my iconoclasm

i want my a.d.d.

2006-08-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

I picked this nymag article up from Matthew Hall, whose blog has been a lot more interesting in the last few months which is even more impressive due to the fact that it has occurred during the summer blogging doldrums. He missed the communist joke though and his scathing critique of MTV made me question his commitment to Calvinism. haha People are stupid and morally bankrupt without MTV, it just made them more homogenously so Matt.

I couldn't resist the fat guy. And I'm always happy to link to a competitor of the "liberal but non-partisan" The New Yorker. Or should that be The New Yorker. (They have a bunch of annoyingly silly style conventions, one of which being that they put titles of works in quotation marks and only italicize the words that aren't a place name in refering to other publications. Somehow they're still non-partisan after a gushing endorsement of John Kerry in an unsigned editorial. And as if I don't know how to pronounce reëlection and it's necessary that I do so for something I will be reading silently. Chill it with the diaeresis already! Pompous liberal idiots.

</end New Yorker rant>

I Want My A.D.D.

How 25 years of MTV have changed the world (for better and worse).

at nymag.com

bruster's ad

2006-07-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

new planned parenthood commercial

2006-07-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

warning: may not be appropriate for those over 35.

What do you think?

soccer is gay

2006-07-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

my hips don't lie: shakira spoof video

2006-07-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

Do not try this at home without A LOT of ducktape.

Warning: This video may disturb small children and the anorexic.
(saji should not watch this either)

are you getting tired of this?

2006-07-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Official Template for Opposing Teetotalism

I [select one: abstain, am a teetotaler, don't drink] therefore my opinion is morally superior and I am qualified to debate this issue.

[commence listing arguments]

not so stupid inventions XIV: old school headphones

2006-07-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

Old School Headphones

stupid inventions index

the ring in the bull's nose theory

2006-06-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

If after you read my last post, you are a little too Reformed and you just aren't "feeling led" like everyone else, maybe you need to make it easier for you to feel led like in the "bull's ring theory".

Baptists sure like to take things literally.

Good times at Founder's Cafe on campus.

do you feel led to read this?

2006-06-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

This is probably my favorite article of any ever written. Please leave a comment, pro or con. I'd like to discuss it.

No Voices In My Head

God may or may not have told me to write this.

by Bill MacKinnon billatclarksondotedu

I’m a lousy Christian.

There. I’ve said it. People say that admitting it is the first step. What makes me a lousy Christian you ask? Hidden sin? Lukewarm commitment? Worldliness?

I wish.

At least if it were one of those, I could do something about it. No, what makes me a lousy Christian is something I don’t seem to be able to do anything about. You see, God isn’t speaking to me. He won’t give me assignments. He didn’t tell me who to marry. He was obstinately silent when I had to decide whether to take my current job. He doesn’t give me secret knowledge about other people or situations. In short, He isn’t doing for me what seemingly the rest of the evangelical church claims He is doing for them.

Why not me? What have I done wrong? Why this slight? Everyone else has all this extra revelation straight from God. They’ve got intense feelings, and power, and special instructions and don’t have to make any of their own decisions. God tells them what to do and when to do it. In fact, some of them claim they don’t do anything until it is clear what God wants them to do. If I waited for God to tell me what to do, I would never get out of bed. All I’ve got is a Bible and the Holy Spirit within me. (at least, I hope He’s there. I can’t feel Him moving about, but the Bible says He’s there)

I’ve done quite a bit of study on this issue and I’ve gathered quite a few theories and teachings. God seems to be telling different people different things, but perhaps we can sort them all out and come to some conclusions.

First is what I like to call the Ham Radio teaching. I’m sure you’ve seen people fiddling around with the dials on a ham radio. They twist and turn and adjust until the voices become clear. The voices were there all along; they just couldn’t hear them until the right adjustments were made. Some people say God is like that. He’s always speaking. He just can’t get through to us until we make the right adjustments in our lives. As soon as these adjustments are made, His voice is loud and clear! The adjustments generally involve getting rid of all sin in your life. How lucky for the really good guys in the Bible like Cain and Jonah to get it right the first time. Oh wait…

Second is what I call the Walkie Talkie theory. If you have used a walkie talkie, you know that as long as you are speaking, the other party cannot be heard. You can only hear them when you stop speaking and listen. I naively thought that prayer was generally one-way communication with God. But I’m told it is really two-way communication, and that I can’t hear God until I stop talking. Then I’m supposed to listen. How long I wait to see if God is going to say anything is directly proportional to my faith. I apparently missed this part when Jesus taught His disciples to pray, but I’ll go back and look.

Next on the list is the Easter Bunny theory. God’s will is mysterious and he hides it carefully and then asks you to find it. People are always saying that they are “looking for God’s will for my life.” Things like strong feelings and coincidences are clues. God wants you to do things, but He won’t tell you what. But evidently He will hold you responsible if you don’t do what He wants you to do but won’t tell you. Hold on, I’m looking up the verses that support that now….no, no, just a moment…no, not there. Well anyway, I’ll find them later.

There’s the Bull Ring theory. Have you ever seen a ring in a bull’s nose? It’s not there because he’s rebelling against his parents. It’s there for people to pull on. When someone pulls on the ring in a northerly direction, the bull “feels led” to walk north. When the person pulling the ring changes direction, quite remarkably the bull does as well. I have probably heard the term “I feel led” or “I felt led” from other Christians more than any other phrase. But when I ask them what “feeling led” feels like, they are at somewhat of a loss to explain. From what I can gather, it’s a kind of strong desire or impression. Well, if you can’t trust strong desires what can you…uh, never mind.

One of my favorites is the Paxil theory. Paxil is a drug that calms you down and gives you a feeling of peace. I’m told that if I’m wavering between a number of options on an important decision, I should kind of semi-decide upon one, and see if I have a “feeling of peace” about it. If not, move on. Now the thing is, I don’t get stressed or nervous about much of anything. So if “peace” is my main decision making criteria, most of the decisions I’ve made in my life have been correct. Woohoo!

Last but certainly not least is the Back to School theory. Put simply, you can’t hear God’s voice until you learn how. Somehow, without it being recorded, it is known that all the folks God spoke to in biblical times had learned how to hear God’s voice. How they learned it or what is involved in learning it has never been fully explained to me. If I ever do learn it, I will gladly teach it to others, but only if they call me “sensei”…

Well, that was fun. There’s a whole lotta teaching goin’ on out there about God speaking. They all seem to be a bit different but perhaps we can find a common thread among all or most of them. I think I’ve spotted it. Have you? The common theme among most of these (which although I’ve presented them in a tongue and cheek manner, are common and serious teachings) is that God is trying to speak to people and often failing to get His message across.

So now I have a question. Is that a picture of the God of the Bible? Does the God of the Bible try? Does the God of the Bible fail? Is the God of the Bible limited by the failures and foibles of His creatures? Did Abraham “feel led” to go to the land of Canaan or did he hear God speak loud and clear? Did God hide Jonah’s mission to Nineveh ? Was all the sin out of Job’s life when God spoke to him from the whirlwind? Did Moses have to learn to hear God speak from the bush? In short, where the heck did all these ideas come from? Certainly not the Bible.

If you email me and tell me I’m putting God in a box I swear I will hunt you down and kick you in the shin. This isn’t about what God can do. This is about what we can teach. And (hopefully) we can agree that our teaching authority and doctrine comes from the Bible, not the voices in our heads. God can do whatever He wants. But we can’t teach whatever we want.

What does the Bible teach about God speaking? Well obviously God spoke to people in many ways: the burning bush, angels, a voice, writing on the wall, etc. Notoriously absent are things like impressions, feeling led, and feelings of peace. When God wanted someone to do something, He told them and they heard and understood. Period. They didn’t always like it, and they didn’t always obey, but they heard. How could they not? Were they more powerful than God? Are you? Is there anything within your power or imagination that can keep God from getting a message to you? Who do we think we are?

God may choose not to speak to you, but if He does speak, you will hear.

Please don’t come back and quote me the “if you have ears to hear” verses. Read those in context. To “hear”, as Jesus was employing the term didn’t mean to hear, as in perceive with your auditory appendages. It meant to accept and obey. Obviously the crowd “heard” him in the sense that I’m talking about.

It is curious to me that if someone in a typical evangelical church stood up and said an angel spoke to him and told him that God wanted him to be a missionary to Africa , we would be very skeptical at best. Yet if that same person stood up and said that he “just really feel led to go to Africa to be a missionary”, the "amens" and applause would be deafening. Yet the former is biblical and the latter is not.

So, should we be looking for angels or burning bushes? No. Moses wasn’t looking for one. We shouldn’t be looking for anything. What we should do is read our Bibles. You want to hear God speak? If you have a Bible, you have thousands of years of God-inspired instructions, messages, exhortations, rebukes and praises right at your fingertips. Why do we think we need more than that? God’s will for your life is written there. God’s instructions for living are there. To want them piped directly into your brain is just foolishness and laziness. Worse, it opens you up to the worst kind of doctrinal errors.

So in conclusion, a lousy Christian I may be, for many reasons. But my inability to hear God’s voice isn’t one of them. I have a Bible, and God speaks to me whenever I open it.

insurance companies find colombian women bad for business

2006-06-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - In Colombia, beauty can kill.

Drivers ogling attractive women rather than paying attention to the road are one of the South American country's leading causes of car accidents.

Distraction was the No. 1 cause of the 115,000 road accidents in Colombia last year, costing the equivalent of about $250 million Cdn, according to research by the Road Safety Fund, a private organization.

The cell phone was the biggest distraction for drivers, accounting for about 10 per cent of all accidents. Second was men staring at women, which accounted for nearly one in 20 crashes.

"It's a culture here of drivers honking the horn at an attractive woman, throwing her some compliment as he drives past, and he's not concentrating on driving," the group's director, Francisco Fernandez, told a news conference.

His presentation included close-up images of attractive women in miniskirts to remind the audience of the extent of this danger.

More than 1,300 drivers were interviewed for the study conducted by the fund, a private group made up of insurance companies.

Colombia has been improving its road safety, bringing down accidents from an average of 200,000 per year to just over 115,000 last year.

But with potholed roads traversing treacherous mountain ranges and drivers who don't think twice about overtaking on blind corners, driving in Colombia can still be a dangerous endeavour.

While authorities have begun fining those caught driving and speaking on a cell phone - sanctioning more than 17,000 drivers in Bogota alone last year - the fund is recommending less draconian methods to discourage men from looking at women while driving.

"We are hoping for an educational campaign, to inform drivers of how dangerous this can be," said Fernandez.

Other listed distractions were drivers fussing with their appearances and looking at advertising - which in Colombia often features scantily clad women.

The study found that as male drivers grow older, they get grumpier: less focused on women but more inclined to be distracted by arguing with their passengers.

"Around the world, distraction is one of the leading causes of accidents. The reasons for distractions are different for each culture," Fernandez said. "In the United States, research has found a large cause of distraction is eating while driving, something not seen here."

sbc resolution 55

2006-06-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

At the recent Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, it was decided that not only alcohol, but adultery and gluttony are also of great concern in our churches and since prohibition is biblical and has proven so effective in the past, it will be extended to sex and food also.

(Appropriate scripture references are included.)

Resolution No. 55
ON [SEX AND FOOD] IN AMERICA

WHEREAS, Years of research confirm biblical warnings that [food] leads to physical, mental, and emotional damage (e.g., Proverbs 28:7); and

WHEREAS, [Sex] has led to countless injuries and deaths on our nation's highways; and

WHEREAS, The breakup of families and homes can be directly and indirectly attributed to [sex] by one or more members of a family; and

WHEREAS, The use of [food] as a recreational [device at potlucks] has been shown to lead individuals down a path of addiction to [food] and toward the use of other kinds of drugs, both legal and illegal; and

WHEREAS, There are some religious leaders who are now advocating the consumption of [meat] based on a misinterpretation of the doctrine of "our freedom in Christ"; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, June 13-14, 2006, express our total opposition to the manufacturing, advertising, distributing, and consuming of [food]; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge that no one be elected to serve as a trustee or member of any entity or committee of the Southern Baptist Convention that [has sex or eats food].

RESOLVED, That we urge Southern Baptists to take an active role in supporting legislation that is intended to curb [sex] in our communities and nation; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge Southern Baptists to be actively involved in educating students and adults concerning the destructive nature of [food]; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we commend organizations and ministries that treat [food]-related problems from a biblical perspective and promote abstinence and encourage local churches to begin and/or support such biblically-based ministries.

Sex, food, and alcohol are gifts of God. On one extreme, Legalism has forbidden sex in marriage, meat in meals, and wine in communion and on the other extreme, carelessness and rebelion in the church has allowed sex before and outside of marriage, gluttony at potlucks, and drunkenness at the Lord's Table. There is no safety in asceticism and no love in laxation. God's word is our arbiter in these matters and we ought to obey God rather than men.

The SBC still has a long way to go in accepting "inerrancy".

if alan marries a minister of pain

2006-06-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

Alan (Screaming Pirate) recently asked in a comment if the Minister of Pain would make a good minister's wife:

"I wonder if the minster of pain would make a good minsters wife..... we could be co-pastors of our local "community center"(come on you know the type)....... I wonder if she would be a submisive wife? or if she would constaintly be minstering to me. To many questions here. Prov 31:10 "An excelent wife who can find?" "

Alan, I'm sorry to say that the Minister of Pain is already married to another member of the Power Team.

It reminded me of this picture called "bumpy relationship".

Here is what it might look like if Alan found his own Minister of pain and they were co-pastors of the "community center" in Spanish Fort, Alabama.

fide-o bites back

2006-06-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

check out this post about the SBC at fide-o.
(emphasis added)

We took our Bibles as literal, accurate, and inerrant, just as we were told to do, and began to read them. That is when we discovered a lot of our inherited theology verbally passed down to us is extra-biblical if not unbiblical.

