From Mark on Facebook:
What does Jesus say about those who don’t believe Scripture?
“But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’” (Luke 16:31.)
That applies to all those Leopard Theologians who think the Bible is only inspired in spots and that they are inspired to spot the spots.
I’m predicting a moderate-sized Romney win, but the Democrat’s intimidation tactics and destruction of Republican registrations are already well-documented and could swing the results. Given how Obama used your tax dollars to buy votes from millions of people I’m amazed that it could be a Romney victory at all. But I’m encouraged that even with the seemingly non-stop Obama (free) infomercials from the mainstream media that enough people see how he is actively destroying the country and how a second term would be step functions worse. He’ll be as unrestrained as the blind men of Sodom.
And a Romney win will be just as huge of an impact. With some natural business cycle improvements plus Romney/Ryan policies they would sail to re-election in 4 years based on the dramatic improvements in the economy. It would be the easiest campaign ever: “We promised, we delivered. Want some more?”
But it gets better than that. The Clinton Democrats will throw Obama under the bus before the Romney inauguration and keep him there permanently. The Liberal extremists would be damaged for a long time.
Will I still have joy if Romney loses? Of course. That is my birthright as a Christian to have joy and contentment whenever I choose.
But will there still be something to mourn about? Of course. While I’m a huge fan of God’s sovereignty and how we shouldn’t act as non-Christians do when it comes to mourning or celebrating the wrong things or in the wrong way, there is nothing wrong with lamenting a Romney loss. And as one blogger noted, there is no reason you’d tell a Romney supporter, “no big deal, God is sovereign!” any more than you’d say that to someone going through a medical issue.
As I responded on a Facebook thread, I definitely agree that our hope should be in Jesus. Mine is. And we need an eternal perspective. But taking that to an extreme would also mean that the “love your neighbor” command isn’t a big deal. After all, this life is just a short blip, right? But if I love my neighbors, I want them to have religious freedom, I want them to have jobs, I don’t want them to be killed just because they are unwanted, I don’t their minds poisoned with sexual perversions in public schools, etc. And this election deals with all of those things.
The lesser of two evils is still less evil. We aren’t voting for a religious leader. We are electing someone to govern us with the values most approximating a biblical worldview, and our choices are limited. Even if a self-proclaimed Christian ran you can never be 100% sure he is legitimate. Remember, Obama claims to be a Christian.
And remember, it isn’t just about the President. While the incumbent has violated the Constitution at will, most Presidents don’t. So the Congress is crucial. When people long for the “Clinton years” what they are really longing for is a conservative Republican Congress. And the “Bush years” that Obama blames the most were the “Democrat Congress years.”
So get out and vote Republican if you haven’t already! And remind Democrats that until their platform is changed, they are officially pro-abortion: No restrictions of any kind plus taxpayer-funding.
As Steve Jobs would tell you (uh, if he could), sometimes you need surgery and medicine, because eating and exercise won’t cure what you’ve got.
But in many, many cases some exercise and better eating will fix your health problems, give you way more energy, save lots of money and put less of a burden on those you love.
You don’t need to do extreme exercise, but here are a couple impressive success stories from people who used P90X.
http://www.beachbody.com/product/p90x-success-stories-tommym.do
http://www.beachbody.com/product/p90x-success-stories-jeremyy.do
I see a lot of testimonials posted at 24 Hour Fitness as well. One was a grandma who was becoming a burden to her family. After exercising she was able to do so much more on her own and to play with her grandchildren. Another was a common one where a guy lost a lot of weight and was able to get off all sorts of medicine.
I think the key is to remember who you are competing against: Yourself. It is the “you” who won’t do any physical activity today versus the “you” who does something — anything! As the Bible notes, there will always be those better or worse than you, so try not to compare. Just find something you like, no matter how minimal, and do it.
I like doing a hybrid of P90X weightlifting, some cardio (stair stepper or exercise bike) and core work. And we go ballroom dancing several times per week. We’ve met lots of people who lost weight and feel much better since they started dancing. We think of dance as just a fun hobby and not exercise, but you get the benefits either way.
The historical reliability of the Gospels. We have good reasons to believe.
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Common traits of kids who don’t leave the church — some excellent points about youth groups, but I must add that the Bible doesn’t mention youth groups. They have great value if done right, but churches should emphasize the responsibility of parents to teach their kids. Alas, too many parents are biblical ignorant and doing nothing about it.
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The tragic superficiality of the gay lifestyle — I was surprised yet glad that this actually made it in the NY Times. Hopefully some people will reconsider their views.
