The Untold Tale of the Purpose-Driven Crime-Stopper

Remember the woman who foiled a kidnapping (?) by reading "The Purpose-Driven Life" to the criminal? She has recently signed up for a book and movie about the situation.

What you didn't know is that she possibly knew the criminal beforehand, she did give the criminal methamphetamines while in her house (because she was out of marijuana) and that the criminal she witnessed to turned to Islam while in prison.

You can read more be clicking HERE!

A Semi-Pelagian Catechsim

Almost always true, mostly funny, sometimes sadly recognizable!

1. Q: What is the chief end of each individual Christian?
A: Each individual Christian's chief end is to get saved. This is the first and great commandment.

2. Q: And what is the second great commandment?
A: The second, which is like unto it, is to get as many others saved as he can.

3. Q: What one work is required of thee for thy salvation?
A: It is required of me for my salvation that I make a Decision for Christ, which meaneth to accept Him into my heart to be my personal lord'n'saviour.

4. Q: At what time must thou perform this work?
A: I must perform this work at such time as I have reached the Age of Accountability.

5. Q: At what time wilt thou have reached this Age?
A: That is a trick question. In order to determine this time, my mind must be sharper than any two-edged sword, able to pierce even to the division of bone and marrow; for, alas, the Age of Accountability is different for each individual, and is thus unknowable.

6. Q: By what means is a Decision for Christ made?
A: A Decision for Christ is made, not according to His own purpose and grace which was given to me in Christ Jesus before the world began, but according to the exercise of my own Free Will in saying the Sinner's Prayer in my own words.

7. Q: If it be true then that man is responsible for this Decision, how then can God be sovereign?
A: He cannot be. God sovereignly chose not to be sovereign, and is therefore dependent upon me to come to Him for salvation. He standeth outside the door of my heart, forlornly knocking, until such time as I Decide to let Him in.

8. Q: How then can we make such a Decision, seeing that the Scripture saith, we are dead in our trespasses and sins?
A: By this the Scripture meaneth, not that we are dead, but only that we are sick or injured in them.

9. Q: What is the assurance of thy salvation?
A: The assurance of thy salvation is, that I know the date on which I prayed the Sinner's Prayer, and have duly written this date on an official Decision card.

10. Q: What is thy story? What is thy song?
A: Praising my Savior all the day long.

11. Q: You ask me how I know he lives?
A: He lives within my heart.

12. Q: And what else hast thou got in thine heart?
A: I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

13. Q: Where??
A: Down in my heart!

14. Q: Where???
A: Down in my heart!!

15. Q: What witness aid hath been given us as a technique by which we may win souls?
A: The tract known commonly as the Four Spiritual Laws, is the chief aid whereby we may win souls.

16. Q: What doth this tract principally teach?
A: The Four Spiritual Laws principally teach, that God's entire plan for history and the universe centereth on me, and that I am powerful enough to thwart His divine purpose if I refuse to let Him pursue His Wonderful Plan for my life.

17. Q: What supplementary technique is given by which we may win souls?
A: The technique of giving our own Personal Testimony, in the which we must always be ready to give an answer concerning the years we spent in vanity and pride, and the wretched vices in which we wallowed all our lives until the day we got saved.

18. Q: I'm so happy, what's the reason why?
A: Jesus took my burden all away!

19. Q: What are the means given whereby we may save large crowds of souls in a spectacular manner?
A: Such a spectacle is accomplished by means of well-publicized Crusades and Revivals which (in order that none may be loath to attend) are best conducted anywhere else but in a Church.

20. Q: Am I a soldier of the Cross?
A: I am a soldier of the Cross if I join Campus Crusade, Boys' Brigade, the Salvation Army, or the Wheaton Crusaders; of if I put on the helmet of Dispensationalism, the breastplate of Pietism, the shield of Tribulationism, and the sword of Zionism, having my feet shod with the gospel of Arminianism.

21. Q: Who is your boss?
A: My boss is a Jewish carpenter.

22. Q: Hath God predestined vessels of wrath to Hell?
A: God hath never performed such an omnipotent act, for any such thing would not reflect His primary attribute, which is Niceness.

23. Q: What is sanctification?
A: Sanctification is the work of my free Will, whereby I am renewed by having my Daily Quiet Time.