The problem is while we give to the cooperative program, which is what all the SBC should be about, guys like me have been placed on the other side of a new battle against reformed doctrine. The SBC will accept any theological drivel that comes down the pipe from the “Seeker” guys as long as it keeps the numbers up. They will tout the emergent crowd as ground breaking evangelists no matter how much they assault the truth of scripture. Yet we aspire to an extremely high view of scripture and read church history, including Southern Baptist, follow our SBC fore-fathers in reformed theology and it is called a virus, dangerous, and anti-evangelistic. Then to top it off we get to sit in Greensboro as nearly every speaker there took unnecessary shots at one of our great loves, the Doctrine/truth of the Word of God.

the power team

2006-06-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

There’s this belief among Christians that for one's occupation and hobbies to glorify God they have to be able to be taken out on a traveling evangelism road-show.

You can’t just be a farmer and be good at it. Or bring honor to Christ through honest business practices. Or innovative ideas. Or hard work. OR THE GOSPEL.

You can’t do whatever you do, do it as for God and not for men.

A good example of this is the Power Team. I think they were touring Assemblies of God churches or something when I was of a youth group age. (I like to call it dis-assemblies of God which I think is really clever but someone probably thought of ages ago.)

If you haven’t been to see the Power Team, it’s basically a bunch of body builders that break, bend, or tear bricks, bats, phonebooks, or bars, with various parts of their bodies. They do everything you pretended to do when you were a kid but just didn't have the muscles for. They also blow up water bottles (the old fashioned red rubber kind) until they pop. It’s interspersed with Christian catchphrases and typical athlete post achievement God things (pointing up, making the cross out of the stuff you just broke) and testimonies like, “I used to do roids but then I got saved and I don’t anymore." Probably my favorite kind of testimony. The kind where the sin is the main idea and the cool thing rather than the gospel. God is just sort of like your hypnotherapist whose only purpose was helping you stop a bad habit. Anyway bricks are broken. Bats shattered. Then you get saved at the end.

“JESUS AND STEROIDS GAVE ME THE POWER TO TEAR THIS PHONEBOOK IN HALF! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

</end beefcake wrestler voice>

If your church isn’t going so well, you might want to consider the Power Team. Their website shows these statistics:

*2-3 out of every ten accept Jesus

*20% average church growth

*our methods are proven

*you can’t afford not to have us in! (what does that even mean?)

*churches actually doubled in size after hosting a Power Team crusade!

*for every $10 a church spends in a Power Team crusade, we see someone accept Christ.

*hundreds, even thousands, give their lives to Christ during a typical crusade.

*we are second only to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in # of salvations across America over the past 25 years.

Have they done any follow up studies to see if people still went to Church afterwards when they found out that there would not be brick breaking on a weekly basis?

Is there someone who keeps the scores on whose ministry has the best numbers? Has it existed for 25 years? It reminds me of the scoreboard I saw on larknews.com one time. It said fantasy preaching league and it had scores for Benny Hinn, Luis Palau, etc.

They also have a girl on the team now known as the “Minister of Pain”. I guess there is nothing in the bible that specifically says women can’t be Ministers of Pain.

Even though I think this should not take the place of the gospel it's still pretty cool.

I think things are changing now and people are turning back to the gospel as a means of preaching the gospel rather than freak shows and traveling circuses. If you are Arminian then you better have a great light show, play with the temperature, change the oxygen content of the room, play the most emotionally moving music, drag out that invitation, and have “every eye closed and every head bowed” and remind them of that car accident they are going to have on the way home because it’s merely a human decision that can be influenced by human strategies.

I’m glad my role as a pastor is not to be a charismatic cult figure and I won’t feel like I have to rely on the traveling freak show for God to do something in my congregation. I’m just a lightning rod for God, preaching the gospel. His word will break the hearts of stone instead of muscles gained through Arminian steroids.

couple pose I want

2006-06-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

~~If I get married~~ When I get married I will use this pose for our pictures. This picture says, "Despite the fact that I have an early 90's hairstyle, a tiny face, huge glasses, and I majored in engineering and didn't know any girls in college, I have a pretty wife that clings to me like I'm Fabio." Not that that's what I want to say but I just think it's a loving pose.

Well I don't know about the head on the arm thing and the smug prigish expression; they should look more happy.

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Genesis 2:24

I guess it would be more biblical if he was holding her.

would you trust timmy with nuclear weapons?

2006-06-10T16:16:00.000-07:00

I was reading something at Jollyblogger today and one of the ads was trying to raise money for a PAC by taking advantage of our fear of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad destroying the world.

It instantly reminded me of when Timmy's mom said he looked like the Iranian President.

Timmy is a fellow blogger here at Southern who has enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame as of late after publishing a quality blog called provocations and pantings and organizing the T4GCON Band of Bloggers seminar. Despite the fact that some of us like to call it "provocations and panties", his blog is a lot more serious than mine and he has been doing a good job of keeping track of pre-Southern Baptist Convention news. Just so this post can't be called a gush, he does have a penchant for bells and whistles which bogs down his blog with a flickr zeitgeist, clustrmap, and neocounter. He also started and writes for strange baptist fire which is a response to baptist fire, which was basically a website about how the evil Calvinists are secretly plotting to take over the world.

Would you trust Timmy with nuclear weapons? If we did, there would be a clustrmap and a neocounter on a seperate nuclear weapons blog with all of the countries at which he had aimed missiles.

nachste sarah jessica parker

2006-06-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

While doing the research for my last post I found this German article.

I can't read this but the juxtaposition of the images and "rülpsenden, stinkenden Monsters", and Sarah Jessica Parker in the same sentence with a word that sounds like nasty (nächste) makes me laugh. Is "rülpsenden" rumplestiltskin in German?

Die nächste Rolle von «Sex and the City»-Star Sarah Jessica Parker ist an der Seite eines rülpsenden, stinkenden Monsters.

not to parents: failure to launch

2006-06-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

Note to parents (mine included):
This has been bugging me for a while now and I'm sure it will offend some of you but it needs to be said.

If your adult son is still at home and you want to give him a nudge to make him get on with life, do not hire a forty-something skank from New York that smokes like a freight train to do this ambiguous yet meretricious task.

While this may sound good on paper in a Paramount Motion Pictures office while being pitched by a Hollywood type with terminal ADD, it would not work in real life or as a film.

As I see it, you have three options:

1.) Your son is a loser. It's your fault. Deal with it.

2.) Stop babying him. Take back the credit card, give him the boot, change the locks.

3.) Hire Sarah Jessica Amber Tina Marie Jennifer Parker to live with you and do nightly performances of her roles from Little Orphan Annie and Square Pegs. Your son will be gone the first night.

(Warning: Do not allow Jami Gertz to assist, this will ruin everything.)
(If you don't know what Square Pegs is, consider yourself blessed) If that link requires membership, try this. Episodes from this show are authorized by the CIAfor interrogator use in torture of terror suspects.

(I do not live at home by the way.)

This is your son launching after the "Annie" option.

boy was left behind as left behind book released

2006-06-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

The latest Left Behind book was released today. The Rapture: In the twinkling of an eye, countdown to the earth's last days. It's a Prequel. Big shocker there. I thought they had already written about the rapture in this series but they are cranking these things out non-stop and there's another one due out in August.

While writing this post I listened to the timlahaye.com website music which is quite addictive. The site opens with a flash animation diagramming 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 in case you can't understand it without pictures.

I made this picture for my earlier post about the Left Behind video game but it was way down at the bottom and I'll just assume it was so smooth as to be unnoticeable or too offensive for anyone to notice it but I thought it was really funny but no one said anything about it.

In an incredible stroke of fate, which played directly into my hands, allowing me to make a striking metaphor, a young boy was left behind by his parents after his own birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese (a pizza restaurant catering to children with arcade games and playgrounds).

In our rush to celebrate the wedding feast as the bride of Christ (the church) is reunited with Him in the last days as described in Revelation we've left behind the guest of honor. We've divided the body of the bride because some are pre-wedding cake and believe that the cutting of the cake should come before the dinner so that the everyone does not have to wait for everyone else to finish eating to get cake. Some are post-wedding cake and believe the process should be the reverse because everyone knows that cake comes after the meal and we don't want anyone to spoil their appetite. Some are a-wedding cake and believe there should be no wedding cake because it makes one fat and ugly and it might offend those who are already fat and we should be sensitive to the weaker conscience of our fatter brothers and not eat cake in front of them if it could cause them to stumble. Some are cake historicists and someone has already started eating the cake.

The bride is so caught up in "Her Day" and the planning for it that she hasn't talked to the groom for years. She used to read his love letters over and over but now skips to the back ones that have to do with the reception. He loves her dearly and is always accessible, but she ignores his calls. She could be living a full life with the person who loves her more than anyone else but instead she is packing weight on and filling her life with icing tastings and deciding what color the toothpics should be in total disregard for both the present and the future.

Acts 1:7 "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own Authority."

take a photo tour of j@mes wh|te's seminary

2006-06-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I will hear or see someone reconmend one of his books. Do they know where he got his "doctorate" from? Do they know he tried to take down one of our professors?

Take the photographic tour of Columbia Evangelical Seminary

kentucky wedding cake (my old kentucky home part I)

2006-05-31T23:15:00.000-07:00

Some of you happy young kids about to leave the so called "temporary gift of singleness" behind need to cut a few corners in your ceremony and this might be what you're looking for. Some of you want to be "missional" and live like the people around you. If Donna goes with the bobble head bride and groom cake topper this would be the cake to put under it.

not so stupid subway invention part XIV

2006-05-29T22:44:00.000-07:00

You supply the caption:

stupid inventions index

left behind video game trailer

2006-05-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

I was going to post this here but they insisted on putting a picture of God in it. They won't show Adam's naked body and insist on drawing clothes for him but they don't care about the Second Commandment. It's like I'm the only one with Deuteronomy 4:15 in my Bible! Can't they just stick to messing up Revelation?

left behind video game trailer

Let's get to the content.

What do you think about the three paths?
1. Those who daily seek a personal relationship with God
2. Unbelievers and believers who don't seek after God
3. Those who choose to ignore God

Isn't an unbeliever that doesn't seek after God choosing to ignore Him? If one doesn't have a devotional every day does one fall into the second category for good or just on days when one doesn't read the Bible? Why should believers and un-believers be in the same category? I think this was written by a theologically schizophrenic Baptist trying to keep eternal security and not scare away the pentecostals. Why have three categories when discussing Revelation? How about the sheep and the goats like the Bible says? But wait there are more categories!!!

4. All infants
5. Children (did they mean all to qualify infants only?)
One of my professors was telling us that he can clearly see sin in his children when they covet toys, hit eachother, and say, "MINE!" He said it would seem that if all children go to Heaven then one would think it a merciful act to save them from eternal torment in Hell by killing them before they became unsaved and it would even make abortions save people from Hell.

Is the terrible human suffering of the End Times too serious to be made into a game? Can there be any educational value? Especially when the game is geared towards gamers in their late teens, 20's, and up? What about something like the old Bible Adventures Nintendo games from the 80's where Noah collects animals and food for the ark? Does playing this game count as "daily seeking a personal relationship with God?"

Here is a Reformed Historicist website you might find usefull.

screen shots
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

live video games

2006-05-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

pacman

super mario bros.

street fighter 2

benny hinn's wife blaspheming the holy spirit

2006-05-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

Suzanne Hinn, Benny Hinn's wife blaspheming the Holy Spirit
(allows choice of connection speeds)

alternate direct link
(same file as above in case it doesn't work)

Is that not the biggest freak show you have ever seen? People are actually clapping and going along with that. It's hard for me to imagine someone acting like this without drugs or alcohol. Ride the clouds baby! Ride em to the floor! RIIIIIIIIIIIIIII! I think towards the end Benny realized how embarassing she was and gave her a little of the old Holy Ghost machine gun to stop it. The first time I watched this the net was slow so the video was choppy and she just disapeared into the floor. To me this is evidence of demonic power because without it I wonder if anyone would go along with this.

Mark 3:29: "But he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation" Certainly the context of this verse is the scribes saying that Jesus' ministry was the work of the devil but we shouldn't call the work of Satan the work of the Holy Spirit and we should be respectful of the Holy Spirit as well.

There's also some stuff on Ifilm but that's blocked if you're on campus.

Hinn saying Jesus will physically appear on the platform of his crusades

Hinn saying you don't have Jesus you are everything Jesus was and is

This is supposedly the Dateline NBC investigation of Hinn
but I can't get it to work. Does it work for you?
Dateline Video

Just in case you didn't believe the Holy Ghost Machine gun thing:
audio of Holy Ghost machine gun quote

Here's the curse he pronounced on anyone who is against his
"annointing". Note the weird voice.

trl wednesday on my iconoclasm

2006-05-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've got so much material backed up from finals week just waiting to be posted. I'm interested in what you would like to see next. Cast your vote in the comments.

video:
Pat Robertson's latest gaffe
Benny Hinn's Wife Video
lady punch video
marriage proposal video
the worst music video ever

written posts:
Note to parents regarding the film Failure to Launch with Sarah Jessica Parker
Pastor's wife
emerging church
Christianity Today magazine and the assasin
The gifts of Indiana
NAMB controversy
The new SBC president (very funny)
The new head of Girlscouts
No speedos at Southern
The fat pastor and the clerk
Why people don't get married
The Power Team
Minister fails to make the sexiest Occupations list again

I'll stop there. Some of these aren't complete but I will finish them if there is sufficient interest. Cast your vote now.

25th anniversary of superbook

2006-05-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

If you're a long-time reader of my blog you know that I liked the animated series Superbook as a child.

The series was a revolutionary attempt by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) to break into Japan with the gospel. Superbook was one of the first animes and it became one of the most popular shows in Japan and during its television run, the Bible became one of the best-selling books.

If you watch it, keep in mind that it was created for very young children, specifically Japanese children with no knowledge of Bible stories and as such, they are very simple. Don't expect a detailed explanation of the symbolism or an exposition of covenant theology. There are a few episodes with Jesus and you probably know that I'm against icons but it's been a long time since I have watched Superbook so I don't know if there are any theological inaccuracies or anything un-reformed. I haven't watched much Veggie Tales, probably because I like neither vegies nor VeggieTales but I would imagine that Superbook is much better than the few moments of mostly annoying nonsense with some silly mockeries of Bible stories mixed in that I have seen in VeggieTales.

The only Christian holiday in Japan is Christmas and the local missionary the project worked with thought that people would be most receptive to the ideas at this time so the series built up to the birth of Christ which was broadcast during December so as to coincide with interest in the west and the Christmas holiday. The series has been successful around the world and has even been able to break into muslim and atheist countries.

