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I keep feeling the need (or guilt) to post here or at least keep reminding you that I am regularly posting on my other blog. Limited time and energy right now has restricted me to only post at my Voices Carry pro-life blog. I’m not giving up here, I promise, I won’t let too many days go by without something interesting here.
Of course we are all praying about Hurricane Gustav hitting New Orleans today. I have posted a substantial article on where God may be in all of this. I welcome feedback on that. If you want to send money to help, send it to my friend Pastor Dino Rizzo at Healing Place Church. You may recall he and Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge were major players after Katrina. We’ll see how it goes, we may send a work team too.
Lifelight was this past weekend here in Sioux Falls - billed as the nation’s largest Christian music festival. I only went for a couple hours Saturday. I did post last night on a couple of the extremist abortion supporters who crashed the Lifelight Festival. Pardon the title but the article is even more shocking… eat a queer fetus for Jesus.
These are a just few of the headlines that caught my attention today and my discussion starters.
One heart, one widow connect suicides of 2 men (I don’t think the woman is the common denominator. I’ve seen suicides flow generationally, in siblings, etc. I would love to hear from our deliverance ministry people/friends on this one… the spirit of death staying with a transplanted heart???)
Bible Courses Allowed, Not Mandatory for Schools (Some of you know that I have been on this for a couple of years and have said this may be the next matter I take up in our city and state. I welcome your involvement.
Vladimir Putin saves TV crew from tiger (I’m looking at Putin and the Tiger through a prophetic, symbolic lens. Interesting.)
‘Founders’ prayer violated Constitution as they wrote it’?? (Thank God for my friends at the Alliance Defense Fund.)
CNN poll shows no post convention bump for Obama (No comment.)
Of recent, my blogging energies have been diverted to the LIFE ISSUE. However, this morning I find myself pondering some headlines. Just pretend we are at the breakfast table, drinking some good joe, reading the paper. Your thoughts are welcome.
Italian Priest Organizes Beauty Contest for Nuns
Muslims begin to copy the megachurch multi-site model
Police cite church for praying too loudly
Tornado hits Denver on eve of convention
Faith-filled convention opens with prayer
What Saddleback’s Pastor Really Thinks About Politics
August frost hits Minnesota and Wisconsin
Church-Going Teens Have Higher GPAs
One legged NYC prostitute knocked from wheelchair dies
A couple local headlines…
No abortion ads in student directories
Kory and the Fireflies to appear at LifeLight Music Festival
A couple crazy video clips are in the news from the Olympics…
It’s doubtful they’ll be catering to us this Christmas (or Easter) dumping the polar bears and replacing them with nativity imagery or a cross. Pepsi anyone?
This is a great book! We were blessed during our 12 city Urgency Tour in February to have Danielle and Darlene drive from KC to Church at the Gate here in Sioux Falls to personally deliver 300 copies of Justice Loves Babies so we could give them out to South Dakota pastors. God, raise up a children’s prayer movement for the unborn!
Last month on my pro-LIFE blog I paid tribute to a spectacular lady named Irena Sendler. Irena Sendler saved 2500 babies and children from the Holocaust. Her pro-life mantle is up for grabs. You can read my comments here and here. My friend Bob Ellis in Rapid City just plopped this YouTube clip on his blog - thanks Bob for finding it. Irena Sendler was nominated last year for the Nobel Peace Prize but was beat by Al Gore. I have so so so much to say about that travesty but I’ll let you just think it yourself.
Yesterday someone set fire to the governors mansion in Texas. (What a senseless loss for the state of Texas. I hope they catch the guy.) For whatever reason this news item caught my attention. Perhaps because I’ve not looked at the news the same since I read this great book. A couple elements of the story seem symbolic and prophetic to me - fire and the dwelling of the governor. I’m inclined to think Texas represents something but I’m not sure what.
I’ve been thinking about fire a lot lately - the fire of God, revival fires, purifying fires. It hit me as a metaphor or a prophetic picture when I saw this picture of the governors mansion. What if the refining fires of God were to burn in the heart of our national governance?
