News Snippets From All Beats

A Pastor was gunned down Sunday during his sermon in Maryville, Illinois.  Some parishioners reported that they at first thought it was a drama skit when a man walked down the aisle and subsequently pulled out a pistol and began firing.  The pastor deflected the first shot with his Bible which emitted a burst of confetti into the air when it was struck.  Several rounds followed which struck the pastor who eventually died from his wounds. “We just sat there waiting for what comes next,” said an assistant pastor’s wife in reference to the confetti burst, “not realizing that he had wounded the pastor.”¹ Several congregants bravely restrained the assailant until police arrived, and two were stabbed by the gunman who produced a knife in the struggle.  In addition to the obvious, this tragedy has a subtext for pastors who make it a practice to include arts and entertainment in their sermons.  it might desensitize people the point that they do not recognize a real emergency.

^1. Jim Suhr, “Police: Ill. pastor deflected gunshot with Bible,” Breitbart.com. March 8, 2009.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96Q5BJ00&show_article=1&catnum=0

Bishop T.D. Jakes is charging that the media is unfairly characterizing the African-American church. The media, though, is only doing what it has finally been forced to do in examining one Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his obvious racists and Marxist leanings. Had Wright not been the twenty-year spiritual advisor of Barack Obama, he could have continued making his caustic speeches denouncing America, Caucasians, and hardworking people who obtained success, and gone completely unnoticed.

The media would have ignored Wright precisely because it fears a T.D. Jakes, or some other personality, would accuse the press of maligning the whole African-American church by exposing Wright’s racial intolerance and subtle calls for anarchy. Not to mention the media’s love affair with Democratic presidential candidates. What’s on the radar screen now is the important question as to either Obama’s deceitfulness (secretly agreeing with Wright), or his inability to make necessary character assessments of people who have an influential relationship with him, and who stand over him as a respected counselor, on intimate and moral matters, for two decades.

Jakes, however, would not have it get a hearing. “I implore you to not take the words of a few and depict the thoughts, hearts and motives of many,” Jakes wrote in his CNN piece.¹ But did he craft this to mean the few in the media who got the story out? There was, after all, no condemnation of Wright in Jakes’ commentary.

Notes:

¹ T.D. Jakes, “Commentary: Negative press distracts churches from mission,” CNN Politics.com, May 5, 2008.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/05/jakes

The British Humanists Association is championing new regulations set to go into effect next month in England which will contain stricter regulations for psychics and other spiritualists, including faith healers. The new regulations are designed to reflect European Union directives on fair trading and consumer protection against fraud. The affected spiritualists are complaining that the burden of proof will be shifted by the laws from prosecutors proving guilt to the accused proving innocence.

The Humanists occupy themselves with “campaigns against religion and supernatural beliefs,”¹ and one could wonder what future EU compliances will dictate further regulations on faith claims from churches where the Christian gospel is preached. There are, after all, some very impressive claims made that might prove hard to support in an EU court.

Exactly how would one prove, to the satisfaction of Humanists judges, that they are innocent of fraud when they claim to have a message that can save a human soul from Hell? The psychics in England are taking some ribbing about whether they should have seen this coming. One is tempted to ask: does the Church see what’s coming?

Notes:

^1. Steve Addison and Paul Casciato, “Psychics see big trouble over new laws,” Yahoo! News, April 18, 2008.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080418/od_nm/britain_psychic_

dc;_ylt=AifYpnlUnZ_nQoyPTmTuTeCs0NUE

An Ohio school teacher ordered to remove a tapestry of the Ten Commandments from his classroom complied, but refuses to obey an order to remove his Bible from off his desk. Science teacher John Freshwater has taught for 20 years, but has never taught from, or preached out of, his Bible to students. He contends that he is being unfairly discriminated against in what amounts to viewpoint discrimination and infringement on his sincerely held religious beliefs.

