Someone asked me if I would write about the Sikh Temple shooting that occurred in Wisconsin two days ago. Here it is, but it not in the way that you might think.
First, the facts: An Army vet took a gun and began shooting people who were at worship in an Oak Creek WI Sikh Temple. He killed 6 people and wounded four, before being shot and killed himself by police. Just 16 days before the Wisconsin attack, a lone gunman had entered a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people and wounding dozens more. In between these two horrific shootings, a woman who had been aboard a Detroit Riverboat partying, was involved in an altercation, and as the boat docked, disembarked and returned to shoot, striking seven people, critically injuring one. She is still at large.
President Obama said of the Sikh Temple shooting, “These kinds of terrible and tragic events are happening with too much regularity for us not do some soul-searching and examine additional ways that we can prevent such violence…”
There are three items in the quote to consider. First, he said these kinds of terrible tragedies are occurring more often. That is true. The second comment of note is that he said we need to do some soul-searching. This is also true. Thirdly, he said that we need to examine ways to prevent such violence in the future. This is also true but it will never happen as long as man searches his soul and fails to turn it over to Jesus.
Sin starts in the mind.
I want us to really think about the interior state of man and how God knows what it is.
Sin begins with a thought. “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.” (Mark 7:21-22).
“Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:14-15).
Sin begins inside us in the heart and mind, and then it is given birth when we speak the thing, and then the action follows. Anyone who has worked in the Good News Club knows we tell the kids of the progression of sin in this way: “Sin is anything we think, say, or do that displeases God.” Think-say-do.
Shootings like the Aurora Theater in Colorado or the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin don’t ‘just happen.’ The perpetrator was thinking about it first, and for a long time, too.
If we are seeing these sinful acts happen more and more frequently, imagine how much more people are thinking about them, first. The acting out is the last stage of the progression. The visible heinous act is only the tip of the iceberg to the heinous acts that occur in the mind. Floating icebergs have a significant proportion of their mass below the surface of the water. When we say “This problem is just the tip of the iceberg,” what we are really saying is “A small evident part or aspect of something largely hidden.” If the evident part is getting bigger every day, how much larger of a problem is the hidden part? (Definition and unmodified photo from Wiki).
“Many people who will not do evil deeds are nevertheless boldly evil in their thoughts. A man who abstains from fornication for fear of getting caught might convince himself it is all right to indulge in salacious fantasies because he thinks no one else will ever discover such a private sin. The sins he deliberately entertains in his mind may be a thousand times more evil than anything he would ever think of doing before others. Scripture says his guilt is the same as if he acted out his fantasies.” (Matthew 5:27‑28).
So you can imagine if people are doing evil deeds almost daily how deeply depraved the thought-life of people on earth is getting.
MacArthur continued: “In fact, nothing damages the conscience more than the habit of indulging in evil thoughts. Unfortunately, once begun, the practice becomes all too easy. This is a sin that does not have to wait for an opportunity; the mind can sin anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. So the habit is quickly and easily established. By engaging the inner faculties—mind, emotions, desire, memory, and imagination—thought sins work directly on the soul to bias it toward evil.”
Now, the LORD said in Matthew 24 that the days just prior to His coming will be like the Days of Noah (Matthew 24:37). So…what were the days of Noah like?
“And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5). [Emphasis mine.]
Everybody is going around thinking evil all the time. We can’t tell, only Jesus can see what is in a man. (John 2:25). But when we see such evil deeds being acted out, you know that proportionally, that many more men’s thoughts are evil. And if the deeds are happening frequently, we know that the evil thoughts are continual.
The good news is that if you are saved, and have had sinful thoughts, if you repent, He will forgive you! Then, guard your thought life!!!
And if you are not saved, Jesus will forgive you when you repent, and all your sins will be forgotten by Him. No matter what you have thought, or said, or done, He will forgive it. He is THAT GOOD.
There are two takeaways to this blog entry:
1. So when we see the Sikh Temple shooting, I don’t want us just to go ‘tsk tsk, that poor unsaved man’. I want us to see ourselves in him. Understand that without Jesus we all have the capability to perform those acts, whether they remain in our mind or whether we act on them. We are all sinners. None is righteous, no not one. (Romans 3:10). We all need to repent, saved or unsaved. The unsaved need to repent unto salvation, the saved need to repent to keep thoughts pure for a more pleasing relationship with the Savior.
2. He is near. Personally, I see the nearness of Jesus’ return not just because of the terrible acts we are now seeing on a weekly and almost daily basis, but because I know that for every shooting done, there are a hundred thousand who thought about shooting. For every Pastor who confesses to an adulterous affair with a minor, there are a thousand more who thought about it. Genesis 6 says that judgment came not only when the evil was present on the earth but when the evil thoughts were continuous in man. Re-read the verse- it’s two parts. How closely does this sinful world’s thought-life match the level of depravity Jesus said we’d sink to just prior to His coming? I don’t know, but Jesus does. Are you ready for Him?
We had a good first day back at school. It was a good but tiring day, mostly due to the furniture we moved around getting our classrooms back together. Overall it was a great re-introduction for my body to get used tot he rigors of working an 8-hour day after literally laying around all summer. Each day this week will get more demanding, until Thursday night’s Open House with parents, and Friday when the kids return to school. You know, whoever wrote about ‘The Endless Sumer’ was seriously misinformed. LOL.
Meanwhile, much to my amazement, the world news kept right on happening while I was away from my computer. Here is some of the more interesting (to me) headlines:
The Hormuz Strait is the world’s chokepoint for exported oil. Iran could easily close it, even though Oman ‘owns’ half the strait. And if Iran does, oil prices would go through the roof. The reason that Iran is discussing this again is because the economic sanctions placed upon Iran by the UN which kicked in in Feb., are starting to have a real and devastating effect. Of course, this economic strangulation has not pushed back the Iranian progress on nukes one inch, but it has made them mad. Hence the talk about closing Hormuz.
MPs, admirals to discuss Strait of Hormuz “TEHRAN – During a meeting on Sunday, the MPs sitting on the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee and the commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Naval Force and the Iranian Navy will discuss the latest developments in regard to the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz, between the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, is a strategic 20-mile-wide link for Persian Gulf oil-exporting nations and the shipping lanes to oil-importing nations.”
I think it is extraordinary that Rumsfeld openly admits that the US is acting traitorously toward Israel, our ally. His statement is remarkable if you think about it.
Rumsfeld: Israel needn’t notify US about strike Rumsfeld further criticized the pattern of leaks emerging from White House concerning Iran, and said that “If I were in the Israeli government, I don’t think I would notify the United States government of any intent to do anything about Iran. So my guess is, given the pattern of leaks out of the White House, that any prime minister of Israel would not call the United States and give clear intentions as to what they plan to do.”
The next news excerpt is a great article on the silliness of the unsaved’s thinking. Romans 1:21 says of the reprobate, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
The word foolish here means without comprehension; foolish because incoherent; failing to “put facts together”, “lacking synthesis”; & describes a person failing to structure information in a meaningful way, and therefore unable to reach necessary conclusions. And they call us ignorant morons. We see here what God really thinks of the intellectual capacity of the unsaved. The definition goes on to say, this person is illogical because they’re unwilling to use good reason.
