Red Giants

Off Track on Orientation

noreply@blogger.com (J.W.) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:14:00 +0000

The always contentious debate over homosexual orientation has heated up in the news recently in connection with the controversial views of a high-profile U.S. Presidential candidate. If we take a step back, we'll see that the premise of the entire debate is flawed because of our modern prejudices.

The Bible does not discuss sexual orientation not because the writers were ignorant of sexuality but because this concept is a fairly new one tied to another false modern construct: sexual identity.

The Bible presents one model of sexual behavior and that is within the male-female marriage. It paints all other sexual behaviors outside of this model with various degrees of disapprobation. In the New Testament, Jesus takes this further to describe that sexual behaviors begin in the thought processes (Mt. 5:27-30). Thought processes, however, are not the same as orientation/identity. The whole idea is thought processes are behavior.

What's the real orientation of humans? Against God. In the hearts of fallen men and women, "anything goes." Inherent in all individuals is a sliding scale of sexuality — no fixed orientation, no Balkanized identities. Fallen man's only identity is against God. Cultures and societies determine the rest.

The Judeo-Christian model of the monogamous male-female marriage covenant was/is completely anathema to the way the rest of the world worked and works. The civilizing influence of this strict model turned out to be quite successful in preserving the race of humankind and helping it flourish.

The concept of homosexual — and by extension, heterosexual — orientation was based on the errant belief that man is "inherently good" and was a way to shoehorn contra-Biblical behavior into a Biblical framework that seemed right.

Outside of Biblical morals and God-given conscience, it's social conditioning (family, friends, community, society) which shapes people's sexual behavior. That behavior can run the gamut depending on those conditions.

This is a huge topic deserving of more space, but for the moment let's look ahead to the future. What will future generations see? The concept of "orientation" will itself be discarded as outdated and rigid. The dead seeds of "sexual orientation" will be swept away for a more "fluid" sexuality that will not recognize or adhere to any arbitrary divisions. The world has been there before and, on its current track, will return there again.

Desensitization and the Christian

noreply@blogger.com (J.W.) — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:46:00 +0000

The recent controversy over the beauty pageant contestant from California has led to heated debates on some Christian blogs. The two most salient questions are: one, have today's (conservative) Christians compromised Biblical views on sexual purity; and two, if so, do they realize it? The answer to the first question: yes. The second: they better.

If anything, the controversy holds up a mirror to the current state of Christian churches vis-à-vis sexuality, and the reflection is an unappealing mixture of immaturity, confusion, and willful complacency.

In an unrelated but still relevant article, writer Robin Phillips at Robin's Readings & Reflections addresses the desensitization of Christians to our hyper-sexualized culture. Its repercussions affect not only sexual purity but eventually Biblical worldview as a whole.

How do the edges of our worldview give way in the first place? When they concern standards—the things we say no to—the pattern is usually the same: our standards are surrendered to the degree that we become desensitized to the things we once objected to. When one is saturated in worldly culture, this happens by default unless we actively strive against it. Desensitization occurs when a person is inundated with a flood of offensive material presented in the least offensive fashion possible, so that it seems almost laughable to make a problem out of it.

Read the entire excellent post here. (A note of reminder: as usual, a link is not necessarily a blanket endorsement of a site's views/doctrinal predisposition.)

The Tyrannical Soul

noreply@blogger.com (J.W.) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 06:00:00 +0000

The deadly cocktail of hedonism and crossless compassion has done widespread damage to today's Christian churches. It has shipwrecked people's faith; it has produced grotesque doctrines.

Paul described Moses as "choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. " (Hebrews 11:25, ESV, emphasis added) Sin is always in opposition to faith. It destroys faith and trust in God's farsightedness by appealing to carnality and man's shortsightedness. A tragic exchange.

It turns out the idols of pleasure are never placated, never satisfied. They are merciless taskmasters. They drive their vassals into the ground and into the dust. The hedonist is filled with angst, but he dares not blame his idols of fleeting pleasure. Instead, he sets out to impose his idols on other people and ultimately on the Bible itself. Yet, these efforts are Sisyphean exercises in continual frustration. Relief is always just out of reach.

In the fourth century B.C., Plato wrote about what he called the "tyrannical soul." From The Republic:

Not only is he ill governed within himself, but once misfortune removes him from private life and establishes him in the tyrant’s place, he must try to control others when he cannot control himself. He is like a sick man who is unable to exercise self-restraint yet is not permitted to pass his days in cloistered privacy; instead, he is obliged to engage adversaries in never-ending rivalry and discord....

Then he who is completely the tyrant is completely the slave.

Doesn't that sound a lot like the men and women in positions of influence who demand that society and the Bible be changed to accommodate their dissolute passions?

Faith in Christ offers true, lasting freedom. Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 11 (ESV):

²⁸ Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
²⁹ Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
³⁰ For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Great Joy

noreply@blogger.com (J.W.) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:55:00 +0000

It really should be Easter (Resurrection) Sunday every day for born-again Christians.

Christ's finished work on the cross set regenerated believers free from the slavery to sin. Yet it's the kind of freedom that we have difficulty grasping, much less achieving, in practical terms, not for lack of self-discipline, of which there could never be adequately enough in these imperfect bodies, but for lack of faith, which arises from the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. We are not only justified by grace through faith, we are sanctified by grace through faith.

Jesus sees what we do not see: His completed work in us. If we try to get there by our own energies, by our own desire to do good, even by our own zealousness (remember Peter and the rooster's crow), we will fail. On our own efforts, we may succeed to some degree, possibly more than the unregenerate, but we will still fail. We will know that we have failed. Like the young Moses before his first trip to the wilderness, we are given a heart for the Lord but still stubbornly strive to do His will by our own power. A defeated life, even for a saved life, results.

Victory for Christians is identification with the Risen Christ — His power and His glory forever. Paul writes that we are to live "with Christ" (Romans 6:8) and "by faith in the Son of God." (Galatians 2:20) By living in faith, we trust the Lord to bring us to that objective (sanctification), only in His time and in His way. It is by faith that His will transforms our day-to-day lives.

There is great joy in freedom.

withChrist.org provides many excellent resources for further study on the "identification truths." For a primer, read "Identification History."

Dawn of a Dark Age

noreply@blogger.com (J.W.) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:50:00 +0000

Iowa and Vermont recently became the third and fourth states to legalize same-sex marriage in the U.S. In his April 10th blog entry, Albert Mohler asked, "Is Same-Sex Marriage Inevitable?" His answer: a resigned yes.