Phooey to those of you who think religion and politics shouldn’t be mixed and please don’t drop Jesus’ line about his Kingdom not being “of this world” in the comment section. He is the King of kings and the Cross was a political retribution… he laid his life down in the political sphere. His Kingdom certainly IS to be IN this world. It’s not OF it because it comes from heaven. Our work is to daily contend for his Kingdom to come here and now on earth as it is in heaven.
His kingdom is not to be relegated to any sector of society (sacred/secular) but it should permeate the whole loaf - politics included. We can’t keep asking God to BLESS America while we do nothing about putting forth laws and legislators that he can actually bless. His Word says he can’t bless unrighteousness, so let’s set forth righteousness and watch what God does.
We need the fire of God in the dwelling of the “governors!” Guess who the Bible says is to rule and govern the earth? You and me. Don’t misinterpret this and think I’m advocating a theocracy of sorts. I’m not. I am talking about the mandate on the church to influence society. If we don’t influence culture somebody elses values will. I believe God will hold salt-less salt accountable for societal decay. I care about my grandchildren’s world too much to let this nation rot on my watch.
But the American Church is ramping up to November fully clueless on these matters. Today I read some are saying 40% of evangelicals will probably vote for Obama. Meanwhile, those contending for the plight of the unborn shake their heads in dismay. Many leaders in the black church including TD Jakes are lining up behind him (7500 Obama-supporting black pastors met last week in Hampton Virginia). I’m guessing they didn’t discuss how Obama is a prominent supporter of that which has caused black genocide.
And then there is the up and coming Emergent Church. The hip “Emergent Church” is capturing the hearts of young evangelicals to reject the religious right but in doing so they tolerate the separation of righteousness from justice. Friends, the religious right has the righteous message and the religious left is pressing the justice message (except for the unborn). But a Kingdom-minded Church needs to aggressively press BOTH righteousness and justice in the public square.
The US Census Bureau reports the world’s 6,666,666,666th person was born on May 10. Of course, overpopulation.net is reacting to this by bemoaning we have now “passed our sustainability” and that “reckless breeding humans” are responsible for the inevitable downfall of the species because we have ignored alarming facts about sustainable food limits that the earth produces relative to population. The Sierra Club wants to re-double its promotion of population control.
It’s hugely disappointing to me that key evangelical leaders like mega-church pastor Rick Warren and Christianity Today editor David Neff are signing things like the Evangelical Climate Initiative which was largely funded ($475,000) by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Hewletts are major contributors to abortion and population control efforts.
All this panic over more people on the planet is soundly debunked by Steve Mosher’s latest book - Population Control—Real Costs, Illusory Benefits. Mosher leads the Population Research Initiative which is dedicated to objectively presenting the truth about population-related issues, and to reversing the trends brought about by the myth of overpopulation. PRI is a growing, global network of pro-life groups spanning over 30 countries. Get this… to date they have successfully eliminated $750 million in U.S. tax dollars to population control groups or programs. Praise God for PRI and Steve Mosher!
You can read a great review of this new book here. In case you are pressed for time, I’ll paste a taste here. The very first line of the book reads… “we have all grown up on on a poisonous diet of overpopulation propaganda.”
Mosher’s book is, first and foremost, an answer to the allegation that the human race is inexorably multiplying, hell-bent toward a giant demographic cliff like so many lemmings. The numbers show that the world is not, has never been, nor ever shall be, overpopulated. In fact, according to the world’s experts–even the ones advocating population control–birthrates around the world are dropping at a precipitous rate. The book thus torpedoes the lifeboat scenario, which argued that in order to survive, we had to throw some of the earth’s passengers overboard. But it is much more than this. The history of the population control movement is replete with human rights abuses. Those who were made to walk the plank of abortion, sterilization, and contraception–all for the supposed good of humanity–have some horrific tales to tell.
These people hate people. Don’t believe me? John Muir, the founder of Sierra Club had this to say about more people… “Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.” John David the editor of EarthFirst agrees… “Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.” Paul Watson, the founder of Greenpeace, said… “I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds.” Or this from Paul Taylor, author of Respect for Nature, “Given the total, absolute disappearance of Homo sapiens, then not only would the Earth’s community of Life continue to exist, but in all probability, its well being enhanced. Our presence, in short, is not needed.”