Peter is more directly blunt. Of those who “and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority,” (2 Peter 2:10), “What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.” (2 Peter 2:22).
Homosexuals Demand that Chick-Fil-A Stop Serving “Gay Chicken” “I must admit I don’t get around much, so I didn’t even know the reliably left-leaning Huff ’n’ Puff Post had a “Gay Voices” section. But yesterday, I read an article from there that covered a recent petition (with a whopping 1,500+ signatures!) that demanded that Chick-Fil-A be consistent with their “anti-homosexual” values and stop serving “homosexual” chicken at their restaurants. As the petition explains, some male chickens will mount other male chickens, so Chick-Fil-A cannot be consistent with their values until they make sure that none of the chicken meat they are serving comes from “homosexual” chickens. Wow. I’ve read some really, really stupid petitions in my life. But that one… Where do you even start?”
While Jesus raises us up day by day, Satan finds a way to make everything a little more depraved than he did the day before. (John 10:10).
The next big gaming accessory: shock collars? “A pair of masochistic French gamers has created a unique and terrible console modification. By attaching shock collars to the controllers and binding certain game events to their activation, they’ve made these classic Genesis games even more punishing than they used to be.”
This zombie thing is getting out of hand. Anyway, if you click on the link, warning, it’s graphic. The makeup they used is realistic, and more gross than any other I’ve seen. And finally, I simply ask…why? Why do this?
Zombie invasion sparks terror in NY “AMC teamed up with viral marketing agency Thinkmodo to unleash a horde of supremely gross zombies (expertly created by makeup artist Sue Lee) on the streets of Manhattan, dressing them up as paramedics and mailmen and filming bystanders’ reactions to the undead invasion. And the clip has been a huge success, racking up more than 2.5 million views in less than a week. Thinkmodo co-founder Michael Krivicka gives us the inside scoop on the shoot: “We shot this video over the course of eight days in various parts of Manhattan with 13 different zombie characters. The challenge was to keep the zombies hidden and have them pop up at the right moment to scare people and crowds.”
Ho-hum, yet another long dormant volcano suddenly rumbles to life, taking scientists completely by surprise… This one’s in New Zealand. This article calls the situation “Code Red“. The article below calls is a total surprise.
Mt Tongariro erupts for first time in over 100 years “A total surprise“ LATEST: Volcanic activity at Mt Tongariro could continue for weeks, months or even years after Tongariro rumbled to life after being dormant for more than 100 years last night. Last night’s eruption was a total surprise, so “we have to expect the unexpected”, GNS volcanologist Michael Rosenberg said. The mountain erupted at 11.50pm, sending ash across roads and prompting a potential threat warning for central North Island regions. The eruption threw rocks and spewed ash from the Te Mari craters, near Ketetahi hot springs, on the northern side of the mountain, GNS Science said.”
There is so much more going on, like the top Syrian Prime Minister defected yesterday, and three Parliament men with him. Palestinians blame Israel for two trees that fell at the Temple Mount, the wildfires in Oklahoma, another shooting (Not the Sikh shooting that killed 6, that was so yesterday, I mean the woman who opened fire on the crowd debarking from the Detroit Princess Riverboat today).
The spaceship Curiosity landed on Mars last night. That’s all well and good, but I don’t know why people don’t just trust Jesus for the pardon of their sins, and after the resurrection go visit Mars in person…
That was the tweet from a Christian sister who lives in Oklahoma. Wildfires have struck that state the last few days and there is much damage.
We’re scorched from one end of the nation to the other. We are experiencing heat, drought, fires, ash, dust, dryness and thirst…
Why is this? Because our hearts are hot for satan, we’re drought-ridden from not being in the Word, and our consciences are seared as if with a hot iron. So it is no wonder, my glorious God, that You manifest on the outside what is on the inside of your people. You are the Living Water, but we refuse it. You are the refreshing dew but we don’t want it. You give to us that is athirst the fountain of the water of life freely but we turn away. (Revelation 21:6).
“but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ( John 4:14 ).
But your people say NO!
“Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.”
(Haggai 1:10)
Corn plants damaged by extreme heat and drought conditions in Carmi, Illinois. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg. source
I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.” (Isaiah 5:6)
Marion Kujawa looks over a pond he uses to water the cattle on his farm on in Ashley, Ill. Kujawa has been digging the pond deeper after it began to dry up during the current drought.
“The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.” (Deuteronomy 28:24)
In Luther, Okla., at least two dozen homes, a day care center and other businesses have been destroyed by a wind-driven fire. source
Surely wickedness burns like a fire; it consumes briers and thorns, it sets the forest thickets ablaze, so that it rolls upward in a column of smoke. (Isaiah 9:18)
A horse, which was eventually rescued, tries to escape a wildfire Friday in central Oklahoma. Photo: Jerry Laizure, AP. source
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jeremiah 2:13).
Medina County: cisterns drying up in drought. source
I like to see the metaphors in how the LORD presents Himself to us. One of those ways is as the Living water, refreshing rain, a fountain of truth. Water, water, water. I also like to see His promises. We often focus on the ‘good’ promises, of eternal life, treasure in heaven, unconditional love. But He made other promises too. Like this one that He promises His people the Jews-
“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments…Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase.” (Leviticus 26:3,4)
Although our covenant with Him as the grafted-in Gentiles is not the same as the covenant above, the principles are the same. We are still to walk in His ways and follow His statutes. If we do, then another of His promises will be fulfilled:
“And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” (Isaiah 58:11).
Barnes’ Notes closes beautifully with an explanation of the Isaiah verse above. Man, those 1800’s writers could write:
“But in the supplies which God makes for his people there is no such deception. The fountains of pardon, peace, and joy are ever open and ever full. The streams of salvation are always flowing. The weary pilgrim may go there at any season of the year, and from any part of a desolate world, and find them always full, refreshing, and free. However far may be the pilgrimage to them from amidst the waste and burning climes of sin, however many come to slake their thirst, and however frequently they come, they find them always the same. They never fail; and they will continue to flow on to the end of time.”
Updated to include identity of and comments from law-breaker who defaced Chick-Fil-A restaurant in Torrance, California. See below.
—————— When Jesus said in Matthew 24:6 that one of the signs of His soon coming would be wars and rumors of wars, automatically we think of military wars. And indeed it means that. Military war is not only what He meant, in my opinion. He didn’t use the word strateuo: “to make war” (from stratos, “an encamped army”). He used the word polemos which means war but it also means battle, strife, quarrels.
The word ‘polemos’ that He used in English is ‘polemic.’ A polemic is “a contentious argument that is intended to establish the truth of a specific belief and the falsity of the contrary belief. Polemics are mostly seen in arguments about very controversial topics.” Polemics address important issues in religion, philosophy, politics, or science. The word is derived from the Greek meaning “warlike, hostile” which comes from polemos, “war”. (Wiki)
What we have in the Chick-Fil-A controversy is a very open war- a culture war with polemical battle lines drawn on one side and the other. This week America was engaged in a national convulsion in polemics, AKA culture war, strife, battle, and quarrel. Christians brought biblical light to a Godly value (heterosexual marriage) and focused it in such a way as to shine it directly into the eyes of those who are yet in darkness. My own opinion is that this is also what Jesus meant when He said ‘you will see wars and rumors of wars.’
