The Golden Compass

Although the movie, The Golden Compass, has not yet hit theaters, I feel the need to comment. I am not concerned about this film per se, but rather about it leading people to read the set of books on which it is based. I have read them, and need to point out that Philip Pullman’s, His Dark Materials, is an anti-Narnian trilogy that sets God as a deceiver and the Church as power hungry murderers. It is unabashedly anti-Christian and anti-God.

The Dangerous Act of Worship

Joel recommended “The Dangerous Act of Worship” by Mark Labberton, so I read it on vacation. I also must recommend it. This book needs to be read and discussed throughout the Church. It’s not that it says anything new…It’s just that it says so many important things well. Worship is a bigger topic than many have made it out to be and Labberton paints with a very fine brush filled with cultural and biblical insights. He sends out a prophetic wake-up call to a sleeping Church that we are to flee the American Christian culture’s “worship wars” and instead, live as Christians in exile (in the world but not of it). Along with the many actions of worship within the Church, our worship is also to be manifested outside of it as we, “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God’ (Micah 6:8). This is not safe worship, it is dangerous.

Vacation

It’s time and I’m taking it! Nan and I will be gone until the 4th.

Science Series Review

SCIENCE VS GOD

Have we proved the Case for an intelligent designer?

WEEK 1
We looked at the beginning of the universe and saw that there were only four possibilities
1 The Universe is Eternal – Everything has a cause
2 The Universe is an Illusion – A perceiver would have to be real
3 The Big Bang Caused the Universe – No problemo – What caused the bang?
4 God Created the Universe – God is outside of creation and time therefore not subject to it’s laws

We saw that there are only three philosophical possibilities concerning God
1 Atheism: No God
2 Pantheism: All Is God
3 Theism: God Made All

WEEK 2
We looked at evolution and saw that there were three possibilities
1 Organic Evolution – Life come from non life
2 Macro Evolution – Darwinianism – All species come from a common ancestor
Problems – Natural selection can improve a species but not change it to another
Cambrian Explosion
Fossil Records – Lies – Falsification – extreme time gaps
No current transitional species
No past transitional species
Phylisophically – Life lacks meaning and morality
3 Micro Evolution – Structural changes can occur within a species
Structured changes within pre-existing kinds of life. Heredity & Variation.
This one is scientific and is observable in nature.

Stupid School Award

This years Stupid School Award goes to… the Portland Maine School Board for deciding to issue birth control pills to girl’s as young as 11 years old without parental consent. I don’t even know what to say about this incredible insanity. What are they thinking? Middle school kids need parental permission to take an aspirin, let alone birth control. By the way, isn’t it a crime (statutory rape) if someone has sex with a minor? Are they going to find and prosecute the partners? Will they ask who they are when issuing pills so they don’t get pregnant during an illegal act? I already know the answer to this one…NO!

I think that the parents should asap rid themselves of this school board. Vote them out, protest them out, whatever. Just get rid of them and get new sensible members.

Good Buys

I was looking for a deal on “wild at heart” books and came across this amazing deal. You can get a case of 48 for $55 at http://booksfor1dollar.maninthemirror.org/. They also have other books and devotionals for similar ridiculous prices. Definitely worth checking out.

Depressing Songs

I always thought that it would be cool to have the “Most Depressing Songs Collection” featuring the most depressing songs of the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc…
Maybe Time/Life would put it out. Anyway here are some of my personal favorites. I think these are all from the 60s and 70s.

Eve of Destruction (Barry McGuire) Theme: We’re going to blow ourselves up
All by Myself (Eric Carmen) Theme: I’m really, really lonely and I can’t take it anymore
Dust in the Wind (Kansas) Theme: Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity
Eleanor Rigby (Beatles) Theme: Some lives don’t matter to anyone
Blowin in the Wind (Dylan) Theme: Lot’s of injustice…no answers
Cat’s in the Cradle (Chapin) Theme: You were a rotten parent
It’s Over/Cryin (Orbison) Theme: Desperate love unreturned
Yesterday (Beatles) Theme: She left me without explaining
Masters of War (Dylan) People who profit from war should die
At Seventeen (Ian) Perhaps the most depressing girl song ever written.
Theme: Only pretty girls get valentines and go to dances

Feel free to give me your list or add to mine

Jim & Casper Go to Church

I recently read the book, “Jim & Casper go to Church”. It is the story of a Christian (Jim) hiring an athiest (Casper) to join him in visiting, discussing and evaluating a dozen churches. They visited many sizes and cultures of churches throughout the country. I already knew of most of the churches they visited and would have liked to have heard about lesser known ones. No sacramental churches were visited.

The book depressed me. In looking critically at some American Churches it certainly uncovers warts. I just felt like I was on this great speck-finding journey. I suppose it is necessary to do an honest evaluation now and then but I somehow came away feeling embarrassed and hopeless.

I do agree with the book when it adresses issues about our general hypocrisy. When really looked at, we are too often motivated by selfishness instead of sacrifice, we use manipulation instead of love and friendship, we promise things like wealth or healing as a fundraiser, we teach positive thinking instead of biblical truth, we are divided by race and economics, and so much more . I agree with the book that the American Church is often as materialistic centered as the secular culture.

A Great Man

This week a dear brother in the Lord has gone home. Joe Patti was a quiet, unassuming man who blessed and humbled me by his desire for God, truth and righteousness. He was always in Church serving in as many ways as he could. When she was alive, Joe served his disabled wife faithfully and without complaint. Joe was an example to me of a Christian man and will be greatly missed. My prayers go out to his family and The Church of the Intercessor for their loss. See you soon Joe.

Others May…You Cannot

If God has called you to be really like Jesus, He will draw you to a life of crucifixion and humility, and put upon you such demands of obedience, that you will not be able to follow other people, or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their success, of their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, or may have a legacy left to them, but it is likely God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, namely, a helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden in obscurity, because He wants you to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may let others be great, but keep you small.

He may let others do a work for Him and get the credit of it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He may let others get the credit for the work which you have done, and thus make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own.

He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. But if you absolutely sell yourself to be His…slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in the inner circle.

Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not seem to use with others. Now when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of Heaven.

G. D. Watson, 1845-1924