The tragic absence of moral clarity has catapulted 21st-century society into the abyss. Once de facto homosexual marriages, i.e. so-called civil unions, were approbated, not just legislatively and judicially but also, and especially, in people's mindsets, the endgame was in sight.

Amending the Constitution would appear to be the only route left available to traditional marriage advocates, but this action highlights the one necessarily unavoidable weakness of the Constitution — in order to legislate morality, you need a moral people. As John Quincy Adams wrote, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. "

Blessed are the Meek

noreply@blogger.com (the staff) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:14:00 +0000

Anton Bosch Ministries recently posted a series of excellent pieces on the Beatitudes.

From "Blessed are the Meek":

One of the ways we learn meekness is by taking His yoke upon us and by walking with Him. In so doing we learn meekness from Him. But when we go at things on our own and constantly have to fight circumstances and situations, we become more aggravated and less meek, rather than meeker...

So the question is: Are you more like Jonah, or more like Paul? Have you learnt surrender to the will of God, or does God have to arm-wrestle you every time He wants you to do something? The sad reality is that it is not the Lord who suffers because of our stubbornness – it is us who continue to feel the pain of the goads and the frustration of fighting the very things that should be drawing us to the center of His will.

The meek man has stopped fighting and has discovered the joy and peace of surrender to God’s perfect will.

The "Disproportionate Response"

noreply@blogger.com (the staff) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:24:00 +0000

In today's Daily Mail, Melanie Phillips writes an incisive, impassioned article on the war in Gaza and clears away some of the rotten thinking vis-à-vis Israel that is currently so trendy in the West.

The often-made comparison with IRA terrorism spectacularly misses the point. Hamas actually run Gaza. The equivalent would have been the Irish government firing 6,000 rockets at England.

Does anyone seriously doubt that, in such a hypothetical situation, Britain would have been at war with Ireland long before that total had been reached?

And she cuts down the oft-wailed "disproportionate response" argument:

The main complaint is that Israel’s response is ‘disproportionate’, since some 500 Palestinians have been killed compared with ‘only’ four Israelis since the war started nine days ago.

This is absurd. In World War II, 20 times more civilians were killed in Germany than in Britain. Did that make the war against the Nazis ‘disproportionate’? Of course not.

Click on the link below for the full article:

"Yes, the war in Gaza is terrible. But the alternative was worse - for all of us"

What Really Happened in the Middle East

noreply@blogger.com (the staff) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:03:00 +0000

What with all the misinformation coming out of the mainstream media regarding the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, this short flash video produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center is a useful history lesson (or refresher).

Click on the link below:

"What Really Happened in the Middle East"

What Is Old Is New Again

noreply@blogger.com (the staff) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:36:00 +0000

It's been mentioned here and here before, and it bears repeating. When the persecution of Christians takes place in the West, it will happen with the aid of other Christians.

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. (Matthew 10:21)

At first, most will not recognize it as persecution, since only a handful of Christians will suffer. These persecuted Christians will be a decided minority, the ones who are already dismissed as "right-wingers," "fundamentalists," "creationists," "haters," "hijackers of the faith," and the like. The multitudes will delight when a few of these Christians are successfully forced to renounce their backward beliefs and confess their error to the public.

These Bible-believing Christians will be scapegoats. For years, the media and universities have cast them as the number-one supporters of an unpopular administration — with the implication that, ideologically, they share the blame for its perceived failures and offenses. The irrational rage directed at that administration won't stop after it's gone. The blame will only be shifted to those religionists who dared to involve (the wrong) faith in the political process.

These Christians will be outcasts among their own. They will be shunned in polite society by the greater body of nominal Christians. When their voices are silenced, their worldly brethren will not lift a finger in protest. The reason? These particular Christians are harmful. They stand in the way of progress, peace, unity, and change. It is for the greater good that they go away.

Have we not seen this before? The cast of characters may have changed, but a human nature born into sin hasn't. And the prince of this world is still the same.

Who's at the Controls?

noreply@blogger.com (the staff) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:19:00 +0000

The life of a born-again Christian is not defined as "good to gooder."

Picture the character of a believer as a mixing board in a musician's studio. There are two volume controls (or faders): one for Self and one for God. Though the volume control for God is a brand-new element, the fader labeled "Self" is not taken out. It remains.

A righteous life then, to echo John 3:30, would be one where the volume control for God is increased, and the volume control for Self is decreased. The thing is, man's not too good at handling these controls himself.

Santification is often erroneously viewed as a man-centered, Buddhist Nirvana destination involving a straight line up to enlightenment. There is an expectation of reaching the point where one says, "I've made it."

When that "moment" is not reached and the realization dawns that the old nature remains, the individual begins to think there must be something wrong with their salvation, or the efficacy thereof. They become susceptible to distortions of the Bible in order to suit the flesh. They don't realize that the "good to gooder" way of thinking has taken their focus off God. They've only succeeded in raising the volume control of Self despite their best intentions.

A life lived in pursuit of personal perfection is a setup for multiple, existential, faith-threatening crises or — when the individual is less than honest with his or herself — boa constrictor-like legalism.

"He must increase; I must decrease." John the Baptist's simple declaration of Christ's ascendancy is multi-layered. It beautifully illustrates santification as an exchange of two natures, rather than the replacement of one with the other. The structure of the verse emphasizes the believer's relationship and identification with Jesus Christ. The righteous believer is the humble believer who lets Christ take the controls.

Essential Qualities of Biblical Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (the staff) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 04:11:00 +0000

There's an excellent new article up at The Moorings titled, "What is True Wisdom?" (June 10, 2008) It's well worth printing out or bookmarking for future reference.

The article uses these verses from James Chapter 3 to define true wisdom:

¹³ Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.
¹⁷ The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
¹⁸ And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. (KJV)

We've seen Christian fellowship on websites and blogs frequently degenerate into feudal camps or echo chambers. So the following excerpt is particularly resonant:

Because true wisdom is meek, it is not pushy. It is not always seeking to correct the stupidity of others (Prov. 12:23; 17:27-28; 29:11).

Of course, it is not wrong to assume a role of teaching others, if that role comes to us as a responsibility (we teach the gospel to the lost; we teach our own children; etc.). Nor is it ever inappropriate to answer someone's questions, or to provide information to someone who is seeking truth. But we do not parade our wisdom or force it on others. What did Jesus do? When challenged by His enemies, He frequently chose to evade the question rather than get into an unprofitable dispute. Frequently, He just kept silent (Matt. 21:23-27).

You can read the full article here.

A Great Distraction

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:09:00 +0000

British journalist and columnist Melanie Phillips analyzes various issues of the day, from Western dechristianization to education to Islamic terrorism, often with more moral clarity than you'll find from the ostensible Christian voices in the mainstream media.

