaborate on the Trinity but rejected and replaced it. Additionally, Volf’s assumption that Jews did not worship something like the Trinity is unsubstantiated. Many Jews held their monotheism in tension with a belief in
Conclusion The question of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God is complex. Wheaton made a respectable decision in giving Hawkins time off to consider the implications of her statement: she is allowing Islamic assertions to subvert the importance of essential doctrine. That said, one ought not fault her harshly for the mistake, as these issues are murky. What is dangerous is the path of Volf, accusing people of bigotry to shut down valid conversations. One can both love Muslims and insist that the God they worship is not the same as the Christian God. Christians worship a Triune God: a Father who loves unconditionally, an incarnate Son who is willing to die for us so that we may be forgiven, and an immanent Holy Spirit who lives in us. This is not what the Muslim God is; it is not who the Muslim God is; and it is not what the Muslim God does. Truly, the Trinity is antithetical to Tawhid, fundamentally incompatible and only similar superficially and semantically. Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. Nabeel Qureshi is the New York Times best selling author of Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.
Stories of Great Awakenings by Tim Keesee There is Saditha. I met her and her husband at a Cairo safe house. She had become a Christian, and so her father was desperately trying to kill her. Then there’s the pastor’s wife in Somalia. She and her husband were both Muslim-background believers. Like the apostle Paul, the love of Christ compelled them — at great risk — to go and share the Good News with their people (see 2 Corinthians 5:14). The Good News wasn’t the discovery that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Rather, it was the stunning, saving message of the gospel, the Word of the Cross. In early February, this pastor was murdered, and his wife and children are now in hiding. Then there are the three men I met who are sleeping in an old church near Chittagong, Bangladesh. Because they have become Christians, they have been violently cast out
of their homes and villages. One young man named Jahru is in his early thirties. Though he is very much alive, his family has already held his funeral. In this communal culture, his prospects for marriage and a career are bleak. I asked him why he would go through so much heartache and trouble, and he spoke of deliverance: “I came to realize that only Jesus could take away the weight of my sin.” Then gesturing to his fellow fugitives he said, “Each believer has his own story, but all must walk through the fire.”
BY TIM KEESEE
The similarities between the God of Islam and the God of Christianity are fairly superficial, and at times simply semantic. Though Islam claims that the Muslim God has done some of the same things as the Christian God and sent some of the same people, that is not enough to say that Muslims worship the same God as Christians. These minor overlaps are far less essential to the reality of who God is than the fundamental differences of his nature and persons. What God has done or whom He has sent is far less of a defining characteristic than what He is and who He is; though Islam and Christianity overlap at points on the former, they
multiple divine persons. Though the term “Trinity” was coined in the second century, the underlying principles of this doctrine were hammered out on the anvil of preChristian Jewish belief. It was not until later, when Jews and Christians parted ways, that Jews insisted on a monadic God. The charge of Christian hypocrisy is anachronistic.
Then there is the joyful testimony of a brother in North Africa named Kamal. His first exposure to the gospel was through Christian satellite TV. The one thing that stood out to him was hearing Christians praying for all peoples — whereas a Muslim’s standard prayer was for Allah to kill all nonMuslims. He saw a way of love and grace that led straight to Christ. He said the word “salvation” appears nowhere in the Koran — whereas the Bible is all about salvation. So Kamal believed on Jesus, the Messiah, and prayed to him in the only place he knew to pray — the mosque! He had never met another Christian until one day at the café where he was a waiter he greeted a man with the salutation, “Peace and grace.” The standard Arabic greeting is usually only “salam” (peace), but Kamal said, “Peace and grace.” This man, whose name was Mohammed and who also was a believer, said, “Are you a Christian?” Kamal said he was and that he prayed to Christ in the mosque. Mohammed said, “No. You don’t need to go to the mosque to pray. You can pray anywhere, anytime because Christ is in you. And you don’t need to clean yourself by the ceremonial washing because Christ has forever washed you by his blood.” Later these two newfound brothers baptized each other in the ocean near Casablanca. Kamal and Mohammed, Jahru, Saditha, and thousands of other brothers and sisters have, by the power of the Spirit, shaken off the shackles of Islam. They indeed believe that “there is one God.” But they also know that “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6). Their robust Christology started with a great awakening. Endless despair has given way to endless joy because they can say with David, “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure” (Psalm 40:2) and with Peter, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
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opposing worldviews
Stop Donating To The Wounded Warrior Project – They’re A Fraud Update at the bottom uring this Christmas and New Year’s season the gift of charity swells in the hearts of many. And who better to benefit from that charity than those who have literally given life and limb for the freedom and liberty we possess today than the veterans who stood tall when their nation called on them? When people donate money they expect that the majority of it will go to the actual cause and not line the pockets of some corporate hack or grease the wheels to enable extravagant parties. Unforunately, when it comes to the Wounded Warrior Project, the people who have been so generous with their donations have been bamboozled and the veterans in need have been placed, as one veteran put it, into a “dog and pony show.” For full disclosure, I have been against the Wounded Warrior Project ever since they came out as being against the 2nd Amendment. That is not some perceived imagined slight, WWP has stated that as a fact. Via their director of public relations Leslie Coleman, the Wounded Warrior Project staked their position with regards to the 2nd Amendment thus after refusing to go on the Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk national radio show: “While we appreciate the interest in having a WWP representative on your show on Veterans Day we are not able to participate in interviews or activities with media/organizations that are related to firearms.” So basically, if you have anything to do with firearms, the Wounded Warrior Project doesn’t want anything to do with you. Every since then I have told believers in the 2nd Amendment to take their donations elsewhere. But now, I have discovered that on top of being against the 2nd Amendment, the Wounded Warrior Project is a legal scam in which the vast chunk of donations made to them go to executive salaries and lavish parties and the veterans they claim to help, by and large, are given trivial trinkets and used as fodder for photo ops. During an interview with the Daily Beast, a double amputee veteran of the Iraq war spoke candidly: “They’re more worried about putting their label on everything than getting down to brass tacks. It’s really frustrating.” “Everything they do is a dog-and-pony show, and I haven’t talked to one of my fellow veterans that were injured… actually
BY TONY OLIVA