Here's a few random thoughts I had after watching some of the videos some two decades later.
*Eve should never have a 40 year old cigarette smoker voice
*The robot's voice is also very annoying
*You can tell someone is bad if they have less than three teeth
*A Mexican bulfight guitar strumming song means something big is about to happen
*Joy's skirt is quite short
* I never noticed it before
*I like they way they try to intervene in history and are always foiled
*Goliath was a poet
*What kind of last name is Peepers?
*I'm curious what the marriage episode is about
*When I was a kid, the devil's highwater purple pants were hilarious

This video tells how it all began:
25th anniversary of Superbook

"In addition, some additional edits were necessary for the English dubbed version to make the episodes conform to more conservative (in comparison to Japan) American broadcast standards."
A rather unfortunate scene from Superbook

video:
closing them (Japanese)
opening theme
closing theme

I think they redid the song
audio:
opening song
closing song

You can buy the videos and dvd's at:
christian book.com (cheaper)
amazon

you can see some short videos of the show at the main website:
superbookkids.com

from wikipedia:
Superbook (Anime Oyako Gekijo; Animated Parent and Child Theater) is an anime television series produced by Tatsunoko Productions in Japan in conjunction with the Christian Broadcasting Network in the United States. The series chronicled the events of the Bible's Old and New Testaments in its 52 episode run. The first 26 episodes aired from October 1, 1981 to March 29, 1982. The series returned as Superbook II (Pasocon Travel Tanteidan; Personal Computer Travel Detectives) with 26 episodes to air from April 4, 1983 to September 26, 1983. Between both series in the first run was the companion series The Flying House. The series was broadcast on TV Tokyo, CBN Cable (now ABC Family), and in syndication. Episodes are available on both VHS and DVD, (http://www.breakthroughgaming.com has links to the videos and DVD's). It was previously seen on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, but is currently off the schedule. It can now be seen on TBN's "Smile of a Child" network.

In the United States, Superbook was the first animated series with a Christian religious theme to go into syndication since Davey and Goliath in the 1960s. It is likely that many young viewers who watched the series during its initial run in the 1980s were unaware of its Japanese origins, since anime had not yet achieved the widespread popularity in the U.S. that it now enjoys and since CBN removed all Japanese names from the English credits aside from a credit for Tatsunoko for the animation production.

Superbook was criticized by religious conservatives in the United States (many of whom probably were also unaware that the show was Japanese in origin) for "condensing" or "glossing over" the Bible stories it portrayed and for its "jerky" animation style which is nevertheless characteristic of anime TV series in Japan (which generally have much smaller budgets than feature films such as Hayao Miyazaki's works). Many also believed that introducing modern characters (two children and a walking, talking robot) into the stories would confuse and disappoint young readers who would be disappointed not to find such modern characters in the real Bible. Nevertheless, the series has was a huge global success, translated into over 30 languages, and is frequently used as a tool to introduce children and other new Christians to the basics of the Christian faith. Believing that Japanese children would be most responsive to Bible stories and that the best way to reach them was through the media of anime and manga, CBN enlisted Tatsunoko's help in creating the series to help drive Bible sales in Japan, a country where Christians are a minority of the population. It was successful in both audience ratings and in helping to increase Bible sales, although it gets only a brief mention on Tatsunoko's list of works on its Web site. CBN originally did not plan to release Superbook outside of Japan since anime was not considered marketable in the West at the time, but reportedly the network was encouraged by a positive response to the series at a convention in France and went on to prepare the English-dubbed version that would be aired on U.S. television in 1982.

To this day, the series has a loyal and devoted fan following around the world, among adults who grew up watching it as well as youngsters. Although, as noted, the original intended audience for Superbook was Japan, the series found even greater success in Christian countries in Africa like Kenya where it aired on National TV. The show was very popular in Kenya. Another African country in which Superbook has become quite popular is the predominantly Muslim nation of Senegal; it was reportedly the first Christian-themed program ever broadcast on Senegalese television. In the Ukraine, the animated series inspired a live-action Barney and Friends-style children's program titled Superbook Club (with the robot Gizmo, or "Robik" in Ukrainian, as the mascot), and there are also several Superbook Club music albums aimed at children.

The series began at the home of a young boy named Christopher Peepers (original name: Sho Azuka) who discovers the magical Bible "Superbook" (Timebook) that speaks and sends him and his toy robot Gizmo (Zenmaijikake) back in time to the early events of the Old Testament. Gizmo can walk and talk, but only for the duration of the adventure (and he still needs to be wound up regularly). Chris' best friend Joy (Azusa Yamato in Japanese) accompanies him on his adventures into a time and place that only "Superbook" can help them see for themselves.

In the first episode, Chris and Joy were cleaning the attic for Chris's father (a somewhat eccentric college professor) when they noticed an old book glowing. The children tried to open the book, but they couldn't open it no matter how hard they pulled. The book promptly opened on its own, shining a blinding light around Chris's bedroom, and started to speak before whisking the children back in time to the Garden of Eden to experience the story of Adam and Eve.

In Superbook II, which took place several years after the first series, the book fell unto a computer keyboard, giving anybody the ability to see into the past from Christopher's home via the monitor. Ruffles, Chris' dog, managed to get lost in time, prompting Gizmo and Chris' cousin Uri (Hisashi in the original Japanese) to search for her. Chris and Joy kept watch and control of the computer from the present. The older children also had a hard time trying to keep what happened a secret from Chris's parents.

The first season of Superbook featured chiefly stories from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), although a few episodes dealt with the life and ministry of Jesus Christ and the season finale episode was about the conversion of Saint Paul of Tarsus. The episodes in the first season were chiefly one-shot stories, with no overarching "plot" aside from Chris and Joy learning valuable life lessons from their travels in the Superbook. Season One could be considered a "Cliff's Notes" version of Bible stories, as some condensation or editing of stories was necessary in order to fit them into half-hour episodes and make them suitable for young viewers. In addition, some additional edits were necessary for the English dubbed version to make the episodes conform to more conservative (in comparison to Japan) American broadcast standards.

The episodes in the second season focused solely on Old Testament stories, and Season Two added more detail to some stories already covered in Season One (for example, the stories of Abraham and Joseph). Likewise, The Flying House was a more in-depth look at the life of Jesus and other events from the Christian Scriptures (New Testament).

3 new classes for fall semester

2006-05-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

There are three new courses just now being added to the Fall 2006 schedule.
The courses are being taught by the new faculty that are coming on board in
August: two in “theology and the arts/culture” by Steve Halla, Ph.D. and one
in “theology and the law” by Peter J. Richards, JD, PhD. Here are the
course titles and descriptions of the newly added courses:

28021 Christianity and the Visual Arts: A study of the relationship
between Christianity and the visual arts. The course includes a biblical
perspective of the visual arts, the use of the visual arts in the history of the
church, important artists in the Christian tradition, issues and concerns in
contemporary art, and visual art in the life and ministry of the local church.
Taught by Dr. Steve Halla.

28022 Jesus and Modern Culture: A study and critique of modern
portrayals of Jesus in popular culture. The course includes Jesus and world
religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism), Jesus and modern
theology, Jesus and Friedrich Nietzsche, Jesus and modern art, Jesus and
film, and Jesus and popular music. Taught by Dr. Steve Halla.

28030 History of Christian Political and Legal Thought: An historical
survey of two millennia of Christian thought on the rule of law, the political
order, church and state, rights and duties of individuals and institutions.
Taught by Dr. Peter J. Richards.

chris rock on taxes

2006-05-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

I wouldn't have thought I would agree with Chris Rock on political issues, but I actually do. It's weird but when I read this, I can hear his voice saying it.

expletives removed by Legalism Inc.

The messed up thing about taxes is, we don't "pay" taxes. The government TAKES them. You get your check and Money is GONE! It was not no option! That ain't a payment thats a JACK!

Every week they take money out of your check, then they want some MORE money in April. What kind of gangster **** is that?! Why didn't they just take the money they needed in the first place? Instead of coming to me like a damn crackhead saying, "Remember that money I borrowed before? I need a little bit more." UNCLE SAM IS ON THE PIPE!

The worst part about it, we pay taxes for **** we don't even use:

Fire Department: My house ain't burning! I keep the sprinklers on 24 hours a day. Gotta nice MOIST house!

Police Department: I never called a cop in my life! If something go down I have a GUN. I'll handle it my damn self. And if I do ever need the police I'll be happy to write them a check: "Somebody broke into my house. Here you go"

School Tax: I don't have no kids!! Why am I paying school tax?! I know some of yall got kids...But do you think I give a damn how dumb YOUR kids are? I don't care if your kid is in 10th grade with coloring books. I wear condoms for a reason...trying to save a few dollars. When I get some kids then I'll care and then I'll pay! But now I have to pay for everyone else's kids to go to school.

Social Security Tax: Why are black people paying Social Security? You won't get the money til I'm 65... Meanwhile, the average black man dies at 54. Hypertension, high blood pressure, LAPD, Crazy white boys...something will get your ***! Black people should be able to get Social Security at 30. How they goin to force you to save your own damn money? They should ask us if we want them to take Social Security. A white man should come to your job and say "would you like us to save money for you when u get old?" NO, I want the **** NOW!

I use to work at McDonalds making minimum wage. When you make minimum wage, that means the job doesn't give a damn about you. They don't care about your Christmas, they don't care if your kid gots shoes on. Boss talkin bout "Hey, how you doing?" You know how the **** I'm doing! I'm doing BAD, thats how I'm doing. How can I be doing anything with this lil bit of money u paying me? When you make minimum wage that's like the job saying "Hey, If we could pay you less, we would...But its against the law!"

I would get $200 a week and they would take out $50 in Taxes. Thats a lot of money if you only making $200. Thats like kicking Wednesday and Thursday in the ***. What do you get with that $50? All the free street light in world. As far as I'm concerned, give everybody a candle! Just give me back my $50.

separated at birth: Joel Osteen & Tim Allen

2006-05-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D:

tulip scare: the committee on un-baptist activities

2006-05-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

inspiration: motopolitico

The first person to guess the locations on McCarthy's map gets 5 perseverance points.

i have been given fabulous powers

2006-05-16T22:10:00.000-07:00

note: read post before this first so it will make sense.

After reading my last post, some of you are wondering, "What is a homosexual rite of passage?"

This video is appropriate, just don't drink anything while watching it.

The actual line really says, "Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me..."

a rose by any other name. . .

2006-05-14T23:13:00.000-07:00

A Case of Mistaken Identity

I thought I had seen a book in the bookstore by Mrs. Mohler, Director of the Seminary Wives Institute (and our seminary president's wife) so later at home I went to look it up. . .

MZ. MARIE Mohler wrote another book also but I can't bring myelf to put it up here. It's on amazon if you must. (I warned you)

Mrs. Mohler spells Mary with a "Y". She wrote parts 12, 27, 42, 57, 72, & 87 in Devotions for Ministry Wives and has written a booklet called Modeling Modesty, which is available in the campus bookstore if you would like hard coppies.

Please add links if she has written something I have missed.

pentecostal sect bans sponge bob

2006-05-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

taken from allzah.com

Pentecostal Sect Bans Cartoon Figure

Poplar Bluff, Mo. – Members of the Pentecostal Church of Financial Miracles and Endless Health Benefits believe they have identified ‘The Beast’ from the book of Revelation, and it is none other than cartoon character Sponge Bob Square Pants. “It is plainly described in Revelation 13:1,” explains minister Bob Dowdy, “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea.” Growing softer and more deliberate for emphasis, Dowdy continues, “If you watch his show, this Sponge Bob comes from the sea!”

Sponge Bob Square Pants is an extremely popular children’s cartoon, and his likeness can be found on countless products and toys. Along with pals Patrick, Squidward, and Sandy the Squirrel, Sponge Bob is a cornerstone of the Nickelodeon Network.

However, his status as a product marketing point also confirms the suspicions of the church. “Revelation 13:17 - And that no man might buy or sell, save that he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name,” quotes Dowdy, “I was over to the Big G last month and practically everything in that store had a picture of Sponge Bob on it. I was in the dairy section buying some cheese, and my wife Nola Jean comes running up to me waiving a pair of underpants with a picture of this Bob Squarepants on them. You almost can’t buy anything without his image on it. About all I can buy is groceries with the Big G brand on them.”

To get their word out, the church has been holding monthly ‘Ban Bob’ parties for the children. “We tell the children to be careful of Sponge Bob’s power, and we destroy and burn his graven images to rid them of his foul influence,” explains Minister Dowdy.

However, this service has caused some friction with neighbors, including other Christian denominations. The Reverend recounts, “A fellow from down the block, who goes to one of those Southern Baptist churches, pulled up in my driveway and told me if I ever speak to his son again, he’ll kick my asteroid. Only he didn’t say asteroid. I guess Satan has evil minions everywhere. That’s what comes from allowing that New American Standard version of the Bible in your church. We’re King James Bible only, ‘cause if it was good enough for Paul and Silas it is good enough for me.”

Deacon Lester ‘Punkin’ Holstein admits, “Now Pastor Dowdy may have been wrong when he said Pope John-Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Mikhail Gorbachev were the Anti-Christ before, but he just has too much evidence to be wrong this time."

finals finale finally finalized

2006-05-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

Glad exams are done with. Now maybe I can celebrate at the:

This is the public library near campus. I don't know if straight, white, republican, capitalist, complementarian, Southern Baptist, males without dreds are allowed at this. Will there be body painting, drum circles, and doobies? Probably not. It'll be VBS for wiccans.

Perhaps I should take some copies of this or maybe this. Thanks for smallpox and floods mother nature.

I will be posting more frequently now too.
(I know this event already took place.)

stupid japanese subway inventions part XIII

2006-05-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

You supply the caption:

stupid inventions index

stupid inventions index

2006-05-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

inflatable church

2006-05-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

The church that's full of hot air!

Are you a wanna be mega church but you can't afford the giant office building on 6,000 acres with a curious absence of crosses or anything religious?

Maybe you're an old line church and your building program has got you down? Tired of preaching about tithing? Looking for that old-school tent revival feel?