This past week, Phillips wrote a series of entries* in her web diary on the new television documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle (on UK's Channel Four and available online) and the quasi-religious (even anti-scientific) nature of the climate change advocates.

From Melanie Phillips's Diary: "The Climate Change Truth Deniers" (March 13, 2007)

The evidence that science — as opposed to the politicised version of it — does not support global warming theory has been obvious ever since this theory first burst upon us in the late 1980s. What is only now surfacing, however, is the evidence of the corruption of the processes being used to promote this scam and the intimidation of any scientists who try to tell the truth. For me, the most explosive revelations on the C4 film were scientists testifying to this corruption — from the vast amounts of grant money being used to create an entire global warming industry making it financially difficult for scientists not to produce ‘research’ that supported the theory; to the falsification of the computer models in order to produce the alarmist predictions that would attract such funds; to the IPCC’s deletion of crucial parts of the evidence that didn’t fit the theory; to the circular argument that there was now a ‘consensus’ on the theory among all the finest minds in science around the world.

Man-made climate change is just one of many tenets of the West's secular religion (see also moral relativism, multiculturalism, and homosexual/pansexual identity). For the past four decades, these non-negotiable concepts have gained widespread acceptance among the general public and in Christian churches. (Remember last year's Evangelical Climate Initiative?)

The global warming agenda is a natural product of secular humanism. In the humanist (materialist) worldview, man and man alone controls his destiny. Only he can be the cause of man's suffering and only he can save man from that suffering. To consider other possibilities — that the weather changes are (currently) unexplainable and/or that man has no control over those changes — is unthinkable. This kind of tunnel vision is unscientific; it is, however, humanist. As Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, observes in the documentary, "The whole global warming business has become like a religion, and people who disagree are called heretics."

Thus, man-made global warming is a great distraction. Radical environmentalism appeals to man's vanity at the macro level. Its broadening influence on public and private sectors is further evidence of judgment on the West as it recklessly abandons its Judeo-Christian foundation. Time and again, the current direction of the West mirrors Paul's last-days description of vain imaginations and foolish, darkened hearts (Romans 1:21).

* 3/9: "The emperor’s green new clothes"
3/13: "The climate change truth-deniers"
3/14: "The ‘post-normal’ science of climate change"
3/15: "A post-normal conference"

Vanity is Confusion (tohuw)

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:34:00 +0000

Lighthouse Trails Research has put up a review of emerging church pastor Dan Kimball's new book, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, which they cleverly retitled They Like (Another) Jesus But Not the Church, the Bible, Morality, or the Truth.

The book's premise:

Kimball insists (p. 19) that "those who are rejecting faith in Jesus" do so because of their views of Christians and the church. But he makes it clear throughout the book that these distorted views are not the fault of the unbeliever but are the fault of Christians, but not all Christians, just those fundamentalist ones who take the Bible literally, believe that homosexuality is a sin and think certain things are wrong and harmful to society...and actually speak up about these things.

The Bible says (in Psalms 14):

² The LORD looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.
³ All have turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Kimball's argument is not new, nor is it meant to be; it merely continues the sustained attack from inside (and outside) the church on two major areas of God's established order: sexuality and epistemology. The Western church's vain acquiescence to the world and acceptance of half-truths on behalf of "nice people who mean well" is evidence of hardened hearts. The postmodern repackaging of "Hath God said?" — the Devil's rhetoric from the Garden of Eden — is confusing and enervating Christians in the West.

As in past eras of the church, this is a time of judgment and testing. Christians and Christian leaders who do not take up the armor of God and attempt to "go it alone" on intellect, experience, and earthly wisdom and approbation will find themselves in a sea of confusion.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:

²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
²² Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Encouraging News

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:06:00 +0000

Here's a news story not likely to be picked up by the mainstream media as it challenges the liberal myth that Islamic hegemony in the Middle East is cultural rather than compulsory.

From ASSIST News Service: Iranian Imam Receives Christ Via Satellite TV, Escapes Country

One of the top Islamic leaders in Iran accepted Christ and left the country after facing death threats and imprisonment, according to an Iranian pastor living in the U.S.

“This man has been watching Christian TV programs for the past two years,” said Pastor Elnathan Baghestani, founder of Iran for Christ Ministries. Pastor Baghestani and his wife provide Christian programming to the Mohabat Network satellite, which broadcasts 24/7 into Iran and other Middle Eastern countries...

While it is illegal to own satellite dishes in Iran, many hide them on their roofs or other locations on their property. “They arrest people for having satellite dishes because they know the Christian programming is effective,” Baghestani noted.

Faster Than You Might Think

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 19:53:00 +0000

Secular humanist propaganda, for decades aided and abetted by the mainstream media and public education, is successfully turning the Christian church against itself. Jesus described a time when "many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Matthew 24:10-13) That time seems to be arriving with surprising swiftness.

Consider this excerpt from a two-year-old N.Y. Times article highlighted today by the conservative MRC/NewsBusters.org blog:

All debates with the Christian Right are useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School. These naive attempts to reach out to a movement bent on our destruction, to prove to them that we too have "values," would be humorous if the stakes were not so deadly. They hate us. They hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution. Our opinions do not count. This movement will not stop until we are ruled by Biblical Law, an authoritarian church intrudes in every aspect of our life, women stay at home and rear children, gays agree to be cured, abortion is considered murder, the press and the schools promote "positive" Christian values, the federal government is gutted, war becomes our primary form of communication with the rest of the world and recalcitrant non-believers see their flesh eviscerated at the sound of the Messiah's voice.

The writer of that article, Chris Hedges, is set to publish a book in January '07 titled American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America — add one more book to the mushrooming genre of "theophobic" lit (as dubbed by Dan at WithChrist.org) appearing on bookstore shelves these days. For commentary on and a comprehensive list of those books, check out the October 17th entry of the WithChrist blog.

The ecumenical Christian leaders and nominal Christians seduced by this kind of rhetoric identify more with the tenets of Rousseau than plain Scripture. They equate born-again Christians to the radical Muslims "hijacking" their religion. To mollify their secular counterparts, the Christian humanists will do whatever is necessary to survive.

Lost and Found

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 01:06:00 +0000

Last Thursday, a construction engineer digging up a bog in the Irish Midlands uncovered an ancient Psalter dated to AD 800-1000. Hailed as a "miracle find" by the National Museum of Ireland, the 20-page vellum manuscript was found opened to Psalm 83.

