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| Blue Grotto, Capri-Facebook |
I am interested in reality and spirituality as I have written about on this blog, previously; I want to stay in the real world. I don't want to be influenced by poor reasoning or be deceived.
I reason that God has revealed himself historically and supernaturally in Scripture, and I depend on divine guidance. There are thousands of Biblical manuscripts which speak of the same God dealing with his creation, and it is reasonable to accept his inspired word. Within the Bible healing and the supernatural did take place. I myself have witnessed the power of the supernatural by seeing an exorcism of a person I know.
However, personal experience is not my primary reason for being a Christian, rather I trust in God's guidance, and revelation, and I accept that God is hyper-rational, not illogical, and able to make truth known to me.
Philippians mentions in 1:17-19 that some preach Christ out of selfish ambition, and not from pure motives, but Paul rejoices that Christ is still being proclaimed. To many in the Church perhaps these questionable healing ministries are fraudulent.
I am certainly not a supporter of such ministries and churches.
Jesus and the Apostles did not attempt to perform phony healings for selected people, but from Scriptural evidence were empowered by God. I believe that God can empower someone to perform a healing, but so often I think certain people want to make supernatural things happen and for this reason I think scepticism is healthy in regard to healing and miracles.
The You Tube video satirically puts the point across that much of what occurs in the hyper-charismatic church rivals a video game for realism...
I saw 'Dick Tracy' the film, highlighted on the television listings and thought of the American childhood cartoon I used to watch. I have not viewed the cartoon since childhood.
The show was full of ethnic stereotypes...
A sign of a cultural change from today and there is today more of a cultural sameness within the Western world.
Forgive Me For My Debt: Audio
Great blog here! Also your web site lots up very fast!
ReplyDeleteWhat host are you the usage of? Can I get your affiliate link for your host?
I desire my website loaded up as fast as yours lol
Dear Beloved in Christ,
ReplyDeleteChristian greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am Bro Peter Ehigie from Nigeria. By the grace of God our mission is to win souls to the kingdom of God, mandated "Great Commission" Matthew 28:16-20. Beloved, We are requesting for your kind assistant. We need Bibles for our new converts, whom are highly in need of the word of God, even if they are used ones we will gladly receive them to the glory of God.
Thank You for being a blessing to the work of God here in Africa. We hope to hear from you soon.Yours in Christ, Peter Ehigie.
Scottish dog dance
ReplyDeleteMichelle kept trying to get her mother to fly out for a visit. "No way am I getting
ReplyDeleteon an airplane," was the inevitable answer.
"Look, Mom, when it's your time to go, it doesn't matter if you're on the ground or
in the air."
"I know," said her mother. "I just don't want to be that far off the ground when it's the
pilot's time to go."
…..Doc’s Daily Chuckle (pkaine@roadrunner.com) by way of “Christian Voices” (ChristianVoices@att.net)
Demon Awareness
ReplyDeleteOn October 17, 1959 Göntje and I were married. Twice, in the morning in the Standesamt and in the afternoon in the Posteholz chapel. In Germany twice was normal. Only the Standesamt one counted legally.
In the USA it’s more complicated. It looks like it’s a “church wedding,” but in Pennsylvania when I do the job I’m really an unpaid employee of the Orphans Court. If I don’t return that postcard in 10 days it’s a $500 fine. I did one in British Columbia under some health agency and forgot to put the couple’s health insurance numbers on the wedding form.
That’s the American secular Christian way. The church is not really part of the state, though it can look that way. Here’s the thing: we don’t want a state church, we want room for all denominations, or faiths. But we don’t want to be blatantly secular either. So we put “In God We Trust” on our money and swear the president in with his hand on a Bible. We start meetings with prayer, carefully leaving out “in Jesus’ name.” (I don’t see how Christians can pray without the Mediator, but I guess it seems better than nothing. Do they say Jesus under their breath?).
There’s that tax-free clergy housing allowance. I’ve heard that someone calculated that when there’s a church in town the crime rate is lower, so that saves on taxes for police so we can give the saving to the preacher. I doubt it’s right, but I take it anyway. My excuse is the tax table is so complicated that everyone gets some weird break.
Should the state cater to Christians in general? Charles Hodge was against the post office being open on Sunday. When horse-and-buggy farmers found it hard to get to town often, it was handy combining going to church and to the post office. Look under his discussion of Sabbath in his Systematic Theology, and get the full-blown Christian nation treatment.
Living in a state both secular and somewhat Christian was complicated but it worked for a while. Now we’re being pushed to be more consistent. The state has decided that same-sex marriage fits its look at the world, but we say we know better. (Yes, some churches agree with the culture, but their way with the Bible looks pitiful to me). Culture and state have changed their minds on what’s right and wrong, but the Bible hasn’t. Can a church still do some marriages and not all? My preacher friend in Canada had doubts he could so he’s stopped doing any. No big deal, let the state do the real wedding, as in Germany, and followup with something else in church. You just leave out at the end: “according to the law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Christians are voters, so we can vote on what the state thinks right. We lose some, we win some. We did have four congregations of Presbyterian Seceders, one in my home town, who believed they shouldn’t vote until we put Jesus Christ into the Constitution—but the rest of us think we can get along without that).