Maybe you're emerging and you want to take it to the next level! Act now before another emerger in your area gets it first!*

Willow Creek approved!!!**

See Airquee Inflatables Inc. for details

Also comes with pipe organ, sacrament table, and pulpit.
Inflatable pub also available for Presbyterians, see above link.

If you blow it, they will come!

*Emerging churches should not use candles inside structures.
**Not actually approved by Willow Creek Association.

book has too much adult content for seminary students

2006-05-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

Our filter is a little too aggressive sometimes.

I thought maybe it was just the passage (Micah 6) I was trying to look up, but it’s a pretty tame passage. I read it again and then I thought it might be because of, “I redeemed you from the house of bondage;” but the whole site is blocked.

If you're on campus, try looking up Genesis 2. If you’re not on campus, here is an image of what you would see:
Perhaps the naked frolicking in the garden part is a bit too much for seminary students.

Micah 6:8 is a good verse:
(it’s in KJV cause I memorized it that way)

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
And what doth the LORD require of thee,
But to do justly,
And to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?

bible errata

2006-05-05T23:06:00.000-07:00

This may rock your world, but the "infallible" King James Bible had errors over a dozen times in its history. In the 1632 version, in Exodus 20:14 the seventh commandment read, "Thou shalt commit adultery." The culprits were fined a lifetime's wages.

These versions are highly collectible but are usually out of reach for those of ordinary means as only a few examples of each error may exist and most are quite old. Errors were immediately caught and erroneous versions were often recalled or destroyed by the public. Errata could lead to crippling disgrace and civil punishments for the publishers.

Quit licking your lips you liberals. One word got left out in the whole thing, it was quickly found and now it’s shocking. Look elsewhere for your feeble disqualification schemes.

Manuscript Bibles

The Book of Kells, circa 800

* The genealogy of Jesus, which starts at Luke 3:23 has an extra ancestor for Jesus,

* Matthew 10:34b should read “I came not to send peace, but the sword”. However rather than “gladius” which means “sword”, Kells has “gaudius” meaning “joy”. Rendering the verse: “I came not [only] to send peace, but joy”.

Printed Bibles
Coverdale

* “Bug Bible” In Myles Coverdale's 1535 Bible was known as the "Bug Bible" because Psalms 91:5 read: “Thou shall not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night”. This error was repeated in the 1539 Great Bible. The KJAV used the word "terror".

The Great Bible

The Great Bible of King Henry VIII of England had this error:

* “Treacle Bible” In the 1549 edition, Jeremiah 8:22 was translated “Is there no treacle in Gilead?”

Geneva

* "Breeches Bible" 1560: A Geneva edition mistranslated Genesis 3:7 as "making themselves breeches out of fig leaves." The accepted meaning is aprons.

* "Place-makers' Bible" 1562: the second edition of the Geneva Bible, Matthew 5:9 reads "Blessed are the placemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

KJAV

In various printings of the King James Version of the Bible, some of the more famous examples have been given their own names. Among them are:

* "Wicked Bible" or "Adulterous Bible"' 1632: omits an important "not" from Exodus 20:14, making the seventh commandment read "Thou shalt commit adultery." The printers were fined £300 (a lifetime's wages) and most of the copies were recalled immediately. Only 11 copies are known to exist today.

* "Unrighteous Bible" or "Wicked Bible" 1653: another edition carrying this title omits a "not" before the word "inherit", making I Corinthians 6:9 read "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?..." In addition, Romans 6:13 reads "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness into sin..." where it should read "unrighteousness".

* "Printers Bible" bef. 1702: Psalm 119:161 reads "Princes have persecuted me without cause." The first word was changed, possibly by a typesetter, to Printers.

* "Vinegar Bible": 1717 the heading to Luke 20 reads "Parable of the Vinegar" instead of "Parable of the Vineyard."

* "Murderer's Bible" 1801: edition in which "murmurers" is printed as "murderers", making Jude 16 read: "These are murderers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage."

* "To-remain Bible" 1805: in Galatians 4:29 an editor had written in "to remain" (i.e. stet) in the margin, as an answer to whether a comma should be deleted. The note inadvertently became part of the text, making the edition read "But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit to remain, even so it is now."

* "Discharge Bible" 1806: "discharge" replaces "charge" making I Timothy 5:21 read "I discharge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality."

* "Standing Fishes Bible" 1806: "fishes" replaced "fishers" making Ezekiel 47:10 read "And it shall come to pass, that the fishes shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many."

* "Ears To Ear Bible" 1810: edition which makes Matthew 13:43 read: "...Who has ears to ear, let him hear." The correct phrase should be "ears to hear".

* "Wife-hater Bible" 1810: "wife" replaces "life" in this edition, making Luke 14:26 redundantly read "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own wife also, he cannot be my disciple."

* "Rebecca's Camels Bible" 1823: "camels" replaces "damsels" in one instance, making Genesis 24:61 read "And Rebecca arose, and her camels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebecca and went his way."

Fictional Bible errata

* The "Buggre Alle This Bible" of 1651 appeared in the novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. The typesetter replaced Ezekiel 48:5 with a rant complaining about his job. It also has three extra verses at the end of Genesis 3 about the loss of the flaming sword by the angel Aziraphale, added by Aziraphale himself, a character in the novel.

* In the UK television show Red Dwarf, an obscure fundamentalist Christian sect on Io based its worship on a Bible wherein 1 Corinthians 13:13 read "Faith, hop, and charity, and the greatest of these is hop." The sect is consequently known as "Seventh Day Advent Hoppists" and members spend every Sunday hopping. Arnold Judas Rimmer's parents were members of this sect and raised him accordingly, but he appears to have left the faith.

source:wikipedia

aaron's rod that (ear)budded

2006-05-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

truth in marriage

2006-05-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

***WARNING: THE WEDDING DRESS FEATURED IN THIS POST DOES NOT MEET OFFICIAL GUIDELINES.

HETEROSEXUAL MALES EXPOSED TO THIS MATERIAL WILL MORPH INTO LICENTIOUS BARBARIANS.***

Donna is considering this cake topper for their wedding cake.

I told her she should go with this one instead. She pointed out the fingernail scratches under the groom's fingers.

I'd like to take this to a wedding and put it on the cake when no one was looking.

Update: This picture should not be construed as representative of Jason and Donna.

excommunicate me

2006-05-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

Please excomunicate me if I ever preach about wedding dress guidelines. I don't cruise girltalk but I got this from nick, who does.

Here is the appropriate attire for a woman of God:

Protestant:

Catholic:

Muslim:

seminary student:

happy may day commies!

2006-04-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s May Day again and even though your children are not allowed to have anything to do with the true meaning of Christmas or Easter, they will have all manner of leftist rubbish crammed down their throats around this holiday. This is not widespread but has been happening for a long time. When I was a kid, Christmas and Easter were beginning to be sterilized but even then, May Day was the chance for the pinkos in the public schools to celebrate their own religion: Socialism/Communism. It’s the ultimate public school holiday: pagan and Marxist.

Children are made to study historical occupations with harsh working conditions and only the most extreme horror stories of accident and mistreatment are told so as to make the child think that these practices were common place. So, because in the history of the world, people have had to work hard, communism is good. Whatever.

You have to sing a bunch of stupid songs with leftist themes. Most of the songs we sang in school had some kind of emotional leftist message. I remember thinking how dumb they all were but I didn’t understand why until I was much older. So much of my public school education was like this and even as children we could see how stupid and unworkable it all was.

Occasionally there were songs celebrating farming or American heroes that at the time the leftists did not have the guts to remove from the curricula and it made me enjoy them that much more that they weren’t stupid. We made up our own versions of these songs and our own songs also. One I can remember is to the tune of the “This land is your land, this land is my land” song. I suppose that has something to do with being against private property or we’re all some big happy hippy family living in a van in America.

This land is my land, this isn’t your land,
I’ve got a shotgun and you don’t got one,
If you don’t get off, I’ll blow your head off,
This land was made for only me.

Strangely enough, the actual song is anti-private property, specifically mentioning no trespassing signs. Woody Guthrie (another commie) stole the music from the Baptist hymn, “When the World’s on Fire.” Some silly Canadians changed the words for Canada and I wouldn’t mind giving them the song in an exchange, if they would take back Neil Young, Celine Dion, Keanu Reeves, Alex Trebek, and Anvil Levigne.

I think every May Day I am going to send my kids to school in those shirts that say, “Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this dumb shirt” or “Communism has only killed 100 million, let’s give it another chance”. Well I don’t want to send them to public school but maybe they could go on May Day for solely antagonistic purposes.

May Day has its origins in paganism and the celebration of the end of the winter half of the year but it has been quite effectively co-opted by leftist movements. It’s still widely celebrated for its seasonal qualities in Northern Europe.

Personally, I’m not that concerned if someone wants to celebrate certain holidays that may be of pagan origin. They are bound up in the mystery of the ages and even if one wanted to, one couldn’t determine for certain which ones were appropriate. God is the author of the holiday, commanding and initiating numerous feasts and holidays and giving detailed instructions as to their celebration and meaning. Even the first Sabath is a sort of holiday and a continuous one throughout time. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul says that if someone invites you to a feast and you feel like going, partake but don’t engage in idolatry knowingly.

The reason we have Labor Day in the US is to prevent us from having May Day. In every other country, May Day is a big deal. There are a bunch of dirty commies out in the streets tearing the place up. President Grover Cleveland was afraid that if May 1st was made a holiday, the people would commemorate the Haymarket Riots so he supported the fledgling Labor Day movement.

In typical American fashion, he embraced a permanent lesser evil to thwart a temporary greater evil. There’s nothing quite like saving yourself from communism by embracing socialism. Thankfully crass commercialism has saved us by stripping this holiday of all meaning and replacing it with vacations, super sales, alcohol, and Crazy Larry’s Mattress Mart advertisements.

Lately Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May), a Mexican holiday has nearly destroyed May Day. It’s basically a day to go to Mexican restaurants and drink imported beer. Tomorrow, in a strange turn of events, the two will coincide in the illegal alien strike, reviving the leftist nature of May Day as well as possibly infusing a new meaning and greater significance into May Day for some of those with Mexican heritage in the US.

The origins of the leftist May Day have to do with shorter working days. Marx theorized that part of the working day is for the subsistence of the worker and the other for the owner of the capital, thus if the proletariat owned the means of production workers could work shorter days and weeks. You can read more about this in Das Kapital Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 10, Section 1. I’m not even joking, that’s where it is. Too bad for Marx, Capitalism was able to stop child labor and cut working hours beyond his wildest dreams.

The truth is that it is the government that is eating up all our labor. Tax Freedom Day is three days later this year so you’ll be working for the government for 116 days. You thought you worked for yourself didn’t you?

These figures do not portray the true situation as they do not allow for weekends and holidays. No one would work for 116 days straight. Were I to work 365 days a year, this would be accurate. Why allow for sleeping but not for weekends? There are about 261 or 262 working days in a year depending on leap year, holidays, etc. Thus 44.4% of our working days are taxed and we work until the 162nd day of the year, that is, June 11th for the Government. Which coincidentally was when President Roosevelt armed the Soviet Union in the Lend-Lease program with 14,795 aircraft and 7,056 tanks and in another stroke of genius gave 80 million Eastern Europeans and half of Europe to be brutally subjugated by Stalin. Which, in retrospect, was not such a good idea. This is another great example of embracing communism to stop socialism (German) or vice versa. These figures do not take into account the burden on the economy and further penalty paid by Americans in the form of fewer and lower quality jobs, lower pay, higher prices, and destruction of freedom.

One of my fond childhood memories of May Day is the maypole. Its origins are also pagan but have been co-opted. It is thought of as a fitting symbol for the ideals of Marxism. People are working together in harmony to produce something greater than they could produce alone. I agree, nothing says dictatorship of the proletariat like forcing persons you have power over (children), to associate with those they do not wish to associate with (the opposite sex and their cooties), to learn useless information (pole weaving), to do work they don’t want to do (maypole weaving), that produces nothing useful (weaved maypole) must be un-done(un weaved), for no pay.

pat robertson has a race horse, christian liberty and gambling

2006-04-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Since it's derby time here in the land of Colonel Sanders and baseball bats, I thought a race horse story would be appropriate.

It was discovered that Pat Robertson owns a half-million dollar racehorse.

I don't know if Pat Robertson has condemned gambling or not but it's hard to imagine that he hasn't at some point. I don't necessarily agree with this article, especially the comparison of prostitution to gambling, although it is a rather amusing analogy. I just think it's an interesting article.

Somehow, growing up Baptist, I picked up Sola Scriptura but not "Scripture and Baptist Tradition Alone", which I have called it in earlier posts. I don't know how I came to be this way. I seem to have a logical mind and enjoy debating. I guess it's just a gift of God. This makes it really difficult to be fundamentalist in reading and applying the Bible to one's life. The prohibition of gambling was something I questioned as a kid but I never received a good answer. Once I found a tract about gambling in one of those “tract racks” in the back of church. Did anyone else have those?

The tract was pretty lame. If I remember correctly, the only scripture reference it had was about the execution detail casting lots for Christ’s robe. This certainly seems bad and it went on and on about how terrible that was. The crucifixion was terrible and the actions of the soldiers were a further humiliation of Christ. I think the significance of this verse is the trivial manner in which they behaved, not recognizing just whom it was on the cross and that it was the pivotal point in history. To use this as a verse about gambling is to miss the point entirely.

Something I always think about in situations like this is if God thinks gambling is a sin why aren’t there any scriptures specifically forbidding it? He told Israel to put tassels on their garments and what to do about mold but he forgot this? Certainly not. I think what we are left with is that it can be wrong when it violates other laws, for instance, those requiring provision for one’s household.

One way to make gambling a sin is to make the same argument used for alcohol in that there is no moderation and all gambling leads toward gambling addiction and impoverished families not to mention mafia debts that shylocks come to collect. Anyone who has ever gambled knows that this is absurd because a lot of times it’s not really that fun and there’s too much freakin math involved. I don’t mean it’s not fun because you lose I mean it’s just not that exciting.

One could get addicted to ugly ebay lamps and waste that money which one’s family required for sustenance, but that does not make ugly ebay lamps a sin.

