Tithing

https://palmadden.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/pals-pen-tithe-monsters-past-time-to-lockem-up/

The above link is to a pretty good essay on tithing.

I want to give pastors the benefit of the doubt in terms of their motivation for teaching tithing. I really believe, deep down, they just don't trust their congregation to give otherwise.

Sometimes Opportunity is the Child of Adversity

Acts 8: 3 But Saul was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison. 4 Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word.

Throughout history, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has spread and flourished during times and in places of persecution, hardship, and the moral bankruptcy of societies.  We see this in the book of Acts and the early history of the Church. It can be seen today in countries all over the world. In some places a particular religion is favored by the state. In others Christianity is regarded as seditious or treasonous. Many Christians have been imprisoned, tortured and killed.

In the U.S. Christians have not yet, for the most part, experienced the kind of persecution that threatens our lives. Persecution for us has involved lawyers rather than storm troopers. Our rights under the Constitution are being marginalized. Our day may come but our current plight does not compare to that of the jailed pastor of a Chinese house church.

For most of my 52 years, Christians have watched with alarm as American society has declined morally. The response to this has often been to organize politically. The phrase “take America back” has been one spoken from the church pulpit and the campaign stump. When Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980, It may have seemed that the tide had turned in favor of Conservative/family values/Judeo Christian principles. That was an illusion

It was also wrong-headed. I believe God will always expose and chastise His people when Christians deceive themselves (I'm pleading guilty) into believing their hollow, temporal, man-centered victory is from Him. The open displays of sinful behavior we see flaunted today did not appear out of thin air. These are simply the desires of man coming out of the shadows into the open.

The United States has never been led by people who were not tainted by sin. On the one hand, we can be patriotic and appreciative of our freedom and the good things the U.S. has done for the world. On the other, we recognize the dark intervals in which our nation perpetrated evil.

The desire for the victory of high principles has often kept us from recognizing the fact that there are real people behind the caricatures invented for the purpose of winning debates and elections. For instance, my opinion about immigration policy remains what it has always been. But no one in Washington is asking for my opinion. To allow our domestic grievances to become an impediment to the Gospel puts us on a par with people Jesus described as a brood of Vipers.

The fact that U.S. borders are essentially open and porous is a source of political and moral frustration for an ideological Conservative like me. But think about how many lost people we Christians may encounter as the world enters this country. The opportunity for the spread of the Gospel could be huge. Your ‘neighbor’ (in the Biblical sense) needs to hear the Gospel regardless of the means by which he or she entered the country.

Immigration policy is only one example. The challenge for American Christians is to reconsider what it means to honor God in the marketplace. If you encounter, corruption, preach the Gospel. If you see sin on parade, don’t try to force it back into the shadows. Preach the Gospel. If you are exposed to every kind of sinner among your neighbors, preach the Gospel. Because such were some of you.

I visisted a church recently and, for the first time in my life, was told essentially to not come back. Sharing with an assistant pastor my desire to find a Christ centered church focused on teaching God's Word,  he said, "Well then this is not the church for you. We have found that Christians already know enough (alarm on my part). They just need to go out and be Jesus (more alarm)."

I made the mistake of voicing my thoughts when I said, "Wow, that is so wrong." To which he replied, "We are not like the Pharisaical churches you are used to."

The passage for the "sermon" which they described as a conversation, was Matthew 28:19, "Go ye into all the world baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost..."

During the "conversation," two assistant pastors, dressed very mod with gotees and cool glasses, mentioned the passage and then used it to make a recruiting pitch for volunteers. The application of the verse was summed up in "Just bring them in (the unchurched). We will take care of the rest."

The assistant pastor also told me, "We model ourselves after Andy Stanley's church," (still more alarm) I know that years ago, this church was Purpose Driven. There is no telling when the next fad will overtake them.

Later in the week, the pastor sent me an email saying, "we are looking for Christians who want to be missionaries rather than students primarily."

The problem with all of this is that verse 20 follows verse 19. "...teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you and lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.Amen." Studying the Word and going out to the unchurched is not an either/or dichotomy. In fact, to send the church out into the world without having equipped the body of Christ to teach goes against God's command.

Once again, God's Word has been surgically marginalized by leaders with a plan to make it "relevant."   

Stop Looking Everywhere For an Explanation

The most empirically provable (and socaily dismissed) explanation for the evil that man perpetrates on himself has been expressed in God's Word for centuries.