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getting any help from the Wounded Warrior Project. I’m not just talking about financial assistance; I’m talking about help, period.” Another soldier, Sam, an active duty soldier with Special Forces gave voice to what he sees as the problem: “In the beginning, with Wounded Warrior, it started as a small organization and evolved into a beast. It’s become so large and such a massive money-maker…the organization cares about nothing more than raising money and “keeping up an appearance” for the public with superficial displays like wounded warrior parking spots at the Walmart.” A veterans’ advocate spoke their concern stating: “They’re laser-focused on making money to help vets, but forgetting to help vets. It’s becoming one of the best known charities in America—and they’re not spending their money very well.” A second veterans’ advocate echoed that concern: “It’s more about the Wounded Warrior Project and less about the wounded warrior.” Ken Davis, a veteran from Arizona says that he is considered an “alumni” of the WWP even though he doesn’t want to be associated with the organization and that the WWP uses him to bolster their numbers fraudulantly. He questions the WWP: “I receive more marketing stuff from them, [and see more of that] than the money they’ve put into the community here in Arizona. It’s just about numbers and money to them. Never once did I get the feeling that it’s about veterans.” He could have used a ride to a VA facility for health care, he said. But rather than receive practical assistance from the WWP, he got a branded fleece beanie. “They’re marketing, they’re spending money—but on what?” Speaking of how the WWP spends its money, how does that break down? Only 48 to 58 cents of every dollar actually makes its way to wounded veterans and as you read above, that could be spent on trivial nonsense orchestrated to bolster the WWP and not necessarily help actual veterans who are in need. Think about that though…for every dollar you give them as much as 52% of it goes to their overpaid executives in either salary (the CEO Steve Nardizzi makes $375,000 a year) or their corporate infrastructure that includes vacations, parties and events. One would expect to find such excess and bloating in the Federal Government but not in a charity that says it is there to help. More like they are there to help themselves and
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give only the meanest of help to those they claim to champion. Let me make a comparison for you so as to illustrate how little of your donation goes to the veterans when you give to the Wounded Warrior Project, because maybe you think that 58% (I’m being generous) is a good amount and that an organization needs 40 plus percent to operate with. While the Wounded Warrior Project circles the drain at the mid fifties when it comes to percentage of donation going to cause, another veterans charity, Fisher House has 95% of their donations going directly to help veterans. Fisher house receives top marks from charity watchdog organizations and is 25 times more efficient when it comes to fundraising than the Wounded Warrior Project. Transparency, efficiency, nearly all the money going to veterans, no anti American sentiments…this is why, if the spirit of giving has touched your heart and you desire to donate to a charity that helps veterans, give to Fisher House. You will get more bang for your buck and will help out those in need instead of helping buy Steve Nardizzi another sports car. So yeah…stop wasting your money by padding overpaid executives and give to organizations you know will spend the money on those in need. I encourage you all to look into Fisher House and any money you were going to give to the Wounded Warrior Project, consider sending it them instead. UPDATE: Apparently its not all about the money…its also about religious bigotry as the Wounded Warrior Project rejects donations from children at Christian school and other Christian organizations. Seems being a Christian is too partisan to help the troops. Thanks to our readers for pointing out this story. Just as we headed for press, the two top executives of the Wounded Warrior Project — among the largest veterans charities in the country — were fired after an investigation into accusations of lavish spending on parties, hotel and travel, according to a statement released on behalf of the embattled organization. Wounded Warrior Project's CEO, Steven Nardizzi, and COO, Al Giordano, were fired by the charity's board amid criticisms about how it spent more than $800 million in donations over the last four years. The development was confirmed by Abernathy MacGregor, a public relations firm hired to represent the veterans charity.
IMAX WITH LASER BRANSON IMAX REVEALS NEW CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE BRANSON, MO — Branson’s IMAX Entertainment Complex opened its doors in October of 1993, featuring a state-of-theart movie experience with IMAX® 15/70 film projection in one of the largest IMAX® theaters in the country. Nearly 22 years later, Branson IMAX has unveiled plans for a $1.7million renovation and a new cinematic experience, IMAX® with Laser IMAX’s next-generation digital laser projection system. Sunday, January 17th, 2016 marked the end of an era, the end of IMAX 15/70 film projection at Branson’s IMAX Entertainment Complex, but is also ushering in the most cutting-edge technology available to moviegoers today. “It’s an exciting time for us and our community as we undergo major renovations to the IMAX theater,” says Randy Brashers, President of ITEC Attractions. “It has been and will always be our mission to provide the most unique moviegoing experience in the country for our guests. From the beginning, when we
were one of the largest IMAX theaters in the country to today, soon to be one of the largest IMAX theaters in the country featuring the IMAX with Laser projection system. “ IMAX with Laser represents a quantum leap forward in cinema technology — providing audiences with the sharpest, brightest, clearest and most vivid digital images ever, combined with a whole new level of immersive audio. The technology will enable the Complex to deliver the full array of the highest-quality IMAX digital content available. This will not only further enhance The IMAX Experience® for its patrons, it will also offer the Complex a competitive advantage that can serve as a catalyst for future growth. Designed from the ground up for IMAX’s largest screens, the dual 4K laser projection systems are equipped with a new optical engine and suite of proprietary IMAX technologies capable of projecting an image that fills the entire IMAX screen with maximum resolution and sharpness,
unparalleled brightness with presentations in both 2D and 3D, industry leading contrast and an expanded color gamut that will allow film makers to present more vivid colors than ever before. Whites are whiter and blacks are blacker, noticeably sharper to the naked eye. The new system also includes IMAX’s next-generation, 12 channel sound technology that delivers even greater power and precision for the ultimate audio immersion. IMAX with Laser delivers audiences unprecedented levels of brightness, contrast, color and sound. In addition to projection and sound upgrades, the interior of the IMAX theater will undergo major enhancements to further provide guests with the most unique and comfortable movie experience. Ultimate premium seating will be featured in the theater with three styles of comfort. “Our VIP section will consist of oversized, zero gravity electric recliners, the premiere recliner with ergonomic luxury and comfort. It’s like bringing your favorite recliner from home to the movie theater,” says Mr. Brashers. “Our general admission seating will be upgraded to highback rockers and recliners, constructed with the same ergonomic style as our VIP seats”. Another feature that guests will appreciate includes selecting your seats at the time of ticket purchase, either on-line or at the box office. Preassigned seating eliminates long lines and stampedes when the doors open for those Hollywood blockbusters and creates a more relaxing, pleasurable movie experience. “Branson’s IMAX theater will be the biggest, brightest, best theater in the country for the ultimate cinematic experience,” says Paul Bluto, owner of ITEC Attractions.
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immigration
When Citizenship Was A Big Deal
BY ANDRÉE SEU PETERSON
I
passport photos, to arrive on time for my biometrics appointment, to submit to interviews, to get fingerprinted, and to wait on a list for years and hope the government has generous quotas for my particular country. The Apostle Paul felt that civil citizenship was important enough that he resorted to arguing for it in his favor when the law had treated him unfairly. And at the mention of it the authorities trembled. Andrée Seu Peterson is the author of three books: Won't Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, Normal Kingdom Business, and We Shall Have Spring Again.
I’ll pick the jackass please I was in need of a very complicated heart surgery. I was given two referrals. The first surgeon met with my wife and myself and quickly ushered us to a comfortable briefing room with overstuffed couches plants and a beautiful vegetable and fruit tray. “Please help yourself to some snacks. Can I get you a cup of coffee or other beverage” the doctor politely offered. We were amazed by his bedside manner. “What kind of assurances can I give you to encourage your faith in me to give you the best care and outcome possible?” he implored with a handsome smile and cordial wink. What do you know about this procedure?” I asked in earnest as I fantasized about naming my first born son after him. Well, the good doctor grinned and almost sheepishly tilted his head down while looking at his shoes and said, “I actually wrote the paper on this procedure and submitted it to the American Medical Association journal. It is my publication in which most surgeons use to operate with.”