Once as a child I got in pretty big trouble for “gambling”. The classified paper, the Dandy Dime had a football contest. One had to pick the winners of the games that week and there were cash prizes. I languished at the bottom for a few weeks picking which mascot animal would win in a fight. This strategy proved effective in predicting the results of Seahawks games but failed miserably in Bears games. Then I started using win/loss records and did a little better. Then, I found out that sports experts and mathematical geniuses calculated the odds for every game in something called a “spread”. I also found a couple old guys that had nothing better to do but watch football. This one guy was almost never wrong.

Then one day First Baptist Church’s preacher’s son won the football pool and his name was published in the Dandy Dime! Good times.

Let me remind you that this was not actually gambling as no money was put in. I had nothing to lose but my misspent youth, oh, and maybe some privileges. I was pretty excited and it was a significant amount of money in those days and children were forbidden to work in official capacities and the only way to get work was to work un-officially for old people from the church that thought a quarter was a fair wage for hours of work. (think of that chicken farmer scene from Napoleon Dynamite)

Let me also remind you that spanking with a leather belt was used as a means of discipline rather than a sexual practice in those days.

I like to go to the Westminster Larger Catechism for difficult questions like this because it is usually quite clear once one understands the meaning of the older English words. In question 141 it asks, “What are the duties required in the eighth commandment?” Part of the answer commends “frugality” and says, “…to procure, preserve, and further the wealth and outward estate of others, as well as our own.”

Question 142 asks, “What are the sins forbidden in the eighth commandment?” It answers, “…prodigality, wasteful gaming; and all other ways whereby we do unduly prejudice our own outward estate, and defrauding ourselves of the due use and comfort of that estate which God hath given us.”

Particularly relevant to Kentucky is question 142’s prohibition against “manstealing”. So all you hoochies out there consider yourself warned.

I found a fascinating article on gambling at the Q&A section of the OPC's website. It seems that there is some disagreement over what the catechism actually means! Does it prohibit only “wasteful gaming” and not other gaming?

The article says that Richard Baxter (you may know him as the 1600’s author of The Reformed Pastor) considered this a matter of Christian liberty and laid out some circumstances where it might be allowed. One of them was in the case of betting that another’s assertion was not true. He seems to think it is a useful device to deter persons from making false assertions. I remember doing this all the time as a kid because children are constantly saying outrageous things. If you don’t think calculating the chance of something happening is a sin, (and those creationist defense guys better hope it isn’t) I have calculated the odds of actually being paid on these childhood bets at one in 50 trillion. I think I remember being told not to say I bet you're wrong, etc. because, “We don’t bet.”

I think it is appropriate to study these matters as they are useful for conscience’s sake and in the ministry it is likely that you will be asked these questions of practical morality. Will you have an answer?

update on nku prof. that attacked pro-life display

2006-04-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Earlier I brought you the
story of a professor at Northern Kentucky University that worked herself and her students into a liberal frenzy in class and ran out and attacked a pro-life display.

It seems that one girl has called the group and apologized, saying she felt intimidated into those actions.

The University is stalling for time and hoping everyone will forget. They probably won't do anything but give her early retirement or a semester off. I fail to see how these would be punishments. As far as the legal system, my bet is that they will get off totally or with a slap on the wrist such as community service. The best community service Dr. Jacobsen could do is to not be a psycho.

Yes, NKU parents, you are paying all that money for your kids to learn stuff like this in class. The reason we can't speak our own language anymore is because this is what English departments do nowadays instead of teaching English.

This is from the Cincinnati Enquirer,which is the big daily in Cincinnati.

Prof, others charged in cross case

Jacobsen, students accused of trashing NKU lawn display

BY KAREN GUTIÉRREZ | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - A professor and six students at Northern Kentucky University were charged Wednesday with misdemeanors related to the April 12 destruction of an anti-abortion display on campus.

Sally Jacobsen of the literature and language department, has been charged with criminal mischief, theft by unlawful taking and criminal solicitation. The third charge relates to evidence that she encouraged students to participate in the destruction, County Attorney Justin Verst said.

The six students, who range in age from 21 to 27, were charged with criminal mischief and theft by unlawful taking.

The theft charge is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $500 fine.

The criminal mischief and solicitation charges are class B misdemeanors punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $250 fine.

Verst said additional students might be charged as their identities become known.

Four hundred crosses representing aborted fetuses were pulled from the ground and thrown in trash cans around campus.

A sign explaining the temporary display, which had been approved by university officials as an expression of free speech, was also removed.

Jacobsen told reporters that she had "invited" students in her graduate-level British literature course to exercise free-speech by destroying the display.

She said she was offended by the simulated cemetery, which she considered intimidating and harmful to women who might be considering abortions. NKU's campus newspaper, the Northerner, published photos of Jacobsen dismantling part of the display.

Since the incident became public, NKU's president has received hundreds of e-mails from throughout the country condemning the professor's actions. She was placed on leave last week, and substitutes were assigned to her classes for the rest of the semester.

Jacobsen has received a large amount of hate mail, her lawyer, Margo Grubbs of Fort Wright, said.

She had no idea there would be so much fallout, and she is sorry for the hurt she caused, Grubbs said.

"She never wanted to harm her university or her students at all," Grubbs said. "Twenty-seven years of her life have been at this university."

Jacobsen will plead not guilty, Grubbs said. Grubbs said the dismantling of the display doesn't amount to a criminal act.

"The intent was just an expression of freedom of speech," Grubbs said. "She saw harm coming from it, and she was just expressing her attitude towards the harm."

The six students are Michelle Cruey, Katie Nelson, Heather Nelson, Stephanie Horton, Sara Keebler and Laura Caster. A court date was set for May 11.

NKU sophomore Katie Walker, president of the Right to Life group responsible for the display, said one of the students called her to apologize a day after the vandalism. She could not recall the student's name.

"She was very upset about the whole thing. She said she kind of felt intimidated into those actions, and she felt horrible about it."

Walker said she appreciated the call but still felt that all those involved should face some consequences. The faculty member's actions were especially grievous, she said.

"It wasn't just theft. It wasn't just vandalism. It was the violation of a right we hold sacred," Walker said, referring to free speech. "That kind of behavior needs to have repercussions."

Verst said that based on the evidence presented by NKU police, he would have brought charges regardless of the Right to Life group's position.

"I thought it was pretty clear-cut. Obviously, there's strong feelings on both sides as to the issue involved, but the subject matter of the signs didn't play into my decision."

Kent Kelso, NKU's dean of students, said the university will wait until the court process is complete before deciding disciplinary action against the students.

t4gcon piper laugh counter

2006-04-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

benny hinn's Holy Ghost machine gun located

2006-04-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

Louisville -Thursday
T4GCON attendees breathed a sigh of relief as it was announced today that Benny Hinn’s Holy Ghost machine gun has been found.

The weapon had been declared missing after an audit of police evidence lockers, adding to the hightened state of concern as the Arminian Threat Level had been raised to red in preparation for the conference. It was confiscated after a hunting accident in which John McArthur, President of Master's Seminary, was shot with the weapon.

Auditors said that the weapon had "crept in unawares" to a different area of the evidence room. Apparently it somehow found its way to stacks of currency confiscated in a narcotics seizure. A police officier noted, "Apparently the thing has a real taste for money! We just found it curled up in a pile of currency. When we pulled it out it seemed to not want to let go of the money, strangest thing I've ever seen."

Hinn has repeatedly asked that the Holy Ghost machine gun be returned, "That was uh, a rather unfortunate, uh, accident. He shouldn't have gotten in the way of God's annointed. They must return Benny's property at once! God will send fire down and consume you for impeding the work of his annointed, Benny Hinn."

Master's Seminary officials had been worried that the presence of so many charismatics and the potential proximity of the weapon could cause flashbacks of the incident and worst case, another "intense momentary memory recall of previously studdied languages", (the term employees of the seminary are required to use in reference to the event).

t4gcon booby prizes

2006-04-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

If you're reading this, you are either truly dedicated reading in your spare time after the conference, didn't make it to the Together for the Gospel conference, you're feeling the sting of T4GCON's gender exclusion and lapsing back into your feminist days, or you're in the last category of don't really care. Let me tell you, Louisville is an exciting place to be right now, but I'll quit rubbing it in.

The purpose of this post is to tip you off that some of what's going on is already available on the internet and you can have it right now for free.

R. C. Sproul's message at Southern Seminary Wednesday, Holiness and Justice is now up. Maybe you have been wondering, "Why isn't R. C. Sproul's sermon up on the chapel sermons page yet?" It's not on the chapel sermons page. It's at the gheens lectures page. I don't know if this is on it but he started out saying, "Open your New Genieva Study Bibles to page xxx." That was hilarious. I didn't bring mine that day but after that, I wished I would have.

The chapel was packed out. I was hoping that the lack of space would force me to sit uncomfortably close to what would turn out to be my future wife but apparently this was not part of God's sovereign plan. My mind usually wanders a bit during sermons but today I was especially focused. You could have heard a pin drop in there. I really like his annecdotes because I can't see from a mile away what's going to happen. Rather than just being a weak metaphor, his allegory greatly contributed to overall understanding of the theme. He used several difficult passages in which God strikes people down,including Aaron's son's strange fires.

People are always saying, "That's not fair," and asking questions, especially of the Reformed, about how God can be just and merciful. I got that strange feeling I get when I hear something that resolves a tension, makes total sense, and seems a bit obvious but was hidden from me before by my own foolish notions or a swarming cloud of Arminian confusion that follows me. I'll try to find a picture of it.

President Mohler said that he had heard this sermon years ago and that it was very meaningful too him. I'm glad he asked R. C. to do this one. This sermon is well worth your time.

I expect some of Dever's lectures to sound similar to this one that he gave at Southern in 2002 called, "The Evangelical Church, Richard Sibbes[,] and the sufficiency of the Gospel." It's from back in the RealAudio days so you'll need some type of Real player or an mp3 player that does .rm's. If you have to get one find an old version and not one of the newer ones because they don't work as well, are only for XP, and have too much extra junk you don't want.

You probably already know this but Tim Challies is live blogging the conference. I expect things like this to be a few posts of incomplete notes after the fact but that is not the case at all. He is taking excellent notes and they are posted immediately.

Session Three - Al Mohler: Preaching with the Culture in View
Sessiont Two - Ligon Duncan: Preaching from the Old Testament
Session One - Mark Dever: The Pastor's Understanding of His Own Roll

Timmy at Provocations and "Panties" has a couple pics up and has set up a flickr group which already has some 30 photos.

They said that all of this will be available on DVD and .mp3 at some point so you'll have access to it you will just miss out on not having a place to sit, seeing the charismatics get clappy happy, herding like cattle for 20 minutes trying to get out of the building. Seriously, it is very encourageing to see that we're not alone and that there are other reformed pastors there. I would guess that a lot of them are far away from eachother and can feel pretty alone sometimes. There are pastors here from all over the world.

I was thinking about putting a C. J. Mahaney Cry Counter up on my blog but I haven't been keeping track well enough and I decided it was too mean and after hearing him I really like this guy.

no juice at the first communion

2006-04-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this article. It sums up a lot of my favorite points about wine. I was saving it for passover but I had forgotten about it. There are a couple things I might critique in it but I thought you guys might have fun doing so in the comments. See you at T4GCON tomorrow.

UPI's Uwe Siemon-Netto
No juice at the first Communion

By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religious Affairs Editor
Friday, March 18, 2005

WASHINGTON – On the first-ever Maundy Thursday almost 2,000 years ago, Christ took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this whenever your drink, in remembrance of me." (1 Corinthians 11:25)

The cup contained Passover wine. Today, many U.S. pastors, especially the Rev. Jerry Falwell, condemn the drinking of such a beverage as sinful. Indeed, in most American churches, including sanctuaries of most mainline denominations, sweet grape juice is served instead of wine in shot glasses or plastic finger cups at Holy Communion.

Hence many ministers in the United States have a saying about vacant vessels or heads: There are "as empty as Jerry Falwell's wine cellar."

Type the words "wine or grape juice" into your Google search engine and you will get some 11,500 results, including many a learned treatise claiming that the liquid in Christ's cup in the Upper Room the night before his crucifixion was unfermented.

The trouble with this assertion is of course this: Nowhere in first-century Palestine could a drop of unfermented grape juice to be found at Passover time.

Like elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, grapes were picked in August or September. As soon as grapes were off the vine and crushed by the naked feet of slaves, back then, their juice would start bubbling and become more and more potent.

As the Christian History magazine reminds us in its current issue, it wasn't until the 19th century that an alcohol-free swill could be produced from the "blood of the vine," to use a Biblical term.

Inspired by teetotalism, Thomas Bramwell Welch, an American Methodist dentist, and his son Charles first pasteurized grape juice in 1869, heating it and thus killing the microorganisms that cause fermentation.

Since then, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and most other Protestants use Welch's grape juice or similar products for communion. Only Lutherans and Anglicans stuck to wine. Some of their congregations even serve up a particularly potent drink to give the "communicant a bit of a kick – or a little help to the Holy Spirit," as some Lutheran pastors like to say.

Roman Catholic churches have withheld the chalice from laity since the high Middle Ages and are only now slowly returning to the "common cup," which then of course contains real wine.

Eastern Orthodox congregations blend wine, bread and warm water to a mush in the chalice from which the priest communes the faithful with a spoon.

Of course, these last four faith groups believe that Christ is truly present in the wine, either trough transubstantiation (Catholic), meaning that by consecrating the wine has turned into is blood, or "consubstantiation" (Lutheran and Anglican), meaning that he is "truly present in, with and under" the two elements of the Eucharist, although bread still remains bread and wine remains wine.

To the orthodox, his real presence is a mystery, which they do not seek to explain.

The other Protestant churches either emphasize the commemorative aspect of Holy Communion or affirm, as Calvinists do, solely Christ's spiritual presence in the Lord's Supper.

Since the Welchs' invention of alcohol-free grape juice – by the way, the Greek word for juice, Khymos, is nowhere to be found in the New Testament – the wine faction and its opponents in the Christian Church have been at loggerheads, sometimes light-heartedly, sometimes in earnest.

Once I overheard the Anglican wife of the late David Reed, the much-lamented ultimate pulpit prince of Presbyterianism, rail against his denomination's devotion to juice: "Blasphemy!"