Authorship of Psalm 83 is attributed to Asaph, a Levite and choir leader who lived during the time of David (1 Chronicles 15:16-17). In Psalm 83, Asaph describes Judah's neighbors conspiring against her and beseeches the Lord to stop these enemies:

³ With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish.
⁴ "Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more."
⁵ With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you —
⁶ the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites,
⁷ Gebal, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
⁸ Even Assyria has joined them to lend strength to the descendants of Lot. Selah

The locations of those neighboring tribes can be found today in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, as well as southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Bible scholars believe the confederacy described by Asaph did not exist in antiquity and remains an unfulfilled prophecy. Islam, the single most plausible unifying force for such a coalition, did not come along until the 7th century, some 1,500 years after Asaph's time. As the fighting in Lebanon prepares to enter its third week, any existing tolerance for Israel in the Middle East (e.g. the recent split in the Arab League) will diminish badly.

Update: The National Museum of Ireland clarified Thursday that Psalm 83 of this Latin Psalter corresponds to Psalm 84 in today's Bible translations. Certainly less dramatic, yes. However, worldwide exposure of Psalm 83 in light of current events is the real story here.

Trial Balloon

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:23:00 +0000

While the world community publicly recoils at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stated desire to push Israel into the sea, secular humanists are nodding their heads with discreet approbation....

The worst-kept secret in the West is the growing anti-Israelism and/or anti-Semitism among the ranks of academics, media, and other assorted intellectual elite. Usually couched in terms of "measured concern for the stability of the Middle East (i.e. Israel is the real problem)," the rhetoric got a little less subtle this past week when Richard Cohen of the Washington Post dropped this trial balloon in his column:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

Many capable counterpoints have been made to Cohen's assertions, including Eric Rosenman's response at CAMERA.org (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East reporting in America). Obviously, the secular media has found in Richard Cohen a perfect spokesperson for criticizing Israel without appearing anti-Semitic. In this case, Cohen pulls it off. But the fact remains, secularists still can't see beyond their materialistic worldview. Religions (and especially their spiritual underpinnings) are still a puzzling mystery to them.

Cohen was surely echoing the water-cooler chatter of like-minded colleagues. Was it newsworthy? Not really. This kind of pandering to moral equivalency and the Islamic Middle East is very much unsurprising these days.

The worst part is, these kinds of sentiments are heard more and more in Christian circles. Watch out.

Upside Down

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:02:00 +0000

For the most part, the secular Western media's been relatively silent on the sickening genocide (tens of thousands dead in three years) taking place in Darfur, Sudan. They took notice when George Clooney and Angelina Jolie — two big Hollywood stars with decidedly globalist, leftist agendas — recently made separate tours of the war-torn region. Even then, the media focused on the victims, relief efforts, Western politicking, and everything but the perpetrators of the genocide.

That's because said perpetrators — the Sudanese government and its proxy militia the Janjaweed — are Arab and Muslim, and the genocide is most definitely about race (the victims are black Africans) and religion (Islamic jihad). The thing is, these killers aren't white, European, and Christian (or Jewish, for that matter).

Speaking Wednesday to The New York Times, the secular left's de facto mouthpiece, UN human rights commissioner Louise Arbour implied that Israel is committing war crimes as it fights Hezbollah along the Lebanese border: “The scale of killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control."

The Arab Muslim government in Khartoum has repeatedly rejected calls for UN peacekeeping forces to intervene in Darfur as the genocide there continues. Meanwhile, the secular media pummels Israel's "disproportionate" retaliation against Hezbollah, an Islamic terrorist organization which, not unlike the criminals in Khartoum, views human life (i.e. non-combatants) as fodder for the advancement of its religious ideology. (This same media would like us to believe such "religious imperialism" also describes current U.S. foreign policy. Hence their confusion.)

In National Review Online this week, conservative commentator Lawrence Kudlow wrote: "When the dust clears the world will applaud Israel for its courage." If the world hasn't gone completely insane.

See also Samaritan's Purse Sudan page.

Checking In

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:07:00 +0000

Back in March, Dan at With Christ wrote, "It's hard to know what to write about. Too many choices! The world, while never 'stable,' seems to have come really unhinged." Four months later, these words couldn't be truer.

"Rumors of wars" reached a fevered pitch this past week as the Israel Defense Force (IDF) struck back at the terrorist group Hezbollah. By killing eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two on July 12, Hezbollah and Iran appear to have rolled the dice and gotten the predictable responses they were hoping for: an all-out Israeli retaliation followed by a supportive American (and British) response and then European/Russian handwringing. Their objective? Accelerate increasingly negative world opinion against Israel and prick U.S. resolve concerning Israel and the Middle East. Hezbollah and Iran stand to lose a few thousand outmoded rockets and maybe a few square miles of strategic real estate while gaining serious leverage in the (appeasement-minded) court of world opinion. Western media reinforces the Islamist meme by referring to Hezbollah terrorists as "militants," "guerrillas," or "Lebanese resistance."

For the mainstream media, the "story within the story" is the United States' supposedly delayed response to American evacuees in Beirut. Facile comparisons to last year's Hurricane Katrina disaster ignore the logistics, threat level, and simple insurance nightmare (these days) of extracting thousands of civilians from a war zone. Reporters filed stories on complaining Americans — largely ignoring the grateful ones — which, depending on your political point of view, reinforced the prevailing attitude that a) the current U.S. administration is callous/inept, or b) Americans today are just really spoiled.

Rome is Burning, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:57:00 +0000

The comparisons are inevitable.

Peel away the emotion, the romanticized delusion, the pleasure-induced coma, and we are confronted with the picture of a nation dying. It's not a modern-day Grapes of Wrath story — as the mainstream media would have us see it — about the trials and tribulations of itinerant, God-fearing farm workers searching for a better life. It's not about a strident, xenophobic, hopelessly outdated few who oppose them, especially when this "opposition" is neither vocal nor few. It's not just about the U.S., especially when Europe finds itself in the same dire situation.

Yes, Rome is burning again, and the elite still don't care.

Last August at WithChrist.org, Dan S. wrote:

The President and his Administration's failure to secure the Nation's borders will probably go down as one of biggest policy blunders and moral failures of the decade. America's southern border is being overwhelmed by violence, crime, and property destruction associated with the smuggling of drugs and human-cargo into the United States. New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson was forced to recently declare a 'state of emergency' in counties on the border. Of course, Mexico has suffered for centuries from spiritual darkness, corruption, crime, and poverty--the social fruits of Catholicism. Quite obviously, George Bush sees it differently. (August 14, 2005)

Historical Perspective

Libertarian writer Steven LaTulippe compares the 43rd U.S. President, George W. Bush, to Theodosius the Great. Who was Theodosius? He was a Roman emperor in the late 4th century who allowed the barbarians to settle in the Empire as a concession to mounting military losses.