Now for the relevant application. I’ll boil the culture war down to two people, Adam Smith and Rachel.
Distribution of Chick-Fil-A restaurants in the US. Wiki commons
The background to this war is that in an interview with the Baptist Press, Chick-Fil-A chain restaurant owner Dan Cathy responded to a question about the company’s support for traditional marriage, saying:
“Well, guilty as charged. We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families – some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that … We intend to stay the course. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.” Source
His mild and gentle but clear statement caused a firestorm of protest. The usual protests came from the homosexual segment of the population, but this time the politicians and Mayors of major cities, particularly Boston and Chicago, stated that they would do everything in their power to stop Chick-Fil-A from operating as a company in their city.
The usual argument in culture is one thing, but the US is founded on principles of freedom of speech and religion, and this not-so-veiled attack on those principles ignited a peaceful protest by the conservative segment of the population. They decided to go and buy Chick-Fil-A food as a sign of support. On August 1, 2012, Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day happened. Boy, did people turn out for this!
My Christian brother in Norway tweeted, “Why is everyone from america talking about this chick-fil a or something??” I told him that the national convulsion we’re experiencing here is simply the latest iteration of an age-old battle. This week it burst into open warfare in such vitriolic proportions that the culture war spilled overseas to the notice of other nations.
You might ask, the homosexual agenda has been visible for a long time, this isn’t the first time it has burst open in America. Remember Stonewall? How about all those Pride Days, Gay Parades, and legislative rallies and protests for homosexual marriage?” Yes, that is true, that is part of the culture war. It’s been one-sided so far. But this week was the first time in my memory that the initiative was taken by Christians, in a well-planned and organized push-back.
People who are not in Christ are in satan. There is no in-between. Satan deludes the unsaved into thinking that there aren’t that many Christians. They think we are kooks, living exclusively in the south, and that we have no power. Christians are no-account in an unsaved person’s life, because they simply don’t see us. We are invisible to them because satan has blinded them to the Light of Jesus that is in us. I cannot stress this enough.
I can say these things because I wasn’t saved until I was 43 years old. Until then I was a New England liberal elite who thought Christians numbered in the dozens, maybe hundreds, living Deliverance style in the woods of Mississippi. Or maybe all in one subdivision. They were easy to avoid and had no impact to my life. When I did get saved and moved to the south I was shocked, shocked I tell you, at the sheer number of Christians. Before, they were invisible to me. And that is because satan has blinded their minds.
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4)
I have four points I’d like to finish with.
On Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day, Adam Smith, an executive at an Arizona company named Vante, sat for a looooong time in the drive-thru. He was there to buy some water and to tell the employee serving him that she worked for a horrible company that denies homosexuals their rights. He said he felt good, purposeful and jazzed to be doing it. We know all this because he filmed his encounter and posted it on Youtube. The next day his company fired him.
A day or so after that, Smith posted an 8-minute video apologizing for his actions and stated he wasn’t just saying this because he was fired and he has a lot of time on his hands to reflect on his actions. His video is below. You can watch for yourself. First I’ll post some of his comments and embed them in the context of the (culture) wars and polemical arguments bursting out all over.
“You should know I never planned to say the things I said that day…and how I said them. I planned to peacefully participate in the Youtube post where Jackson Pearce asked people to order a large water as a sign of support for the gay community. But when I got to your window, after seeing all of the people in and outside the restaurant, that came to support Chick-Fil-A, I lost it. I just lost it. I couldn’t believe the number of people that came out to support a corporation…”
1. What he really means there is he couldn’t believe how many people came out to support a corporation that openly embraces a Christian value. Because, of course, liberals and homosexuals and the unsaved come out in force and in numbers all the time to support or oppose corporations. Look at the Occupy Wall Street protests. They oppose Bank of America or other banks. Last time I looked, those were corporations.
2. I can just see how sitting in that long line for all that time roiled Mr Smith. He got madder, madder and madder. Satan opposes God. When someone is deeply reprobate, they will be angry when confronted with truth. Smith had buckets of time in line to watch truth in action. Romans 1 says that all have seen God because He has revealed His invisible qualities to us through the creation. In this case the truth hit him on the nose and he couldn’t help but see the numbers of people who support corporations with Godly values. Those who deliberately suppress this truth descend on a path that gets darker and darker. Confronted with truth, they get angry. They will become the things they claim to hate!
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” (Romans 1:28-30).
Smith could not believe the number of people who love God and who support Godly principles. Smith was confronted with visible, tangible proof of the fact that God exists in many people and he shrank like a vampire from holy water, screaming ‘noooo noooo nooo’. OK maybe not literally, but pretty close, seeing his own words above! “I just lost it.” So he lashed out:
“For me, the main goal of supporting the gay community outweighed any collateral damage that Rachel became. … I just literally saw Rachel as collateral damage.”
3. In other words the war in the reprobate to win at all costs no matter who gets hurt in the process is clearly unveiled. This is because in suppressing the truth, they are filled with all manner of unrighteousness as described above. Their unreasoning, satanic hatred of all things Godly will darken them to the point that they rise up in violence. This is a war. When presented with the truth become so blinded with rage they lash out and as in any war, there is ‘collateral damage.’
Like this:
Huffington Post reports, Homosexual “Manny Castro has stepped forward to claim responsibility for the “Tastes Like Hate” message painted on the side of a Chick-fil-A restaurant Friday morning in Torrance, Calif.” Castro claims that he, as a homosexual man has few rights and that the people at Chick-Fil-A were trying to take away what few rights he has left. “When Castro saw news photos of thousands of Americans lined up around the block to buy a sandwich in support of the company on “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” his heart sank even more.” Castro says Americans eating chicken sandwiches to support their preferred restaurant is the “same thing” as when 40 years ago Christians protested whites marrying blacks. Therefore, he reasoned, his defacement of local property is “not that much of a crime.”
You notice that it was when Castro “saw” the photos of lines upon lines of people at Chick-Fil-A that the polemical issue really affected him. “His heart sank.” It was when he was confronted with the truth that he was angered into negative action, that is.
They will never see the irony in that a hate filled heart will, under cover of darkness plot an evil plan, buy paint, gather together in unrighteousness, and in their foolish battle, they break the law in order to claim that others hate. Breaking the law is the most hateful incivility in the highest degree. But their reprobate minds just lose it and in the ensuing war, there is collateral damage. In this case, an innocent restaurant manager who had then to deal with the aftermath of reprobate hate plastered on his building.
Smith goes on to say that the reaction against him subsequent to his video posting and then his firing was discouraging. He has received threats against himself, his family and his co-workers. This is unfortunate and is not a Christian value. People who do those things, no matter what side of the culture war they say they are on, are reprobate with a foolish heart and a darkened mind.