The Word of God says the polar opposite… that the redemption of the created order is dynamically tied up in the redemption of man. That all creation is presently waiting for us to get right with God. That the creations liberation from its “bondage to decay” awaits us. The salvation of the earth is not in the elimination of humankind but rather in the redemption of humankind. God has never rescended the mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.”
If you’ve yet to hear my message this past week on this subject you can download the podcast here. It’s titled “Changing Climates” and is about Rizpah in 2 Samuel 21. The key points are…
1. The number one thing we can do for the creation is acknowledge the Creator.
2. Blood pollution, more often than not, is the culprit in any climate crisis.
3. It takes an atonement to redeem and heal the land.
4. God uses intercessors to change the atmosphere.
Not recorded on the audio version are my comments on the We Get It Campaign which was launched on Friday. I encourage everyone to read the declaration and consider signing it and joining with others who are committed to finding pro-life strategies to care for the environment.
This past week alone I got sermon feedback from people in Washington DC, Hawaii, California and Iraq. Oh the wonders of the podcast. I’m told in three of these places my “Origins: God’s Green Earth” series is making the rounds and is quite a hit. Of course I appreciate feedback that is positive. Interesting to me, I’m getting triple the feedback I normally get in a message series and we are giving away hundreds of CDs. One lady on Sunday, a visitor, took a handful and plans to send them to her Ph.D microbiologist son with hopes that he’ll make room for God in his life. This morning I was mapping out the remaining messages in the series and had the thought… why quit so soon? There is so much more to say on this theme. I do believe it has end time relevance.
Also I know that those of you who attend CATG each weekend may never be able to run for President unless you disavow the crazy politically-incorrect things I’m saying right now and have said over the years. Actually we do need people in our midst to rise up and govern - that’s the Creation Mandate - rulership, dominion over the created order. Go for it! I promise to not pull a Rev. Wright.
Big thanks to my friend Steven M. Collins for this guest post. As usual, Steve opens the Scriptures in untraditional ways showing things we wonder why we didn’t see all along. Recently Steve gave me a preview of a fascinating paper he was about to post on his website - “Is the earth 6000 years old.” I’ve linked to the full paper here and also at the end of his guest post. After reading his paper a couple of times, I asked him to write a guest post here to sum that up and that is what is spelled out below. Steve lives here in Sioux Falls with his wife and family, has written five books on Israel, and is one of our life group leaders. More on his books and his blog on his website. Pray for Steve’s health - he’s unable to travel and take speaking engagements right now. Lord, touch this brother!
Pastor Steve, I am really enjoying your message series on “Origins: God’s Green Earth.” I agree it is critically-important that we understand the foundations of our beginnings in order to truly understand our Creator and his purpose for our lives. As you have been giving your “Origins” series, which has a strong emphasis on Genesis 1, I have been putting the finishing touches on an article which complements the subject matter of your messages. My article addresses the “Creation vs. Evolution” debate from an entirely new perspective.
My article strongly affirms a literal understanding and application of the scriptures, and I believe that by combining the account in Genesis 1 with creation accounts in other books of the Bible (Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc.), we can actually reconcile the differences between the scientific community and the Christian community regarding the origins of the earth and life itself. We know that God has eternally existed. Have the creative efforts of an ageless Creator (in the physical world) been limited to only the most-recent 6,000 years, as many “young earth” Christians maintain? Read the rest of this entry »
Al Gore is a prophet who lives wealthy and hypocritically off the offerings of his followers. Global warming has become a religious belief - there are believers and unbelievers, infidels and apostates, proselytes, evangelists, hypocrites and corruption. There are rituals, creeds and divination. There is blasphemy and “truth” albeit inconvenient. There is preaching, prophecy and indoctrination. There are disciples (the media), and the professors have become the high priests and apostles of evolution. Their textbooks are now Holy Writ. The faithful vow to follow no matter what the true facts may show. Abortion is the sacrament. A global Crusade is underway with converts and casualties. A Jihad has been called against the only thing in the created order that bears the image of God. The salvation of the planet is only in the extermination of people.