A fascinating and surprising story published in the New York Times, laying bare what many homosexual activists will never admit publicly. It reports the real life tragedy of a typical homosexual man who sees and lives life based on the superficiality of homosexuality. How you look, what you wear and your “positive” attitude about yourself as a homosexual was the false recipe he sold to countless other gay men, but somehow knew that it wasn’t the truth.
On Jan 1st, Bob Bergeron, a quintessentially positive gay man, committed suicide. He left his friends, past sex partners and acquaintances wondering why. But they are blind to the real issue. The obsession with youth, beauty and sex is a killer. In a suicide note, he summed up the homosexual lifestyle in a single damning sentence:
“It’s a lie based on bad information.”, he wrote.
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Polar bears are thriving — wait, that can’t be right. The global warming / climate change folks who are aggressively fighting for an unprecedented global financial and power grab showed a picture of a polar bear on a small piece of ice.
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NHS bans woman from surgery because her carbon footprint is too big — Socialized health care sounds appealing, provided you don’t know history and can’t think through the logical consequences of it.
This is the problem with socialized medicine. You pay your money up front and then later on the government decides how much treatment you get. They have no reason to be nice to you – you already paid them. They don’t get paid more or less based on the quality of care they give you. You can’t get a refund on taxes paid. And where else can you go? It’s a single payer system.
I saw this on a poster: Socialized medicine may kill you, but at least it is free. Unless you pay taxes, then it just kills you.
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78-Year-Old White Guy Assaulted in Honor of Trayvon Martin — How much more blood will be on the hands of the MSM, Jesse, Al and the rest of the racism industry?
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US State Dept to force gay agenda on foreign nations — Most citizens have no idea how aggressively the administration is exporting the gay agenda.
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Obama supports women at Augusta National as party courts women’s vote — So the Panderer-in-Chief tries to get some easy publicity on this, then stumbles when asked the obvious question of whether his strong principles would have even the slightest impact on his behavior.
When later asked if Obama would play at a men-only club, Carney said the president had not specifically addressed that scenario during their conversation on the subject.
Chalk this up to the most powerful man in the world weighing in on an issue with the equivalent passion of clicking the “Like” button on Facebook. In other words, meaningless hypocrisy.
Bonus question: How many women does Obama golf with?
The president himself, however, has a well-documented history of excluding women, especially on the golf course.
Obama played 23 rounds of golf between January and October of 2009 before inviting a single woman to his foursome, the New York Times reported. This was emblematic of broader concerns over the president’s preference for the company and advice of men:
“The technical foul over the all-male game has become a nagging concern for a White House that has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that Mr. Obama’s closest advisers form a boys’ club and that he is too frequently in the company of only men — not just when playing sports, but also when making big decisions.”
“Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,” former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers told the Times.
In a 2011 article titled “The White House Boys’ Club: President Obama Has a Woman Problem,” TIME magazine’s Amy Sullivan detailed the president’s fondness for male-dominated enviroments.
Yeah, there’s a real war on women going on, just not from conservatives.
But what’s new? When the Tea Party rallies allegedly didn’t have just the right mix of diversity then the charge from the liberal media was racism. And if you like Tea Partier Herman Cain then you are extra-racist because you are obviously just voting for him to cover up your regular racism.
Yet the Occupy protesters are having the same lack of diversity. Does the media assume it is racism? Of course not. They rationalize it away in the most creative ways. See Occupy protesters eye diversity as movement grows.
The outcry against the nation’s financial institutions that has swept the country in recent weeks has crossed many boundaries, including class, gender and age. But a stubborn hurdle in many cities has been a lack of racial inclusion, something noted by organizers and participants alike.
“We, the 99 percent, have to be reaching out to the cross section of the communities that we live in,” said Tim Franzen, one of the organizers of the Occupy Atlanta movement. “If you come down to the park and spend a day I think you might have a hard time saying this is an all-white movement. We are reaching out, but we’ve got some bridges to build.”
The absence of diversity is particularly notable given that some of the larger issues surrounding the Occupy movement — including the economy, foreclosures and unemployment — are disproportionately affecting people of color. And the legacy of activism present in some minority communities seems a natural segue for such a cause, which has been linked to the strategies of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
African-Americans are more inclined to rally around social justice than financial literacy causes, said John Hope Bryant, founder and chief executive officer of Operation HOPE, a non-profit organization that educates underserved and low-income Americans about personal financial responsibility.
Got that? The alleged lack of Tea Party diversity (ignoring, again, the rise of Herman Cain) was immediately and emphatically attributed to racism, yet the admitted lack of Occupy diversity is because of a lack of concern over financial literacy (Is that guy saying that blacks aren’t financially literate?!) — even when they admit that blacks are disproportionately affected by what they are protesting.
