Only 40% can name more than four.
How many can you think of without looking them up?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Really Important but Unknown
Only 40% can name more than four.
How many can you think of without looking them up?
What happened on May 21?
Here is a page from Family Radio's greatly subdued web site.
It's a good indication of the extremes groups will go to to re-interpret scriptures or past teachings to hang on to their core doctrines.
I like the last part, "You may have been saved prior to May 21, without your knowledge!"
I am thinking that October 21 will not garner anywhere near as much attention as May 21 did. Especially since Camping had a stroke on June 9th and has been moved to a nursing home. The "Open Forum" radio program is no longer aired each night. Ironic?
What really happened this past May 21st ? What really happened is that God accomplished exactly what He wanted to happen. That was to warn the whole world that on May 21 God’s salvation program would be finished on that day. For the next five months, except for the elect (the true believers), the whole world is under God’s final judgment. To accomplish this goal God withheld from the true believers the way in which two phrases were to be understood. Had He not done so, the world would never have been shaken in fear as it was. One phrase is “the completion of God’s salvation program.” The other is “God’s final judgment.” The completion of God’s salvation plan is concentrated in the word “rapture.” The phrase “God’s final judgment” is concentrated in the word “earthquake.” These two words, “earthquake” and “rapture,” have been extremely important in our teaching of Judgment Day – May 21. A critical understanding of these two words is the only change required to know why the unsaved are now living in a world that has not been horribly destroyed, and the elect have not been caught up to be with God. We always look at the word “earthquake” to mean the earth, or ground, is quaking or shaking violently. However, in the Bible the word “earth” can include people as well as ground. In Genesis 2:7 we read: “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground…” Thus the word “earthquake” can also be understood to teach that mankind shakes.Therefore we have learned from our experience of last May 21 what actually happened. All of mankind was shaken with fear. Indeed the earth (or mankind) did quake in a way it had never before been shaken. God had come spiritually to bring judgment upon the whole world. The second word, “rapture,” identifies with the idea of the completion of God’s salvation program. The catching up of all the elect meant that there was to be no more salvation activity to be done anywhere in the world by God. Each and every true believer had become eternally safe with God in Heaven. No more was there any aspect of God’s salvation program that remained to be done. But the same thing became true this past May 21, even though no one was raptured. No one who had not become saved by that date can ever become saved. God tells us in Revelation 22:10-12: “And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: For the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still. And behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” Thus we have learned that except for a somewhat different understanding of the words “earthquake” and “rapture” or “catching up” no other past teachings of Judgment Day or the end of the world have been changed. The time line, the certainty of it, the proofs, and the signs are all precisely the same. No other past teachings have been changed or modified. Indeed, on May 21 Christ did come spiritually to put all of the unsaved throughout the world into judgment. But that universal judgment will not be physically seen until the last day of the five month judgment period, on October 21, 2011. We have also learned that God is still teaching that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked and will not punish the wicked beyond what is called for in Deuteronomy 25. That is, there is a distinct limit to God’s wrath. Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period. On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured. We must remember that only God knows who His elect are that He saved prior to May 21. You, too, without your knowledge may have become saved before that date. Anyone can continue to beseech God for mercy because salvation and the election program are entirely in God’s hands. |
It's a good indication of the extremes groups will go to to re-interpret scriptures or past teachings to hang on to their core doctrines.
I like the last part, "You may have been saved prior to May 21, without your knowledge!"
I am thinking that October 21 will not garner anywhere near as much attention as May 21 did. Especially since Camping had a stroke on June 9th and has been moved to a nursing home. The "Open Forum" radio program is no longer aired each night. Ironic?
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Can there be morality without God?
This is a 90 minute discussion/debate between prominent apologist Dr. William Lane Craig and Yale philosopher Dr. Shelly Kagan.
The topic is, "Is God necessary for morality?"
This interaction seems to be more civil and rational than most Christian/atheist debates tend to be.
The topic is, "Is God necessary for morality?"
This interaction seems to be more civil and rational than most Christian/atheist debates tend to be.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Evolving in Monkey Town
This book is written by Rachel Held Evans, who some would consider a "darling" in the Emerging Church movement.