However Smith also says that on the other hand it is encouraging. Because, he says, “If people can get this passionate about a guy being rude to a girl in the drive-thru, how much more passion can we have for our fellow human beings have whose basic rights are being threatened by a corporation like Chick-Fil-A?”
4. So you can see that he is not really sorry. His heart is still darkened. He recognized the light inside of Rachel the woman he berated, but he wants to harness that light for satan’s purposes.
This “war” will continue and even deepen. The lines are drawn so clearly now.
The chasm between the Light-filled Christian and the Dark-Hearted Reprobate will shrink, and shrink and shrink, until one day Christians will be raptured and we will study war no more! The Dark-Hearted Reprobate will have no one left to battle with…so he will turn against the next guy whose heart is even darker than his. Because their war is really against God. They will continue, because Romans 1:32 closes out with:
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
May God have mercy upon them…but His wrath is building.
————————————— Original video of Smith going through drive-thru on Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day. It is a little over 2 minutes.:
Adam Smith’s apologetic video, it is about 8 minutes
What’s going on in the world world, anyway? Here is a news synopsis for you-
Never has so much been stated in an article and so little has been said. It is all vapors and platitudes. The only concrete news I got from this article in the Jordan Times is that Panetta is out of the country.
King warns of ‘dangerous ramifications’ of Syrian crisis “US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s six-hour stop in Jordan — his first visit to the Kingdom as defence secretary — is part of a regional tour that he began earlier this week, making stops in Tunisia, Egypt and Israel. … His Majesty King Abdullah on Thursday voiced Jordan’s concern over the escalating situation in Syria and its “dangerous” ramification on the region, calling for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. The King reiterated the need for a solution that would put an end to the bloodshed and spare the Syrians more suffering, a Royal Court statement said.”
UN Peace Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan quit this week. Syria’s ally Russia has something to say about that.
Annan’s Exit ‘Opens Gates’ for Intervention – Russian Ministry “Annan’s decision against extending his mandate as the UN envoy to Syria raises loads of questions regarding the future of this country. He is an honest international mediator but someone wants to push him out of the game to open the gates for forceful actions. This is obvious,” Gatilov wrote in his Twitter account.”
Note how Russia sees the situation, this next paragraph is through their eyes:
“The West is pushing for President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster, while Russia and China are trying to prevent outside interference in Syria saying the Assad regime and the opposition are both to blame for the bloodshed.”
Methinks Russia doth protest too much. Because meanwhile, the Lebanon Daily Star reports,
Russia sends navy vessels to Tartus: agencies “Moscow is sending three large landing ships with marines aboard to a Russian naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartus, Russian news agencies quoted a source in the general staff as saying on Friday. The source said each ship would have up to 120 marines on board and that the vessels, already in the Mediterranean, would arrive in Tartus by the end of this week or early next week. The source said the ships’ mission was to replenish supplies at the small Russian maintenance and repair facility, manned by fewer than 100 personnel, according to analysts.”
Landing ships. Did you catch that? Landing ships. Wiki– “They are designed for beach landings and can carry a 450 ton cargo. The ships have both bow and stern doors for loading and unloading vehicles, and the 630 m² of vehicle deck stretches the length of the hull. Up to 25 armored personnel carriers can be embarked. They were built for the Soviet Navy during the Cold War, but the current Russian Navy has little need for a long-range amphibious capability and most of them are kept in reserve or are retired.”
Well, some of them just came out of retirement.
Meanwhile in Israel, the talk is of that long spoken of and long prophesied war and rumor of war, a pre-emptive attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Will Israel attack? Won’t they attack? Do it! Don’t do it! (Matthew 24:6)
Oy, I think the “rumor of war” is worse than the war.
The US has been on a downward trajectory for some time. The Chinese have been on an upward trajectory. Our economies, world influence, power, and stability have been like a see-saw. We know the US is not a player in any sense in the end times prophetic plan. The US is not mentioned. The ‘Kings of the East”…are. (Daniel 11:44, Revelation 9:13-16, Revelation 16:12-16). In my opinion this article clearly shows the switch. Now, China is the nation not to say no to.
Australia rejects US proposal for nuclear aircraft carrier group near Perth “Australia, which tries to tread a fine line between supporting its closest ally, the US, and not upsetting China, its biggest trading partner, yesterday rejected a proposal to base a US nuclear aircraft carrier group near Perth, saying it did not want US bases in the country…. “I think they’ll [the Australian government] be very careful not to risk further displeasure from China by doing anything that suggests they’re supporting a US military build-up in Asia,” Hugh White, head of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, told Associated Press.”
I’ve been watching the Uganda ebola case for two weeks now. It has grown into a concern. People are fleeing hospitals for fear of an outbreak
Suspected Ebola cases growing in Uganda “KAMPALA, Uganda — Six more patients suspected to have Ebola have been admitted to the hospital days after investigators confirmed an outbreak of the highly infectious disease in a remote corner of western Uganda, a health official said on Monday. Stephen Byaruhanga, health secretary of the affected Kibaale district, said possible cases of Ebola, at first concentrated in a single village, are now being reported in more villages. “It’s no longer just one village. There are many villages affected,” Byaruhanga said. This is the fourth occurrence of Ebola in Uganda since 2000, when the disease killed 224 people and left hundreds more traumatized in northern Uganda. At least 42 people were killed in another outbreak in 2007, and there was a lone Ebola case in 2011.”
Uganda Ebola outbreak: patients flee hospital amid contagion fears “Terrified patients fled from a hospital in western Uganda as soon as news broke that a mysterious illness that killed at least 14 people in the region was Ebola, one of the world’s most virulent diseases.”
Remember, ebola is the disease with the 90% mortality rate because it melts your insides. (pestilences: Matthew 24:7)
The NY Times lead a story on ebola with this: “Of the pathogens that keep worried scientists awake at night, few rival Ebola for ruthless efficiency. The virus contains just seven genes, yet it manages to kill up to 90 percent of the people it infects.’
Which prompted this Virology Professor to investigate if the 90% statistic was true, and found this on the WHO page:
“According to the WHO page on Ebola haemorrhagic fever, “Zaïre, Sudan and Bundibugyo species have been associated with large Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) outbreaks in Africa with high case fatality ratio (25–90%) while Côte d’Ivoire and Reston have not. Reston species can infect humans but no serious illness or death in humans have been reported to date.’
I think the average mortality rate from ebola is an average 65%, but it is pretty well universally acknowledged that the rate increases dramatically during an outbreak. Hence the fear conveyed in the above articles. Just to compare, the 1918 influenza outbreak that killed about 20-100 million people had a mortality rate of 2%.
Health teams face real-life horror in Ebola battle “When officials in Uganda verified an outbreak of the Ebola virus on Saturday, it set international health workers in motion. The hemorrhagic virus is the stuff of real-life horror — spreading through contact with infected individuals, their bodily fluids and even clothing they have worn. In many cases Ebola leads to a rapid decline marked by fever, diarrhea, vomiting and internal and external bleeding.”
How is this a good idea, I ask?