Dave Daubenmire of Pass The Salt Ministries is a spokesman for Freshwater, and he made this timely observation:

Please notice that the attack on religious freedom in America is on Christianity. No one is trying to silence the religious freedom of Muslims or atheists or humanists. Quite the contrary. We are told to ‘understand’ Muslims, to be sensitive to the atheists and to tolerate the humanists and their various denominations of ‘isms’ (environmentalism, feminism, secularism, socialism, communism), which we teach openly in our schools. ¹

Students at the school are responding to the religious persecution by supporting the popular teacher. They are using cell phones, the internet, and other means to organize a “take-your-Bible-to-school day.”²

Notes:

^1. World Net Daily, “Students proclaim ‘take-your-Bible’ day Rally in support of teacher ordered to hide Good Book,“

April 18, 2008. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=61903

^2. Alexander J. Sheffrin, “Ohio Teacher Refuses to Remove Bible From Classroom,” Christian Post,April 18, 2008.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080418/32015_Ohio_Teacher_

Refuses_to_Remove_Bible_From_Classroom.htm

Ben Stein’s film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” set for release April 18, is not a case made for the creation of man, or even for intelligent design. Its focus is the persecution educators and scientists are subjected to for challenging the theory of evolution. The film is the result of interviews conducted over a period of two years with more than 150 educators and scientists who doubt the theory is an explanation for the origin of life. The film also contains interviews with leading proponents of the theory that include Richard Dawkins. As the title of the film implies, rigorous and open examination of the evidence used to support natural selection is considered unacceptable, and in many instances it brings retaliation and ruined careers.

Nevertheless, the number of scientists who have weighed the evidence and found it wanting, and are willing to go public, continues to grow. Since 2001, over 700 scientists have singed the “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” list proclaiming they are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”¹

As the Darwinian Evolution unravels under scientific scrutiny, Walt Ruloff, Executive Producer of “Expelled,” observes that the only thing holding it together is “politics”.² In the world of research grants, text book publishers, and careers that’s easy to appreciate, but there is another aspect of Darwinian Evolution that has become a gigantic leap of blind faith exhibiting something on the order of a religious adherence. And that places the theory where it belongs, and where it is most easily dispatched. Take for example how it is addressed in this section from the feature article “Immediate Man” running on The Bible Beats; which shows various ways the Bible defeats the theory:

Evolving Inanimate Objects: A Standard the Theory Cannot Meet

The foregoing verse [Gen. 1:26] presenting the creation of man as man is not an anomaly. There are no less than eight verses in the first two chapters of Genesis that demand immediate man in order to be intelligible to the text (i.e. Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:3, 7, 8, 15, 16), and if only one of them should be chosen for memories sake it would have to be this one:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Gen 2:7).

At one time, and in one instance, man was fully formed up to his nostrils before he had any life in him at all-no living cells struggling for survival, no grotesque mutating and mindless devouring as protoplasm. God completely formed him out to the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of life, and by miraculous means man became a living soul; not an intermediate soul, not half a soul, but a living human soul in its entirety starting life in the image of God. The scriptures give us an unmistakable assurance of a straight forward and literal account of creation for fowl, animals, and man; and they may even provide us with something more.³

The article does provide more by use of unique illustrations, and seemingly unrelated characters like Jonah, to show God’s creation of mankind is a literal account in Genesis. The treatment is both good study for the faithful, and particularly useful to dispel the idea that the Bible is harmonious with evolution as the mechanism God used in creating life.

Notes:

^1. Troy Anderson, “Ben Stein Makes His Case for Doubting Darwin,” Daily News, April 5, 2008.

^2. Ibid.

^3. David Dansker, “Immediate Man,” The Bible Beats.com, February 16, 2008.

The first jackboot of Global Warming fanaticism hit the floor down under when Australian professor Barry Walters revealed plans for penalizing people who refused to circumscribe their lives by the doomsday theory of global warming. As is usually the case when political factions can’t win the day with facts, they campaign to force their views through punitive taxation coupled with special exemptions for extraordinary compliance. Thus Walter’s $800 annual carbon tax per child for families who surpassed the states two-child limit could be offset by carbon credits earned from voluntary sterilization.¹

Since the Walters leak last December global warming faithful have been scrambling for a microphone and an outrageous new proposal to make. While the competition has been fierce, it appears that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pulled ahead of the pack by renewing his call for global carbon taxation, and adding new penalties for suspected global warmers.

The mayor pitched his worldwide carbon tax plan at the UN’s “Addressing Climate Change: the United Nations and the world at Work” conference. There were few surprises in his call for the UN to punitively tax countries, including America, to create an incentive for them to tow the global warming party line (he wants Americans to levy the tax on themselves, and then turn the revenues over to the UN). The other boot dropped, however, when Bloomberg began drawing parallels between suspected global warmers and terrorists.