The word "barbarian" comes from the ancient Greek barbaros, meaning a person with different speech and customs. The "Conan the Barbarian" sense of the word does not entirely apply to ancient Rome. But when we think of Rome falling to the barbarians, our mental image is of an invading horde of uncouth belligerents. It turns out the invasion was a lot less war-like than we are popularly led to believe.

That's what makes Rome's end so pathetic, in the truest sense of the word. Rome went out, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

In January 2004, Tulippe wrote:

Essentially, the proponents of Theodosius’ policy made three arguments. First, was that the expulsion of the Germans was simply impractical. There were too many of them already within the borders, and their deportation would involve potentially explosive conflict. Second, was the belief that the intruders would eventually succumb to the overwhelming power of Roman culture and assimilate…becoming productive Roman citizens. Third, was the belief that the importation of this new population would economically benefit an Empire which was suffering from a declining population.

They were wrong on all counts. Within 100 years, the Western Roman Empire was gone, and the Dark Ages were ushered in.

Populist columnist Frosty Wooldridge cited these statistics back in January:

From January 2000 to March 2005, a whopping 7.9 million legal and illegal immigrants settled into the United States. Over half of those immigrants arrived as illegals in that five year period.

Four of those years were the first four years of the Bush administration.

7,000 to 10,000 illegal aliens according to Time Magazine, pour across our borders every night of the year equaling 3,000,000 annually. They number over 15 to 20 million and there is no end to the line that grows by 85 million desperately poor added to the world yearly.

In his recently published book, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Oxford historian Peter Heather argues that insatiable imperial expansion combined with unfettered immigration of the Huns and the Germanic tribes were the most significant factors leading to the death of the Roman Empire.

The Romans were deeply embroiled with war in the East the Persian empire. Emperor Valens was forced to admit Gothic hordes. All went well until food supplies ran short and tempers flared. From the Gothic War until the fall of Rome, continuous pressure from the Huns forced more barbarians into the empire. Eventually, the immigrants grew more powerful than existing Roman authority.

(Heather disputes the popular theory that Rome was also in social and moral decline at the time. To believers, the social and moral decline of the West, circa the 21st century, could not be more obvious. In Scripture, the superpower of the world faces judgment before the world as a whole — Revelation 18:2.)

Time Is Not Standing Still

After Theodosius I, it took nearly 100 years for the Western Empire to finally expire. At the time of its death in 476 A.D., the Roman Empire had lasted 500 years. It had succeeded the Republic, which itself lasted 500 years. The United States, however, is a mere 230 years old. But things today are moving at a considerably more rapid pace.

The compression and intensity of events in the last 100 years are totally unlike pre-20th century levels. Hundreds were killed and thousands were wounded in the Battle of New Orleans, which culminated the War of 1812. It turns out America and Britain had already signed a peace treaty in Belgium two weeks earlier. The news simply had not reached the enemy combatants on the field.

In 2006, worldwide travel and communication are at unprecedented levels. Consequently, knowledge is increasing at an astounding rate never before seen. (These last few decades are often referred to as the Information Age.) Economists now argue that knowledge and innovation drive the modern economy, not the old bedrock factors of land, labor, and capital. It all means that, in the 21st century, a nation's decline can and will occur that much faster. And America's decline need not be speculation any longer; we see it happening (very quickly) before our own eyes.

Christian Citizenship

Illegal immigration, and globalization in the bigger picture, are not morally neutral issues. The lawless influx of immigrants into any nation is not something to be celebrated or rationalized by Christians, as some church leaders are doing. Spiritual separation does not mean forfeiture of earthly (national) custodianship or some kind of acquiescence. Patriotism and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, and patriotism certainly does not mean dominionism.

In April 2005, Dan S. addressed the subject in his With Christ blog:

From time-to-time, we receive comments from those who have fallen prey to what I call dispensational asceticism. These individuals have come to appreciate the unique role of the Apostle Paul and his message to the heavenly Church; however, they go too far in asserting a unitary citizenship for the Christian. This is contrary to the dual (primary and tertiary) citizenship model taught and lived by the Apostle Paul. Their hearts are in the right place; but their minds are not. This is typically the realm of soul eradication. Sadly, a few dispensationalists today even lay claim to being "super-spiritual" or "super-apostles" (2 Cor.11:5).

He continued:

The Church, the Body of Christ, holds dual citizenship. See Acts 16-23 where the Apostle Paul exercised rights under his Roman citizenship. One might ask, "If Paul believed Christians had only a heavenly citizenship, why then did Paul "interfere" in the Roman legal system? Why did he not just remain silent?" Similarly, why are the Pauline epistles filled with instruction regarding the earthly (Matt.20:30) institution of marriage? Why would the Hebrew epistle call marriage "honorable", if engaging in such an union was worldly and contrary to one's heavenly citizenship. Paul warns of those who "forbid" believers to marry (1 Tim 4:3).

...The Risen Lord does not deem the heavenly Christian’s moral influence ("salt") upon the world to be “interference.” Further, having this moral influence is not the equivalent of seeking to usher in the Millennial Kingdom--a patently false accusation.

While heavenly Christians are called to "live in the world", we are warned against spiritual warfare by fleshly means (2 Cor.10:3-5), being "entangled" by the affairs of the world (2 Tim. 2:4), adopting the "principles of the world (Col.2:8), or being a "friend of the world" (James 4:4). But nowhere are we taught to withdraw from the world. This is not Pauline. (April 10, 2005)

Rome is Burning, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 08:50:00 +0000

Last August, Dan at WithChrist.org remarked: "Mexico has suffered for centuries from spiritual darkness, corruption, crime, and poverty--the social fruits of Catholicism." (August 14, 2005)

Catholic leaders are noticeably among the most vocal religious opponents of U.S. immigration reform. After all, aren't the majority of the illegal aliens Catholics themselves? But this familial comparison is rather deceptive. The Catholicism of Latin America is simply not the same thing as the Catholicism encountered in Europe and the U.S. It is often a Catholicism blended with native pagan superstitions and practices (e.g. Santería). William E. Cashion II describes the typical experience of the missionary in Latin America:

Most evangelical missionaries have gone to Latin countries prepared to witness to the vast host of nominal Christians within the Roman Catholic Church or to the secular-minded that inhabit the major cities....The missionary then arrives on the field believing that he is somewhat prepared to proclaim the gospel in the new culture. Soon it becomes clear that something was overlooked during orientation. The missionary comes into contact with what seems to be an unknown religion. True, the majority of the people say that they are Catholic.