That’s radical bias, even by the mainstream media’s standards.
Hat tip: Chuck from Facebook
As if we needed more evidence that Liberals literally fail at basic economics, this anti-Tea Party piece is floating around Facebook as if it actually proves something: So you say you hate taxes? … well here is the solution. Here’s a sample of the 102 items listed (they really put a lot of work into this logical fallacy!):
1. Do not use Medicare.
2. Do not use Social Security
3. Do not become a member of the US military, who are paid with tax dollars.
4. Do not ask the National Guard to help you after a disaster.
5. Do not call 911 when you get hurt.
I imagine that most of you will quickly spot the straw man fallacy: The Tea Party never claimed to want taxes to be zero. Never. They even used the “backronym” of Taxed Enough Already. Therefore, the “but taxes pay for good things” argument is meaningless. It proves nothing. It was just an extended-play, petty vehicle to demonize one’s ideological opponents.
And you’ll probably realize that just because we need taxes for some things — and the Tea Partiers agree that some taxes are necessary — it doesn’t mean:
Side note: The commenters on the Facebook page included the typical “tea bagger” pejorative. It occurred to me that the anti-Tea Party people must be real homophobes. After all, why would they consider it to be such an effective insult to refer to Tea Partiers by a term describing a gay sex act?
1. Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons: “There is no emoticon to express I feel!”
2. Pearls Before Swine comic:
As one female caller to a talk radio show said the other day, “She is smart, she is athletic, she loves the outdoors, she hunts, she fishes, she raises kids, she is on TV, she has been a governor of a state, she writes books, she blogs, AND she is pretty. What’s not to hate?”
90% of people abort Down Syndrome children, but she gave birth to hers. Her pro-life position makes Liberals absolutely hate her. You could agree with radical feminists on literally every issue possible except unrestricted abortion and they will hate you with a passion. Seriously.
SP [Sarah Palin] is a stupid moron.
I got this challenge on Facebook from a life-long friend. He has a great sense of humor and thick skin, but sadly suffers from a debilitating case of Liberalism. Out of kindness, I gave him two chances to withdraw the dare, but he persisted (they are a stubborn lot!).
Neil, I dare you to post this on your blog. No, I double dog dare you. Zombies Walk The Halls Of Congress : NPR.
The article highlighted Democrats and Republicans who stayed in Congress after scandals. I wonder why NPR didn’t go after examples like this more aggressively? I mean, sweet Maxine is still there. They could shine a bigger light on this one:
Other survivors? There’s Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). During the fiscal meltdown, she arranged a meeting with the Treasury Department for a bank her husband owned stock in.
The article forgot to note that Republicans are more likely to resign and more likely to be pressured to resign from their party. Then again, you can only be a hypocrite if you have standards to begin with. Witness Chris Matthews’ claim that the real problem with Weiner is that “backwards” religious people disagree with his behavior — meaning that “progressive” people think there was nothing really wrong with a Congressman exposing himself to bribes and ridicule in sending R- and X-rated pictures of himself to strangers and then lying to friends and enemies alike in a pathetic cover-up attempt. His real crime was getting caught. Hey, at least Matthews clearly reveals his “morality.”
Also note that the NPR article “forgot” to mention Bill Clinton staying in office after abusing his authority with an intern, exposing himself to the possibility of blackmail, trying to destroy her life (and he would have succeeded if not for the infamous dress) and lying under oath. Yet while Nixon became synonymous with deception and scandal, Clinton’s punishment is making $100,000 per speech and having a wife who is Secretary of State.
Back to the dare: My friend’s premise was that I’d never post something from NPR that showed that they were balanced. But the grand irony is if they were truly unbiased then he could send me their links all day, every day. But as it is he found a token piece that was balanced and was so shocked and thrilled that he launched into his double dog dare without realizing that he was proving my point, not his.
Whether NPR is biased or not (and of course they are wildly biased, or my extreme Liberal friend wouldn’t be such a loyal fan), they shouldn’t get government funding.
There you go, my friend. Hope you’re happy!
Rob Bell has gotten a lot of well justified criticism over the universalist heresies (that is, everyone goes to Heaven) in his Love Wins book. Ironically, now Bell is saying he’s been misinterpreted and that he’s not a universalist — which means that Rob’s universalist supporters disagree with him. What chaos!
The Sola Sisters have a good analysis of why Rob’s responses to his critics fall short. Here’s an example they highlight:
…..Hell, as a period of “pruning” in which God is continuing to woo each person who is there until they end up in heaven (Bell’s version, p. 91 “Love Wins”) as compared to
……Hell as an eternal punishment for those who have broken God’s moral laws, and who are paying the penalty of their sins with their own lives (God’s version).