Bloomberg likened suspected global warmers to terrorists as having “the same potentials of destroying the planet we live on.”² While the mayor used the tactic of place card switching, substituting the verb of global warming for the people actually in his cross hairs, his vociferous call to action against those who fail to subscribe to the theory of global warming must have been unmistakable to the crowd at the UN. Then Bloomberg got to the point in his discursive sophistry which was to declare hunting season on these enemies of the UN State. “We should go after terrorists every place in this world, find them and kill them, plain and simple,” said the rising master of double entendre.³ To make sure his double meaning was not lost, Bloomberg artfully avoided mentioning that the real terrorists are Muslim, and this no doubt gave the UN despots some villains they could finally draw sabers against.

Quick to lace up and jump on board with Bloomberg in the hunt for suspected warmers was airline mogul Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways. Branson pledged the financial might of his Luftwaffe, to the tune of $25 million, for scientists to find a “solution” for heading off the impending environmental catastrophe.⁴

This search for a final solution seems to be an eerily recurring theme in the Green Reich, and Branson might be letting slip that he is poised for military maneuvers, of sorts. In what may be an effort to unleash his air force by official UN sanction, Branson hinted at the formation of a global UN situation room form where, presumably, targets could be assessed and air strikes could be launched. “We need a war room,” Branson told the UN attendees, who by that time must have set in rapt euphoria, listening to celebrities and members in United States government competing to find out who could click their heels the loudest. It will be interesting to see in the next round of fanaticism how heil they can go.

Notes:

^1. David Dansker, “‘Final Solution’ looms in Global Warming Madness,”TheNewsBeats.com, New Snippets FAB, December 20, 2007. http://www.laodiceannewsbeat.com/news/?p=70

^2. Benny Avni, “Mayor Compares Threat of Global Warming to Terrorism,” New York Sun, February 13, 2008.

http://www.nysun.com/article/71103

^3. Ibid.

^4. Ibid.

Briton’s Environmental Agency has issued guidelines for what to do in an emergency arising from exposure to toxic mercury. This threat is deemed immanent due to British environmental laws forcing the replacement of tungsten bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs, or CFL’s, by 2014.¹ Exposure could result when a CFL is broken, releasing 6 to 8 micrograms of mercury.

Mercury exposure from CLF’s will pose a risk to existing medical conditions such as skin and repertory ailments, and can also cause migraine headaches. Health officials are concerned over mercury because repeated and long-term exposure can cause damage to the nervous system, the kidneys, and eventually result in birth defects. A level considered hazardous starts at about 2.8 micrograms in blood test results (2.8 ug/dL).²

This warning from across the pond is of interest to Americans where similar legislation enacted last month virtually replaces the incandescent light bulb with CFL’s in all American households by 2020.

Interestingly, a study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in 2006 showed that an increase in mercury-containing vaccines administered in the 1990’s increased neurological disorders in children, including autism which “skyrocketed.”³

Precautions to mercury toxicity include evacuating a broken CFL site for at least 15 minutes, using rubber gloves and sealable plastic bags for cleanup, and avoiding any activity that might contribute to the toxin remaining airborne, such as using a vacuum cleaner. After cleanup, all residues must be taken to an official recycling station.

The mandated death to the incandescent bulb is another example of how Environmentalists continue to profit by the Global Warming message of doom at the expense of the public’s health. The cost of special handling for disposed CFL’s in Briton currently hovers at $1,300 per recycling bin.

Notes:

^1. WorldNetDaily, January 8, 2008.

^2. New Jersey Department of Health

^3. WorldNetDaily, March 3, 2006.

The list of speakers scheduled to participate in Crystal Cathedral’s Rethink conference in January 2008 reveals promoters will be practicing mental stealth. Of course, a gathering of global influencers would not be complete without a cadre of Teletherapists. They are necessary to persuade attendees to embrace new relationships with unsaved globalists, and to take on new ministries to the emotional needs of the rising global consciousness; instead of ministering the gospel of grace to the lost and the perishing. The lineup includes:

H. B. London - billed as the “pastor to pastors” at Focus on The Family, where he is employed as Vice President, Ministry Outreach, Pastoral Ministries.¹ This purported shepherd-of-shepherds recently earned recognition for assisting in the restoration of fallen New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard; restoring him not to the cross of Christ, but to the serpentine staff of psychotherapy, of which mastery Haggard is now in hot pursuit for his own salvation, and the salvation of others whom he hopes to one day earn a living from; being paid to likewise restore them, to Freud, Jung, and Maslow and the gang.