24. Q: What rule hath God for our direction in prayer?
A: The rule that we must bow our hands, close our heads, and fold our eyes.

25. Q: What doth the Lord's Prayer teach us?
A: The Lord's Prayer teacheth us that we must never memorize a prayer, or use one that hath been written down.

26. Q: What's the book for thee?
A: The B-I-B-L-E.

27. Q: Which are among the first books which a Christian should read to his soul's health?
A: Among the first books which a Christian should read are the books of Daniel and Revelation, and The Late Great Planet Earth.

28. Q: Who is on the Lord's side?
A: He who doth support whatsoever is done by the nation of Israel, and who doth renounce the world, the flesh, and the Catholic Church.

29. Q: What are the seven deadly sins?
A: The seven deadly sins are smoking, drinking, dancing, card-playing, movie-going, baptizing babies, and having any creed but the Bible.

30. Q: What is a sacrament?
A: A sacrament is an insidious invention devised by the Catholic Church whereby men are drawn into idolatry.

31. Q: What is the Lord's Supper?
A: The Lord's Supper is a dispensing of saltines and grape juice, in which we remember Christ's command to pretend that they are His body and blood.

32. Q: What is baptism?
A: Baptism is the act whereby, by the performance of something that seems quite silly in front of everyone, I prove that I really, really mean it.

33. Q: What is the Church?
A: The Church is the tiny minority of individuals living at this time who have Jesus in their hearts, and who come together once a week for a sermon, fellowship and donuts.

34. Q: What is the office of the keys?
A: The office of the keys is that office held by the custodian.

35. Q: What meaneth "The Priesthood Of All Believers"?
A: The Priesthood Of All Believers meaneth that there exists no authority in the Church, as that falsely thought to be held by elders, presbyters, deacons, and bishops, but that each individual Christian acts as his own authority in all matters pertaining to the faith.

36. Q: Who is the Holy Spirit?
A: The Holy Spirit is a gentleman who would never barge in.

37. Q: How long hath the Holy Spirit been at work?
A: The Holy Spirit hath been at work for more than a century: expressly, since the nineteenth-century Revitalization brought about by traveling Evangelists carrying tents across America.

38. Q: When will be the "Last Days" of which the Bible speaketh?
A: The "Last Days" are these days in which we are now living, in which the Antichrist, the Beast, and the Thief in the Night shall most certainly appear.

39. Q: What is the name of the event by which Christians will escape these dreadful entities?
A: The event commonly known as the Rapture, in that which it is our Blessed Hope that all cars driven by Christians will suddenly have no drivers.

40. Q: When is Jesus coming again?
A: Maybe morning, maybe noon, maybe evening, and maybe soon.

41. Q: When the roll, roll, roll, is called up yonder, where will you be?
A: There.

42. Q: Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!
A: Praise ye the Lord!

43. Q: Praise ye the Lord!
A: Hallelujah!

44. Q: Where will we meet again?
A: Here, there, or in the air.

45. Q: Can I hear an Ay-men?
A: Ay-men.

Washington Nationals Fire Chaplain

The chaplain of the Washington Nationals recently "brought hate" into the baseball team's clubhouse when he responded to a players question regarding the fate of Jews.

According to an article published Sunday in The Washington Post, Nationals outfielder Ryan Church said he asked [Chaplain] Moeller if Jews are "doomed" because they do not believe in Jesus. Church said Moeller nodded, the Post reported.

"The Nationals did a good job about bringing hate into the locker room," said Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who leads the city's oldest Orthodox synagogue, Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah.

That's it? That constitutes HATE these days. A protestant clergyman agreeing that if a Jewish man does not believe in Jesus Christ then that Jewish man will not be in heaven. How was he supposed to answer? Reasonable people should be able to see that Christianity is mutually exclusive from every other religion in the world.

On the same hand, so is Islam and every other religion. I wonder what would have happened if a Muslim chaplain (do they have those?) had been asked the same question in the same setting? He would have had to have said the same thing, wouldn't he?

How would Rabbi Herzfeld answer the question about Muslims or even atheists? How "hateful" would he be? I guess it depends on how orthodox he truly was - how far has he abandoned the faith given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? The God he claims to worship also commands him "Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." Unless he believes Allah and YHWH are different names for the same Divine Being, then he wuold have to "bring hate" into the equation as well.