...Even in the United States, especially in those areas that are home to large hispanic populations, it is common to observe these unusual practices among the Catholic "faithful." Those who serve as evangelical missionaries among Roman Catholic communities wonder if they have not encountered a yet unnamed world religion.

In February, Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony in Los Angeles attracted controversy after saying he would encourage his priests to ignore any tough new immigration laws when providing aid to illegal aliens. His bluff was a publicity stunt, but a successful one nonetheless. Mahony and the Catholic Church know full well that restrictive immigration legislation is unlikely to ever pass, considering the Bush administration's rigid position on the issue, plus the fact that millions of working-class Catholic immigrants represent a potentially huge Democratic voting bloc.

Double Standard

Actually, the underlying lesson here is that the humanist elite can freely exercise a double standard when it comes to breaking the law, all the while portraying patriotic Americans and especially those intolerant fundamentalist Christians as the true enemies of the Constitution.

Mahony is, of course, only one of many to exploit issues of poverty for political capital and certainly not the last to sprinkle on Biblical references for good measure. In March, New York Senator Hillary Clinton was widely quoted condemning the now-defunct Congressional bill (H.R. 4437) designed to curb illegal immigration:

It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scriptures. This bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.

These remarks reflect a growing trend by the elite: using the Bible to silence critics. Political grandstanding aside, many in the U.S. realize that amnesty for illegal immigrants is not about helping the poor, but creating a subclass of Americans for the international corporations. It's a modernized version of indentured servitude that will depress the wages of legal Americans. So, really, it's about helping the rich. President Bush recently told CNN Español that the illegal immigrants are "doing jobs Americans won't do." In this day and age, that kind of political transparency is surprising.

Yet another parallel: historian Peter Heather, in his new book Fall of the Roman Empire, contends that the Roman economy was still going strong in the century leading up to its final demise.

Furthermore, the U.S. government's southern counterpart is hardly a passive observer. Mexico does not hide its desire to shed itself of undesirables and reap the economic benefits. The romanticized media view is one where illegal immigrants are entirely comprised of hard-working individuals and families who've been handed a bad break in life. But that's not the whole story. Some illegal aliens are not only trying to find a better life, they're trying to escape the law — and succeeding. Some estimate that 1 out of every 10 illegal aliens is a criminal/fugitive. Included among that number are various sexual predators and gang members, not to mention possible terrorists.

Globalization

"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there....They said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:1-4)

Globalization has always been about the glory of man, going all the way back to the days of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel in Genesis Chapter 11. And although God did scatter the people and break their common language, mankind has found itself, thousands of years later, in a position to put it all back together again. And man, in all his pride and vanity, could not be more delighted.

The New International Order (a term used often by Alan Keyes, among others) currently faces two major roadblocks. One is the Muslim world in the Middle East. The solution, up to this point, has entailed military engagement and threats of engagement, in addition to major pressures applied to Israel. The other roadblock is the strong Judeo-Christian tradition in the U.S. and Britain, especially its persnickety defense of national sovereignty and wariness of global governance.

So far, the solution to that roadblock has been all political but certainly no less belligerent. In July of last year, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was ramrodded through the U.S. House of Representatives at the stroke of midnight with various House rules falling by the wayside. This came 12 years after the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which helped set in motion the events we see happening today.

The global media is doing an excellent job of playing to the emotions of readers and viewers. Not surprisingly, the news coverage on the immigration issue is going for the visceral reaction: wide-angle pictures depicting thousands upon thousands of unified immigration marchers with occasional references to small or nonexistent groups of angry and defensive counter-protesters. There are some telling but brief glimpses of demagoguery which are mostly edited for sound bite consumption.

Images of massive crowds can also evoke a far different meaning. From Nimrod's people and their Tower of Babel to the Israelites and their Golden Calf, massive assemblages of people in the Bible reveal the extent of mankind's spiritual rebellion. Man derives a kind of empowered consciousness when in great numbers. In those instances, he shuts out God. Fallen man's impulse is to seek strength in the unity of mankind rather than in the Lord. So that sinful ears would listen, God scattered His own.

Jim Wallis's Christian humanist organization Sojourners is pleading for "compassionate" immigration reform with their chosen Biblical panacea, Leviticus 19:34:

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:34 is abused almost as much as Matthew 5:39, and it just does not tell the whole story. Their argument ignores the alien's obligations to reject their pagan gods and practices and conform to Israel's social and religious customs:

The seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. (Exodus 20:10)

In a sense, this is what the legal process of immigration is designed to accomplish: to demand assimilation and national obligation from immigrants. The real issue is not that U.S. immigration law is broken, but that it isn't being enforced.

What's worse, this common abuse of Leviticus 19:34 by humanist Christians conflates a macro issue with a micro one, with nondispensational aplomb. They confuse government responsibility with personal and private sector responsibility. This is not a surprise since all humanists wish to replace God with government. They play upon themes of Christian service and guilt by disingenuously changing the whole issue from one about immigration (national interest) to one about poverty (personal interest). Humanists make individual responsibilities into government obligations because, in their worldview, a nation does not protect the interests of her people; instead, a nation takes care of her people. Or better yet, a world government takes care of all people.

Lastly, the humanist misapplication of Leviticus 19:34 conveniently implies some kind of unbroken connection between the theocracy of ancient Israel and the Church Age that we live in today — even though "theocracy" is normally a verboten concept for the humanist.

It is also interesting when humanist Christians treat one Biblical passage as an open-and-shut case but not others, like this one, just one chapter earlier in Leviticus: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." (KJV)

The Social(ist) Gospel

"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John 14:2-3, KJV)

Heaven in the Bible is not a commune. It is a place where people have personal identities and personal property. On Earth, God raised up a nation (Israel) and gave it a home. A sense of national identification is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Families and nations are part of God's will; only sin has introduced suspicion and strife.

Many leaders in the mainline and emerging churches would like us to think that Jesus espouses socialist values. But the meek inheriting the earth in Matthew 5:5 is not referring to some kind of proletarian revolution or "Robin Hood" scenario, i.e. stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Rather, it refers to the true followers of Christ: strangers in this world but inheritors of the Millennial Kingdom.