Aussie Tycoon Wants to Clone Dinosaurs for His Real Life, Resort-Based Jurassic Park “In other billionaire news today, a controversial and ostentatious Australian is supposedly planning a real-life Jurassic Park, complete with cloned dinosaurs. Clive Palmer, who also wants to build a modern-day Titanic replica, has held talks with the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep, reports Australia’s Sunshine Coast Daily. Palmer, a mining magnate, owns a luxury resort on the Sunshine Coast, in southern Queensland on Australia’s Pacific side. He would put the dinosaurs in his new resort there, the Daily reports.”
Big head squirrel feeder “Hang this vinyl 5-1/2″ x 8″ Big Head Squirrel Feeder in front of a window or near a porch, fill it with something squirrels like to eat and when they stick their head up there, the squirrel looks like he has a hilariously huge head with a goofy smile.”
Take that, squirrel! I heap humiliation upon you! Plus, I fart in your general direction!
The Millennium Kingdom is the nearly next event on the schedule of God’s prophetic plan. There will be the end of the Church Age, culminating in the rapture of the saints. Then 7 years of the Time of Jacob’s Trouble, and the return of Jesus to put an end to sin (Dan 9:24). After that He establishes His kingdom which will last for 1000 years. Satan will be bound and put in the pit so he won’t even be around to bother anyone for all that time. (Revelation 20:2-7)
The Jews will live in their promised lands, and the Church Age Saints will live in New Jerusalem. Believers who made it through the Tribulation will enter the Kingdom and repopulate the earth. Without sin and with the earth having been restored, the population will explode quickly. It will be a time of peace and harmony.
“And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.” (Isaiah 32:17–18)
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people.” (Amos 9:13–15).
The curse of creation will be gone and the animals will be friendly.
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together;” (Isaiah 11:6–9)
The children who are born during the Millennium Kingdom will grow in a happy, healthy, whole environment. If they die at age 100 it will be as if they died while a child, so ‘young’ they must have been accursed.
“No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.” (Isaiah 65:20).
We who are raptured or resurrected through death will be talking with these children. After all, they will be be born with a sin nature and have to be taught about Jesus. Can you imagine some of the conversations in our rocking chair as we sit under our vine, and the kids come around? Maybe a kid crawls up onto our lap, or sits on the porch and asks for a story. We can give them the real “back in my day” stories!
Back in my day, you had to lock the doors because of robbers. What’s a lock? It’s a thing where it prevents the door being open unless you have the key. What’s a key? It’s…oh, never mind. What’s a robber? It is a bad guy who comes to take away your things without permission. Why would they want to do that when everyone always has everything they need? Maybe they were hungry. What’s hungry? LOL, maybe they just wanted our TV, eh, Bessie? [speaking to neighbor] What’s a tv? Never mind. Hey, kids, look at that lion over there. Back in my day, they would chase you and chomp you and eat you up! No! Not my friend Leo! He’s nice! Well, maybe they were hungry and they wanted a human to eat. What’s hungry? You said that word before. You kids make me tired. Go play with that cobra over there. (Isaiah 11:8) OK bye Grandma Elizabeth!
Back in my day… [shudder]. I think I’ll go visit Martin Luther and Apostle Paul for a while. Ack, kids these days. They never had it so good.
I enjoy Twitter. I get news, fast, ‘meet’ like-minded Christians who encourage each other, and usually have a laugh. People really are very funny and witty. There are two guys who are usually re-tweeted by someone I follow. One is the Surly Deacon and the other is the Church Curmudgeon. Church Curmudgeon’s tag line is “It ain’t the way it used to be, I’ll tell you that.”
The Church Curmudgeon said the other day, “I am big! It’s the deacons that got small! #DeaconMovieLines”.
I thought that was pretty funny … because we’re all part of the body in equal standing before the Lord.(1 Corinthians 12:27-31).
If you know that famous movie line from Sunset Boulevard and how Gloria Swanson nailed the delivery, all the better. Here is Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond:
“The Surly Deacon said on Twitter the other day- “Under the cover of darkness someone (me & Ted) replaced the 2008 Baptist hymnal with the 1975 one. Contemporary worship has to go.”
The wit for me is that the Surly Deacon thinks 2008 Baptist hymnal is contemporary. There’s depth to that comment if you think about it.
Here is something more sobering, especially in light of today’s headline from Drudge regarding yet another threat from Iran’s President Ahmadinejad that Iran’s only goal in life is to annihilate Israel. When, oh, when will the US top level officials begin to understand Iran really means it? Iran not coincidentally wants to annihilate the US as well. They’re just not as vocal about it.
Here is the headline:
Ahmadinejad: World forces must annihilate Israel “In a speech published on his website Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel…. Ahmadinejad added that “liberating Palestine” would solve all the world’s problems, although he did not elaborate on exactly how that might work. … Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth, has previously called for Israel’s annihilation, in a 2005 speech in which he used a Persian phrase that translates literally as “wiped off the page of time.”
Psalm 83 says they would say that:
“O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God! For behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!” (Psalm 83:1-4).
If you live in the US and you are reading this, don’t get too comfortable. The video below shows how easy it is for Iran or one of its paid proxies can attack us and send us back to the year 1700 in one second.
Joel C. Rosenberg brings us up-to-date on the war drums in Israel-Iran-Syria, you note, the exact hot zone today and the exact prophesied hot-zone at the end of days according to Isaiah 17:1, Psalm 83, and Ezekiel 38-39.
Here is a short clip on the tenuous and vulnerable position the US is in this very day.
The US is in a vulnerable position before her enemies, but no Christian is. We are safe in Jesus. No matter what happens, we are safe in His arms.
“The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)
We haven’t had a foray into the strange and fringe for a good while, so I pass this along for the UFO-logists in the group.
As you know, I love quantifiable data to use as a benchmark for comparing events to history. I think it helps us stay grounded and not get carried away too far with prophetic newspaper exegesis. In this UFO report from the National UFO Reporting Center, they say that fireball sightings have increased tremendously.
We know that Revelation is an orderly UN-creating of the universe as opposed to Genesis which is the account of Creation. In Revelation we read that the mountains will fall, rivers will dry up, houses will topple, stars will plummet, the sun will go out…
Just before that uncreation, the Lord will collect His bride in the rapture and take us to heaven. Even so, we were told to look for signs that will precede this time that will be so devastating no flesh would survive if Jesus had not cut short the days. Matthew 24:29 says that at the end of the Tribulation the stars will fall. Celestial things will happen and in my opinion it is no surprise that we see a foretaste now of what will happen in the Tribulation. In the context of His talk about the end of the age, Jesus said to be on guard! Why? “I have told you these things beforehand.” (Mark 13:23).
So here is a bit of news that’s ‘out there’ in more ways than one!
“We apologize for the long delay in updating our website and database of reports. Our last posting was July 4th. The delay is explained by the fact that we have received an unusually large volume of reports, and we are working on a full-time basis to get them all proof-read, and posted to our site.”