How to speak to a human being

If you are anything like me, you detest working your way through the computerized phone menus of our mega-companies. All you want to do is figure out the discrepancy on your phone bill but you have to press 4 to get to another menu where you have to press 2 and then you . . .

OI!

Go here to get some shortcuts through the menus of many of the most widely used companies.

Here is Dell Computer's "shortcut" to talk to a real live human being: option 1, xt 7266966, option 1, option 4, option 4

Dig a hole to China

Did you ever attempt something like this when you were a kid: grab a shovel and start digging in your backyard, thinking you would dig to the other side of the world. Now, you can go to this Google Map and find out where you'd come out on the other side.

HINT: If you live in Statesville, I must warn you to not do it. Your backyard will be flooded when you open up a hole in the Indian Ocean a couple hundred miles off the coast of Australia!

The Church is NOT a building

I hope you'll read this encouraging and sobering account of a church recovering down in Louisiana! It reminds us of the important lesson that the church is not the building we meet in during the week and on Sunday. The church is the people of God who gather to worship anywhere and everywhere!

Even athiests know liberal Christians are mixed up

Here's an interesting post on Touchstone's blog that says what conservatives already know: liberal Christians are internally inconsistent.

The Left's Hatred of The Book

The president of Thomas Nelson recently announced that his company was going to donate a lot of money and a lot more Bibles (100,000 of them, to be exact). You can read that here and in this excerpt:

We will donate 100,000 Bibles to the relief efforts. Why Bibles? This afternoon, an official in Baton Rouge said on Fox News, “We need water, food, ... and Bibles.” This is something I knew we could help with. Samaritan's Purse, an organization headed by Franklin Graham, one of our authors, has agreed to distribute these for us. We will begin shipping them to Louisiana as soon as we get instructions from Samaritan’s Purse.

Amazingly, but predictably, this has set off a firestorm of protests from the Left. Some of the vitriol spilled over this issue is truly mindboggling until you get theological and remember that these people are unregenerate and haters of God. They are doing only that which comes natural to them.

Here is a sample of the responses: (Click here and here to read more!)

My God. The man has no shame. People are starving and dying of thirst and the best he can do is Bibles for people who live in the Bible belt. They wouldn't even be able to use them for kindling because they don't need fires to keep warm in the New Orleans heat. Why doesn't he just challenge his customers to buy Bibles on-line and contribute a percentage of sales to the Red Cross?

If they don't use the bibles for kindling, you know, to boil the water before drinking it, they can always use the pages for toilet paper once dysentery sets in. That's why they call it The Good Book.

Whatever, each to their own thing! If some folks think it’s a sensible priority to provide Katrina refugees a book full of contradictions, scientific absurdities, primitive superstitions, hoary old myths, a book replete with vile atrocities…well that’s their call… . If some of said refugees concur that’s also just dandy.

Tony Campolo continues his slide into heresy

Discussion of disasters brings out either the best in the church or the worst. Tony Campolo is an example of the latter. Over at Belief.Net, he writes this:

Whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, "Why didn’t God do something? Where was God when all those people died?"

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad answers. One such answer is that somehow all suffering is a part of God’s great plan. In the midst of agonies, someone is likely to quote from the Bible, telling us that if we would just be patient, we eventually would see "all things work together for the good, for those who love God, and are called according to His purposes." (Romans 8:28)

There are still other religionists who take the opportunity to tell us that God is punishing America for its many sins.

Perhaps we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed. Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures does it say that God is omnipotent. Kushner points out that omnipotence is a Greek philosophical concept, but it is not in his Bible. Instead, the Hebrew Bible contends that God is mighty. That means that God is a greater force in the universe than all the other forces combined.

Campolo should heed his own advice, because later in the same article he says, "Personally, I contend that the best thing for us to do in the aftermath of Katrina is to remain silent, and not try to explain this tragedy."

Chief Justice Rehnquist has passed away

CNN is reporting that Chief Justice Rehnquist has passed away. This is a clarion call for the evangelical church to once more fulfill its true purpose and gather for "JUSTICE SUNDAY III" to throw our political weight around and help God save this country!

Now, if I can only get my tongue out of my cheek!