ReplyDeleteYou get used to the culture and think it must be right in its place, when we haven’t really thought a lot about it. You get used to legal abortion, 50 million babies so far. You get used to divorce without biblical basis. Should we get used to same-sex marriage, as a state thing and not as a church thing?
That’s the one pressing on us right now. But don’t we need to look at the whole changing culture thing first, and what that means? The big brainy book is Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, but I’m not there yet. I’m still coasting along with the little book about that big book, James K. A. Smith’s How (Not) To Be Secular. The nugget I got there so far is that in the old pre-modern age, it was an enchanted world. There was more to reality than “laws of nature,” things could happen as the spiritual world broke in, as God changed things, as it made sense to pray to him to do it.
The shift came at about 1500, he says. But if that’s true, what was my grandmother Nain Eliza doing when she prayed for rain when everything was drying up with the whole growing season bound to be lost? (She got famous since she was the only one to bring an umbrella to the prayer meeting for rain, and needed it). Are farmers likely to be pre-modern? Are Calvinists pre-modern, still living in an enchanted world where God changes sophisticated unbelievers’ hearts?
I think the real question is the last one. Have we Christians succumbed, are we too embarrassed to admit, even to each other, that we believe that we live in an enchanted world? Are there things we don’t ever think of praying for anymore?
I’m thinking especially about what we believe about “casting out demons” and I’ll tell you why. I’ve been to so many presbytery meetings where we examine someone to see if he’s qualified to be a pastor. We ask him everything, but so far I’ve never heard him asked, “how good are you at casting out demons?” But think about one of the greatest Presbyterian missionaries ever, John Livingston Nevius. There’s even the Nevius Principle named after him: missionary churches should be self-supporting very soon, themselves church-planting very soon, getting no more missionary money very soon. It didn’t work in China but wonderfully in Korea.
Nevius gets my attention for something else. He learned very soon that in the Asian world demonic oppression is widely believed and seemingly experienced. What should he make of this? His Demon Possession and Allied Themes is free online, but escaped from me today, so here’s a summary:
http://anglicalpentecostal.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-rev-nevius-holy-spirit-gives-lesson.html Did you see this: “Consistently, the missionaries were taught by the converts to disregard secessionism and accept as continuously valid the Bible’s descriptions of the demonic and exorcism.” Missionaries learning from new believers, really? To learn from them the Bible is ‘continuously valid’? That exorcism is still part of our ministry? For me, his most helpful advice is his most basic: don’t start conversations with demons, only answer back when they talk first.
ReplyDeleteWhy do I bring this up? Granted that demon possession is not that major a theme in the Bible, but if it’s real, it must be terrible for our fellow-believer, and aren’t we called to care for him? What’s really moving my heart right now: is this where we didn’t follow the God’s Word but instead our modern culture? Where we succumbed to rational respectability? Where we cheerfully gave up a major part of our Lord Jesus’ victory over evil?
I’m enthusiastic over the World Reformed Fellowship and its recently adopted Statement of Faith, that I consider our faith for the world today. It is the only global Reformed statement we’ve ever had! Look at parts of its section II. Evil and sin:
. . .The fallen angels are called demons and are led by Satan. They oppose the work of God and seek to frustrate his purposes. Nevertheless God remains sovereign over the powers of evil and uses their actions to forward his plan of salvation. Demons are not to be worshipped or served in any way. Their activity lies behind false religions and Satan blinds human minds to the truth. . .
Human beings join forces with supernatural agents who have brought about such horrific evils as genocide, the abuse of power, world wars, various types of terrorism, psychopathic killing, human trafficking, drug abuse and violence of all kinds. Without underestimating and undermining the significance of human beings, such outrageous forms of evil are propagated and orchestrated by demonic forces with the result that human beings can be divided, destroyed and brought below the level of animals in their thoughts and behaviour. Evil is not only directed towards the destruction of creation and the image of God in the descendants of Adam and Eve, but also towards suppression of the church and the truth of God. Though demons do not multiply, nor can they be destroyed by humans, we are still called to resist the evil, injustice, oppression and violence that the demons use for their purposes, while awaiting and praying for the return of Jesus Christ, who will bring an end to all these things. . .
There it is, our only global Reformed statement, and the only one with demons in it! I think the more global we become, the more we’ll be protected from our own little culture’s respectability syndrome. But I still struggle with this. I keep thinking of fakers who pretend they do exorcisms. We need to bring in some Asians to help us evaluate, don’t you think? We need to think through how our diverse Christian cultures help us understand him in deeper ways, I think that’s how it works.
ReplyDeleteMy local friend David Powlison helps me in his Power Encounters: "Our secular modern age may have created a barren and disenchanted world, but an over-fascination with demonic agents creates a lurid, re-enchanted counter-world that is just as bad." Thanks for that warning, David; you must be right, we need to be warned about culture from both the right and the left.