Jeremiah 17:9
"The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?

Mark 7: 21-23
"For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22 "deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. 23“All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.”

Max Hastings Says it Better Than I could

Max Hastings writes for the UK Daily Mail. His assessment of the societal deterioration in Britain is one that should lead to some introspection here in the U.S.

Notice the rioters all seem to have cell phones.

Some quotes:
A century ago, no child would have dared to use obscene language in class. Today, some use little else. It symbolises their contempt for manners and decency, and is often a foretaste of delinquency.


If a child lacks sufficient respect to address authority figures politely, and faces no penalty for failing to do so, then other forms of abuse — of property and person — come naturally.

So there we have it: a large, amoral, brutalised sub-culture of young British people who lack education because they have no will to learn, and skills which might make them employable. They are too idle to accept work waitressing or doing domestic labour, which is why almost all such jobs are filled by immigrants.

They have no code of values to dissuade them from behaving anti-socially or, indeed, criminally, and small chance of being punished if they do so.

They have no sense of responsibility for themselves, far less towards others, and look to no future beyond the next meal, sexual encounter or TV football game.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html#ixzz1Uj8oOUoU
 

Punxsutawney Phil Confirms Global Warming

Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog that predicts the arrival of spring, confirmed today that spring will indeed arrive early.  "Clearly," said Phil, who failed to see his shadow this morning, "gloal warming will lead to an early and warmer-than-normal Spring season this year."  Phil went on to predict that Ground Hog Day will have to be moved up to mid January because Spring will be coming so much earlier now. When asked to explain how it is that the reason that he cannot see his shadow was because of a monumental snow storm, Phil said, "Look buddy, I don't make the rules.  I just call it like I see it."

A good book

Signs of the Times

Re: Michael Patton's question, What makes two people married or divorced?

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2010/07/what-makes-two-people-married-or-divorced/#comment-37731

Living together, sex, and having children are things common to people who “hook up” for periods lasting anywhere from a week to a few years.

Clearly what is important is intent. In Matthew 19, the Pharisees tempt Jesus with the question, “‘Why then did Moses command to give a bill of divorcement, and to put her away?’

8. He saith unto them, Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so.”

They were splitting hairs with the Lord, like a bunch of lawyers, trying to maneuver him into a corner. But he made it clear. God puts up with our machinations because of our hardness of heart.

The fact that God allows us to violate his ordinance should not be seen as consent.

Joel Osteen Always Good for a Laugh

Watching Joel Osteen Sunday night. His message was from the passage in which Jesus turned water into wine. Osteen used this story to say that God is going to "accelerate the blessings in your life. It goes like this:

Jesus took a process that normally takes years (the production of wine) and did it instantly. God will do the same thing with your dreams and goals. He will make your dreams come true faster than you ever thought they could. Just believe.

There is at least one major problem with this application. Water does not normally turn to wine. You can stare at a jug of water as long as you like and it will still be water (minus some evaporation). Jesus didn't speed up a process. He did the impossible.

Why Are The Begats Important?

Matthew opens his account of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the most boring part of the Bible. The family tree of Jesus. To a person who has never read the Bible, the begats are the point at which that person, especially a young person, begins to wonder just how long it is going to take to get to the exciting part. The first family line is in Genesis. So right away, we run into a long list hard-to-pronounce names. There is a point, however to the family lines in the Bible. One of Matthew's main purposes is to present Jesus Christ as The King. From beginning (the lineage) to end (Matt 25), Christ is portrayed as the expected King. Jesus is not merely the King because he is God. He is the earthly king of the Jews as well.

While it is true that the Jewish leaders rejected Jesus as king (John 19) It is also true that Jesus family tree shows his royal pedigree. The King had to come from the line of King David. Look at the list in Matthew's Gospel and you will see that his line runs from Abraham through David through his adopted father Joseph. Notice verse 16 says "16Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah." The verse does not say Joseph was the father of Jesus. We know Mary was a virgin.

You might ask how Jesus is qualified to be king if Joseph is not his biological father. It is true that adopted children in Jewish society had all the rights of biological children. And later in his life Jesus was referred to as the son of Joseph so he was recognized that way. But there is even a better answer.