Appearing here in the conference line-up of speakers, London proves once again that he is not only unable to lead pastors, he can’t even lead sheep, or himself, in the right direction: which would be as far from the bazaar as possible. Instead, he is put on the hook as a lure to entice the young and simple in the faith into the camp to be made merchandise of. Certainly it must be a proud moment for Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family to have helped to give this man legs to walk, and a mouth speaking great things.

Dr. Tim Clinton - is a licensed counselor and marriage and family therapists, and an ordained minister. It is obvious by his other pursuits which one of these opposing views the doctor holds to be superior to the other, and which one he views to be only supplemental to his practice. Clinton is also the President of American Christian Counselors, an organization of other licensed therapists, and the Executive Director of the Center for Counseling and Family Studies, and Professor of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Liberty Theological Seminary. In this last position, it is interesting to note that should pastors reach out for encouragement from a supposed bulwark of theology and doctrine, they will be shown the real power behind the stone, and nursed back to competency with the sour milk of Freud and the gang.

Dr. Les Parrott - is the founder of the Center for Relationship Development at Pacific University. Like his colleagues, Parrott’s concentration is on preaching relationships between other people; married people, unmarried people, and people who are doing the things that were formally reserved for married people, but very little in the way of establishing and maintaining a relationship with God. This is because his Psychology Bible (DSM IV) neither asserts the existence of God nor views relationships with Him as healthy (a diagnostic category has been derived for the treatment of persons to ease them out of a religious view). He is an appropriate choice for officiating in this marriage where “prominent thought leaders become you thought partners.”²

Dr. Henry Cloud - an author and clinical psychologists with a consulting practice who “works with leaders in a wide range of organizations and corporations.”³ With his new book The Secret Things of God: Unlocking the Treasures Reserved for You, Cloud justifies plying his craft on Christians. By asserting the dichotomy of the psychological mind existing separately from the spiritual heart, Cloud suggests the two are at impasse without the power of his psychotherapy to bridge them. He then implies that his work will allow the victorious Word that ineptly gets “locked in their minds” to get activated in their hearts.⁴ Of course, the Bible alone would never do because that is just full of the secrets that get locked in the head, and can’t find their way out to help anyone without the power of psychotherapy to set them free. Not to mention, Cloud would make far less royalties only selling bibles.

These speakers are among those being exalted by Crystal Cathedral for their vain imaginations which are the products of their own reasoning, and the successes they have had in deceiving others with their stratagems. They measure each other by worldly standards, and they are led away by their own conceits. Their carnal reasoning is actually against God; they do not come from Him, they do not express Him, they do not rely on Him, and He will not have them used for Him.

All the “latest thoughts and perspectives,”⁵ or strategies, of these icons are contrived to wage campaigns after the manner of physical warfare, and rely on the weapons wielded by the flesh. The weapons of psychoanalytic observations and manipulative therapies are weapons of the flesh. The eclecticism of modern Teletherapists in applying human techniques to alter thinking and behavior are all strategies and schemes derived and employed by sentient beings relying on their own devices. They are not of God; neither are they for the Christian (2Co 10:3-5).

Notes:

1. Pressroom Biographies, H. B. London, Jr., Vice President, Ministry Outreach/Pastoral Ministries, Focus on the Family.

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/press/focusvoices/A000000029.cfm

2. Rethink, Why Rethink: Rethink Tanks - Learn and Share.

http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com

_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=2 (accessed 10-8-07).

3. Rethink, Speakers.

http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com

_content&task

=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=14

4. Editorial Reviews of Dr. Henry Cloud, The Secret Things of God: Unlocking the Treasures Reserved for You, by Dr. Henry Cloud. 2007.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Things-God-Unlocking-

Treasures/dp/1416563601]

9. Rethink, Rethink the Details.

http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com_

content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=6

At least six high-profile televangelists, who are also prosperity preachers, are now under investigation by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa who is on the Senate Committee of Finance. They include Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and Benny Hinn. So far, they have been asked to provide financial statements and records. The investigation was actually initiated by Ole Anthony who is the founder of Trinity Foundation, a watchdog organization for televangelists. ¹ Since it began in early November, Anthony has been joined by Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine in supporting the Senate investigation. The primary complaint of Anthony and Grady is essentially that these religious leaders earn too much money and live too comfortably, and this is hardly grounds for instigating and welcoming a congressional-led “reformation,” as Grady put it.²

We are living in an age where Constitutional safeguards are constantly being circumvented by state and federal laws (e.g. hate crime and hate speech legislation), and congress is rife with those who would jump at the chance to eviscerate Christian pulpits under cover of Christian “watchdogs.” This, and a few other things, should have come to Anthony’s mind beforehand.