So much for the “separation of church and state.” So much for NOMA - the “non-overlapping magisteria” of science and religion. But then again, what do you expect, this isn’t science anymore, these are faith-based initiatives.
Happy Earth Day! Perhaps you are aware I’ve been preaching for a month or so on the theme Origins: God’s Green Earth. The series is all about the earth, the environment and the end times. This whole creation/evolution debate is a worship issue in that it’s about who gets the credit, the glory and the praise. I encourage you to tune in via the podcasts if you are outside the area.
This past weekend was especially important as I connected the dots between the population control movement and the global warming movement. This is not just about how we all need to drive hybrids and use high effeciency light bulbs. What we have here is an evil, unholy end-time alliance. (DVD’s of the message are available - you’ll want that over the audio-only version as some key video clips and charts that I used in the message are only on the DVD.)
Here’s the deal, media mogal Ted Turner is pouring his billions into Algore’s three-year propaganda campaign. If you haven’t seen the Ted Turner clip I showed a few weeks ago, check it out for yourself. He says “we’ve got to stabilize the population - there are too many people.” He advocates getting the planet from 6 billion people down to 2 billion through global one-child per family policies like they have in China, through forced sterilization and by getting reproductive health care services within walking distance of everyone on the planet. Of course that is all code for “abortion.”
First, the problem the globe is facing is de-population not over-population. We need more babies right now not less. Second, we all want to save the planet, especially Christians. God gave us the mandate to steward the earth and we abdocated that mandate and the world has picked up the “green mantle” in a misguided way. Third, Satan is at war with God and, people, human-beings are the only thing in the created order that bears the image of God. Satan is a liar and a deceiver. He knows people won’t buy the “kill people” agenda so he’s packaging it “save the planet.”
All this fuss over whether it’s getting warmer or colder is just a smokescreen for something far more devious. It’s like the devil is distracting mom and dad by getting them to fuss over the thermostat all the while he is taking their children.
Jesus spoke of the convulsions in nature as sign posts of the end of the age. He said it’ll all be like birthpangs. We know there will be false prophets at the end of the age, but if it’s like “birthpangs” then we can expect some false alarms, some false labor. Just like years ago when I rushed my pregnant wife to the hospital and they sent us home a couple hours later because it was “a false alarm,” Jesus is saying “heads up, there will be some false alarms before this all comes to pass.”
Think about these things as one billion people today, earth day, sound the “alarm.”
Every spring, God’s green earth comes alive! This was God’s promise to Noah… “as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” The verse also indicates this present earth won’t endure forever. Evidence abounds, our planet is fallen. Everything began with excellence at Creation, but the created order is on a path of degeneration.
Eco-gospel prophets like Al Gore are blowing the trumpet that we are in a planetary crisis - but, it’s confusing because their ideology is based on the belief that earth is evolving upward, from worse to better. (Evolution, mind you, isn’t a science; it’s a belief – a belief that actually runs counter to science and the evidence.)
Surprising some, science and Scripture agree about our origins. Once we understand our origins and God’s mandate that we steward creation in this age and the age to come, our identity and role in both come into focus. More to come this weekend at Church at the Gate…
I’m loving the warm up here in SD - even wore a short sleeve shirt to the services today. Perhaps it was a little premature. It’s 37 right now but that still means the snow is melting. I was reading this afternoon how globally, January was the coldest on record in ten years. And, that many scientists believe that this winter’s weather could point to a future cooling trend. You can read it yourself:
Marc Morano is the resident authority on global warming with the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works minority staff. He says according to records kept by the United Nations, global average temperatures peaked during the El Nino year of 1998 — and that since 2001, the temperature trend has declined slightly. According to Morano, despite the continued pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere, the southern hemisphere has also experienced a cooling trend; and in the northern hemisphere, January 2008, by some estimates, was the coldest month in more than a decade. “Solar scientists are worried about the lows,” he says. “They’re calling it the ‘disturbingly quiet solar cycle.’ And we’re faced with again just a lack of years … of temperatures just sort of ‘plateau-ing out’ to the point where the head of the U.N. IPCC [Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change] has recently called for an investigation as to why temperatures were not continuing to rise as predicted.” Morano also notes that between 1940 and 1975, the earth’s temperature cooled even though CO2 levels rose. And global warming alarmists, he notes, have failed to explain the lack of a correlation between rising CO2 and rising temperatures, a theory that Al Gore promotes in his movie An Inconvenient Truth.