Evolving in Monkey Town tells her faith story. She grew up in a staunch evangelical home where her Father was a Bible Professor. In her Christian school she competed for and won the "Best Christian Attitude" award 4 years in a row. She was an outspoken evangelist as a child, and apologist as a young adult. She had all the answers and saw it as her solemn duty to give them to the rest of the world.
Then one day she saw a Muslim woman executed on TV and her house of faith started to crumble. This woman had lived a life of horrible abuse, and now that she was dead, would suffer unimaginable agony for eternity. Why? Because she had the misfortune to be born in a non-Christian nation. The notion of hell became horrifying to Rachel. It seemed like salvation was a "cosmic lottery" in which only a lucky few were winners. She could not reconcile her notion of what kind of God would devise this system.
So she went on a journey of questioning anything and everything about her faith, God, the Bible, and eventually made faltering steps back to Christianity by clinging to the depiction of Jesus as "the Great I AM with dirt between his toes," who taught and demonstrated that it was more important to love than to have all the right answers.
She isn't real in-your-face about it, but she strongly implies she's a universalist... no one will go to hell. Or at least people will be in heaven that had never heard of Jesus. The proof text wherewith she had her epiphany was the verse in Revelation where John said he saw people from "every tribe, nation, language" worshiping in heaven. She even imagined shouts of "Allah" ascending to the throne.
This book is an easy and enjoyable read. I identified much with the personal turmoil her doubt causer her, as I seem to have a faith crisis myself every decade. Her candor is refreshing.
One thing I don't understand, however. She talks a lot about the problems she has with lots of things in the Bible, such as the creation story, the role and treatment of women, the atrocities in the Old Testament, etc. She is very ambivalent about the Bible, loving and hating it at the same time. However, when it comes to the Bible's description of the person and work of Jesus, she seems to accept it at face value. She doesn't seem to question the story about him like she seems to question so much of the rest of the Bible. It's like, in spite of all the errors or "human fingerprints" throughout the Bible, somehow we have a reliable record of who Jesus was and what he did.
I suppose this book reflects much of what the Emerging Church movement is about. No doctrine. No creed. No absolutes. Nothing is very important except loving God and loving others (however that happens to be defined at the moment). The emerging church claims to not be simply a "Take II" of the liberal Christianity/social gospel of a century ago, but if it walks and quacks like a duck...
I'm going to finish by posting a bunch of quotes from the book. She's a good writer, and I trust this is not copyright infringement; but I'd like to give you a good enough taste that you will consider reading it. It will give you a lot to think about. Definitely not for those who like their faith neatly tied up with a bow.
My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand. p. 17
No longer satisfied with easy answers, I started asking harder questions. I questioned what I thought were fundamentals - the eternal damnation of all non-Christians, the scientific and historical accuracy of the Bible, the ability to know absolute truth, and the politicization of evangelicalism. I questioned God: his fairness, regarding salvation; his goodness, for allowing poverty and injustice in the world; and his intelligence, for entrusting Christians to fix things. I wrestled with passages of Scripture that seemed to condone genocide and the oppression of women and struggled to make sense of the pride and hypocrisy within the church. I wondered if the God of my childhood was really the kind of God I wanted to worship, and at times I wondered if he even exists at all. p. 22
There are a lot of things I don't know. I don't know where evil came from or why God allows so much suffering in the world. I don't know if there is such a thing as a "just war." I don't know how God will ultimately judge between good and evil. I don't know which church tradition best represents truth. I don't know the degree to which God is present in religious systems, or who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. I don't know if hell is an eternal state or a temporary one or what it will be like. I don't know why people are gay or if being gay is a sin. I don't know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don't know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life. I don't know how to reconcile God's sovereignty with man's free will. I don't know what to do with those Bible verses that seem to condone genocide and the oppression of women. I don't know why I have so many questions, while other Christians don't seem to have any. I don't know which of these questions I will find answers to and which I will not. --- And yet slowly I'm learning to love the questions... pp. 224, 225
An evangelical in the truest sense of the word, I once wrote the plan of salvation on a piece of construction paper, folded it into an airplane, and sent it soaring over the fence into the back yard of our Mormon neighbors. p. 31