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“Wow!”, I exclaimed. “That is very impressive. How many of these procedures have you actually performed?” “Well you will be the first. You will have that honor. I'm very confident that our objectives can be met and you'll be very satisfied with the results.” I thanked him for his time and soon after leaving his office scheduled my next referral. At the next appointment a brusque doctor met us in his office. He immediately chided us for being two minutes late. I reminded him I have been greatly hindered because of my illness. He derisively scolded me and said if I were to lose about 20 pounds I probably would not be out of breath so much. I stifled my anger and asked him if he had a glass of water for me. He replied, “Do I look like a cafeteria?” I looked at my wife with a disgusted look while I tried to decide whether to clock this guy or just storm off. My wife gave me a reassuring nod to hold my tongue. So I asked this pompous doctor, “What do you know about this procedure?” He replied, “Well, I've read some interesting procedural papers on it which I totally disagree. I have however, successfully performed over 500 of these operations. After that amount I stopped keeping count.” I then asked him, “What is your success rate?” He said, “As regarding the operation itself, I am batting a thousand. I have not lost one patient due to the operation or complications from it.” “I looked at my wife and said, “I’ll pick the jack-ass please.”
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feel that citizenship is not such a big deal anymore. The prevailing winds of legal permissiveness and laxness have successfully eroded the frisson of the words “American citizen” in my breast—as they were calculated to do by people with agendas. It is interesting that there was a time when citizenship meant something. And it was in an age and place that many of the “sophisticated” people in our modern country would consider backward compared to 21st century America. The Apostle Paul was arrested in Jerusalem one day in the first century A.D. and hauled off to jail. Here is what happened next: “But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, ‘Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?’ When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, ‘What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.’ So the tribune came and said to him, ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ The tribune answered, ‘I bought this citizenship for a large sum.’ Paul said, ‘But I am a citizen by birth.’ So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him” (Acts 22:25-29). If citizenship is no longer a big deal, maybe we need to apologize to all the people in history and even today who have done it the right way and followed all the protocols. If all it takes to be an American is to walk across a porous border, I would feel a little foolish if I were a European going to my local embassy or consulate to submit a petition, to prove my age, to produce financial documents and character documents, to pay fees, to prepare Form N400 and if applicable, N-648, to get my
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BY CAL THOMAS
White Poverty and Me n his continuing effort to pit races and classes against each other, Democratic presidential candidate and selfdescribed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has said that if you are white, "you don't know what it's like to be poor."
I
have reduced the number of poor people in America. And yet, the poverty rate changes very little. A rational person might conclude that spending more money on programs that have failed to achieve their stated goals is not the right answer.
He should drive some of the roads I've driven in West Virginia, among other places. Some of the homes of the white poor look like throwbacks from an earlier time.
In April and May of 1964, President Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson toured the Appalachian states. After their visit he vowed to wipe out poverty. He didn't and his successors haven't either.
Sanders attempted to "clarify" his comment (a political synonym for walking it back when it didn't play well) during a town hall meeting Monday night in Detroit. Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked him about his remark and Sanders replied, "I know about white poverty. There is no candidate in this race who has talked more about poverty than I have." Therein lies the problem. The left talks a lot about poverty, but when it comes to programs and ideas to help people climb out of poverty their only solution is to spend more money. If money alone were enough to extricate people from poverty and help them sustain themselves with a job and a strong family, then the more than $1 trillion spent on anti-poverty programs since the Great Society was launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 would
What do I, a now "prosperous" white guy, know about poverty? In 1965, I was a private first class in the U.S. Army, working at Armed Forces Radio in New York City for the astronomical wage of $99 a month. All of us enlisted men had second jobs to make ends meet. Mine was as an engineer at WOR-TV. I had no car, the subway was 10 cents (soon to jump to 15 cents, producing cries from the left that it would harm the poor). I had no savings and as one payday approached I had only a dime in my pocket for a one-way trip to work. Had the paycheck not arrived, I had no idea how to get home to our little apartment in Elmhurst, Queens. Hitchhiking in New York City was not an option.
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What I did have was incentive. I did not accept my poverty status as the final verdict on a young life. To paraphrase the song, if I couldn't make it in America, I couldn't make it anywhere. And so I kept at it until my Army discharge and then I moved back to Washington where I finished college, worked at a civilian media job, and persisted until breaks came. While poverty does not have simple solutions, there are solutions. They begin with relaying stories to the poor about people who used to be in their situation but liberated themselves from a life of want and need by making the right life choices. Inspiration and hope do not come from government. They come from within. "You gotta have hope, mustn't sit around and mope," says the song from the musical Damn Yankees. Where does anyone hear that in our blame, envy, and entitlement political discourse? Where have you gone Horatio Alger? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. © 2016 Tribune Content Agency LLC. Listen to Cal Thomas’ commentary on The World and Everything in It.
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sorrow and hope July 22, 2013
It’s been almost a year since you ended your life. You have had another birthday! It’s still hard for me to grasp that you’re gone. I will always have two daughters. One is in heaven. Let’s go back---When I was two and one half months pregnant with you, we were in a head-on car accident. It was a near death experience for me, however we all survived. Your big sister came out with minor injuries. Six and one half months later, you were born in the Mansfield, Mo Hospital. Your Dr rated you a perfect #10 (May 1, 1980). The town’s people called you “the miracle baby.” Looking back, my regrets would be: working when you were small, and placing you in a public school in Jr High. It seemed to bring out the rebellion in you. You ran away from home at fifteen and had your first child at sixteen. After that, you were married and had two more children, (boys) two years apart. At some point with your involvement of drugs and your marriage failing, you attempted suicide by an overdose of narcotics at age 22. Then it was like a snowball—a series of mental hospitals, medications, and treatment centers over and over and over. I don’t know how many times you overdosed. You always pulled through, and I would thank God and pray for help for you. I knew the primary help had to be spiritual, however, I know God uses other venues and people. There were many efforts made to help you. You had accepted Jesus as a child, and knew His peace and love, but the drugs had a stronghold. At some point your children were taken by grandparents as you were no longer able to care for them. Depression became a serious problem. Forgiving yourself for all the mistakes and wrong choices was hard, especially giving up your children. Life became a daily battle for you. On August 19, 2012, when the news finally came, I was shocked. You used a gun.
to go and grow into completeness, maturity as only you can be the only you for only Him! Look up, then reach out. Someone is lower than you. PS Karie, we have not forgotten you. This letter is in memory of you. Your core desire was to help others and we won’t forget that. Our eyes still leak and our hearts ache for you. Say ‘hi’ to granny Nellie for me! Love, Mom All Peter had to say was ‘help’ and reach out to Jesus and he walked on water with Jesus!
LETTERS TO A MISSED DAUGHTER
Dear Karie,
No more comebacks, no misses. It was over after ten years of attempts, you were gone. Tragically and violently of your own doing. You left us behind with wounds, hurts, what-ifs, and guilt. We, your family will carry what you did in our hearts until heaven heals us. So you see Karie, suicide should never have been an option. The loss and cost are too great to bear. Yet as you know me well, I will end this letter on a positive note. You live on in your precious children. We treasure the memories we have of you, the funny and wonderful ones. God was so faithful to allow us thirty two years with you. Please know not a day goes by but we think of you. Until we see you again, know we love you.
Read Job—He had ‘issues,’ but when he prayed for his friends, his life was turned around!