Mary was in the royal line as well. There is a fork in the road at David. Joseph's line came through Solomon. Mary's came through David's other son Nathan. So Jesus is doubly qualified. This is also important because in Joseph's line there is a man named Jeconiah. Jeconiah was put under a curse by God (Jeremiah 22:30). His ancestors were forbidden from taking the throne. So if Jesus were only in line through Joseph, that would have actually disqualified Jesus from being king. Another interesting thing about Jesus family tee is who is included in it. There are gentiles, women (even a harlot) and some rather unsavory people.

The point of this is that God uses whom he chooses. No one is chosen by God because of any special righteousness or qualificatiosns. In fact, the people God chose for His puproses were sinners. Just like us.

Matthew-First Installment

Background: Matthew was a tax collector. Tax collectors were employed as contractors by Roman senators. The senators would bid amongst themselves to auction off the rights to collect the taxes from particular territories of the Roman empire. The senator would pay the tax for say, Jerusalem. Then he would collect the tax plus a mark-up. The tax collectors would pay the senators and collect the tax plus the senators fee plus something for themselves. By the time the citizen paid the tax it was much more than what was actually paid to Rome, depending on just how much the senator and the tax collector were trying to extract for themselves. There was a fair amount corruption in the whole system. The Jews considered Rome to be an evil occupying force. Tax collectors were considered just above prostitutes in the social structure. Some (not all) tax collectors were ruthless. Zacchaeus was the tax collector who Jesus found in a tree (because Zacchaeus was short, he climbed up to see Jesus) (Luke 19) along his path and called him down to spend time at his home. Zacchaeus was so moved that he vowed to pay back everyone he had defrauded four-fold and give half of his belongings to the poor. This came AFTER he had been called by Jesus. Salvation came first. Charity and restitution second. Apparently, Matthew felt no such compulsion. Or he simply did not say so. Matthew may have been a relatively honest tax collector. Taking only a reasonable commission. This would not change the fact that Matthew was a sinner in general or mitigate the overall lostness of his soul. God's Word does say that when Matthew was called by Jesus, (Matt 9) Matthew left his previous life behind immediately. Even though Matthew is describing his own experience he writes in the third person, always keeping Christ at the center of the story.

What is Copenhagen Really About?

Two words. Envy and money. This is all about the less developed countries seeing an opportunity to fleece the developed world of billions of dollars. The idea that tyrants like Mugabe will put the money towards cutting emissions in their countries is laughable. They will do what they have always done with foreign aid. Pocket the money and leave their citizens to suffer.

You Didn't Say What Kind Of Change

Once there was a man who was married. After eight years of marriage, he became fed up with his wife and they divorced. The wife left the man with $10,000 of credit card debt. The man remarried and put the second wife in charge of the family finances. She had promised him 'change' if he would marry her. Faced with a ten thousand debt, the second wife decided the solution was to go further into debt by $100,000. This was ten times the debt left by the first wife. The husband was furious. This was not the kind of change he had in mind. When he asked the second wife why she had done something so irresponsible, the second wife blamed the first wife for leaving behind such a financial mess. This made no sense to the husband. The family could now not even afford to pay the interest on the debt. The husband demanded that the second wife cease her irresponsible spending. The second wife responded by spending another $20,000 on credit. All the while, she claimed that she was left with no choice because of the first wife. She said this even though the debt she had accumulated was now twelve times the debt of the first wife.

The husband wanted to divorce the second wife. Unfortunately, he lived in a country where couples could not divorce until they had been married for at least four years. He had no choice because the second wife ignored his wishes. All she would tell him was, "You said you wanted change. You didn't say what kind of change."

The World's Only Universal Religion

Outside of Christianity, there really is one true world religion. It is the melding of all of the world’s other religions into one common theme: The Self is God. In this religion, I am sovereign. The world revolves around me and you exist at my discretion and to serve my purposes.

In my religion, there may be times when I will grace you with my liberal generosity. I will, when it suits me, perform random acts of kindness. The criterion for my good deeds is a complicated, arbitrary system based mainly on my own self-aggrandizement. The main purpose of such charity is to appease my own screaming conscience. As long as I feel better about myself, it’s a good thing. It also helps if others notice.

In the religion of self, I hold the scales of eternal justice. The balance may tip any way I please. I decide what is reasonable. I decide what is important. I decide what is sin. I decide what I must do to redeem my soul. That is, if I decide my soul needs redeeming at all.