My strategy for winning the Best Christian Attitude award each year included keeping extra pens and pencils in my desk to loan to needy students, graciously allowing my classmates to cut in front of me in line at the water fountain, trying not to tattle in an effort to secure the troublemaker vote, and writing sweet notes of encouragement to Isabella and Juanita, to procure the minority vote. p. 36
I may have been the only teenager on the planet who enjoyed guilt-based purity lessons more than the adults giving them, and yet I managed to attract a few boys who thought that an excessively friendly, large-breasted girl with a purity ring and a savior complex sounded intriguing, especially the year Cruel Intentions was released. The smartest ones feigned interest in talking about spirituality so that they could get my phone number. Few made it past the first two-hour diatribe about being equally yoked. pp. 42, 43
You might say that the apologetics movement had created a monster. I'd gotten so good at critiquing all the fallacies of opposing worldviews, at searching for truth through objective analysis, that it was only a matter of time before I turned the same skeptical eye upon my own faith. p. 79
Suddenly abstract concepts about heaven and hell, election and free will, religious pluralism and exclusivism had a name: Zarmina. I felt like I could come to terms with Zarmina's suffering if it were restricted to this lifetime, if I knew that God would grant her some sort of justice after death. But the idea that this woman passed from agony to agony, from torture to torture, from a lifetime of pain and sadness to an eternity of pain and sadness, all because she had less information about the gospel than I did, seemed cruel, even sadistic. p. 91
After we finished the last pages of The Diary of Anne Frank in middle school, Mrs. Kelly informed the class that Anne and her sister died of typhus in a prison camp, thanks to Adolf Hitler. I was horrified, not just because of the prison camp but because everything I'd been taught as a girl told me that because Anne was Jewish, because she had not accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior, she and the rest of her family were burning in hell. I remember staring at the black-and-white picture of Anne on the cover of my paperback, privately begging God to let her out of the lake of fire. p. 92
The space between doubting God's goodness and doubting his existence is not as wide as you might think. I found myself crossing it often, as it didn't require much of a leap. p. 96
When I was a little girl, if someone asked me why I was a Christian, I said it was because Jesus lived in my heart. In high school, I said it was because I accepted the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross for my sins. My sophomore year of college, during a short-lived Reformed phase, I said it was because of the irresistible grace of God. But after watching Zarmina's execution on television, I decided that the most truthful answer to that question was this: I was a Christian because I was born in the United States of America in the year 1981 to Peter and Robin Held. Arminians call it free will; Calvinists call it predestination. I call it "the cosmic lottery." pp. 97-98
Some Christians are more offended by the idea of everyone going to heaven than by the idea of everyone going to hell. I learned the hard way, as reports about my faith crisis spread around town and rumors that I'd become a universalist found their way back to me in a wave of concerned emails and phone calls. Once news of your backsliding makes it to the prayer chain, it's best just to resign yourself to your fate. p. 113
...Sammy was one of those kids who lived in constant terror of getting unsaved, so every year, he marched his way to the front of the rustic little chapel at Bible camp and rededicated himself to Jesus, while the rest of us pretended to keep our eyes closed. p. 170
I'd always wanted a gay friend. But, as embarrassing as this is to admit, I wanted the sort of gay friend who would give me fashion advice and add some diversity to my clique, the kind of gay friend who would make me look edgy and open-minded, not the knid who would actually challenge my thinking or stereotypes. p. 177
When I was a little girl, I knew I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, except a pastor. p. 181
Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter a virtue. p. 219
The Bible is by far the most fascinating, beautiful, challenging, and frustrating work of literature I've ever encountered. Whenever I struggle with questions about my faith, it serves as both a comfort and an agitator, both the anchor and the storm. One day it inspires confidence, the next day doubt. For every question it answers, a new one surfaces. For every solution I think I've found, a new problem will emerge. The Bible has been, and probably always will be, a relentless, magnetic force that both drives me away from my faith and continuously calls me home. Nothing makes me crazier or gives me more hope than the eclectic collection of sixty-six books that begins with Genesis and finishes with Revelation. It's difficult to read a word of it without being changed. pp. 188, 189
Well, there are many more nuggets. But I will leave it to you to get the book and discover them for yourself.
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Evolving in Monkey Town tells her faith story. She grew up in a staunch evangelical home where her Father was a Bible Professor. In her Christian school she competed for and won the "Best Christian Attitude" award 4 years in a row. She was an outspoken evangelist as a child, and apologist as a young adult. She had all the answers and saw it as her solemn duty to give them to the rest of the world.