Mom 8-17-2014
2nd year letter
7-26-2015
Letter #3
Dear readers,
My Karie, my baby,
This letter on the 2nd anniversary of Karie’s death is not written to her, but to you, (The hopeless, the addicts, the lonely, the down and out and on the bottom). No, I don’t know how you feel, nor can I relate to your situation; however, I have the antidote to all life’s problems. It's the Perfect Peace of God which passes all understanding! I would know about it because I experienced it from a small child. Always needing and receiving from the Holy Ghost even before I knew who He was. My refuge, My Savior, My peace and joy, My edge, My courage, My all in all, My #1. That peace runs Karie through my veins and keeps me at all times. It doesn’t change, is not emotional—it’s just therealways. As I take inventory of my life, I realize it’s my biggest advantage. We can only share what we possess, and so I share….Would to God I could literally pour as it were liquid peace from me to every one in need who reads this letter. I know what Karie needed, and it wasn’t ‘tough love’. It was ‘real’ love and peace from God through others. So I extend to you today and why not? Isn’t He, after all, a God of miracles? Didn’t He weep because He cares? Receive today, now, this instant, from God through me. The life, the will, the seed
3 yrs. Aug 19th 2012. God knows how we miss you. No one else is even close to being you. That's the problem—no one replaces you. You are not here. We can’t see you, and yet as I get older, I seem to gravitate upward. I feel closer to God and to you than I did last year. That's good! That's neat! I’m sure you’ve heard, your only daughter is having a baby. Ah, you get to be a nana in heaven. Of course that makes me a great! (times 2 now) A funny thing happened recently. I was watching ‘Rectify’on TV and God showed me something about you. Someone on that show committed suicide the same way you did, and it was very upsetting at first. Then I felt God asked me why the person did it. I said because of guilt. He said “that's why Karie did it too”. Not because of anyone else, because of guilt. Guilt built up from making wrong choices over the years. The guilt overcame you at last. There were times you almost made it. You focused on God, and came up out of it. Then you looked backward again, to the demons who pulled at you. O to have stayed focused, not looking back! To have used the will of iron God created us all with. To have made a decision for the glory of God. That “come hell or high water” kind of decision. I have decided to follow Jesus! Your Loving Mom Prov. 4:25-27
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summer camp • Playing adventure games and getting wet. • Guys go fishing and girls dress up for a Princess Dinner. • Learning about God and how He is always with us. • Lots of great FOOD! • Playing carpet ball or relaxing in a hammock. • Being creative and making crafts. • Making new friends is one of the best parts of camp. • Senior campers learn woodworking or sewing and other life skills. 2016 Camp Dates:
P.O. Box 1607 Rolla, MO 65402 Phone: (573) 3642786 Our Mission To be a transforming agent in the lives of families of prisoners by introducing them to the love and hope in Jesus Christ, and to develop leaders who will impact our world. Camp David of the Ozarks is a 501c3 non-profit Christian summer scholarship camp uniquely designed to meet the needs of children of prisoners. Children of prisoners are often considered the most at risk youth in America. We have found that a week of camp can play a significant role in giving these children a better future. Located in Rolla, Mo, Camp David began as a small rustic camp in 2004, and has steadily grown since. But camp isn’t just for the kids, each summer we have over 100 volunteers who cook meals, wash dishes, help with crafts, play games, and are just there for the kids. So come join our team in giving hope to children of prisoners! We believe camp will be the highlight of your summer. You will make new friends, ride horses and go swimming, plus camp is a place where you can be yourself and be accepted just as you are. Top Ten Reasons to Come to Camp David: • Riding horses!!! • Running the obstacle course. • Shooting bows and arrows! • Catching lizards or hold bunnies and kittens. • Swimming every day.
SWEET SPRINGS It is our belief that God favors protection and provision, and calls us specifically to do so while relying on his guidance. Firearms give us the tools for following that calling. Sweet Springs Gunworks is located at: 374"Gfgp"Yc{"kp"Dtcpuqp"pgct"vjg"hkuj jcvejgt{"d{"Vcdng"Tqem"Fco0" *639+"7;:/:8;3
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Senior Boys' Camp- June 13-17 Senior Girls' Camp- June 20-24 Junior Boys' Camp- June 27-July 1 Timothy Training Camp- July 4-8 Junior Girls' Camp - July 11-15 Junior Boys' Camp- July 18-22 Junior Girls' Camp - July 25-29 Community Kids' Camp- August 1-4 What are other kids saying about camp? “I learned teamwork and about having fun. My favorite thing was horses and crafts.”– Kiyana “I learned about God and how he works. My favorite thing at was making friends and archery.” – Eugenia “My favorite things were horseback riding, swimming, and other activities. I’ve had lots of fun!” – Emily “I learned about Jesus. My favorite things were horseback riding & the Princess Dinner. Thanks, again. I really appreciate it.” – Tatianna “I learned about God and fishing. Fishing was my favorite thing to do. I mostly like the puppet show.” – Camren “I learned that God is always with us and loves us. My favorite things were obstacle course and making friends.” – Darian “I learned about fishing. My favorite things were wood working, making friends, and swimming.” – Jeron “I am enjoying everything. My favorites are carpet ball, swimming, horseback riding and getting wet.” –Dashawn Have you been to Camp David? What does camp mean to you? What was your favorite part of camp? Please tell us why you like Camp David!! Email Papa Big Heart: cdo@campdavidozarks.org www.CampDavidOzarks.org
Your children will either inherit God’s promises or your fears. Deal with your fears so your children will walk in the promises of God. -T.D. Jakes
good questions
Administration has failed to call ISIL's systematic elimination of religious minorities by its true name. Hillary Clinton has said it. Marco Rubio, too. The European Parliament, the U.S. Catholic bishops and Pope Francis have also uttered the important word to describe the Islamic State’s systematic elimination of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East.
It’s called genocide. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Iraqi and Kurdish governments, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called what is happening by its correct name. But not so the Obama Administration. The president and his representatives refuse to embrace the word and the attendant responsibilities that come with recognizing the campaign of terror in the Middle East. So it was left to the House of Representatives to speak out on behalf of the United States. Congress recenly joined the global chorus of condemnation and took up a resolution originally sponsored by Reps. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., and Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and three others and finally cosponsored by 213 members of Congress — including 65 Democrats — to say what the president will not. The resolution declares that the atrocities against Middle Eastern religious and ethnic minorities constitute “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.” It declares that it is the sense of Congress that all governments, including the Unites States, should recognize this reality. The resolution passed unanimously 393 votes to zero with bipartisan support. A bipartisan companion bill in the Senate has ten cosponsors. The resolution came in advance of the past March 17 congressional deadline requiring the secretary of State to, “submit to the appropriate congressional committees an evaluation of the persecution of, including attacks against, Christians and people of other religions in the Middle East by violent Islamic extremists.”
Why the administration has not yet invoked the “g-word” is a bit of a mystery since Secretary of State John Kerry has all but acknowledged that the word is applicable. He stated a year and a half ago that ‘‘ISIL’s campaign of terror against the innocent, including Yezedi and Christian minorities, and its grotesque and targeted acts of violence bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide.” In February this year, Kerry said of the terror being visited upon religious and ethnic minorities: “None of us have ever seen anything like it in our lifetimes. Obviously if you go back to the Holocaust, the world has seen it.” Indeed, a just-released Knights of Columbus report chronicles the murder, kidnappings, sexual slavery and displacement of Christians at the hands of ISIL. Mass graves of Christians have been discovered in Syria. Kerry himself has also noted in testimony that there has been “forced evacuation and displacement of Christians” in the Middle East and that it’s a “cleansing, ethnically and religiously, which is deeply disturbing.” So, what are they waiting for? If there is still any question about the religiously motivated actions of ISIL, the Knights of Columbus report outlines ISIL propaganda that declares they will “continue to wage war against the Christians” and promises, “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted … If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.” Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide because he recognized that this was a special kind of evil that needed to be named. It wasn’t enough to call it an atrocity or mass murder. He wrote, the “formulation of genocide as a crime [enshrines] the principle that every national, racial and religious group has a natural right of existence.” Is this what the Obama Administration believes? If so, now would be the time to let the world know. Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY
and is author of The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.