Not Just an American Problem

The immigration issue in Europe is just as big as (if not bigger than) it is in the United States. The riots in France last fall focused world attention on the worsening tensions between disenfranchised Arab and African immigrants and the government there. Some U.S. officials now see Europe as a threat for Islamic terrorism on par with Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East. After the July 7 London Underground bombings, one poll discovered that 1 out of 4 British Muslims sympathized with the terrorists' motives. It's about an invasion of values, not just people, much as it was in Rome 1,600 years ago.

Back in the U.S., there are reasonable solutions to illegal immigration (which is only a problem on its southern border). Syndicated columnist Victor Davis Hanson writes:

We should allow those illegal immigrants who have been living and working here for at least five years to start their citizenship process. But we should insist this be a one-time exemption rather than yet another periodic amnesty that encourages others to break the law and unfairly cut ahead in the immigration line. ("Assimilation Is the Real Debate," April 3, 2006)

On his radio show, Albert Mohler referred to this type of solution as "this much and no more." The only problem is, the elite aren't listening. They're too busy fiddling.

Further reading:

"Barbarian Invasions" (June 8, 2005) by Timothy Birdnow at The American Thinker

"A Biblical View of Illegal Immigration" (February 6, 2006) by Ron Gleason at Christianity: Doctrines and Ethics

Doctrines of Devils

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 03:35:00 +0000

"Boring" scientific/religious theories or discoveries rarely rate big headlines, but the popular media will eagerly make an exception when it comes to unmasking the purported falsehoods of the orthodox Judeo-Christian worldview, emphasis on Christian.

So, in a span of a week, we learned that Jesus, in fact, walked on ice at the Sea of Galilee because it was really cold at that time, and also that Jesus secretly told Judas to turn Him in to the authorities, so Judas didn't do anything wrong after all. (Never mind that "Satan entered Judas" in Luke 22:3, John 13:27.)

With Easter just around the corner, the National Geographic Society and its cable channel (jointly operated by such international media conglomerates as Fox and Sky TV, among others) are touting the restoration and translation of an ancient Gnostic manuscript (written in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic and dated between 300-400 A.D.) called the "Gospel of Judas" with two newly published books and a special television program to be aired internationally this weekend.

National Geographic has cleverly dovetailed its own effort with the increasing hype surrounding next month's Hollywood A-list adaptation (to be released by international media conglomerate Sony) of Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code (published by international media conglomerate BMG). A summary of the theology behind The Da Vinci Code and its Gnostic underpinnings can be found in this article at Kjos Ministries.

They Believe It

"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

Secular media and academia appear to be less and less concerned about veiling their anti-Christian bias. While they maintain they are simply providing an objective counterpoint to established Judeo-Christian culture and thought in the West, the secular elite must know (with some sense of accomplishment) that when it comes to historical Christianity, the masses are thoroughly confused. As good stewards of humanism (secular and Christian), members of this elite are merely doing what they believe. Core to this pursuit of progressive humanism (the collective will of mankind) is the rooting out of absolutism, parochialism, and exclusivism — code words for Bible-based Christianity.

Writer, professor, and Gnostic apologist Elaine Pagels said this to the New York Times (subscription req'd) about the Gospel of Judas: "These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion and demonstrating how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement really was." One reviewer of The Gospel of Judas at Amazon.com wrote these comments (which he titled "Objectivity is the key..."):

No one is forcing The Gospel of Judas to be read or even accepted by anyone at anytime. It's publication simply reaffirms the fact that the four gospels commonly accepted into the canon are a tiny fraction of Christian literature....However, as the world changes and the internet allows for free disemination [sic] of knowledge, the "other" gospels are developing a gravity of their own....Here's to hoping that Judas' Gospel takes its rightful place among all of the others that exist outside of the limited world of the New Testament.

Writing over 1,800 years ago, Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons and one of the early Church leaders, dismissed the Gospel of Judas as heresy:

They declare that Judas the traitor...knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.

Church and Science Fiction

"For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness." (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12)

The reemergence of Gnostic and apocryphal heresy in our modern day has met with weak opposition in many churches and seminaries, including those we would think of as conservative or evangelical. (Pastor Ken Silva at Apprising Ministries has recently been writing on contemplative prayer in the church.) Today, we find the Church under judgment, infiltrated by pragmatism on one end and New Age spirituality on the other, beset by sex scandals and the acceptance/celebration of impenitent sin. (See "judgment must begin at the house of God," 1 Peter 4:17, KJV.) Churches lacking real Scriptural teaching will find that these heretical "revelations" act as subcutaneous injections into their anemic flocks.

A simple reading of what remains of this Gospel of Judas (about 80%) yields heresies and blatant inconsistencies with Scripture, and sometimes it reads like science fiction. Certain textual quotes selected by the popular media (e.g. ''You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me") are intended to give the general public the idea that this "gospel" is a reasonable, historical accounting, complete with Bible-ish formality.

Many news outlets are quoting the following excerpt where Jesus supposedly tells Judas, "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal." This one sounds a lot like the Serpent asking Eve, "Did God really say?" (Genesis 3:1) Or, in other words, "Here's the real scoop."

But it gets weirder. Albert Mohler points out one peculiar passage in the Gospel of Judas that you won't see quoted by the secular media:

No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen, for that place is reserved for the holy. Neither the sun nor the moon will rule there, nor the day, but the holy will abide there always, in the eternal realm with the holy angels. Look, I have explained to you the mysteries of the kingdom and I have taught you about the error of the stars; and . . . sent it . . . on the twelve aeons.

The Gospel of Judas speaks of the "thirteenth spirit" and "enlightened aeons." There's a lot of "heavenly" esoterica. The news media have conveniently ignored those parts and instead have focused on the scholarship and behind-the-scenes recovery of the manuscript, with disingenuous comparisons to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They know better not to address the Gospel of Judas in full because, even to a Scripturally malnourished public, it would start to look really phony and bizarre.

The cultural elite understand that few will take the time, or care, to scratch beneath the surface. An unsettling axiom and a sign of the times.

The Elephant in the Room

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:49:00 +0000

On Tuesday evening, various media outlets in the U.S. scrambled to cover the arrest of a Homeland Security official caught in an internet sex sting, just one of many currently undergoing operations. Hours before, the news was dominated by the lurid and heartbreaking tale of Justin Berry, the teenage victim of internet pornography who testified before a Congressional committee, urging lawmakers into action.

Many of the statistics offered on pornography (multi-billion dollar industry, tens of thousands of predators, etc.) were indeed startling. Suffice it to say, pornography — aided and abetted by the internet like never before — is so pandemic it might be next to impossible now to find an individual not affected by it in some way or another.