“Part of the explanation for the increase in sightings is the several radio programs that Peter Davenport, NUFORC Director, has made appearances on, in order to discuss the high volume of reports of “fireballs” that we have been receiving since June 2011. Whereas a typical number of reports submitted per month to NUFORC over the last 17 years has been 250-350, during June we received 974, and we have received 1,052 during July. The majority of the reports from the last two months appear to be about the “fireballs,” which we have discussed frequently over the past year. This type of sighting appears to have increased significantly, within the last month or two, and they now dominate the reports we are receiving.”
Here is another piece of news. I often report on sinkholes. They frequently happen when a long-undiscovered or a recently catastrophic failure of a water pipe saturates the ground underneath and suddenly the top-pavement gives way. This is nothing unusual. Slightly more unusual, Florida in particular has endured a spate of sinkhole events over the last three years. So much so that a legislative session was called to re-regulate the insurance industry covering these swarms of claims coming in, and when that didn’t work they simply stopped covering sinkholes in many cases.
Even more unusual are the sinkholes that happen in cities. The Guatemala City sinkhole in 2010 was a surprise and a shock to many, it looked exactly like a shaft of hell had opened up.
Well now one has opened up in Brooklyn NY of all places.
Giant sinkhole opens up in Brooklyn; nearly eats car [Updated] The Earth went looking for a snack in Brooklyn on Wednesday when a twenty-foot deep, twenty-foot-wide sinkhole opened up between Fourth and Fifth Avenues in Bay Ridge at about 6 p.m., according to CBS. Several cars lined the collapsed portion of the street. Fortunately, the sinkhole didn’t swallow any vehicles; however, it got at least a taste of one that leaned into the gaping hole. “We’re so blessed,” said the Zen-like car owner. “If we were five minutes later or anything, we could have been in the hole.” Another cavity formed earlier in the summer in the same neighborhood. The cause is unknown and we’re not geologists, but our recollection of high school earth science tells us this is a pretty clear-cut case of an undernourished Earth.”
Ah! the update later says that the cause was a sewer line break, so the case is perfectly normal.
What I always find interesting about these events, whether they are explainable as normal or not, is the language used to report on them, and the reaction to them. People are skittish these days. You see it in the reporting. Maybe because I live with words and both my professions have been working with words (teacher, editor) I am tuned to the nuances of how a general trend in reporting goes. I’ve mentioned often that lately the news reports from Mainstream Media have used apocalyptic references and language, even some bible verses. I do not think this is because all those reporters are Christians, I think it is that though they are likely not saved, they are responding to the verse in Romans 1:18-20:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
As for the response of people in reading these reports, they remind me of the verse in Luke 21:25b
“…distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves,”
That is not to be taken literally. The sea and the waves are a metaphor for the peoples of the earth in clamor, as the waves of judgment come roaring one after the other, faster and faster. The metaphor is used in like manner in Isaiah 8:7-8, and explained in Isaiah 57:20.
Don’t you feel that people are pretty skittish these days? Spooked? On edge? Look what happened in the days after Aurora shootings at theaters around the country. In one PA theater, they thought they saw a gun and there was a panic stampede out the door. It doesn’t take much to get people to act crazy these days. And for good reason!
This essay by Grant Phillips called Chaos to Glory really sums things up:
“So many souls, Christians and non-Christians, live in fear and dread today. Thousands are without jobs, or barely making a living. Retirement funds have disappeared into the pockets of thieves. The elderly are wondering how they are going to make it. It’s always been tough for them, but it’s getting worse, much worse. And then there is Obamacare. Plans for college have been put on hold or forgotten. Those graduating from colleges, universities, trade schools, etc. are shocked to find nothing there for them.”
“The cost of … well … everything, keeps going up, but the funds that come in the household have remained at the same level, shrunk or vanished. The only ones not feeling the effects are the wealthy and very wealthy. Nature has turned against man and taken his homes in floods, wildfires and other “natural” disasters. There is too much rain in some areas, and too much drought in others. Winter skipped Spring and went directly to Summer, and Summer is here with a blast. Extreme heat has broken over 4,500 records.”
“Any crime you care to mention is out of control. Our police agencies are swamped, and our jails and prisons are bursting at the seams. We may soon be hearing about the largest bank scandal in history. It is alleged that twenty major banks have been fixing interest rates for years. If this is true, it will affect the global financial system, and major Banks could crumble.”
“Diseases are rampant. New wars are anticipated. Earthquakes are breaking out around the globe. Volcanoes are waking up. Violent storms are moving over the oceans and headed toward land. And I’ve hardly scratched the surface. Is there anything that could possibly give us hope for a better day? All that is around us is nothing but utter chaos, and is worsening by the day. Suicides are up because people are losing hope. Can there possibly be sunshine at the end of this long tunnel?”
Yes! He goes on to cite the verses that give us hope. His essay is worth the read. I would make one editorial change to his piece, lol, if I may be permitted. Chaos is a good word to use for the lost. They see the world coming apart and it seems like chaos to them. But NOT to us. Jesus is in perfect control. Remember the verse above: why should be be in guard? Because, “I have told you these things beforehand.” That should actually give us comfort. It was planned between Him, the Father and the Spirit, it is coming to pass and it will come to its conclusion, just like He said.
That also means His plan for us will come to pass. In his piece, Grant cite his hope verses, and I’ll cite mine now:
“So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:6)
“Guard my life, for I am devoted to you. You are my God; save your servant who trusts in you.” (Psalm 86:2)
His holiness shows us that He can and will do it. His resurrection shows us He can and will do it. Prophecy shows us He can and will do it. So do not be afraid, even if a sinkhole opens up under us or a fireball flies by our eyes, He saves his servants who trust in Him. You know what some of the definitions of the Hebrew word for ‘saves’ means? Delivers, endowed with salvation, gained the victory! Because He lives, we are in Him, endowed with the greatest treasure of all, salvation by our Savior and knowledge of our Lord.
Even if a sinkhole opens beneath me, I shall proclaim Him! Even if a fireball streaks in front of me, I shall point to Him! In the panic and tumult around me, I exalt Him, the Prince of Peace!
“…be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. (2 Corinthians 13:11b)
For the last week I’ve written about the Arizona dust storms also known as haboobs. I wrote first to search out if they were usual or unusual and second, to determine of the storms we have been getting and increasing in number or are exhibiting unusual characteristics. The answer was yes to usual but also yes to now exhibiting unusual characteristics and also they are increasing in number. Then I wrote an update, here.
I was not the only one who has noticed the dust storms getting more frequent and more severe. This article appeared today in Israel’s daily, Arutz Sheva.
Largest Dust Storms in a Century Roll Back into Dust Bowl Massive dust storms – the largest in a century — are rolling back into America’s Dust Bowl, bringing destructive “haboobs.” According to meteorologists, the huge dust storms are becoming more frequent, forming during the monsoon season from June until the end of September. This summer’s dust storms are the worst to have hit since the massive “Dust Bowl” disaster that struck the Midwest in the 1930s. This past Monday, the state of Arizona was struck again – as it had been one year ago — with the city of Phoenix shrouded in a dust cloud 2,000 feet high and nearly 60 miles wide. Nine thousand homes were left in the dark as electricity poles and tree limbs were snapped, and Sky Harbor Airport was shut down temporarily. Since June, five such dust storms have rolled into the state’s valley area. [Ed. note- one occurred in May of this year, making the total 6]. Phoenix was hit by three dust storms in a row in the past seven days – a very rare phenomenon, meteorologists said, and one that could be fatal for area residents…” [Emphasis mine.]