How Now Shall We Vote? Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation. As Donald Trump edges closer to winning the GOP nomination for president, a new debate has emerged over protest voting, or Republicans’ voting for thirdparty or write-in candidates in the general election. John Stonestreet addressed the emerging #nevertrump movement in our conversation this week. “This is the strangest election in our lifetime, and it’s changed the scene,” Stonestreet said. “When was the last time somebody could say a good thing about Planned Parenthood and still become a Republican nominee? That’s enough to say that the game has changed.” Some Republicans who don’t support Trump still think Trump would be the lesser of two evils next to Democrat Hillary Clinton. But others say they can’t in good conscience vote for a secular pragmatist like Trump. Stonestreet and I wondered what the late theologian and Prison Fellowship ministry founder Chuck Colson would have said. “I think what Colson would’ve said [is], Christians have a responsibility to vote, and we have a responsibility to vote with a Christian worldview in mind,” Stonestreet said. “And that has to do with moral character, not necessarily whether they’re a Christian or not. Chuck once said he would vote for a competent non-Christian that would defend marriage and religious liberty over an incompetent Christian who wouldn’t.” Stonestreet did urge Christian voters to beware of Trump’s utopian fantasy: “If there’s a candidate saying, ‘Hey, y’all, I got it. I’m going to fix it all,’ that’s a big warning sign.”
BY NICK EICHER
BY KIRSTEN POWERS
How Long will President Obama Stay Silent on Genocide?
Nick lives in St. Louis, loves the Blues (as in the NHL), is executive producer of WORLD Radio, and cohosts WORLD's radio news magazine The World and Everything in It. Follow Nick on Twitter @NickEicher.
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DR. HILL’S Weight Loss You first must ask the question, “Why do I want to lose weight?” Some answers might be: “To look good, to feel better about myself or to ensure others will like me more.” I challenge you to find a deeper reason to motivate you! It is important to have a healthy fat to muscle ratio on our body, and we need to take the time to understand what too much fat does to our body. Having too much fat greatly affects our function/abilities and ultimately has a big impact on how we can be used by our LORD God to serve others! (Our spouse, kids, friends, church, community, ministry etc.) 1 Corinthians 6:1920 says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” In 2007, the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute for Cancer Research found more evidence showing that an increase in body fat increases cancer, especially associated with breast, colorectal, pancreatic, gall bladder, esophageal, kidney, endometrial, lung and liver cancers. Too much fat on the body also increases the risk of heart attack, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and nearly every chronic illness. Consequently we can experience a decrease in our energy, our clarity in thinking, effectiveness in our job/ministry… everything. When our health is affected, it not only affects the number of years we live, but the quality of those years. What do we do to lose the fat? It’s all about balance. 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be alert and of sober mind [well balanced and selfdisciplined]. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” It’s not like you can never have a piece of cake again! Moderation is the key. I look at it like budgeting money. For example, it is not bad to spend money to go on a vacation with your family and create great memories. But it is bad if you do it more than you can afford and you get overdrawn at the bank. Your body is like the bank. How many deposits are you making (healthy clean foods, exercise, positive thoughts and scriptures) compared to how many withdrawals (harmful chemicals, junk foods, lack of exercise, negative thoughts and mental stress) are you making? Before we know it, we are overdrawn! But thank God, His mercies are new every morning, and we can become balanced…even flourishing in our health again! Where to start: 5 basic steps to help fill up with clean powerful fuel. 1Decrease sugar and anything that breaks down into sugar (yes that includes rice, potatoes, pasta and even organic whole grains). 2Increase your green leafy and cruciferous vegetables to 60-70% of your diet (kale, spinach, mixed greens, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, Brussel sprouts, cabbage, etc.). 3Decrease bad fats (vegetable oil, canola oil, peanut oil, trans fats). 4Increase good fats (olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, almonds, cashews, pecans, and fish oil). 5Avoid harmful chemicals (high fructose corn syrup, artificial additives and colorings, aspartame, NutraSweet, Splenda, carrageenan, etc.). Your body will actually hold on to fat to buffer from toxins as a protective measure. When it comes to exercise, most everyone knows we need it! Movement is life. Our bodies are designed for movement, so if we don’t get enough, there are consequences and increased body fat is
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HEALTH TIP one of them. Not only does exercise help us lose body fat, but it improves our health in many areas: it flushes out toxins, oxygenates our brain, releases positive “feel goodâ€? hormones, and we gain more strength, endurance and energy. To get your metabolism into fat burning mode, I recommend burst/high intensity workouts 2-3x/wk. On average it takes less than 12 minutes and it maximizes the anti-aging hormone (HGH) which increases muscle and decreases body fat. To expect your body to perform, you must feed it the fuel it needs; the food God has provided for us from the land we cultivate. To get these healthy foods into our daily diets takes some planning! The key to staying on track is preparation. The old clichĂŠ “failing to plan is planning to failâ€? is so true. The more you can plan your meals and shop for the week in advance, the better. Spend a couple of hours on the weekend cleaning and cutting your veggies and any other food prep. This time invested will help you stay on track with a healthy diet when things get crazy during the week. And for exercise, dedicate a time to do it, put it on your
schedule, and don’t let anything interfere with that time! We are called to be good stewards, and that includes our bodies! One of the most important investments you will ever make is in your health! There is another key factor involved in weight loss. It is very sad to me to see some individuals being so strict in their diet and
working so hard in their exercise with very little results when it comes to weight loss
I fight this thought daily: If I take care of myself, I'm selfish and conceited. I certainly don't want to be a "lover of self." Is there anything more un-Jesus-like than: "me first" and "it's all about me!" But where does the balance lie? Because not taking care of myself and consequently loathing myself, is not honoring to God either! In fact I heard it said that, "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but it's thinking of yourself less." I had an a-ha moment here: God loves me and He created me. This overwhelms me with gratitude and I want to know Him more. I set aside time with Him because I love Him and it is the #1 most beneficial part of my life. So it only makes sense that (in His wisdom and love) He is continually
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or even improving their health. One of the most common reasons (most people are unaware of) is the importance of a properly functioning nervous system. The central nervous system controls and coordinates ALL functions of the body! This includes our metabolism and hormones. From various stresses and traumas throughout our life, we can have postural distortions of the spine. The spine is like armor protecting the CNS, and when it is out of balance, it interferes with nerve transmission. This is called a spinal subluxation. Your body must get maximum nerve power and strength flowing through your nervous system to operate at its best. How do you know if you have a subluxation interfering with your health potential? This is what I specialize in! When you are ready to see how we can help you function better and reach your full God-given potential, give us a call at 417-339-3978. We have the technology and the team ready to serve you!
guiding me to take care of my body as well. I have experienced that when I've spent time with God AND excercised and eaten well...I am much more likely to have the strength and God-confidence to reach out to others. (Mind, body and spirit working together)! When I take the time to do these things, I'm a more effective worshipper, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend and worker! I really am able to think of others more and forget about myself. God is transforming the way I think. See, I don't want to take care of myself to be acceptable to society, or to cater to my own vanity and pride...because those reasons are so empty. Been there, done that. I want to do it because God is leading me. And He always has our best interest in mind. Always â?¤ Carolyn Hill is passionate about worshiping Jesus and serving with her husband, Dr. Jerod Hill. Together they encourage and equip people to reach their full đ&#x;’— potential in Christ. Carolyn is also passionate about being a wife and a mother to 2 boys. Along with the family dog, "Red," life is a constant adventure
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as the Spirit leads BY PROFESSOR RODNEY BALLANCE, JR.