I ended up in this Facebook thread on a friend’s page. The “Pastor Universalist,” as he ended up calling himself, eventually deleted all his comments, leaving mine all alone on the thread (it now reads like some weird soliloquy). Again, this guy is defending Bell and his universalism, even though Bell is now trying to deny his universalism. There’s just the pesky problem of this book he wrote where he seems pretty clear about it.
FB friend: Has anyone wondered why Rob Bell has not been accused of being divisive with his apostate treatise on Hell “Love Wins”?
Me: Good point. It is only divisive to disagree with Rob.
FB friend: I can help but to see the parallels in the insanity budgeting/gov. shutdown blame circus.
Pastor Universalist (PU): Well then what is the alternative …..Either God so Loved the world that he gave his only Son to die for it….or he hates it and is going to kill everyone off….. What does your Bible read?
Me: It is about the definition you pour into the word. Does love win? Of course. But Rob Bell ignores countless scriptures to interpret that as universalism — as if what Jesus said about Hell is true then love lost. Was Jesus being loving when He told the Pharisees that they would die in their sins if they didn’t believe who He was? God wins. Love wins. Justice wins.
PU: BTW ….allow me to address your question as well….The reason that many have not accused Rob Bell of being an Apostate is because there are many who believe that his offerings are scripturally sound and follow the essense and Heart of the New Testament doctrine….
Me: Bell and his followers can’t even get John 3:16 right. John specifically mentions that those who believe in him won’t perish — meaning that those who don’t believe in him will. If that wasn’t clear enough, verse 18 will help
Me: Should you believe Rob Bell or Jesus? (Hint: Go with Jesus) Rob Bell (Love Wins, p. 66): Could God say to someone truly humbled, broken, and desperate for reconciliation, “Sorry, too late”? Many have refused to accept the scenario in which somebody is pounding on the door, apologizing, repenting, and asking God to be let in, only to hear God say through the keyhole: “Door’s locked. Sorry. If you had been here earlier, I could have done something. But now, it’s too late.”
Compare that to Jesus Christ (Matthew 25:1-13): Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the wise, “Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out.” But the wise answered, saying, “Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.” And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” But he answered and said, “Verily I say unto you, I know you not.” Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.
PU: And Yes Neil…..It really does depend on your study and Interpretation of Scripture…. Christiaity is a Universal Doctrine….In otherwords….availible to all who ask and recieve… However…To Judge someone as an Apostate is a strong acusation…. Remember that Jesus also spoke that by whatever measure you Mete out….you will also recieve……To build a case for Love winning is a great step of Faith… To Hate is carnal and God is Love… So to believe that God can save is also a great step of Faith….. It is easy to write other people off as lost and unreconciilable to God… But to hold a Vision of salvation is a great Gift….
Me: ”To Judge someone as an Apostate is a strong …acusation…. Remember that Jesus also spoke that by whatever measure you Mete out….you will also recieve”
Seems odd that a universalist would warn me about warning about false teachers.
Me: ”It is easy to write other people off as lost and unreconciilable to God… But to hold a Vision of salvation is a great Gift….”
The question isn’t whether it is easy or hard to do, but what scripture teaches.
PU: That’s Pastor Universalist to you brother…. And again…You are accusing….. I am going to exhort you to be careful here….”
Me: Why be careful? After all, on your view I go to Heaven even if I don’t trust in Jesus. How could trusting in Jesus and making (allegedly) false accusations be a bad combo? Or do you have a passage that says those who don’t trust in Jesus go to Heaven, but those who do trust in Jesus and make false accusations don’t? What if you are making a false accusation against me? Howzabout we focus on the actual passages in question instead of lobbying threats?
I exhort you to heed the many passages about sound doctrine —http://tinyurl.com/4yja58j . And if you are a pastor then that is all the worse. I know of many, many false teachers. Titles mean little to me if their doctrine is false.
PU: OK Neil…..checking out…..believe whateewr you have faith for…Blessings to you…..May you find Christ….”
Me: Ha! Oh, so now I haven’t found Christ? What a hypocrite. Please re-read your quotes about warnings.
Me: My new blog post is dedicated to you: False teaching universalists can’t even get John 3:16 right. Here’s what they think John meant: John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Oh, and BTW, those who don’t believe in him also have eternal life. Which, now that I think about it, means that I should have left the whole perishing thing out of this passage. After all, everyone is going to Heaven no matter what they believe. But I don’t want to have to start over, so I’m going to leave it in. My, I do tend to ramble on sometimes. That’s just me, the Apostle John. Now on to verse 17 . . . V. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. D’oh! I did it again!
Eternity Matters 