Preoccupied

It's been a while since I posted anything to this site. To be perfectly honest, two particular things have been occupying my attention the last several days:

1. A course taught in our church's Equipping University on the Rapture. I spent a few weeks presenting a positive case for pretrib, midtrib, pre-wrath and posttrib. I had never spend much time studying eschatology, preferring to rely on my tradition as a premillenial pretrib dispensationalist. I still am not sure exactly what I believe but I now know what I do NOT believe - the pretribulation rapture!
   
2. Preparing for the draft of the 2005 Western Avenue Fantasy Football League (the WAFFL). This three year old league is getting stronger each year and more fun, as well. We held our draft on August 30. I would blog a LOT on this but I doubt any of you (or should that say EITHER of you) care.
   

There have been several things that have caught my eye and are blog-worthy, including a recent sermon by Prestonwood's Jack Graham, a new competition called something like "American Gospel Idol" or some such nonsense, Hurrican Katrina and God's role/purpose in all that happened and is happening in New Orleans and some interesting stuff coming out of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church.

Maybe I'll get back here soon and discuss some of these things.
Maybe later.

John MacArthur shines on Larry King once again

Larry King invited several to discuss creationism. It was a strange hybrid show with some "infotainment" thrown in with the serious issue. Here's how King introduced the show:

Tonight, Olivia Newton-John's long time boyfriend vanished almost seven weeks ago. Why were authorities not contacted until five days after he was due to return from an overnight fishing trip? And what's the latest on the investigation? We'll ask Scott Epperson with the U.S. Coast Guard, Christine Spiteri, reporter with Channel 9 in Olivia Newton-John's native Australia. Jim Moret, chief correspondent for Inside Edition and more. And then, is it God versus science? After creationism versus evolution, now debate rages over intelligent design with even the president stepping in.

Here's the panel invited to the "debate":

• John MacArthur, pastor, teacher at the Grace Community Church; author of "The Battle for the Beginning: Creation, Evolution and the Bible;" host of "Grace to You" and president of the Master's College and founder of the Master's Seminary.
• Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. Barbara is the author of "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design." She is professor of philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, National Advisory Council of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
• Deepak Chopra, the best selling author of "How to Know God," and founder of the Chopra Center. His blog site, www.intentblog.com, now has a discussion on the topic of creation versus evolution, including lengthy comments by Deepak.
• Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who supports the president's position on teaching intelligent design as well as evolution, favors teaching both.
  
• Congressman Chris Shays, Republican of Connecticut, who disagrees with the president on the teaching of intelligent design.
• Dr. Jay Richards, vice president of the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank at the forefront in promoting the intelligent design theory.

The first question went right to MacArthur. He was asked, "John MacArthur, do you believe that the world is only 5,000 years old?"

MacArthur once again handled himself with amazing aplomb and stayed true to the Bible and gave no quarter to anyone. You can read the entire transcript of the show by clicking on the link above (but scroll about halfway down to bypass the earth-shattering and mind-blowing "news" of a missing person - what about the other thousands of missing persons? This one is famous because of a relationship with Olivia Newton-John?)

Top 500 Universities in the World, Academically Speaking

The Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Institute of Higher Education did an extensive survey of the top five hundred universities based on several fields. It's interesting that the university doing this research finished 301st - they must have been very disappointed.

The fields studied carried different weights that led to the university's final scoring. The fields are listed below:

Criteria	Indicator	Code	Weight
Quality of Education	Alumni of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals	Alumni	10%
Quality of Faculty	Staff of an institution winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals	Award	20%
	Highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories	HiCi	20%
Research Output	Articles published in Nature and Science*	N&S	20%
	Articles in Science Citation Index-expanded, Social Science Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index	SCI	20%
Size of Institution	Academic performance with respect to the size of an institution	Size	10%
Total			100%

As for the results, seventeen of the Top 20 universities are located in the United States. Only Cambridge, Oxford and Tokyo University crack the top twenty internationally.

As you might expect, Harvard earned the top spot with a perfect score of 100 points. Cambridge was second, followed by Stanford, Cal-Berkeley and MIT.

For our local schools,

• Duke is 37th with a score of 37.7 (surrounded by Northwestern and Minnesota);
• UNC-Chapel Hill is 55th with a score of 30.3 (surrounded by Carnegie Mellon and Australian National U.);
• NC State is 113th with a score of 19 (surrounded by the National U. of Singapore and Oregon State);
  
• University of South Carolina is 280th;
  
• Wake Forest is 296th; .