Then one day she saw a Muslim woman executed on TV and her house of faith started to crumble. This woman had lived a life of horrible abuse, and now that she was dead, would suffer unimaginable agony for eternity. Why? Because she had the misfortune to be born in a non-Christian nation. The notion of hell became horrifying to Rachel. It seemed like salvation was a "cosmic lottery" in which only a lucky few were winners. She could not reconcile her notion of what kind of God would devise this system.
So she went on a journey of questioning anything and everything about her faith, God, the Bible, and eventually made faltering steps back to Christianity by clinging to the depiction of Jesus as "the Great I AM with dirt between his toes," who taught and demonstrated that it was more important to love than to have all the right answers.
She isn't real in-your-face about it, but she strongly implies she's a universalist... no one will go to hell. Or at least people will be in heaven that had never heard of Jesus. The proof text wherewith she had her epiphany was the verse in Revelation where John said he saw people from "every tribe, nation, language" worshiping in heaven. She even imagined shouts of "Allah" ascending to the throne.
This book is an easy and enjoyable read. I identified much with the personal turmoil her doubt causer her, as I seem to have a faith crisis myself every decade. Her candor is refreshing.
One thing I don't understand, however. She talks a lot about the problems she has with lots of things in the Bible, such as the creation story, the role and treatment of women, the atrocities in the Old Testament, etc. She is very ambivalent about the Bible, loving and hating it at the same time. However, when it comes to the Bible's description of the person and work of Jesus, she seems to accept it at face value. She doesn't seem to question the story about him like she seems to question so much of the rest of the Bible. It's like, in spite of all the errors or "human fingerprints" throughout the Bible, somehow we have a reliable record of who Jesus was and what he did.
I suppose this book reflects much of what the Emerging Church movement is about. No doctrine. No creed. No absolutes. Nothing is very important except loving God and loving others (however that happens to be defined at the moment). The emerging church claims to not be simply a "Take II" of the liberal Christianity/social gospel of a century ago, but if it walks and quacks like a duck...
I'm going to finish by posting a bunch of quotes from the book. She's a good writer, and I trust this is not copyright infringement; but I'd like to give you a good enough taste that you will consider reading it. It will give you a lot to think about. Definitely not for those who like their faith neatly tied up with a bow.
My friend Adele describes fundamentalism as holding so tightly to your beliefs that your fingernails leave imprints on the palm of your hand. p. 17
No longer satisfied with easy answers, I started asking harder questions. I questioned what I thought were fundamentals - the eternal damnation of all non-Christians, the scientific and historical accuracy of the Bible, the ability to know absolute truth, and the politicization of evangelicalism. I questioned God: his fairness, regarding salvation; his goodness, for allowing poverty and injustice in the world; and his intelligence, for entrusting Christians to fix things. I wrestled with passages of Scripture that seemed to condone genocide and the oppression of women and struggled to make sense of the pride and hypocrisy within the church. I wondered if the God of my childhood was really the kind of God I wanted to worship, and at times I wondered if he even exists at all. p. 22
There are a lot of things I don't know. I don't know where evil came from or why God allows so much suffering in the world. I don't know if there is such a thing as a "just war." I don't know how God will ultimately judge between good and evil. I don't know which church tradition best represents truth. I don't know the degree to which God is present in religious systems, or who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. I don't know if hell is an eternal state or a temporary one or what it will be like. I don't know why people are gay or if being gay is a sin. I don't know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don't know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life. I don't know how to reconcile God's sovereignty with man's free will. I don't know what to do with those Bible verses that seem to condone genocide and the oppression of women. I don't know why I have so many questions, while other Christians don't seem to have any. I don't know which of these questions I will find answers to and which I will not. --- And yet slowly I'm learning to love the questions... pp. 224, 225
An evangelical in the truest sense of the word, I once wrote the plan of salvation on a piece of construction paper, folded it into an airplane, and sent it soaring over the fence into the back yard of our Mormon neighbors. p. 31
My strategy for winning the Best Christian Attitude award each year included keeping extra pens and pencils in my desk to loan to needy students, graciously allowing my classmates to cut in front of me in line at the water fountain, trying not to tattle in an effort to secure the troublemaker vote, and writing sweet notes of encouragement to Isabella and Juanita, to procure the minority vote. p. 36