I may decide there is no such thing as sin at all, at least in terms of what I owe to any man. In my religion, you are a commodity to me. You are either a prop in the theatre of my life or, perhaps a tool by which I may acquire a thing or achieve a goal. If I am ill and your stem cells might cure me, hand them over, even at the cost of your life. If you are old and occupying valuable space and sucking tax dollars from the system, you may need to be eliminated. Get this straight. This is about me.

The only conflict in my religion comes when my interests compete with yours. When this happens, I will attempt to make you an ally for a while. Otherwise, I will form a coalition against you. It will be whichever is expedient.

The religion of self is Darwinism taken to its ultimate end. This is survival of the fittest. Someday, I may be on the short end of the equation. Until then, you are either a resource to me or a burden. If you are a burden, you have lost you usefulness. Prepare to be eliminated.

Christianity Today in the Tank for Obama

Christianity Today magazine is in the tank for Barak Obama. They have been theologically drifting for years but now they have officially joined the "Evangelical left."

In an article in their Out of Ur blog, titled...

Decision '08-Our choice of president is less important than our integrity http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/10/decision_08.html#comments

the magazine warns Christians "shoud be a bit more careful about the 'facts' we repeat."

The article quotes the website factcheck.org.

"Does John McCain really want to apply “Wall Street de-regulation” to health care? No. Did Obama really vote against funding our troops? No. According to FactCheck.org:

'McCain has made multiple false representations of Obama's tax proposals. Obama has made false claims about McCain's stance on Social Security. Both McCain and Obama have traded some whoppers about their energy policies, about Iraq, and about Iran, and about supporting troops.'"

Notice the emphasis on McCain's "multiple false statements."

A little fact checking about factcheck.org reveals the following:

Factcheck.org is funded by the Annenberg Foundation. The Annenberg Foundation was the source of funding for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a failed effort at reforming Chicago's public schools. The CAC was run by William Ayers formerly of the Weather Underground. Barak Obama was on the board of directors of the CAC.

Christianity Today feigns concern for the truth of the candidates statements about each other in order to front for Obama. The goal is to blur the truth by supposedly warning that both candidates will stretch the truth. The idea is to throw Christians off the trail of the truth about Barak Obama.

This is not at all the only example of CT's bias. Just the latest. The magazine has conducted a softball interview and published numerous puff pieces on Senator Obama.

Memo to Washington: Thanks But No Thanks for Faith-Based-Initiatives

It may surprise you to know that conservative Christians believe strongly in the separation of state and church. I reverse the common phrase, "separation of church and state," because it brings with it the image of the church as the aggressor. History shows that just the opposite is true.

Christian believers and even the God they worship have always been considered political threats. Our Lord, even as a baby, was considered by Herod to be a threat to the throne. The betrayal, the trial and the crucifixion of Christ, were thick with the politics of the day. Since that time, a long list of Christians have been tortured and killed because they were considered a political threat, including many in China, Russia and Africa. Some of the original European travelers to North America came because they were Christians on the run from a government.

While Christians in other countries have experienced the sometimes violent oppression of the state, Christians in the United States have experienced something more subtle. We are stifled not by stormtroopers, but by the lure of money and the threat of litigation. Government officials dare not express their faith and neither do employers or landlords.

It is with this in mind that I, and most Christians, want to say thanks, but no thanks to the government funding of “faith based initiatives.”

When President Bush originally announced the program, many of the leading Christians who had supported him, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, et al, announced their opposition. There are several reasons for this. First, there is no such thing as free money from the government. There are always strings attached. President Bush dictated that the money could only be used for secular purposes, effectively muzzling the evangelistic voice of Christian relief workers.


Secondly, the Bible never tells God’s people to be charitable with other people’s money. And that is what government funding is. Other people’s money. Biblically speaking, charity should be personal and sacrificial. It should hurt a little. God’s purpose is to build Christian character in the giver as much as it is to help the needy. To accept government funding defeats God’s purpose.

Also, Christianity is not the only faith whose relief agencies may receive money. That is only fair but it will certainly lead to spiritual confusion. Christians are all about making sure people understand the distinction between following Jesus and other religions. For Christians to accept federal funding along with the agencies of other faiths will only blur the picture.


There have certainly been some misguided souls in the Christian community who decided to accept the President’s offer. Now, we have Barak Obama offering to expand the program and even loosen some restrictions on Christian relief agencies that accept funding.

To any Christian organization that has not yet accepted funding but is considering it, I would say please think in the long term. You do not know when or how the state will call in the debt.