She was jesting, of course, but her banter had a serious core. By withholding wine from the faithful – and, worse, by calling its consumption a sinful act, as Jerry Falwell does – Protestant ministers open themselves to the charge of calling Jesus sinful, at least implicitly.

Thus they place themselves in line with those of Christ's hostile contemporaries who labeled him an "oinopotes," a wine souse. Jesus never refuted the charge that he was a "glutton and a drunkard." (Matthew 11:18-19)

Some Protestants theologians try to overcome this dilemma by claiming that the wine he offered to his disciples in the Upper Room was perhaps not grape juice but essentially no more than water containing perhaps 2.5 percent alcohol per volume.

However, any vintner will tell you that this is nonsense because such weak wine would never last from the fall to springtime; it would be vinegar, unworthy of being served at a Passover Seder.

Of course, the Bible warns against intoxication, saying it "takes away the understanding." (Hosea 4:11) "Wine is treacherous," the prophet Habakkuk cautions. And priests were forbidden to drink wine when on duty in the Temple.

But much more frequently Scripture's authors praise the wine, to wit Jesus Sirach who in the Book of Ecclesiasticus called it "one of the good things ... created for good people." (39:25-26)

"Go eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do," counsels the canonical Book of Ecclesiastes – not to be confused with the Apocryphal Ecclesiasticus – the people of Israel. (9:7)

Vineyards dotted ancient Palestine, where 150 varieties of grapes were grown in Old Testament days. So important was wine to agriculture then that specialists in viticulture were traded at three times the price of regular slaves working the land.

What modern medicine has only recently rediscovered was well known two millennia ago – wine had healing properties. In his parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus said that an injured man's wounds were treated with oil and wine. (Luke 10:34)

And the apostle Paul advises his readers to drink a little wine "for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments." (1Timothy 5:25)

But out of all Biblical narratives there is none where wine flows more lavishly than in story about Christ's first miracle at the wedding feast at Kana in Galilee; there he turned water from six stone jars into the best of wines.

This amount of wine is truly staggering. Experts on first-century Palestine have calculated that the volume of six stone stars corresponded to 652 to 948 modern bottles of 0.75 liters each.

Wine, the Bible tells us, is one of God's abundant gifts of love to his people. Like music, its function is to lighten man's lot this side of Paradise. But linked to its role in Christ's Passion, wine (and not grape juice) also has a significant role for the end of times.

As the Book of Revelation tells us, only wine and oil are protected from the apocalyptic flame. (Revelation 6:6) .

arminian threat level raised to red for together for the gospel conference

2006-04-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

The Together for the Gospel conference is quickly approaching and will feature some of the greatest reformed theologians of the age. In attendance will be many influential church leaders from throughout the world. As the conference will be held in Louisville, Kentucky, the home of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, many leaders of the next generation will also be in attendance. The Arminian threat level has been raised to red and precautionary measures are being taken due to the fact that so many key persons will be in a single location and an attack by Arminians could be catastrophic.

An official recently commented, “In our monitoring of communications channels using tongues, we’ve definitely noticed an increase in “chatter” but then again that could just be supporters of C.J. Mahaney asking God to bless him as he speaks at the conference. Our work was a lot easier before we had all these reformed charismatics. It’s going to make security at the conference a lot more difficult, we can’t just arrest anyone with a tambourine or waving arms during worship anymore. Now our security guards are going to have to ask themselves, ‘Does this person believe that God foreordained from the foundation of the universe that they would play this exact tambourine or is this person thinking that they could have chosen any tambourine and are playing the tambourine synergistically?’ Really, how does anyone know the answer to that?”

Contrary to the rumors being spread among the younger crowd, a spokesperson has again confirmed that J. I. Packer, the Master Yoda of reformed theology, will not be making a surprise appearance at the conference and will be moved to an undisclosed secure underground location where he will be endorsing books with short breaks for eating and sleeping.

James White has refused protection and has insisted on carrying a large broadsword.

Professor Mark Seifrid will be protected from James White.

Southern Seminary has been planning for quite some time now and officials are confident that facilities and students are prepared. Spurgeon’s Bible will be removed from its display case at Southern Seminary’s Boyce Library and taken to the off-campus facility where the ancient manuscripts collection is stored. Students at Southern have been encouraged to keep a lookout for suspicious persons photographing or filming buildings on campus and at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville. Students should report new students that strangely show up in the middle of the semester and carry Darby or Schofield Bibles to class and say things like, "The Old Testament was in a different dispensation," or display a conspicuous absence of the words "grace" and "covenant" in their vocabulary. They may also make statements regarding future actions of buying and selling without being preceded by the qualification found in James 4:15, “If the Lord wills.”

Not to be outdone, the Master’s Seminary has warned of a 9-11 style attack with multiple targets and has taken similar precautions.

There have been unconfirmed rumors that the “Kingmakers” have been trying to move up the date of the Southern Baptist Convention to coincide with the Together for the Gospel Conference in order to minimize opposition but the motion is currently stuck in twelve different committees.

Southern Professor Sean Wright will be guarding several manuscripts of Theodore Beza’s that the Boyce Library does not know that he has.

Professor Tom Nettles will be disguised as Bob Dylan.

Iain H. Murray will also be moved to a secure underground location colloquially known as "Camp David" where he will be working on his next book D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Three Years.

Founders Ministries has refused to comment on Tom Ascol and Fred Malone’s schedules and whether or not they will be attending the conference for security reasons.

Barriers have been set up around the The Grey House in Edinburgh, Scotland as well as Banner of Truth’s other office without a cool name in boring Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Massive quantities of Mega Jolt and Mountain Dew have been delivered for the Christian hackers that will be monitoring and defending monergism.org, founders.org, sbtsblogs.net, and several others round the clock. "We just have to make sure we don't overreact if blogger goes down because it probably will like it does all the time anyway," said a member of the group.

It has been reported that Benny Hinn’s Holy Ghost machine gun has gone missing. It was confiscated after a hunting accident in which Mcarthur was shot with the weapon but it has been declared missing after an audit of police evidence lockers.

A highly placed official noted that, “The worst case scenario is that Hinn has been using the massive amounts of money he receives to build some type of Holy Ghost Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

There was some concern generated when several of the tracking devices that had been secretly implanted in Dave Hunt and the Caner brothers malfunctioned but those concerns were allayed after the devices’ batteries were replaced.

Artist’s sketches have been distributed along with instructions to notify authorities immediately of any sightings of suspiciuos persons resembling the sketches.

These actions have not gone without criticism. Southern Professor Jim Parker commented, “What is the point of all this? If it’s God’s will for us to be preserved we will be and He won’t let them do a darn thing to us! And why oh why does R.C. Sproul, a Calvinist mind you, never fly on a plane? Huh? Of course I can say that! I’ve got tenure baby!

john macarthur, effective in modern media

2006-04-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

Tim Challies captures why John MacArthur is so effective. He was on Larry King Live with a bunch of persons talking about the new reality show, God or the Girl, in which several young men struggle with a calling to the priesthood. He doesn't even waste time with the compulsory, well all of my best friends are Catholic, I respect Catholics, Priests help old ladies accross the street, we have a lot in common with the Catholic church historically, blah blah freaking blah blah, modern polite required bs, he just jumps right into it 1Timothy with this: (and this is coppied from the CNN transcript)

MACARTHUR: "Yes, well I think from a biblical standpoint we need to readdress this issue on a couple of fronts. Number one, according to the New Testament, you can't be a pastor unless you are the husband of one wife and have proven that you're able to manage your household well.

"The apostle Paul also said that one of the false doctrines, he called doctrines of demons, 1 Timothy 4, is forbidding to marry. There is no biblical basis for this whatsoever. You can't use Jesus as an example. He's God in human flesh.

There is no biblical foundation. In fact, Paul said it's better to marry than to burn. So, you put a priest in an impossible situation, then stick him in a confessional all day to listen to people reciting all their sexual sins and I think that's just way over the top if you expect somebody to live a pure life with that kind of temptation thrown at them.

KING: You say a pastor should be married, you mean someone comes out of seminary they have to be married or they can't be a pastor?

MACARTHUR: Well the bottom -- yes, the bottom line is there could be exceptions. You could have a widower. You could have somebody who did never marry. But the qualification for a pastor is the husband of one wife, a one woman man.

KING: So you think the idea that even though it's a discipline of the church it's a bad idea?

MACARTHUR: Yes, I don't think it's a biblical idea at all and it came, as Father Manning noted, because priestly families were building fortunes and in 1079 when that became law at the Lateran (ph) Council, it was because Rome started seeing that money was being kept in these massive families. If you don't have any children, you can't pass on anything."

When you're a talking head on TV and you aren't given enough time for the required BS statement about how tolerant and accepting you are before you criticize anything MacArthur just goes for the one two punch. It just makes you wonder if the Holy Spirit isn't helping out a bit.

God please give me the grace to be that effective in the media if it is ever required so that I am not a bumbling idiot.

Tim's coverage of this is a bit better than mine and I also want to remind you that he will be covering the Together for the Gospel Conference.

there's not enough girls here, asian inventions part XII

2006-04-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

You supply the caption:
#1
#2

why do you need hyperlinks that don't do anything on a piece of paper?

2006-04-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I had to use Microsoft software again. How can people deal with this stuff everyday without punching a hole through the screen?

Does anyone know a command to:

REMOVE HYPERLINKS FOREVER

or:

TURN OFF HYPERLINKS TIMES INFINITY

This is in Word if you haven't figured that out by now. I'm sure there are others that would like to know as well. If I find out, I will do a new post on it.

why superman and batman aren't at southern

2006-04-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

They violate section F of the discipline policy.

Sandi Patti Parti

2006-04-17T17:46:00.000-07:00

Whoever is having the Sandi Patti party down the hall from me needs to knock it off.

{sandy patties}

get paid to do research on pandas

2006-04-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

I just knew this was too good to be true. You don't actually get to do tests on pandas, it's just the name of the company.

so you thought I was out of inventions part XI

2006-04-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

Post a caption.

professor leads students in attack on pro-life crosses at northern kentucky university

2006-04-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

You might want to keep these people away from your babies.

From the Northerner Online
More on nky.com
"Pulling up the crosses was similar to citizens taking down Nazi displays on Fountain Square, she said."
Now the cross is the same as a swastika? This professor is an idiot. This is my favorite quote from this feminist:
"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. "-Dr. Jacobsen
So if something makes you feel bad you can destroy it?
{hippy chicks tearing down crosses}

Here's the story from the campus paper at NKU.
Members of the Northern Right to Life are camping out Thursday to protect their display of anti-abortion crosses, following the damage and removal of the display on Wednesday by protestors.

The group has decided to press charges against those responsible.

{Dr. Jacobsen tearing up a sign}

"We called the police and told them that we decided to press charges," said Julie Broering, treasurer for the group. The members reached their decision after a day-long deliberation.

According to University Police reports, several young females removed about 400 white crosses from the grass in front of the University Center plaza at about 5:30 p.m. on April 12.

Northern Kentucky University President James Votruba has confirmed that Dr. Sally Jacobsen said that she encouraged students to practice their freedom of speech by pulling down the crosses during her British Literature class, which meets on Wednesday evenings.

Jacobsen could not be reached by The Northerner deadline.

"I am very disappointed that this happened," Votruba said. "At a university, the opposing views should be able to bump up against each other. Responding with pamphlets or speeches would have allowed the power of ideas to compete."

Approximately 10 students accompanied Jacobsen to the crosses and helped her to remove them. The group knocked the crosses down and piled them in trashcans around the plaza, and removed the "Cemetery of Innocents" sign.

Police arrived at 7:15 p.m. and found the crosses in trash cans throughout campus, according to David Tobergte, an administrative sergeant with the University Police. Tobergte said once those responsible for the vandalism of the crosses are identified, they could face felony theft charges. If those responsible for the vandalism are students, then they will also face university sanctions, Tobergte said.

{hippy chicks that supposedly believe in free speech}

Dean of Students Kent Kelso said he learned of the incident a few hours after it occurred and asked the police to investigate. Kelso said that he is unaware of the identity of any person involved in the vandalism, but is talking with witnesses. If students are responsible for the vandalism, Kelso said that he will have to determine if they have violated the student code of conduct.

"I profoundly regret that the incident happened. My hope is that we can have a dialogue or discussion on what's happening on campus with some sense of civility," he said.

The newly formed Northern Right to Life group at NKU created the anti-abortion display on April 9, and after being notified of the vandalism, the group came to NKU that night to repair and replant the crosses.

In a letter to The Northerner, signed by Nancy Slonneger Hancock, a member of The Educators for Reproductive Freedom, Hancock said that the group "neither knew about nor participated in this act of vandalism, and we most certainly do not condone it." Hancock said that the group sees the cross display as "protected free speech, no matter how strongly we may disagree with the message. It is of the utmost importance that we all respect each others' free speech rights."

{look at that evil grin! you can tell nothing has ever made her happier.}

NKU officials and university police are currently investigating the vandalism. Police reports list damages at $600; group members stated they paid $1.50 for each cross.

BSU girl finds $30,000 and gives to rightful owner

2006-04-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

i wrote this for a political publication and once it is published, i may have to take it down. don't tell them.
Trista Wright was ripping sheetrock from a moldy closet in New Orleans on her spring break when she discovered $30,000 in cash. She was there with her Baptist Collegiate Ministries group from Armstrong Atlantic University in Savannah, Georgia. The owner of the home, who wished to remain anonymous, had inherited it from her parents who grew up during the depression and didn’t trust the banks.

It would seem that Trista’s actions are dwarfed in terms of dollars in comparison to the Government relief efforts but that is to ignore the extent of her sacrifice. Trista’s gift was immeasurably greater than any action of FEMA or the government towards hurricane victims that might be called “charity”.

Trista’s efforts were given of herself. Her benevolence came at her own expense; the government must steal from one person to support any “charitable” project towards another. In fact, some of the money that will be given to Katrina victim was stolen from them through taxation in the first place. Nearly all of the government’s money is ill gotten and carries the taint of stolen goods.

Her work was the sweat of her own brow and it’s likely that accommodations were rather limited during her stay. Construction work or gutting destroyed buildings is probably not something that she would ever consider doing as a job. Working in such an area, one has to consider that there may be some danger of mold inhalation or building collapse. The government has no equivalent sacrifice.

