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The Bare Bones of Christianity

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What doesn’t Jesus want of us? When we think of Christianity, we usually think of church. If you’re a Christian, you have to attend a church. So >>> three hymns, announcements, offering, and a long sermon. Or >>> a strict liturgy loosely based on Catholic Mass. Or >>> high church liturgy as in the Mass, the Episcopalian service, the Orthodox faiths with their garments, incense, and chants. Then you might think about the abuse scandals, gay priests, evangelists begging for a bigger jet, the hypocrisy, the lackadaisical way many Christians live, the egregious use of religion in politics, and last but not least, the restrictions. Can’t do this, can’t do that. The gender hierarchy. Worldly pastors. Hurt people. Well, if that’s what you think, you’re not wholly wrong, but you’re not even close to right.  To understand the kind of religion Jesus Christ established, read the four Gospels. It helps if you love history and can grasp what the first century mind

Cycles of Oppression and Deliverance in Israel

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Why does God allow his people to suffer and be persecuted? Psalm 14 offers us hope.  Psalm 14:1 is famous for the line, "Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God.'" This is also the verse often cited where the Lord looks down on mankind and sees that "there is no one who does good. All have gone astray." Evangelicals use the passage to point out that all mankind is compromised. No one can be good enough to earn their way into heaven, so we must rely on faith. However, the psalmist, allegedly King David according to the attribution headline, is expressing his immense frustration over the constant repression of righteous people by wicked unbelievers. Taken out of context, the verse sounds like all human beings are corrupt by genetic disposition ergo we all need redemption. Well, we are and we do, but that is not what the psalmist is referring to here. 2 The LORD looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if any understand, if any seek God. 3 All hav

"You Look Good, You Smell Good, But You're Going to Hell..."

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A good friend of ours was told by Jesus himself that if he didn't change, he would go to hell. He was attending a Pentecostal church at the time, but had not turned his life over to God. He was there mostly to establish a presence for the men of the church so they would stay away from his cute little wife. He and Terri were the childrens' ministers, and were respected and appreciated in the church. Terri was from a long-standing church-attending family. Rick was raised in foster homes after his mother was murdered in his presence. Because his family were itinerant farm workers, Rick didn't attend school until he was around 8 years old. His foster mother tutored him, but catching up academically was extra difficult because he was also dyslexic.  Rick eventually joined the Navy and was deployed on a ship out of San Diego. After several months at sea the ship was coming back to the port. On board, he was reading one of the darker passages in the Old Testament. He was horrified

You've Got to Show That There's a War Going On...

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  "You've got to show them that there's a war going on, and you've got to show that the only way to win that war is through love." Those are the words of God directly and clearly to Darren Wilson, the producer of a movie called  The Finger of God .   Darren was set on his course to make that movie from two spectacular circumstances. One was that his aunt Patsy and uncle Bob both got gold teeth set into their mouths while at a Pentecostal church service. The other is that an angel named Breakthrough confronted him directly and commanded him to make the movie he was contemplating. That first movie was about miracles, Christian miracles. They included things like gold dust appearing on people as they preached, gemstones appearing in church, and gold teeth appearing in people's mouths. The second movie was first prophesied by Heidi Baker, who told him that God wanted him to go into the darkness to show the light. Later, in a service at the Toronto Airport church,

Of Pianos and Female Bishops

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                                         One of my favorite characters in Church History is   St. Jerome . He was born in the mid-fourth century (300's AD), wrote in the latter quarter of that century and the early part of the 400's. He died around 420, having produced a vast body of literature, including letters, biblical translations, biblical commentaries, and essays refuting heresies. No one had higher praise or love for the intelligent, ascetic virgins of his day. They were his dear friends. He sobbed unabashedly when they died. These women were admired when they didn't bathe or fix their hair. Some fasted frequently and wore hair shirts. They also were adept at Latin, Greek, and (with Jerome's help) Hebrew.  He supported the emerging office of Roman pope. Presbyter and bishop were basically the same office, the difference being a reference to age. These offices had at that time full ecclesiastical status; marriage was not yet forbidden to the clergy. The church ma

Seeing God in the Mosaic Law

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  Bible verses are NKJV, cut and pasted from biblegateway.com. A brief history of the Old Testament eras Genesis 1-11 spans prehistory from about the Age of Copper to the Bronze Age when most writing was in cuneiform script on clay tablets. As we learned in school, Sumer was the “cradle of civilization,” meaning cities, inventions, governments, and law codes. Each Mesopotamian city had a king. In the fairly flat plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, kings built ziggurats to reach the heavens. The family line from Adam to Abraham is recorded. The book of Genesis tells the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the three patriarchs of the Jewish race. In that book, there is no Jewish state. The growing clan moves to Egypt to escape famine. At first, the clan gets good Delta land and begin to thrive and multiply. Eventually, they are conscripted to build palaces and temples. Exodus through Deuteronomy is the story of Moses, the Exodus from Egypt, the giving of the Law, and the wil

Estonia Sings to the Well

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  This post is an update from April 23, 2010. Bible links are from biblegateway.com .  When the Israelites marched out of Egypt into the desert, they were unaccustomed to desert living, so of course they were terrified and angry when in the first month of their escape, they arrived at a location called Kadesh in the Negev. The wells they expected to find there did not materialize and the whole community thought they might die a slow and horrible death without water. They did what people do--they forgot all the miracles of the past and griped that Moses brought them there to die. God commanded Moses to speak to a rock, and the rock would bring forth water, but instead of speaking, a very annoyed Moses struck it twice in anger. As a result, both Moses and Aaron were banned from entering the Promised Land. ( Numbers 20:2-13 ) So the Israelites trudged on from Kadesh and came to another dry place, but this time they didn't panic. The leaders got busy and dug a well right where they wer