So if you were wondering, it’s God is calling, will you pick up the phone?
EDITED to remove hoax reference to Wal-Mart CD refusing to stock Vineyard CD of racy worship lyrics. ———————————– I wrote about the current trend we are experiencing in the Jesus is my boyfriend issue a week or so ago. In it I mentioned that the trend we’re currently experiencing in some Christian and/or evangelical quarters is to reduce Almighty God to our boyfriend or husband, and how this not only diminishes His august Majesty but introduces an inevitable sexual component to this unwanted trend.
In this essay I am going to extend the trend forward to a place that is obvious once you think about it. I alluded to it when I mentioned in that Jesus is my boyfriend essay women as ‘camp followers’. I’ll answer answer the question of “why are mega-pastors like Ed Young, Mark Driscoll, and others introducing sex into the pulpit and why is contemporary music turning into breathlessly romantic and sometimes sexual songs about Jesus?” Here is my answer:
Because satan is preparing for the re-introduction of temple prostitution/sexual divine where the ancient pagan practices of sexual rites constitute a vital offering to deities. Now stick with me as I make my case. It is long so get comfortable.
Since time immemorial, worshipers have sought a union with the divine. We all have eternity in our hearts, (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We all have a conscience. (Romans 9:1). We all have knowledge that a higher being created the world. (Romans 1:19). Some of us suppress this truth. (Romans 1:18). Some respond and are saved by the blood of Jesus when we repent. When we repent, we finally recognize our union with Him, He sends the Spirit to dwell in us, and we are united to Him through covenant, marriage, and adoption.
However back to Romans 1. Those folks who refuse Jesus take a different path. They still seek union with the divine but because they are under satan’s sway, they have to live with his version of it. For those who suppress the truth, they respond to the union with the divine in ever increasingly corrupt ways. The trajectory is always down, as the progression in Romans 1 shows us.
In my opinion, the most overt unholy element of the current unholy perverse downgrade is the union of the sexual in worship.
Everything old is new again. We always come full circle. If you get a globe (remember those?) put a felt marker on the dot of your town, and spin the globe all the way around allowing the marker to draw a line, where will you end up? Back on your town. It is the same way with cultural trends. New Age is really old age. Today’s Personal Revelation is really old Gnosticism. Today’s Charismatic ecstatic experiences are really old Catholic mystic visions. Nothing satan does is new. Why should he expend energy creating new ways to pervert worship when all the old ways still work?
At root of the oldest way to pervert worship is sex. Let’s go back to Genesis and put our marker on the dot of the Garden, and draw that line through to today and you’ll see we will end up where we began.
In Genesis 3 satan tempted Eve. He told her that the fruit was good to make her wise. (Gen 3:5). She saw it was good and a delight. The word delight as used here in the Hebrew means ‘exceedingly, greedily, lust(ing), pleasant.’ She lusted. She didn’t just say, “oh, look, a piece of fruit!” She’d seen it every day so far! Satan made her see it differently, through exceedingly greedy lustful eyes. Satan joined that lust of the eyes with the lust for wisdom and we have the beginning of his tactic to unite the lust of the eyes with the pride of wanting higher wisdom.
Let’s advance that tactic of uniting the sexual and the divine, the erotic and the Gnostic, to Genesis 6:2, where “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.” It means what it says, people. Unholy sexual union with heavenly beings.
Let’s advance the scene to Exodus 32:6, the Golden Calf- “And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.”
What happens when you are congregated with all your friends and family, sit down to eat and drink, and rise up again to play? Clarke’s commentary says of the word play
“And it appears they went much farther, for it is said they rose up to play, letsachek, a word of ominous import, which seems to imply here fornicating and adulterous intercourse; and in some countries the verb to play is still used precisely in this sense. In this sense the original is evidently used, Genesis 39:14.”
Paul wrote of that scene, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did.” (1 Cor 10:6-8).”
It was an orgy, OK? The context indicates this very strongly. If they were worshiping an idol they were under satan’s sway and under satan’s sway with the additional accelerants of food and drink and dance, they went the extra mile and indulged sexually. It was another case of the union of the sexual and the divine.
Scenes of the Golden Calf revelry in ancient art. Note how often they are shown partially dressed-
Adoration of the Golden Calf, Nicolas Poussin
Gerrit de Wet – The Adoration of the Golden Calf
Van Leyden Lucas – Dance of Jews around the Golden Calf
Let’s advance the scene again, to the times of the pagans until Jesus came. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus was the first to state that the ancient Mesopotamians practised temple prostitution. This is really tough on the heart to read:
“The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads; there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four.”
Temple prostitution was a practice in most cultures. Deuteronomy 23:17 forbids followers from indulging in temple prostitution.
“None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute, and none of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute.”
Khajuraho Group of Monuments
Divine and sexual union is a central teaching in Tantric Buddhism, where sexual practices and rites constitute an important offering to Tantric deities. The temple Khajuraho at left is a monument to the Hindu and Jain gods, and is described by UNESCO World Heritage sites as “decorated with a profusion of sculptures that are among the greatest masterpieces of Indian art.” Most of the sculptures are graphic sexual acts. In one of the sculptures a man is having relations with a horse. Masterpiece, eh?
Even after Jesus, the carnal/sensual remained as a part of worship in many cultures, even Catholicism. The sexual as worship was practiced by Catholic and other mystics in the Middle Ages. The late Middle Ages from 1300-1500 was the height of the Catholic Mystical period especially for women. These females, especially Teresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen, experienced and wrote about their personal, intimate, erotic, ecstatic and divine union with God through overtly erotic experiences when overcome with their ‘visions’.
Other female mystics were, starting in the 1200s, Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Hackeborn, Mechtild of Magdebourg, and Gertrude the Great. Their visions are largely based on the Song of Songs and filled with eroticism and the Body of Christ. As we approach the current age, we find Mark Driscoll setting off a firestorm with his graphic and heinous teaching of the Song of Solomon. It was so bad it earned a 4-part rebuke from John MacArthur. Did I not tell you that everything old is new again?
Julie B. Miller, writes, “Scholars of women’s religious history and spirituality readily agree that medieval and early modern women mystics utilized the vocabulary and imagery of sexual love to describe their passionate and intense relationships with the divine.”
In Ruth Evans’ book “Medieval Virginities” we read that in much current scholarship the erotic language of women medieval mystics is not thought to be entirely allegorical. Rather, the religious experience of these women is often regarded as intrinsically erotic…
Jean Gerson, a medieval male mystic himself, noted this trend in 1415 and warned against it. But there is a clamor to accept mysticism today and all that comes with it, including the re-emergence of accepting a union of the sexual.