As a Christian, What are Your Financial Priorities? hould I tithe, or get out of debt first? This is a question I’ve heard dozens of times over my twenty plus years as a Christian financial advisor. It seems as though the very people who should be the healthiest, wealthiest and happiest people on Earth, instead are the ones with the least amount of financial resources available to help others. Some comments I’ve heard about tithing for example, that seem to be popular are: • “I’d give more, but money is really tight right now” • “We’d love to support ministries at our church, but we’re barely supporting ourselves” • “I’ll be glad when we get out of debt so we can help our church” On the other end of the spectrum I’ve had the great blessing to have been able to work with Christians who believe their top priority is giving back to God, and they use the rest of what they have to take care of themselves. Every time I’ve sat down with individuals, couples and families who regularly tithe, we aren’t discussing debt related issues. Instead we discuss multiplying their financial blessings. Is there a direct correlation between those who “give before they live”? Is there credence to obeying the Bible as it relates to how we are to honor God? Is it possible to turn our lives around simply by turning the way we look at money around? Please understand that I am not a theologian, and that’s why I don’t bombard you with scripture in my writings. I am simply a man who loves Christ with all my heart, and strive to serve Him in every way I can. Writing pieces like this is a small way to accomplish that goal. I encourage you to meet with your Pastor about the scriptures to support tithing. I can only prove the things I say
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mathematically and pragmatically. For example, if we listen to popular financial “wisdom”, we believe that having a 15 year mortgage is better than a 30 year because we save a lot of interest. If you are doing this, who are you honoring with the extra 40% of that payment which is typically the higher between the 15 over the 30 year mortgage? You’re saying that saving interest is more important than serving God. By giving God’s money to the bank, you’re providing them the chance to multiply that money for profit, instead of giving God the chance to multiply it for you. Now, if you do the math you’ll see that if you simply put the difference between the monthly payment of a 15 and a 30 year mortgage to work earning just 2% interest, you’ll save enough cash to pay off your home in just over 16 years. The real benefit to this is that you have access to that money in case something breaks down, or a great opportunity arises, without having to borrow it from someone back from the very bank you just sent it to. I’ve tracked one hundred of the Christians with whom I’ve worked over the last 10 years. I noted conversations on paper, and tracked progress with their success. Of these 100 clients I’ve helped, 86 believed they needed to work on their debt before they gave to their church. Of those 86 families, 100% of them struggled with trying to get their own financial house in order, following a one size fits all approach sold to them by mouth pieces of the financial industry. The rest of the 100 had assets to multiply from the beginning, and they continue to grow wealthier by the month. They increase their tithing accordingly, and even take on funding additional ministries with extra revenue. These couples focus on
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their church activities, volunteer for mission trips and offer to help fund projects that benefit others in their community. It appears to me that God is certainly blessing these folks with every penny they give. Many of the couples and individuals I’ve tracked have completely changed their lives using my teachings. A lot of these people, once too poor to tithe, now are able to give beyond what they used to even bring home in their paychecks. I love to recommend financial strategies that blast in the face of popular messages that befall those with a “herd mentality”. Of those who simply follow the group because it’s often the path of least resistance or a popular message. In keeping with my promise to not quote scripture on the fear of getting it wrong, I won’t give you chapter and verse to share my thought. I will simply say that I remember hearing somewhere something like this; Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. As Christians, aren’t we supposed to set an example? Aren’t we supposed to cause others to follow Christ because of the way they see us live? What in your life has caused someone to choose the “narrow gate”? If we’re walking the same wide path as others, can we really expect others to follow us to a different destination? I won’t say that changing your financial priorities will cause you to become wealthy. I can say without hesitation that of the thousands of people I’ve had the privilege to help through my career, the overwhelming ratio of those who place God at the top of their financial priorities have much fewer financial struggles than those who don’t. Just pray about it, and listen with your heart for His purpose in your life. You can learn more about this at
www.icontrolmymoney.org.
If the Arabs layed down their arms today, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel layed down their arms today, there would be no more Israel. -Benjamin Netanyahu
CrossWord Answers to Page 27
are you a pebble in a shoe? An Intimidating Opportunity few months ago I was given an interesting and intimidating opportunity. My son is in tenth grade at a nearby public school and one of his classes last semester was Civics and Careers. For the second half of the semester the focus was on careers and his teacher put out the call to parents to ask if they would come in and talk about what they do. I was apparently the only parent who replied to the email. And so it was that I found myself standing in front of thirty fifteen-year-olds to tell them about pastoring. (At this point I was just transitioning out of full-time pastoral ministry, but the teacher suggested I still focus on it.)