I may have been the only teenager on the planet who enjoyed guilt-based purity lessons more than the adults giving them, and yet I managed to attract a few boys who thought that an excessively friendly, large-breasted girl with a purity ring and a savior complex sounded intriguing, especially the year Cruel Intentions was released. The smartest ones feigned interest in talking about spirituality so that they could get my phone number. Few made it past the first two-hour diatribe about being equally yoked. pp. 42, 43
You might say that the apologetics movement had created a monster. I'd gotten so good at critiquing all the fallacies of opposing worldviews, at searching for truth through objective analysis, that it was only a matter of time before I turned the same skeptical eye upon my own faith. p. 79
Suddenly abstract concepts about heaven and hell, election and free will, religious pluralism and exclusivism had a name: Zarmina. I felt like I could come to terms with Zarmina's suffering if it were restricted to this lifetime, if I knew that God would grant her some sort of justice after death. But the idea that this woman passed from agony to agony, from torture to torture, from a lifetime of pain and sadness to an eternity of pain and sadness, all because she had less information about the gospel than I did, seemed cruel, even sadistic. p. 91
After we finished the last pages of The Diary of Anne Frank in middle school, Mrs. Kelly informed the class that Anne and her sister died of typhus in a prison camp, thanks to Adolf Hitler. I was horrified, not just because of the prison camp but because everything I'd been taught as a girl told me that because Anne was Jewish, because she had not accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior, she and the rest of her family were burning in hell. I remember staring at the black-and-white picture of Anne on the cover of my paperback, privately begging God to let her out of the lake of fire. p. 92
The space between doubting God's goodness and doubting his existence is not as wide as you might think. I found myself crossing it often, as it didn't require much of a leap. p. 96
When I was a little girl, if someone asked me why I was a Christian, I said it was because Jesus lived in my heart. In high school, I said it was because I accepted the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross for my sins. My sophomore year of college, during a short-lived Reformed phase, I said it was because of the irresistible grace of God. But after watching Zarmina's execution on television, I decided that the most truthful answer to that question was this: I was a Christian because I was born in the United States of America in the year 1981 to Peter and Robin Held. Arminians call it free will; Calvinists call it predestination. I call it "the cosmic lottery." pp. 97-98
Some Christians are more offended by the idea of everyone going to heaven than by the idea of everyone going to hell. I learned the hard way, as reports about my faith crisis spread around town and rumors that I'd become a universalist found their way back to me in a wave of concerned emails and phone calls. Once news of your backsliding makes it to the prayer chain, it's best just to resign yourself to your fate. p. 113
...Sammy was one of those kids who lived in constant terror of getting unsaved, so every year, he marched his way to the front of the rustic little chapel at Bible camp and rededicated himself to Jesus, while the rest of us pretended to keep our eyes closed. p. 170
I'd always wanted a gay friend. But, as embarrassing as this is to admit, I wanted the sort of gay friend who would give me fashion advice and add some diversity to my clique, the kind of gay friend who would make me look edgy and open-minded, not the knid who would actually challenge my thinking or stereotypes. p. 177
When I was a little girl, I knew I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up, except a pastor. p. 181
Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice; the latter a virtue. p. 219
The Bible is by far the most fascinating, beautiful, challenging, and frustrating work of literature I've ever encountered. Whenever I struggle with questions about my faith, it serves as both a comfort and an agitator, both the anchor and the storm. One day it inspires confidence, the next day doubt. For every question it answers, a new one surfaces. For every solution I think I've found, a new problem will emerge. The Bible has been, and probably always will be, a relentless, magnetic force that both drives me away from my faith and continuously calls me home. Nothing makes me crazier or gives me more hope than the eclectic collection of sixty-six books that begins with Genesis and finishes with Revelation. It's difficult to read a word of it without being changed. pp. 188, 189
Well, there are many more nuggets. But I will leave it to you to get the book and discover them for yourself.
Please share this post on Facebook and twitter by clicking on the buttons below. I'd also like to hear your comments by clicking on the word "comment" below. Thanks for stopping by!
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