So Long, George

I thought George Carlin was the funniest person in the world. In the late 60s and early 70s, I was a kid and the only time I ever saw Carlin perform was on the Tonight Show (Johnny Carson). I knew nothing of his anti-establishment rants that were part of his act when he was not on television. I didn't know anything about the seven words you can't say on television. When George Carlin was on TV, his humor was simply ironic and really funny. When he was the guest host of the first Saturday Night Live (1974), I thought it was his show and I was disappointed he wasn't on the next week.

Later, I discovered the real George Carlin. The swearing, sexual humor and politics. I found his off-TV humor to be more bitter than anything else and I remember feeling sorry for him. I know from reading and seeing interviews that he really did put the blame for the world's problems on religion, particularly christianity.

He will be mourned by those of us on the right and canonized by Hollywood and the Left.

To me, he is simply a tragic figure. The Lord finds no joy in the death of the wicked.

There's Nothing There There

In the course of my scientific exploration, I have found a neat little web page:

http://www.phrenopolis.com/perspective/atom/index.html

This page illustrates the hydrogen atom. Hydrogen is pretty simple. There is a proton at the center and a single electron in orbit. The neat thing about the illustration is that it is to scale so that it may be seen by the human eye. The electron is represented by one bright pixel. The proton is approximately the size of a basketball. In order to see the electron, one must scroll over to the right what amounts to a distance of eleven miles. It may be the world's single biggest web page.

According to this illustration, if we could enlarge the hydrogen atom enough to see the electron with the human eye, it would be orbiting the proton from a distance of eleven miles away. Other atoms are more complicated but the principle remains the same. If you look at what we know about the galaxy, it is clear that it is also made of empty space. While the Sun is huge relative to the Earth and while there are bodies in the galaxy, which dwarf the Sun, the empty space in between it all is so large as to render the heavenly bodies relatively microscopic.

Furthermore, those heavenly bodies are made of the same empty space, which makes up our physical entity. We, and every material thing we encounter, are essentially made of empty space. We are a mirage, not even a vapor. Physically, we are nothing more than the sum of zillions of little balls of unidentifiable energy held together by an unfathomable force. What we call matter, is really an illusion.

I have never seen a more convincing scientific proof of the existence of God.The Bible tells us God created the Earth, its creatures and all the heavens from nothing. Not that God took what existed and shaped it but that He had to create what exists and form it.

From nothing.

We can give a name to the force, which holds our existence together. We can call it gravity between planets or bonding between particles. And we can experience the illusion of a substantial world. But giving a name to something we experience is not the same as knowing its essence. We cannot and will not ever be able to scientifically get to the bottom of it. That's because there is no 'bottom of it.'

The Bible also tells us that someday, God will peel back everything we think is real. Our world and the entire galaxy will be destroyed and replaced by a new Heaven and a new Earth. That won't be so hard for God because we are made of nothing to begin with. Everything we know to be real will be replaced by what is really real. As we go about our daily lives we should always keep in mind that our material world is something created by God for our benefit and His glory. But it is all as temporary as one of those facades on a Hollywood movie lot. As the old saying goes, there's nothing there, there.

Was the Early Church Marxist?

Another one of my comments on the Out of Ur blog

Travis,

I hope you will read this as old as this thread is. There was nothing remotely Marxist about the early Christian Church. Marxists don't ask for your money. They take it. They claim it is for your own good but they don't ask you if you agree. (Who does that sound like? Oh yeah, modern day Liberals.) The early Christians are said to have been "together and had all things in common;
"45and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need."

Acts 2 NASB

There is no similarity between the early Christians sharing with each other voluntarily out of love and the forcible confiscation and redistribution of wealth by the state. That is actually what the tax collectors did in those days and our modern day tax collectors (The U.S. Congress) are about as corrupt as the tax collctors back then.

Do you have any idea how small a percentage of our tax dollars actually come back to our communities for social welfare? It is so small that sending our money to Washington must surely be a violation of God's command for us to be good stewards of the resources He has given us.

You Might be Emergent if...

Outy of Ur has a post called You Might be Emergent if...

Here are some suggestions:

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy and thanks to Pastor Rob Thurman, who supplied me with almost all of these...

If, when you refer to "the text," your congregation instinctively stares at their cell phones...

If you think Windows NT is a Bible translation...

If your church has designated drivers listed in the bulletin for each service...

If you just take yourself way too seriously...