BY TIM CHALLIES
A
The vast majority of the students in this neighborhood and school are unchurched— we realized the other day that we have never once seen a neighbor heading to church on a Sunday morning. The Bible Belt this is not! As far as my son knows, there are no other students in his class who profess faith or even attend church. Most have been raised entirely without religion. This, then, was the question that faced me: How could I explain pastoring to people who have never been inside a church, who have never read a word of the Bible, and who know Jesus as only a swear word? I did not create a full manuscript so don’t have an exact record of what I said. But it went something like this: We all want to be happy. We all want to experience joy. So as we think about careers we are actually thinking about what will give us a lifetime of satisfaction. That makes a course like this one very worthwhile. The problem is that we are bad at finding the things that make us truly happy. Just think back to Christmases or birthdays that have gone by. Remember when you were young and you were absolutely sure there was one toy or one game that would make you happy? You opened it on Christmas day and it was a great moment. You were overwhelmed with the joy of having it—for two days. Then you threw it in your closet and never looked at it again. It promised so much but left you empty. You moved on to the next thing. We see this in careers. A lot of people think power will make them happy so if they can just become president of the company or prime minister of the country they will finally be happy. A lot of people think money will make them happy so if they just have a bit more money (or a lot more!) they will
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finally be happy. But when they get those things they find that happiness has just slipped out of their grasp. [I believe I used Tom Brady as an example here.] Happiness is tricky, but I believe we can find it. It’s actually hidden in plain sight. It’s found in other people! There is nothing in all the world more valuable than people. We love animals which is why we have the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; we love the planet which is why we are so concerned about protecting it. These are good things. But we know that nothing is more valuable than people, and this is why our laws dictate higher penalties for hurting a person than hurting the planet or an animal. The highest joy doesn’t come from seeking our own good, but seeking the good of other people. If you want to find joy in your life and career, live for the good of others. This brings much more joy than living only for your own good. Pastors are in the business of being a blessing to others, of doing their good. A pastor’s work is to care for people. We have doctors to care for our bodies when we’re sick. We have psychologists and counsellors to care for our minds when they are troubled. The job of the pastor is to care for the soul. [There were some uncomfortable looks from the students when I spoke about the soul.] The soul is that part of you that wonders, “Is there anything beyond what I can see? Is there a God? What happens to me after I die? What is life all about?” The pastor cares for people by caring for their souls. The pastor has some amazing privileges. He gets to be with people at their best and their worst moments. He gets to be with them when they are celebrating and when they are mourning. The pastor comes to visit people when their baby is born—he drives to the hospital to meet the baby and pray with the parents. The pastor is with people when they they receive the news they were dreading— when the doctor tells them that it’s cancer and they have six months to live. The pastor helps people prepare to get married by counseling them and then by saying those words, “By the power vested in me, I pronounce you husband and wife.” The pastor is with people when they die, sometimes sitting right with them when they take their last breath. He is the one who stands at the graveside and says, “We now commit this man to the ground…” The pastor helps people when they are looking for answers, when they are just tired and worn out. It is an amazing privilege to be a pastor. A pastor has a difficult job to do but he has help in doing it. Your doctor has medical
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books that help him make a diagnosis and help him establish a treatment. A psychologist has his books that describe all the different mental illnesses and how to treat them. And the pastor has his Bible. [When I said “Bible” several students noticeably scoffed.] The pastor believes that the Bible is a book that was given to us by God. He believes that the Bible is the way God guides us in the world today, that God, who existed before this world and who exists even outside of this world, gave it to us to tell us how to live and how to know him. The pastor uses the Bible as his manual, using it to teach people and help them to discover answers to their biggest and deepest questions. Ultimately he explains that the Bible is all about Jesus and that Jesus is the answer to what troubles our souls. [When I said “Jesus” several more of the students scoffed and nervously laughed.] I am thankful to have been a pastor and I am thankful that today I have a pastor. I would not want to go through life without someone who cares for my soul. And as a Christian I don’t have to. And then my time was up. I answered a few questions, then spent a few minutes talking about Aileen’s decision to be a homemaker and my new emphasis on writing. Was this the right approach? I have no idea. Part of me wishes I had just thrown out my notes and preached the gospel—”Never mind what you will do for a career! Let’s talk about where you will spend eternity!” Wouldn’t that have been the brave thing to do? Maybe, but I also wanted to show respect to the teacher and for his kindness and courage in inviting me to come. He has been a friend and ally to my son through his first two years at that school and I hope the same for my two other children who will eventually attend his classes. He even invited my son to teach and defend the pro-life position in another class. Either way, I hope I put a proverbial pebble in a few shoes and trust that the Lord can work even through the weakest efforts.
www.Challies.com
ask the rabbi
Easter or Passover
O
I can’t find anything in the Bible mentioning the apostles or early Church celebrating Easter. No eggs or rabbits anywhere. I even found that the one place where the word Easter is found in the Bible—Acts 12:4 in the King James Version—the original word there is actually Pascha, the Greek word for Passover! My Bible clearly shows that Yeshua (Jesus), a Jew, observed the Passover with His closest followers and instructed them, and us, to continue to keep it until His return (Matthew 26:26-29). I was also surprised to read that the apostle Paul explicitly told Church members in the Greek port city of Corinth—most of whom were not and never had been Jewish—to observe the Passover as a reminder and memorial of Jesus Christ's death (1 Corinthians 5:7-8 and 11:23-26).
WITH RABBI JEREMY STORCH
n March 27th of this year, a billion or more people who identify themselves as Christian will celebrate Easter. Next month on April 22nd and for the week following, a far smaller number will observe Passover. I am confused. How can you celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior a month before it happens?
Most Christians think that as long as a person celebrates Easter as honoring Christ's resurrection, God won't mind and we shouldn't care. But God does mind and we should care that He does. Many sources are available that describe the origins, history and purpose of the Easter celebration. If you read them without checking what the Bible says about which religious festivals are acceptable to God, you could easily conclude that the writers and researchers know what they are writing about. Their analyses may seem well-grounded, even beyond questioning. But question you must. If you follow human dogma that doesn't match Yeshua’s (Jesus') teachings, you're on religious quicksand without the lifeline of God's saving truth. This is a brief excerpt from an article on our website TheTabernacleInBranson.com entitled “The Truth About Easter”. And prayerfully consider joining us for our Passover Seder this year on April 25th.
To contact Jeremy for ministry in your congregation, for a radio or television interview or other special event, or for information on his albums or teachings, please call or email:
The Tabernacle Branson’s Messianic Congregation 256 Church Road Branson, MO 65616 (417) 334-7373 TheTabernacleInBranson.com
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where grace abounds
Question: “What are the Origins of Easter?”
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evil about painting and hiding eggs and having children search for them. What is important is our focus. If our focus is on Christ and not the eggs, our children will understand that the eggs are just a game. Children can participate in an Easter egg hunt as long as the true meaning of the day is explained and emphasized, but ultimately this must be left up to the discretion of parents. www.gotquestions.org
Muslims turning to Christ in Denmark by Gene Veith s we’ve blogged about, large numbers of Muslim refugees are converting to Christianity. I knew this was happening in Germany and in France, though it is not happening everywhere. But it is also happening in Denmark, as I learned recently while I was there. The organization Inner Mission, whose conference I spoke at, does much of the evangelism work in that supposedly secularist country. Staffers told me about how they are being overwhelmed by Muslim immigrants and refugees who come to them wanting to learn about Jesus and asking to be baptized. I was told about a Muslim couple who showed up at a Mission House for the weekly Bible study. The next week, 14 Muslims attended. The next week, 50 crowded into the facility. This is happening in Mission Houses across the country. The inquirers are told up front that their becoming Christians would in no way make a difference to the Danish government considering their applications. “We don’t care. Tell us about Jesus.” And if you get sent back, you would be in severe danger as apostates to Islam. “We know. Baptize us!” Inner Mission staff encourage them to continue with the Bible studies. In the meantime, they are taken to a conservative Lutheran pastor for catechesis and eventual baptism. They usually want to be baptized imme-
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BY GENE VEITH