Most of us have seen the "Just say no to drugs" public service advertisements (PSAs). Yet we know that pornography is just as addictive as drugs, if not more so; it is just as spiritually destructive, if not more so. Pornography use is psychologically debilitating and socially crippling, but compared to drug use, its effects are so much more easily masked — especially to its users. We know that pornography is the documented gateway to so-called alternative lifestyles, sexual crimes, murder, illegal drugs, witchcraft, you name it. But when it comes to public opposition to pornography these days, the silence from mainstream quarters is deafening.*

Popular media is only angered/alarmed by the "illegal" forms of pornography because in fact so much of the revenue of these large corporations comes from mainstreamed pornography — or at least what would've been deemed as such 50 years ago. The general public is already sick with small doses of pornographic poison given under different labels. Many go on to larger doses. The public and the media refuse to see the connection.

Because so many churches have fallen prey to the damage wrought by pornography, they say little about it — as if fear of hypocrisy were some kind of excuse for lack of conviction. The demonic genie is out of the bottle. Pandora's Box has been smashed open. Meanwhile, church leaders waffle and offer platitudes like "sin is sin," which is an egregious misinterpretation of the Scriptural truth that Sin (with a capital "S") separates all men from God. Sin (with a capital "S") gives birth to innumerable sins (lowercase "s") of varying qualities and degrees. Just as the symptoms of a disease are not equal, sins (lowercase "s") do not all have equal destructive weight/consequences — spiritually, mentally, or physically. The Bible makes a distinction for sexual sin in 1 Corinthians Chapter 6:

¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
¹⁹ Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

You won't hear a reasonable unbeliever make the absurd and irrational contention that murder is somehow no worse than telling a "white" lie.

While the world is shocked and pretends not to understand how we got to this point of societal decay, Christians should know better. Believers have emboldened the enemy's plans by getting too close to the world. In a rush to counter the problem, some have overreacted by dismissing their grandparents' perceived prudery ("repression") by putting Christian labels onto man-centered, sexually oriented material (or putting man-centered, sexually oriented labels onto Christian material — see an example from Slice of Laodicea). It's the equivalent to the case of a parent buying beers (or who knows what) for their child's party and saying, "If they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it in my house."

But the Old Man (i.e. the old sin nature) isn't buying it — he wants the world, and he'll take it free of the phony labels, thank you. Carnal Christians are being fed a steady diet of worldliness plus some Christianese messages of self-love ("happy-talk"). Result: utterly defenseless whelps left to the devices of a raging lion.

*Once fierce voices of opposition, like the feminists and fundamentalists, appear to have been muted. Some younger feminists today embrace, even promote, pornography.

The River

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 02:57:00 +0000

From Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1883):

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparkingly renewed with every re-perusal....

In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.

American writer Mark Twain's enduring love and respect for the Mississippi River are on full display in this passage from his classic memoir.

But the vivid descriptions above could also capture the extraordinary differences in Biblical interpretation between born-again believers and unregenerate men, no matter their Christian labels or credentials.

An unsaved individual with an entire lifetime spent accumulating a comprehensive knowledge of the Scriptures will still stumble over the most basic Godly insights grasped by regenerate believers.

In his first epistle to the church in Corinth (Chapter 2), the Apostle Paul wrote about this supernatural difference:

⁶ We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.
⁷ No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
⁹ However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"—
¹⁰ but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

Also:
Born From Above

A Time of Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Red Giants) — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:36:00 +0000

God called Lot out of Sodom before its destruction because he was the one righteous man in a very wicked city. (Genesis Ch. 19) But Lot and his family's lives were so bound up in that place, psychologically and materially, that extrication did not come without righteous payment, in the form of painful loss and humiliation. Many, if not most, believers today find themselves in the same position, enmeshed in a world gone over the edge.

The sky hasn't fallen, but the Bible says some will know when it's about to, and others won't (or won't want to know).

In Matthew Chapter 12, Jesus said:

³⁹ But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.
⁴⁰ You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Earthquakes are notoriously unpredictable. In some cases, scientists have discovered — in hindsight — that clues to a quake were always there, and they were just looking in the wrong place. Regarding the last days, however, God's Word tells Christians where to look.

The Apostle Paul warned that, before the return of Christ, there would be a great "falling away," (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, KJV) or apostasy*. Contrast these words with the many contemporary claims of "revival" and the church growth movement. Rather, the true Body of Christ is being called unto the Lord, and this is causing rifts everywhere.

The spiritual struggles are visible at all levels, from the day-to-day lives of Christian men and women — lives assaulted, frustrated, and often compromised by sensuality, worldliness,and doctrinal dissolution — to the fomenting division between cultural, humanist Christians and the much smaller group of Bible-believing ones. Those rising tensions in Christian circles parallel the tensions of the world at large, where a very rich, oblivious, and spiritually bereft West finds itself in a desperate entanglement with a galvanized and motivated East.

We find ourselves in troubled times. Jesus said that, "in a time of testing," those of nominal faith will fall away (Luke 8:13) — the separating of the wheat and the tares.

In his current series on the principal figures in the Book of Judges, Pastor David Legge of the Iron Hall Assembly in Belfast, Northern Ireland, presents Samson as emblematic of the modern lukewarm Christian. (You can read or listen to the sermon here.) This type of Christian — or stage in a believer's life — is characterized by a focus on God through the corrupting and narcissistic prism of the self, "through a glass darkly." (1 Corinthians 13:12)

God disciplines the men and women who truly belong to Him (see Proverbs 3:11-12). Pastor Legge says, "When God...isn't permitted to rule in our lives, He overrules and He works His will out regardless of our decisions." The formidably blessed Samson pursued the path of self-interest and worldliness so far, it took imprisonment and the loss of his eyes to set him back on the right path. Lot and Samson are examples of God's own who suffer the consequences of getting too close to this world.

Likewise, for some Christians today, authentic separation results in very dramatic, life-or-death situations, such as the persecution of believers in places like Afghanistan and China. (The recent case of Abdul Rahman is a well-publicized example.). In the West, where issues of morality and doctrine and lifestyle trigger division, the choices are deceptively subtler. Western Christians, without the threat of persecution or death hanging over them, are deceived into thinking the world is not so bad after all.

Whatever circumstances believers find themselves in, separation from this world is a continuous learning process not without some sacrifice, pain, or loss. A time of testing finds real believers turning to and seeking solace in the blessed hope of our Lord's imminent return. Conversely, it also finds the the nominal church seeking hope through a vain embrace of the world.

*One major prophetic forerunner being the establishment of the Catholic Church. Many centuries later, today's apostasy (ecumenical, one world religion) is similarly disguised in sheep's clothing.

Also:
Christian, Interrupted