While Anthony, Grady, and others may openly criticize various religious organizations that they disagree with, the fact that they do not approve of another’s free exercise of religion does not entitle them to prescribe religious conduct to them, and require it to be enforced. If they have broken no laws, are not in violation of tax codes, and comply with regulations governing their type of organizations; they should not be investigated by senators at the behest of individuals who find them distasteful, and who do not claim to have suffered at the hands of these organizations.

Even if they had real damages arising from fraud or other such offences, there are other recourses open to them within the law. But even senators miss this point.

Representatives should know better than to launch senatorial investigations into various religions and their leaders merely because some people disapprove of their religious expressions; expressions that they have deemed appropriate to their respective religions, and are supported in by their members. But Senators do err, and the free exercise clause might suffer under the weight of such spurious investigations of churches and synagogues that sap resources and consequently chill free exercise, and free speech.

This last concern, the right of the churches in America to preach against sin to the salvation of the sinner, is the gemstone many legislators have been constructing gear and tackle for, over several years now; with the design of seizing it away. Wayward actions like this one only gives them more leverage.

Anthony and Grady have allowed their personal dissatisfaction with apparently false Christian sects, or apostates, to cloud their judgment; thus making it hard for them to discern the times and appreciate the larger picture. This is a clearly a case where they should have sought to conquer evil with good, the good news of the gospel and real Christian doctrine rightly preached (or wrote about in columns, in papers, on in websites). In particular, Grady’s magazine Charisma is not without room for improvement in this area.

The gullible and the simple will be mislead and fooled by the charlatans and the cults until the end. We do no service to the gospel by endeavoring to outlaw those religions that we disagree with, or know to be false. A very wise man once said of a similar vane that we must suffer some abuse of the press to keep it free. Christians should be willing to suffer a little more for something much more important: the freedom to preach the gospel. This is not to say that we should suffer a false gospel for even one minute, but we are to confront it with the truth, and not with the arm of the law.

Notes:

^1. Lillian Kwon, “‘Prosperity’ Televangelists Probed for Possible Financial Misconduct,” The Christian Post, November 07, 2007.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071107/29989_%27Prosperity%27
_Televangelists_Probed_for_Possible_Financial_Misconduct.htm

^2. Lillian Kwon, “More Questions Raised in Probe of Preachers,”The Christian Post, December 04, 2007.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071204/30344
_More_Questions_Raised_in_Probe_of_Preachers.htm

Nothing is sacred to Greens, except their own religion of environmentalism. Every year they become bolder in their attacks on any expression relating to the God of the Bible. This year they’ve set their sights on Hanukkah with a campaign which promotes striking the eighth candle from the menorah. The Greens hope to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and influence the next generation, by replacing the candle with a global warming infomercial delivered by the parents who are to explain that the candle is being sacrificed to save the earth from global warming.

Hanukkah means “dedication” in Hebrew, and it celebrates the purifying of the temple after it was defiled by Antiochus Epiphanes about 161 BC. Antiochus, angered after hearing that the Jews celebrated after hearing reports of his death, captured Jerusalem and slew over forty thousand people. Then he sacrificed swine on the altar in the temple.

The Maccabees rebelled, and three years later recaptured the temple and rededicated it. In the purification process there was found only enough olive oil to light the menorah for one night. Miraculously, the oil burned the eight days necessary for new oil to be pressed, and the feast of the dedication celebrates this miracle. The story is recorded in the Apocrypha in Maccabees I and II, and is also mentioned in the Bible:

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. (Joh 10:22-23)

A confrontation ensued between Jesus and the religious leaders at the feast, just as there is confrontation today between the religious leaders of environmentalism and those who would acknowledge the God Heaven and Earth. One wonders how the Greens would respond to being asked to light a candle for Earth Day.

Story on Greens here

More on Hanukkah here

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