With all these top-notch universities in the USA, why does the world think we are so stupid? Are we?

It's "Report Card" time in the SBC

It's about time for Southern Baptist churches across the country to start filling out the "Annual Church Profile." This is the report sent from Baptist HQ in Nashville asking each church to count up how much money they collected, how many people atteneded Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, how many people went on mission trips and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, how many people were baptized.

That is what we are reduced to: a collection of stats of how many people have been dunked in a year's time. The churches who report the biggest numbers of baptisms are hailed as "dynamic" churches and their pastors are soon elevated to national prominence within the convention. But are baptisms truly the benchmark against which we should measure the true "success" of a church.

Tom Ascol of the Founders Ministry has this to say about it, especially in response Dr. Steve Lemke, Provost of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, who used the very same ACP statistics to write an unscholarly hit piece on Calvinism within the SBC:

Statistics simply cannot tell the whole, or even necessarily the most important, story of a church. For example: what would you think of a Southern Baptist church that had the following profile over a 4 year period?

2001
3506 members
203 baptisms
253 other additions
2200 primary worship attendance

2002
3812 members
296 baptisms
190 other additions
2100 primary worship attendance

2003
4011 members
209 baptisms
137 other additions
2031 primary worship attendance

2004
4163 members
237 baptisms
204 other additions
1874 primary worship attendance

Would this church meet Dr. Lemke's criteria for "declining?" It went from a counted Sunday morning worship attendance of 2200 in 2001 to 1874 in 2004. If my math is correct, that is a 15% decline.

Granted, they have baptized 945 people during that 4 year period and they have added 784 people by other means. But the church membership only grew by 657. It took 1729 new members for the church to grow by 657 members.

In addition those 1729 new members resulted in 326 fewer worshipers! If the church continues to grow at this rate then by the time it adds around 10,000 new members the preacher will be preaching to an empty auditorium at his "primary worship" service.

So, back to my question: How should we evaluate such a church? What judgments should we make about the ministry of its pastor? Would Southern Baptists look at such a church with concern and even alarm? Would they want to bus over church growth specialists to help them reverse the decline? Would they encourage the church to get on board with the latest denominational baptismal goals?

No you won't find any of these responses. Nor will you find the pastor slammed in a seminary professor's paper. Shucks...the church might even be held up as a model for Southern Baptists. Who knows? They might even elect the pastor to become the convention president.

We did!

The NCAA, Indian Mascots and Common Sense

You have probably already heard about the NCAA's news-making ruling that any school with a nickname or logo considered racially or ethnically “hostile” or “abusive” by the NCAA would be prohibited from using them in postseason events. Mascots will not be allowed to perform at tournament games, and band members and cheerleaders will also be barred from using American Indians on their uniforms beginning in 2008.

While NCAA officials admit they still can’t force schools to change nicknames or logos, they are making a statement they believe is long overdue. Eighteen mascots, including Florida State’s Seminole and Illinois’ Illini, were on the list of offenders.

Of course, both of these schools have public records of the local Indian tribes proudly giving support for the use of their names and heritage. How can this be bad when the people involved are not only unoffended but in fact like it.

Those schools who refuse to change their logos will not be permitted to host future NCAA tournament games, and if events have already been awarded to those sites, the school must cover any logos or nicknames that appear.

Two years ago, the NCAA recommended schools determine for themselves whether Indian depictions were offensive. Among the schools to change nicknames in recent years were St. John’s (from Redmen to Red Storm) and Marquette (from Warriors to Golden Eagles).

Never mind that the NCAA will not enact this ruling until after the college football bowl games (oh, the power of the almighty dollar to this incredibly hypocritical institution)! What is amazing is the broad general strokes used to write out this ruling and the ridiculous way they will attempt to enforce it.

What is troubling is that the NCAA gives no notice of what is "hostile and abusive" and what is not. This is just another case of the "thought police" swearing themselves into action, just like the people that think preaching against homosexual sin is a "hate crime."

The President of the University of North Dakota has written an open letter to the NCAA and its leadership. He does an OUTSTANDING job in highlighting the ridiculous nature of this ruling. If you follow college sports at all, I highly recommend you read it.