In other earth-friendly related news, many congregations in America went green for their Palm Sunday services paying double for palms that were specially grown and harvested so as to not contribute to deforestation. Check it out. In case you are wondering, Church at the Gate didn’t go green today, not because we have no regard for the Scriptural mandates to be good stewards of creation. Frankly it had more to do with the fact that we were thinking about welcoming the King more than we were about his creation. My bad.
Did Moses inhale? A “scholar” at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem claims Moses was high on drugs when he went up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments.
Professor Benny Shanon claims Moses got high on a drink called ayahuasca, made out of potent plants that grow in southern Israel. He said: “They constitute the key ingredients of one of the most powerful psychedelic substances in existence.” Speaking about his article on Israeli public radio, he added: “As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either. Or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics.” The professor’s theory came after he tried the drink, which is still used in religious rituals by the Amazon people, and had similar visions. He claims five events in Moses’ life were inspired by the drug, including the Ten Commandments and the Burning Bush miracle.
I love that last part - the theory came after the professor tried the drink. So much for good scholarship - hey, smoke this and things will make more sense.
These are the people who think we are crazy. Recently I preached a message called “Greater Works Than Jesus” and spoke of how the signs and wonders at the end of the age will rock the scholarly and scientific community. We are moving into days when God is coming against the arrogance of man in modern universities with marvels beyond what we’ve seen to date.
Professor Benny will be among the many mind-fried 60’s-era “intellectuals” who are blown away by the wonders God releases on the earth. I’m thinking it’ll be the quenticential bad trip. Dude.
The politicians are now standing in pulpits preaching. Those who know me well know I perk right up when somebody mentions the Sermon on the Mount. My two decade long fascination with it has resulted in quite a collection of books and commentary on it. Here’s the latest addition to my collection. This comes from presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama who was speaking Sunday at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio.
I will tell you that I don’t believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them… So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don’t think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That’s my view.
I suppose he’s referring to the “don’t judge” verses or maybe the Golden Rule. We do need to love people of all varieties and flavors, even enemies. But I wonder if Sen. Obama is aware that before you get to either of those passages you first come to one that does directly apply to marriage. Of course I’m referring to Jesus upholding the sacred union between one man and one woman for one life saying nothing should undermine it or tear it apart. Jesus says anything outside that sacred union is adultery.
Also interesting to me, just before that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus upheld the Old Testament law saying even the little “obscure passages” - the “smallest letter and least stroke of a pen” are not to be discarded. Frankly, this is the first time I’ve heard anyone ever refer to anything in Romans as “obscure.” Romans is widely regarded as the foundational theological letter of the New Testament. Even so, Islam is the faith that interprets some Scripture as more authoritative than others (The Koran’s “peaceful” earlier passages are less authoritative than the Koran’s “violent” older passages). In Christianity, all passages are equally God-breathed (inspired) and useful for faith, doctrine and conduct.
This isn’t the first time Obama has sung the praises of the Sermon on the Mount. In 2006, he had this to say:
Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.
I love it… “let’s read our Bibles!” I think a national Bible Study on the Sermon on the Mount would be a great idea - then let’s get the book back in the schools and back on the college campuses and ultimately judge everything by it.
According to David Barton, 94% of all the quotations in the writings of the Founding Fathers of the nation were quotations from the Bible. Wouldn’t it be something if we started electing people again based on how closely their “platform” paralleled that of the Sermon on the Mount? America would be a better place if political stump speeches were basically Sermon on the Mount sermons. God’s Kingdom would surely come then on earth as it is in heaven.
Here’s a little Sermon on the Mount trivia for you: Reagan was driven by the Sermon on the Mount’s “city on a hill” metaphor and Bush #41, at his inauguration, asked for the Bible he placed his hand on to be opened to Matthew 5.
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