OK, you get the idea. So what does this globe trotting that have to do with today? Because that old notion of uniting the sexual with worship is ba-ack! BIG TIME. It is not in the pagan religions though and it is not in the Catholic religion. It is in traditional Christianity!
It started a few years ago in books with ‘frank’ explorations of sex within the confines of a one-man, one-woman Christian marriage. Lately Ann Voskamp explored the idea of sexual imagery with Jesus like this: “God makes love with grace upon grace, every moment a making of His love for us. [C]ouldn’t I make love to God, making every moment love for Him? To know Him the way Adam knew Eve. Spirit skin to spirit skin?”’ The trend continued with certain sexually topical sermons in the emergent churches. It quickly descended to stunts, like this one from Ed Young with his 24-hour “bed-in” and “7 day sexperiment.”
Ed Young and his 24-hour bed in, sexperiment
It continued with Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill.
Mark Driscoll ‘Obsessed With Sex,’ Says Critic; Followers Ecstatic to See Pastor Go ‘Mainstream’ “The popular and controversial book about sex and relationships penned by Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll has one critic claiming there is a new craze for “sex talk” in the church, while the pastor’s followers seem excited that Mars Hill manages to promote a biblical approach to sex among secular audiences.”
This downward trend continued with lesser-known pastors taking the Young and Driscoll stunts as permission to be even more “open” about sex in the pulpit. The sex focus became prevalent, palpable, and more disgusting. I’m talking over only the last 4 years. It has happened that fast.
It continued further, with Driscoll preaching the Song of Solomon is a salacious way. Elder of the faith John MacArthur publicly rebuked Driscoll in a 4-part essay called “The Rape of Solomon’s Song.” In the first essay he said, “Mark Driscoll has boldly led the parade down this carnal path.”
He is more blunt in this essay about Driscoll’s version of proper sermon topics and language here, in the essay called “Grunge Christianity.”
“[I]t would certainly be accurate to describe both his vocabulary and his subject matter at times as tasteless, indecent, crude, and utterly inappropriate for a minister of Christ. In every message I listened to, at least once he veered into territory that ought to be clearly marked off limits for the pulpit. … Apparently the shortest route to relevance in church ministry right now is for the pastor to talk about sex in garishly explicit terms during the Sunday morning service. If he can shock parishioners with crude words and sophomoric humor, so much the better. The defenders of this trend solemnly inform us that without such a strategy it is well-nigh impossible to connect with today’s “culture.”
MacArthur is referring to a particular sermon Driscoll had preached in Scotland that was extremely sexually graphic, offensive, and tasteless. I won’t even link to it.
So as this parade of carnality now permeates the pulpit, added to this is dance and me-oriented romantic lyrics in praise songs. Am I exaggerating the nearness of the return of temple prostitution? Methinks not.
Look at Passion Worship Band’s lyrics to “Madly”:
We are madly in love with you We are madly in love with you We are madly in love with you We are madly in love with you And all of my life and nothing less I give to you my righteousness…
WE have righteousness to give to Jesus? NO!
Or these sensual lyrics:
You are my desire, no one else will do ‘Cause nothing else could take your place To feel the warmth of your embrace Kelly Carpenter – “Draw Me Close”
Or these–
You call me child and I’ll call you Father Kisses from heaven of joy and laughter … I want to lavish my love on you, Jesus. David Harper – “I Want to Lavish”
Included in racy or romantic lyrics are breathless sexy singing arrangements. Todd Friel warned about this amorous phrasing and sexy singing delivery. Humorously but not so funny, there is a list of 6 lyrics from secular love songs and Christian praise songs. It is impossible to tell them apart. Add to that terrible turn of events, the widespread recent inclusion of dance and skits to ‘praise and worship’ music time during services…
Praise Dancing is now emerging as a ‘ministry.’ It is also called “body worship.” You notice the unintended double meaning, I hope. Increasingly we see dance movement accompany contemporary music as part of the worship service.
Here is an example of a body worship praise dance called Total Body Worship Too… at a Baptist Bible fellowship.
During the dance, people got up and danced themselves, others rushed forward to capture the moment in film or video. The pastor was dancing along the side. As the dance went on, the dancers increased their tempo and simply gyrated and flung their arms all around with no obvious choreography. It is chaotic worship that focuses attention on the body and not Jesus Christ. Pardon me, but I see no ministry here.
“Praise dancing is a ministry,” says 17-year-old Ariana Starks at a recent Saturday morning practice at St. James, where she shimmied her shoulders to vibrant gospel music. “Most young people go to church and find it boring. This is a way to attract people into the house of God who wouldn’t normally want to come. … “The Lord is using us through the art of dance to preach the word of God,” says Debra Crenshaw, founder of the Fremont-based Christian dance company Dance For His Glory. “It can be entertaining, and people can get enjoyment from it, like the purpose of secular dance. But that’s not our sole purpose.” Dance as worship is an age-old custom that can be traced back to the ancient Israelites who danced during Jewish festivals and ceremonies. Sufi Muslims have also been connecting with the divine through inspirational dance for centuries, going back to the whirling dervishes. ” (source).
Did you catch that? ‘Connecting with the divine’ through the body. A physical act. not a spiritual one of the mind and heart. Oy.
Contemporary music already has relinquished much of its mooring to biblical doctrine, and marrying the romantic Jesus boyfriend theme of contemporary music lyrics with bodily expressions of the divine love, on the pulpit or stage, is yet another example of the sexual carnal intrusion ready to burst on the scene in full force when the Spirit is taken out of the way. Challies speaks to praise dancing here.
Modern day cults always have a sexual component and ritualized sex. It is one way you can tell it is a cult!
Our globe has come full spin and where we started with satan in the Garden with wanting higher knowledge to be like God and lusting after the pleasurable fruit. (The lust of the eyes and the pride of life). We are that much closer to the golden calf dancing of Exodus and the pagan practices of ritualized sex at the pagan temple.
Hillsong Church dancing
“The Worship of the Golden Calf” by Filippino Lippi (1457-1504)
The Holy Spirit restrains sin. It is one of His ministries. Prior to the Flood judgment, God removed the Spirit (Genesis 6:3). He will do so again before the Tribulation judgment (2 Thessalonians 2:7). Can you imagine the flooding-in of the sexual when there is no restraint, if there is THIS much of the sexual is already present, even in evangelical churches?
Below is a still from a video of Elevation Church – Charlotte, NC Code Orange Christmas dance to advertise the Code Orange revivals in January at Elevation Church
I didn’t want to put salacious pictures in front of you, but I’d like to close with a challenge: as you view some of these ‘praise concerts’ at churches complete with dancers, mimes, props, Charismatic laughter, body gyrations, loud music and hypnotic drum beats, synchronized hopping, keep in mind the Pastor Ed Young in his bed, the imagined picture in your head of the temple prostitutes, and ask yourself, isn’t it obvious where the romanticizing Jesus movement, mystical ecstatic experience, Song of Solomon sex talking preachers are headed the moment the Holy Spirit is out of the way? The final union of the sexual and the divine- satan’s way.
the-end-time.org 