But as you go ahead with his warning in your head, look again at passages like: Matthew 17: 14-21, because of your tiny faith, that’s why you couldn’t do it; Acts 19:11-20, Paul did it but demons beat up fakers; 2 Timothy 2:24-26, we do all we can for people so they can get out of the devil’s trap. Nevius and the WRF encourage me to work with all of these very seriously. It’s not really right to ignore them all since they don’t fit the way all we educated folks think today, is it?
We can say this: “I don’t know what’s going on inside you, let me take you to the hospital to find out. Say, before we do that, let me pray that the Lord would take out something demonic from you, that could be the problem.’ Is that too wishy-washy? I think it’s a start.
It’s a start to the bigger picture too, to the praying we all need to do. O Lord, so many people we know are blinded by the culture around us, they can’t see you plain as day, the way you have blessed is to see you. O Lord, please teach us to say your gospel a lot clearer and break apart the Satanic darkness of this respectable culture. Amen.
D. Clair Davis
Good day,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Lena!. I am lonely girl, 32 y.o.
I for the first time try to get meet a men in such way and I don't
know what to tell right now. I am petite, light skin, long hair, thin.
I am pretty lonely and wanted to find someone of my age or older than me.
I'm looking for maturea men that i can build a family.
For me the base of any relations are sincerity, respect and trust.
I want to love and feel that i'm loved too!
I have Photo and will gladly email you If you like my description.
I will wait for your letter and if you are really serious in your search, maybe we will find interest in each other.
Do not answer me if you not single or my letter was delivered to you by mistake!
I appreciate the feedback via emails on the audio Satire And Theology posts. I will likely continue posting more as minus video they are less work to post often than a written post and do assist me with my public speaking. Hope I am helpful...
ReplyDeleteGood day,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Lena!. I am lonely girl, 32 y.o.
I for the first time try to get meet a men in such way and I don't
know what to tell right now. I am petite, light skin, long hair, thin.
I am pretty lonely and wanted to find someone of my age or older than me.
I'm looking for maturea men that i can build a family.
For me the base of any relations are sincerity, respect and trust.
I want to love and feel that i'm loved too!
I have Photo and will gladly email you If you like my description.
I will wait for your letter and if you are really serious in your search, maybe we will find interest in each other.
Do not answer me if you not single or my letter was delivered to you by mistake!
hey Subscriber, I need your help
ReplyDeleteNo Hype, No B.S. - I'm sick of it!
ReplyDeleteTrue Friendship Should Be Cherished Forever...
ReplyDeletePensioner's Holiday
ReplyDeleteA Travel Agent looked up from his desk to see an old lady and an old
gentleman peering in the shop window at the posters showing the glamorous destinations around the world.
The agent had had a good week and the dejected couple looking in the window gave him a rare feeling of generosity.
He called them into his shop,
"I know that on your pension you could never hope to have a great holiday, so I am sending you off to a fabulous resort at my expense and I won't take 'no' for an answer."
He took them inside and asked his secretary to arrange two flight tickets and book a room in a five star hotel."
Then, as can be expected, they gladly accepted, and were off!
About a month later the little old lady came in to his shop.
"And how did you like your holiday?" he asked eagerly.
"The flight was exciting and the room was lovely," she said. "I've come to thank you, but one thing puzzled me.
Who was that old bugger I had to share the room with?"
ACTUALLY, SOME OF US ASK THE SAME QUESTION EVERY MORNING !
ENJOY - A Blonde's Year in Review
ReplyDeleteJanuary
Took new scarf back to store because it was too tight.
February
Fired from pharmacy job for failing to print labels.....
Helllloooo!!!.......bottles won't fit in printer!!!
March
Got really excited.....finished jigsaw puzzle in 6 months.....
Box said ' 2-4 years!'
April
Trapped on escalator for hours ...
Power went out!!!
May
Tried to make Kool-Aid.....wrong instructions....
8 cups of water won't fit into those little packets!!!
June
Tried to go water skiing.......
Couldn't find a lake with a slope.
July
Lost breast stroke swimming competition.....
Learned later that the other swimmers cheated- they used their arms!!!
August
Got locked out of my car in rain storm.....
Darn car filled up with water because convertible top was open.
September
The capital of California is 'C'.....isn't it???
October
Hate M & M's.....They are so hard to peel.
November
Baked Thanksgiving turkey for 4 1/2 days ...
Instructions said bake 1 hour per pound and I weigh 108!!
December
Couldn't call 911.
'Duh'.....there's no 'eleven' button on the stupid phone!!!
Scale won't budge? Push through it ...
ReplyDeleteGet fatter?
ReplyDeleteProofreading is a dying art,
ReplyDeletewouldn't you say?
Man Kills
Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
This one I caught in the SGV Tribune the
other day and called the Editorial Room and asked who wrote this. It
took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was
reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next
day.
I just couldn't help but send
this along. Too funny.
Something
Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
No,do you
really think so?
-------------------------------------------------------
Police
ReplyDeleteBegin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Now that's
taking things a bit far!
Panda
ReplyDeleteMating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
What a
guy!
Miners
ReplyDeleteRefuse to Work after Death
No-good-for-nothing'
lazy so-and-so's!