{Trista Wright and Haley Barton}

We don’t know, but as a college student, it is likely that she has no house of her own and that most of the jobs she has had haven’t paid very well. Yet she is helping someone else rebuild their home. In contrast, the government is guaranteed a massive income without any labor and frequently wastes billions of dollars and any aid to Katrina victims is a drop in the bucket of its overall financial position.

She was there during spring break, a time most college students would be enjoying themselves at the beach and one of the most cherished times of a person’s life (the several spring breaks in college). The government can make no parallel sacrifice.

It’s also significant that Trista, there with her Church group, found the money and not a government agent or looter. (If the two may be distinguished.)

It’s ironic that the Father and Mother of the owner did not trust the banks when in fact it is the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Government that they should not have trusted. Trista recounted that at first she thought it was monopoly money; this is not far from the truth. $30,000 earned and saved around 1940 would be over $425,000 in 2006 dollars due to government inflation of the currency. Think of this as a person hiding $425,000 and returning to find only $30,000 remaining. Even though this money was hidden so well that no one new it existed, the government stole 93% of it and it will never be returned.

{our silly inflated monopoly money(I made this)}

At the time of the discovery, the owner of the house was having some medical tests done and was very anxious about the results, perhaps the money will aid in paying a few medical bills.

{what money is supposed to be, beautiful and commodity backed}

When asked about the alternative of keeping the money, Trista said, “I would have regretted it. Nothing good would have come of it.” She knew that this money was not hers, it belonged to someone else and she had no right to it. Any gain from this money would also be ill-gotten. Yet the government had no qualms over some half a century about continuously plundering this and the hard earned savings of Americans as well as many foreigners desperate for stability.

At first the $30,000 seems like a lot of money but it is insignificant when compared to its original value. The true value in this story is not a few pennies on the dollar left over but the lessons of ownership, morality, and sacrifice taught to us by Trista Wright.

How striking that one young lady could be infinitely greater in so many ways than the actions of a behemoth government!

they wouldn't let me take my knife on the plane cause i'm muslim

2006-04-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

NBC stoops to new journalistic low by trying to make people look racist.
Here's some coverage by Michele Malkin

easter cancelled due to jay-walking accident

2006-04-13T02:41:00.000-07:00

feel free to supply a caption.

2 days later, crime scene still there

i took a job test

2006-04-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

Here are your Stockholm Syndrome Method Career Analysis results. A detailed analysis by a certified job coach is only $699.

Your recommended occupation: Minister

Your preferred occupation: something else

You showed strong interest in the following occupations:

Hitman, lifeguard, rock-star, spy, artist, president, watchmaker, real estate tycoon, humorist, inventor, writer, international fugitive, evening gown designer, explosives expert.

you know you want it part X

2006-04-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

Are you lonely at night? Is it going to be a while before you get married? Go another six months with the Manhug pillow! Choose from these fine colors: Boy Smell Blue, Pink Embrace, and Old Man Olive (also available in female version) A great gift that will be appreciated after the sting of the insult wears off!

stupid inventions part IX

2006-04-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

You supply the caption:

don't read this. it's not funny and it will just make you question things.

2006-04-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

Before I went to seminary, someone tried to prepare me for the fact that not everyone there would be perfect. I was told some rather shocking anecdotes that I would have liked to blame on the old liberal days of the seminaries but he quickly reminded me that he was not that old. That may be wrong though as the seminaries have only been cleaned up recently.

Something equally shocking yet less depraved that he told me is that some students don’t go to church. Using basically the same excuses as everyone else, they add some additional ones like: I went to chapel this week or I have too many papers to write and they are about God anyway. It’s not difficult for me to imagine a student getting involved in sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll but I was rather incredulous that someone going into church work would not go to church.

I feel like I’m the only slacker still here that didn’t leave so as to arrive 30 minutes early to Sunday School. On the way out I hear music playing, people talking. When I leave for church I walk out expecting the parking lot to be empty. I tell myself that people are sick. Some people worked till six on Sunday morning. Some people have sick children. Everybody carpools. Maybe they’re just trying to save the planet. Those married people have two or three cars between them and they just take one for the family on Sunday.

It’s a rare occasion when I don’t feel worse than everyone else and I pat myself on the back and say, “Well at least I go to church. I’m finally better than someone here.” How stupid for someone like me to be prideful.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately if I should really be here. Everyone is so motivated, so intelligent, so moral, they already know all this stuff, so sure of their calling, they have a irresistible subconscious urge to do this. I’m not like them.

Everyone else likes reading books from the 1700’s. I can’t tell what the hell the author is saying. I can’t pay attention for the 6 hours it would take me to bushwack my way through 50 pages of what the professor wants us to read on top of everything else I have to read. How do you possibly write a paper on that? I really do not want to put that much effort into reading some liberal that doesn’t believe the bible is true and if I understand anything of what he says it will be some nagging question that it will take me 3 hours to find an incomplete answer to so that it isn’t sitting there in my mind, mocking my faith.

Every 3.6 days a seminary student hears, “If you can do anything else, do it.” I have a lot of problems with this but it may be true if explained properly. I don’t know. It makes it sound like it’s a ditch digging job, a toilet scrubbing job. It’s as if the ministry is a terrible job and it should be your last choice. Shouldn’t it be one’s first choice? Maybe what they mean by this is God won’t let you do anything else. Will God make you miserable and a failure at everything and you will wander aimlessly about until you answer THE CALL TO MINISTRY?

Should I ask God for a sign? Is that a sin? Is it tempting God? Should I ask for a more sure calling? Am I being faithless? Maybe I should be here if I’m not sure. Should I go try to do something else and really see if I can’t do anything else like the tired old adage says? Am I just hogging a chair in a class that some motivated foreign kid should have? Should I go preach somewhere and disrespectfully tell my creator, “This is how you are supposed to communicate with me, if I fail it means I shouldn’t do this, if I do well and people respond well, it means you want me to continue.”

“Be still and know that I am God.” Then what? Believe me, I can very easily sit around and do nothing waiting for a sign.

I look for help in the Bible but I keep thinking of, “With God, all things are possible.” I’m so tired of hearing that. (from myself) Ok so none of my problems really matter because God can make them magically go away or order events so as to accomplish what he wants anyway. I don’t think God works like that.

I guess I’ll go read Dr. Whitney’s article and Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students for the 8^th time. Dr. Whitney, you are too smart. He knew I was going to try to disqualify myself with 1Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

I’ll just keep fighting along. Maybe God will come to my aid. Better to wonder what I’m supposed to do while making progress toward what it might be. If I go do something else and a year from now I find out I was in the right place, it will have been just be a big waste. Hopefully money will fall out of the sky in the meantime to pay for school.

God I gave you my life. Do you want it? I’m not good enough for this. I just know that someday I am going to do something really stupid to disgrace your name. You can have anyone you want for this. You know stuff about me I’ve forgotten and you know there are probably a lot better choices. I feel like I don’t have what I need to do what you want.

If you want me to do this I’m going to need a lot of help.

cut the jibba jabba!

2006-04-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

Psalm 14:1a The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."

where does the stuff on purgatorio come from?

2006-04-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

Marc of purgatorio fame when asked, "Marc, seriously, where do you find these things?"

"A lot of people ask me that question and basically the answer is the same. I think of the stupidist thing I can and do a Google picture search. Low and behold, I find something almost everytime.

"The other great place for ideas is just taking a stroll through your local “Christian” bookstore with a notebook."

church closed on easter to allow more family time

2006-04-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

Easter Announcement

i need this system

2006-04-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

stupid japanese inventions VIII

2006-04-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

it depends on what your definition of "is" is

2006-04-06T23:31:00.000-07:00

I need some greeks (and I don't mean frat boys) to tell me about John 10:28:

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

What is give? A continual action for an individual person? A future event (on the cross). Continual acts of giving because it is constantly being given to new persons?

Know that information posted in comments is safe and is not going to be used for school but purely for my own edification and curiosity.

4.5 perserverance points for the first person to correctly attribute the title quote. (I just know naomi is going to get this one)

ok ok ok back to the funies for a minute

2006-04-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

"Three semi-serious posts in a row!? What is going on! Are you sick? Where are my stupid japanese inventions."

I hear you. Part of it is my spirits are just down right now. I'm having some doubts about being here so I am making it a point to record things of substance about seminary life and theological things that interest me just to remind me.

Here is your regularly scheduled stupid japanese invention. Having trouble aiming at your eye from one inch away? These might be for you!

dr. whitney quoted on medical prayer study, easter egg on sbts.edu

2006-04-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

Roach just had this run today. Hopefully it will get picked up by the media.

secret link I found to Dr. Whitney's bio on sbts.edu that isn't live yet(nothing there)

Dr. Whitney's website

theology books, no questions asked

2006-04-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

Most colleges have a couple bookstores around the campus offering books at a fraction of the cost of the campus bookstore. Now there is one in the Southern neighborhood too. Refiner’s Fire Books is behind B-Dub (Buffalo Wild Wings) in the St. Matthews Station at the corner of Breckenridge and Shelbyville. They specialize in used and out-of-print theology books.

No questions asked
If the check out interrogation (What’s your name? What’s your box number? What’s your telephone number? How much do you weigh? I'll need a fingerprint. Etc.) and the high prices and the rat tunnel of the Lifeway on campus annoy you, you will like Refiner’s Fire Books. I know some of you like to use the tunnel at Lifeway to meet the opposite sex. *bump* “Oh, excuse me, I’m sorry. Wow, your name must be Grace, because you are irresistible.”

At RFB there is room for more than 1.2 persons to walk abreast in the store and the prices are pretty low. The owner doesn’t ask a lot of questions but he is knowledgeable, so you might want to ask him some questions.

Yes, but are there Calvinist books?
There are several books of Calvin’s prominently displayed.

If you need some cash mid-semester, he is buying books for his inventory and he also trades books as well. You might be able to unload that Joel Osteen book your Aunt gave you when she heard you were going to seminary. Someone needs to get some prosperity out of that book!

Tell all your friends and arminians about this guy because we really need him here.

Refiner’s Fire Books
Behind Buffalo Wild Wings in St. Matthews Station at the corner of Breckenridge and Shelbyville
3900 Shelbyville Road, Suite 15, Louisville, Kentucky 40207 (502)515-3371

Centerfold of Calvin, Rainer's Inauguration, American Idol in new issue of SBC Life

2006-04-03T23:10:00.000-07:00

Update: The Great Oz at his blog The Reformed Baptist Thinker has also picked up on the Calvin centerfold in the new SBC Life. He's done a good job of linking to everything related. I don't know if I tipped him off to it but I am glad to see it get some play whether I scooped it or not.

You need to go down to Honeycutt and get the latest SBC Life maga-paper thing.

There's a full color shot of Calvin and a tulip blooming. It's not a full body shot but I know some of you have been praying for this day.

Of course there's the obligatory hypercalvinist sayings that no one has ever actually heard anyone say and that no one actually believes and then surprise surprise, the trusty missions excuse. Apparently all of us future pastors and missionaries here at Southern are just here because we like to write papers. No one should be allowed to repeat that unless they can think of at least one great Arminian missionary.

Dr. Malcolm Yarnell III wrote a TULIP article for it. You may remember him from his recent "Heart of a Baptist" lecture at Southwestern. Tom Ascol had been discussing it at the Founders blog not too long ago. Dr. Yarnell writes that it is disturbing that people are using adherence to TULIP as a test of fellowship. I don't know how he found this out but at Southern, we don't share a ping-pong table with anyone who doesn't adhere to at least 4 points of Calvinism. They might think it was their own abilities that allowed them to win. For fuzeball you have to accept Limited Atonement as well.

There's also an article by Dr. Daniel Akin, President of South Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, entitled: Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility How Should Southern Baptists Respond to the Issue of Calvinism.

This is just my college journalism talking but it might be a good idea to locate an actual Calvinist for your big spread on Calvinism. I guess I should just be happy it wasn't written by Clark Pinnock.

It seems like I'm the only one around here that doesn't like images of the persons of the trinity but be warned there is a violation of the second commandment above Akin's article.

Mandisa Hundley who used to work at Lifeway and now leads worship for the Beth Moore conferences is on American Idol. She got Simon to hug her and apologize for a particularly spiteful comment (even for Simon) after bringing up Christ's death on the cross. I don't know how you could find a way to bring that up. I would probably just attack Simon for making fun of me or try to get a hug from Paula Abdul and have flashbacks to my 9 year old 80's dreams of her. Just kidding. We were fundamentalists, I had no clue who she was.

There is also an article about Rainer's inauguration ceremony.

laughing babies part II

2006-04-02T19:05:00.000-07:00

You know you have marriage on the brain when you cruise goog for baby videos. I am now officially old.(in a 20's sort of way, not old-old)

this has some incredible crossover potential

2006-04-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

muslim rave

2006-04-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

stupid japanese inventions part VI

2006-04-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

Post your own caption.

stupid japanese inventions part V

2006-03-31T10:17:00.000-08:00

These are gonna be huge. If you get one now, you can be the one that wore it even before the runway models. Add a caption for this if you like.

stupid japanese inventions part IV

2006-03-30T21:10:00.000-08:00

This reminds me of a when I was a kid and we would shoot eachother with imaginary weapons and you could say "forcefield".

stupid japanese inventions part III

2006-03-30T21:07:00.000-08:00

These might be useful for some of you hippies that insist on wearing your birkenstocks even when it rains.

fox news uncovers new smuggling route

2006-03-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

We interrupt our regularly scheduled stupid japanese inventions for this newsflash.

Watch this video and find out about the new route illegal alien smugglers are using.

Did you catch that? "Colorado is a major thoroughfare for smugggling undocumented workers because of its central location between New Mexico and Arizona."

I like the way the trooper talks too. He sounds like a Canadian Mountie.

Also note that "Polly" thinks the problem here is the congressmen and especially the coyotes who are charging Mexicans too much to be smuggled in. Sigh. If only we could get them to lower their prices. Maybe Polly can get the congressmen to pass a law making the coyotes charge less.