Answer: The origins of Easter are rooted in European traditions. The name Easter comes from a pagan figure called Eastre (or Eostre) who was celebrated as the goddess of spring by the Saxons of Northern Europe. A festival called Eastre was held during the spring equinox by these people to honor her. The goddess Eastre’s earthly symbol was the rabbit, which was also known as a symbol of fertility. Originally, there were some very pagan (and sometimes utterly evil) practices that went along with the celebration. Today, Easter is almost a completely commercialized holiday, with all the focus on Easter eggs and the Easter bunny being remnants of the goddess worship. In the Christian faith, Easter has come to mean the celebration of the resurrection of Christ three days after His crucifixion. It is the oldest Christian holiday and the most important day of the church year because of the significance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the events upon which Christianity is based. Easter Sunday is preceded by the season of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and repentance culminating in Holy Week and followed by a 50-day Easter season that stretches from Easter to Pentecost. Because of the commercialization and pagan origins of Easter, many churches prefer to refer to it as “Resurrection Sunday.” The rationale is the more we focus on Christ and the less we focus on the pagan holiday, the better. As previously mentioned, the resurrection of Christ is the central theme of Christianity. Paul says that without this, our faith is futile (1 Corinthians 15:17). What more wonderful reason could we have to celebrate! What is important is the true reason behind our celebration, which is that Christ was resurrected from the dead, making it possible for us to have eternal life (Romans 6:4)! Should we celebrate Easter or allow our children to go on Easter eggs hunts? This is a question both parents and church leaders struggle with. There is nothing essentially
diately, I was told, but the pastor first takes them through some months of intensive catechesis (using Luther’s Small Catechism). And then, if they still want to be Christians and if the pastor believes they understand the elements of Christianity, they are baptized, whereupon they become active members of the congregation. A woman who works with internationals for Inner Mission told me that most of these converts are refugees from Iran. She said that many of the converts turned to Christ back home, but had to believe in secret and had no one to baptize them. (I was struck with the high view of baptism these former Muslims had. I remember years ago hearing about “secret believers” in Iran, some of them who lived outside the country, who did not dare to get baptized. That was the point of no return, the ultimate act of apostasy that meant rejection by family and a possible death sentence from the government. The article said that maybe Christians should not require baptism, under the circumstances. But these new believers crave baptism, despite all the risk.) She also said that some had become Christians during their long journey from their homes, as Christians in the countries they were traveling through would give them Bibles. Most also have come to understand the connection between Islam and the oppression and violence they were fleeing. And, yes, some had dreams about Jesus. (Not a dream or vision of the type that Muhammed had, giving him a new religion. Rather, the type described in the Book of Acts, in which both Paul and Cornelius were directed to someone who would give them the Word and Sacrament.) “For years we have prayed for revival in Denmark,” she told me. “We didn’t realize the revival would be among the Muslims!” But there is a connection. She said that many Danes are seeing the difference Christianity is making among the Iranian converts and are starting to take Christianity more seriously themselves. And the zeal of the new converts is inspiring the other members of the congregations they are joining. The conversions of the Muslims would appear to be God’s work. It isn’t happening due to church programs or to outreach efforts (valuable as those may be). It isn’t that Christians are going to Muslims to try to convert them. Rather, the Muslims are coming to the Christians asking for the Gospel. The revival in Denmark–as well as other countries–may just start with the Muslims and then keep spreading.
What is the American Christian Voice?
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Today it is a full gloss, conservative magazine. I hesitate to use the word “conservative” because that word has become a misunderstood moniker to our own perception. But, juxtaposed against a Sanders/Clinton ideology... we are the opposite. This current political cycle has made the left more liberal and the right more conservative. Personally, I have been a fiscal conservative and a social moderate. The contents of the ACV do not always reflect that image since our supporters, subscribers, advertisers and general audience is amazingly diverse. We started out as a local publication to the Branson, Springfield, Missouri area to a publication that has subscribers in all 50 states. Our core advertising base is still that of the entertainment industry. Live music and more recently family attractions put Branson on the map. We boast more than eight million visitors a year. Not bad for a town of only 10,000 citizens! The quality of entertainment in Branson rivals any entertainment destination in the world. So, why has the ACV been unapologetic to the criticisms of our detractors that think we are too harsh on religion and extreme liberalism? It is our position that, historically speaking, much of organized religion focuses on sin consciousness without the understanding that love trumps law. We believe the Bible has to be interpreted in it’s entirety, not just a passage without considering who was inspired to write it and to whom was the intended audience. We also believe that the Word of God can only be understood through the assistance of the Holy Spirit. We also believe that when folks side step that process of the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the opinions of men can bring condemnation on others that Jesus liberated - not just from sin but the condemnation of sin. To sum it all up, God does not want us to
keep His law and commandments but His ultimate goal in our lives is that we eventually WANT to obey His law and commandments. This transforms us from religion to relationship.
leader that lifts up the Great Whore of Babylon as a peaceful, beautiful religion (Islam) while eroding the constitutional rights of Christians.
From a political perspective, we cannot endorse a failed system that our current president has brilliantly crafted under the banner of globalism. Dismantling America here and abroad in a misguided belief, that the United States has caused most of the world’s ills, is treasonous. Indulging every sensitivity for individual abberations has produced a politically correct environment that has all but destroyed any chance to educate the masses that serving others before ourselves is the secret to personal happiness.
Just to be clear, we believe Jesus loves Muslims. They were born in the image of God and He was sent to the earth to die for them so they can live for eternity with their Heavenly Father. But we believe that Jesus hates Islam. Strong statement?
Passivity regarding the progressive agenda of this current administration to silence the voices of the least of these (the unborn) and sympathize and placate Islam while ignoring the genocide of Christians around the world is making the children of God complicit with this despicable behavior. God determines who sits on the thrones and in our case who resides in the White House. The Bible tells us this truth. However, Christians have always been destroyed by a lack of knowledge. In this case, many believers do not understand that He determines our leaders by two methods. One is His divine will. (David) The other method is His permissive will. Just like Saul in the Older testament, God gave the people what they wanted by allowing Barack Obama to become president. Twice! Why does He do that? So that when we insist on our own way, we cannot blame Him or others for the outcome. He could ask us after He gave us His permissive will to put someone like Mr. Obama in the White House, “How is that working for you?” The Biblical narrative shows in both testaments followers of God speaking truth to secular power. From Moses to John the Baptist to the Apostle Paul we see powerful words of criticism to authority, much less a pointed political cartoon. Jesus as well told the secular powers that they had no authority to crucify Him. It is not wrong or “un-Christian” to mock a
BY JOHN G. SACOULAS
he American Christian Voice has evolved over time and is now in its 12th year of publication. It started out as a moderate newspaper tabloid under the banner of the Ozarks Christian News.
musings from a disgruntled editor
Islam as a religion is a Satan inspired counterfeit to the plan of a loving, forgiving God. It is a religion that boasts that God has no son. It is a religion that has kept women in bondage for over 1,500 years. It is a religion that has permeated the culture of many societies teaching there is no hope or guarantee of salvation outside of those who kill non-muslims during a Jihad. Because of this hopelessness it drove a dozen young men into a suicidal mission on 9/11. This current president has done everything possible to protect this great counterfeit to thrive upon the earth and spread like a cancer even into our own borders. Only a fraction of Muslims that convert to Christianity do so from finding common ground with believers. The majority have to be called through dreams and visions because their indoctrinations and fear of family reprisals are so strong. It is the wrong headedness that we mock. We are not mocking Mr. Obama personally. He is the product of his own ancestory. He longed for the approval of a detached, marxist father. All of the influences of his youth groomed him to want to spread this vain philosophy to the entire earth. The American Christian Voice is not a Bible help, tract or vehicle to spread the Gospel to the lost. We are a publication to educate, entertain and inspire Christians to a closer relationship with our Heavenly Father by learning to serve each other while we seek Him through the Holy Spirit and not our own opinions. Occasionally, God uses us as a prophetic voice of warning. “Playing nice” with bullies only works after you have given the bully the message that you will not allow him to abuse you, your friends or your loved ones.
VOL.12 #1 | WWW.AMERICAN CHRISTIAN VOICE.COM
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