Somewhere out there, Carol McKinley's geography teacher is hanging his head in shame and asking himself why he wasted his life. On Monday, the kids in his class will probably watch a movie unrelated to geography as he sobs into his hands silently at his desk.

stupid japanese inventions part II

2006-03-29T07:24:00.000-08:00

stupid japanese inventions part I

2006-03-27T22:18:00.000-08:00

Out of my vast collection of funny pictures, this is one of my favorite categories. There are one or two that are not Japanese though but Japan is definitely the capital of stupid inventions.

If you can read the writing or you just want to make up a funny translation of the writing, I would love that. Also, if you have a pic that would fit this category that would be great.

subtle hints your seminary might be calvinist part II

2006-03-23T15:40:00.000-08:00

(read the fine print)

subtle hints your seminary might be calvinist part I

2006-03-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

There are always tulips around, but no daisies. (the arminian flower, e.g. he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not...)

veee dub, holding it down on the engineering tip yah!

2006-03-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

ve just un-pimped yuh auto

2006-03-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

un-pimp my ride

2006-03-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this a while back. Germans really crack me up. Whether it's what we think they do or what they actually do I find them very amusing.

This is going to be a series, so hopefully my three readers will come back for the rest.

the perfect man, part I

2006-03-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

Ok, let make sure I've got everything here. . . Dark eyes, fit body, kind, caring, and sensitive. He must like music and art. Not afraid to share his feelings. Ok. Brings you flowers, writes you poetry, serenades you with love songs. Expresses himself easily. Likes to spice it up with romance. Foreign accent a bonus.

Yes, he is perfect. He's got everything on the list and more.

Don't read the next part until you've watched the video. It will be funnier that way. I promise.

What do you mean? You didn't say, wears less make up than me, shorter hair than me, or likes girls. He has everything on the list! What's wrong with a little chest make up anyway?

booty is in the eye of the beholder

2006-03-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

This one is work/child/parent safe. There are lots of coppier videos. Would this video be inapropriate if it was a hot chick? Would it be inapropriate if the chick weighed as much as this guy? Have you ever thought about how modesty only has to do with attractive people?

On a side note, doesn't Mr. Tumnus need to put on a shirt? What is the point of a scarf when you're topless? At the bare minimum how about some chain mail when you go to battle? Sorry, Mr. Tumnus, I just saw a picture of you again and although I am well aware of the fact that fauns and satyrs are all about the pursuit of pleasure, playing pipes, drinking, and chasing nymphs, I really could have done without the two hours of nipple gazing.

funny spam

2006-03-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

I've been getting some funny spam in my junk account lately. A junk account is a free webmail account that you don't really care about that you just use for when you absolutely must provide an email address to sign up for something but you don't trust the institution you are giving it to. Some things require you to reply to the email so you can't always just give them HughJass@amandahuginkiss.com

"If you are an ugly duckling, Ultra Allure Pheromones will make women see a pretty swan in you."

I don't really want a girl to see a pretty swan in me. Even if you had never heard of the ballet Swan Lake, this is about the gayest way a girl could think of you. Imagine a guy walking by and all you can think about is white fluffy feathers and swans floating by. Maybe I'm wrong on this one. What do you think?

"Stop reading stupid advises about being popular among the women."

Does this mean I should stop reading that email? I tried to think back to if anything I have read lately qualifies under this.

"Since the High School you were unnoticed by the womens."
This is my favorite one. It just makes me laugh. Despite the fact that it's 75% male here, I can tell I am definitely being noticed by the womens. That would be a funny idea for a movie. A guy buys these pheremones and they stink really bad or they repulse the womens. You could even have them work really well. You can't really go wrong with that idea. I'll just stick to my excessive cologne.

Do you feel noticed by the mens? The other day I was at the grocery store and I walked by an aisle and this incredible smell hit me like I was a bunny frolicking in a field of daisies. I backed up and looked down the aisle and it was a girl that was a full ten yards back down the aisle. That's powerful. But I mean it in a good way.

who wears the pants?

2006-03-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

Check out the word of the day:
uxorious \uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:
Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

Where I come from there was another name for this. (But it's not appropriate.)

Is it possible to be excessively fond of your wife? Is Jesus too fond of his bride (the church)?

a fun trick to play on someone with an esv bible

2006-03-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

Ask them to read Mark 7:16

I've always thought it would be funny to do that at a bible drill. It's probably a good thing I wasn't aware of this stuff back in my bible drill days. I think we need to be careful though, you could really mess up some kid in the head with this because they aren't able to comprehend ancient manuscript scholarship.

The verse numbers were arbitrarily forced onto the text of a particular manuscript. Recent scholarship using older and better manuscripts has questioned some verses. KJV only people call these "missing verses". You should probably be aware of this as you will get a question in ministry like this one day.

There are a couple other places like this also:
Matt 17:21
Matt 18:11
Matt 23:14
Mark 7:16
Mark 9:44
Mark 9:46
Mark 11:26
Mark 15:28
Mark 16:19-20
Luke 17:36
Luke 23:17
John 5:4
Acts 8:37
Acts 15:34
Acts 24:7
Acts 28:29
Rom 16:24
1 John 5:7
(list is not all inclusive and I may have typed the wrong thing)

These are basically the proof texts for the King James only people. In reality, they are also proof texts for why Textus Receptus, the main KJV source document, is questionable.

One of these KJV only sites had this rather bold claim: "The NIV removes 64,576 words!" I'm just glad it wasn't my job to count every time the NIV didn't use a "thee or thou". I feel sorry for whoever had to do that. I'm curious if any Greek or Hebrew Scholars actually hold to KJV only anymore.

Personally I don't really like the TEV, CEV, NIV, Living Bible, The Message, Good News for Dudes and Stuff and those that paraphrase it into, "And Jesus was all, dude, dude. I sense a lot of hostility dude. You gotta go with the flow. Live and let live man, you're cramping the loveflow buzz. "

For a while I was really into the CEV and I was using it in children's ministry and I tried to read the bible through and failed miserably. In both these situations I was getting frustrated cause I couldn't tell what the heck the bible was actually saying. I kept having to stop and go fish out my ancient KJV to get some clarification. (I mean what things in the sentence were related or acting on other things, not overall interpretation.) You don't have this problem in Latin but you can really be ambiguous in English if you want to.

I predict that in the near future we will see a couple more of these translations. They will probably cut out the gay parts, add in a lot of universalism, and paraphrase the really definite verses that make us uncomfortable. I just don't understand why they do this. If you don't like what the Bible says, why not just reject it? I don't really understand apostates and liberal churches either. If you believe the bible's all a lie and geschichte and fairy stories, why go? You can get better fairy stories from Hollywood that don't make you feel guilty about your sin and you don't have to put so much effort into being good, donating money, or cutting out the parts you don't like.

I guess Satan is keeping that going.

Anyway, I like the formal vocabulary and syntax of the KJV though but not the archaic pronouns and source documents. We used to have weirdos come through our church every once in a while promoting KJV only and a bunch of other stuff. Sometimes I wonder about how I'm going to deal with that in the future. One conservative pastor told me the conservatives are always more trouble than the liberals. hahaha

I'm really looking to being proficient enough in Greek to be able to just read the bible for myself. After listening to all these word studies though, I'm afraid it won't be that helpful to read quickly in greek but it will be better to look up every single word. I'd really like to read quickly as in english but with understanding. It's going to be difficult. I'm glad it's not like learning to ski or something and I will instead have God's help.

google mars

2006-03-12T21:57:00.000-08:00

If you thought google earth was cool, you might like google mars. I cruised around a while trying to find Dr. Parker's little green man but in the words of the great Dr. Nash, that may have just been a bunch of horse geschichte.

WARNING: It's not as cool as these picture from my private collection.

Jesus came to be an amusement park so you can be entertained

2006-03-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

[photo: your youth at Centrifuge]

Last year, kids came back from centrifuge wearing orange robes and chanting mantras in what has been called “fugegate”. (ok, they didn’t have orange robes, but really how long before the emergers start doing that?)

Stephen U. has been preparing to teach at [insert whatever cool name it is being called now] and had to beg the leadership to ad in some of the gospel cause there wasn’t any. He documents this year’s heresies from Lifeway:

“In this lesson, we will see that Jesus is the most entertaining and thrilling ride we could ever choose.”

“Its basic goal is to make our park visit memorable and enjoyable.”

“Are you allowing Jesus to thrill and wow you? How can we limit the mundane, confusing, uncomfortable, overbearing challenges that come along in this life?

Not being from an SBC background and having no emotional attachments to our schizophrenic institutions with funny names, my favorite Canadian, Guillaume is able to see right through the behemoth that is Lifeway and asks, "Would we tolerate it if our pastors got up to the pulpit on Sunday and read off a sermon that had been mailed to him a few months earlier from a Lifeway office in Nashville?"

It seems like all I ever hear about our denominational institutions is how they are dominated by mean conservatives and how liberal-phobic they are and they fire people at the drop of a hat for doing anything out of the ordinary. If you don’t get a pink slip for preaching Buddhism or this Jesus roller coaster nonsense, really, how far do you have to go to get in trouble at Lifeway?

A lot of people are asking if Thom Rainer, the new president of Lifeway, is going to clean things up and are generally curious about what he believes. According to the Biblical Recorder, he is a three-pointer. This is a pretty negative piece which unfairly compares Rainer with James Frey, the Oprah book club guy whose book is basically a lie except for the ISBN number but I reference it because it records Rainer's response to the Calviphobia question.

Unless they get Stephen as their teacher at Centrifuge, your youth are going to spend a week being indoctrinated with this "Jesus died for your sins for fun" stuff.

There is an alternative though. Founders usually hosts several youth conferences during the summer.

Try to ignore the excessive use of some really hideous Microsoft word art in that flyer. I’ll take Founder’s sound teaching in word art rather than glossy heresies from Lifeway any day.

These are exciting times we live in where the little guy can say the emperor has no clothes and question mighty lifeway. Apparently Dr. Ascol reads our blogs because Founders picked this up and ran with it. By one blog post, people are being made aware and taking Lifeway to task. You can literally see the reformation happening before you very eyes!

You might drop by Stephen's blog to give him a word of encouragement and thank him for having the guts to confront the leadership and speak out about this. I imagine people don't like being told by seminary students that they are teaching children heresies and he's probably trying to decide what he's going to do about all of this.

the video everyone's talking about

2006-03-09T15:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been delaying posting this for a couple days to try to find some reliable sources but that hasn’t happened.

This video mysteriously appeared a few days ago and has been burning up the fibres ever since. Over 17 seasons, conjecture has run rampant among fans about a Simpsons film.

The video sent fans into an orgy of speculation. It hasn’t been broadcast on television yet but the word on the street is that this is merely a promo for season 17 on Sky One which was the station that brought The Simpsons as well as many other American mainstays to the Brits, Limeys, Pommys, Tommys, Kakis, Redcoats, Rosbifs, Rooineks, Paddys, Bog trotters, Leprechauns, Harps, Mics, Shants, Potato heads, Shilaeli Huggers, Woolybacks, Taffys, and Jocks in the Islands of the North Atlantic.

Notice the distinctly British feel. The flagstone driveway. The man in uniform on the street corner. The license plates. The cars operate on the left side of the road. The driver’s seats are on the right side of the cars. However, Homer’s vehicle is the opposite. The people are pasty white with large noses and British features. Also, note the crack in the garage. I noticed some idiot forgot to leave the rabbit ears on the TV but that’s probably just an Easter egg for nerds like me to gossip about. Also note how Maggie appears out of thin air on the couch.

Sky One is also interesting because they heavily censored everything in The Simpsons until a few years ago. They did the same with Family Guy which made the show nearly unwatchable. (Family Guy is quite a bit edgier)

Sky One built a huge business out of re-runs. They were able to do this because British television sucks. Imagine every channel as a stodgier PBS but with full coverage of Parliament and newsflashes every five seconds from the Ministry of (insert industry that is needlessly regulated by hordes of protocol lovers named Nigel Buckminster Willoughby or Alistair Eustace Buckinghamshireton III).

You actually have to have a license to have a television in England. Do they have like driver's ed. or Television operator safety classes? For color, it’s about $200 a year. Black and white is a little cheaper. That’s why you still see people with black and white TV’s on British shows. Blind people get theirs half off. They even have TV police that go to your house and make sure you pay. I'm not even joking! You think I’m making this up but I’m not. If you don’t believe me, look into it yourself. They used to have a window tax and they also make renters pay property taxes. I found one place that said that not paying the fine for getting busted without a license is the largest cause of the imprisonment of single mothers but that seems hard to believe.

Can you imagine if we shut down every TV station and gave NPR and PBS their own police force and IRS to make people pay instead of whine about freeloaders round the clock and run “underwriting” which is really just commercials? You don’t have to. Move to England. Those commies at PBS would do that in a heartbeat if you let them.

Another bit of trivia: In the 1995 episode with the school budget cuts, Groundskeeper Willie is shown teaching French and says, “Bonjour you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!”. It appears that the show actually originated this phrase. In the French version this was translated to “singes mangeurs de fromage” which means “cheese-eating monkeys”.

Yet another bit of trivia: The Simpsons was ported to Arab speaking markets a couple months ago as "Al-Shamshoon". Everything that has to do with pork or beer was changed to beef and soda or cut out. Crusty (he’s Jewish), Reverend Lovejoy, and Abu have been entirely removed.

George Müller with a fauxhawk

2006-03-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

If you take personal spiritual disciplines with Dr. Whitney at Southern Seminary, you'll read a biography of George Müller. If anyone hassles you about your fauxhawk show them that it's ok since George Müller had one.

In his early teens he was a drunkard, gambler, fraud, and thief. He actually did time for fraud before his conversion.

He trusted in God's provision and he was able to accomplish some amazing things. His orphanage cared for, at its peak, 2000 children. He refused to use government money and only accepted unsolicited gifts. The buildings for his orphanages costed over 100,000 pounds sterling in mid 1800's terms which would mean millions today. He never requested financial support or went into debt. His organization is said to have funded the great missionary Hudson Taylor.

At the age of 70 he began foreign evangelism and preached in around 40 countries.

It's pretty hard for me to imagine doing things this way. It just feels irrsponsible. I've always been against churches borrowing a million dollars for their new building but think about raising money for your mission trip without asking anyone! I'm thinking about trying that if I go on another trip.