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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Just In Case You Didn't Believe That There Is A Gay Agenda

In the comments section of Does the Bible Deal With Sexual Orientation? A black, homosexual, humanist/atheist who delivers the blog AUSFHART (which is the German word for exit) delivered the following commentary:
"The job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists( the black church) who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us ( like Supt. Burnett who believes in a Bible that deems him a descendant of Ham: a slave).

Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest anti-gay sentiment.

Therefore, you Negros can pontificate till judgement day, but this Black, gay man will lobby, vote, influence, and agitate for equality. Hey, you hetero Negros cannot make marriage work( marriage rate has plummeted from 70% to 30% currently) so let us Black gays set the example for education achievement, wealth building, family dynamics, child rearing, marriage bliss, love, sex, and overall successful living. You know I'm telling the truth!" ~ February 28, 2010 9:29 AM
Are We At A Loss? What Are We To Say?

I would guess that comments like this would make those cower who really didn't know the truth and chose to live in ignorance. Even children today watching advertisements and the parading of gay individuals, can easily see that gays have an agenda and that agenda is not only for equality, as AUSFHART suggests, but it is about domination, and suppression of anything that doesn't include it, honor it, or make room for it. If it were not for the fact that we've known for a number of years that the gay agenda is what it is, ie: an agenda, I guess we would be caught off guard with sentiments such as these. So in short we are not at a loss for words, neither are we surprised by radical homosexuals such as this. Let's discuss a few aspects of this confusion 

The Analysis Of AUSFAHRT's Statements & Assertions

1- Proponents Of The Homosexual Agenda Commonly Promote Religious & Class Discrimination

AUSFAHRT starts off by saying what the "job of the gay community" is not, and then goes on to deliver the biggest "straw-man", "red herring" and down right lie ever told in history. He states that

1- The "black church" is religious extremists (not full of them, we ARE them)
2- That church exists to castigate homosexuals and or drop h-bomb on all of them if possible.

First, I have not read any literature where any church, black or white (by tradition) has said anything close to what AUSFAHRT asserts. What this is called is sensationalism and extremism. The comment has no bearing in truth and is not supported by any evidence whatsoever, but yet he calls the "black church" extremists. Further, the comment is a complete lie designed to stereotype, castigate, humiliate and demonize anyone in the "black church" who stands against homosexuality and in favor of the traditional family (ie: marriage between one man and one woman) as outlined and endorsed in the word of God.

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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Some People Get Tired Of "Light Bread"

The Exodus

Exodus 16:13-16 ~ "13-And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host. 14-And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness [there lay] a small round thing, [as] small as the hoar frost on the ground. 15-And when the children of Israel saw [it], they said one to another, It [is] manna: for they wist not what it [was]. And Moses said unto them, This [is] the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat."

Two and a half months after being set free from the bonds of slavery abuse and misuse, Israel came to the wilderness of Sin. That parallel of language is telling because it was in Sin that the complaint was made:

Exodus 16:3 ~ "And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, [and] when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

In Sin not only was the leadership of Israel tried, but also the patience of God was put to the test. Here in just over 2 months the people had forgotten about their sons being made slaves, their daughters being raped and abused and their seniors being disrespected, not to mention their hopes and dreams being destroyed. So, strangely it seems, that they clamoured for the old setting and way things used to be in order to suit their needs.

In spite of it all, God by his mercy and compassion fed the people daily. He prepared a little white wafer that sat upon the ground after the dew rose. Noone knew what it was so they called it "Manna" meaning "what it is" ie: it is what it is. So what they received was sustenance for them and obviously had the ability to nurture their complete physical being. The problem is that even after being fed by the hand of God himself, the people lost interest and wanted variety. They wanted something other than what God was giving them. The late Bishop G.E. Patterson preached a message on this subject some years ago, and in that message he said that the people got tired of eating "light bread" and demanded that the Lord feed them something else. In other words even though God was feeding the people and meeting their needs in the wilderness, their appetite was greater than the manna that they were receiving from the Lord.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Are Your Children Safe At The Doctor?

One would never think in a million years that aside from potential germs, that the Dr's office could be an unsafe place, and that medical professionals entrusted with the most intimate details of our physical bodies would perpetrate terror upon children.
Then we enter the world of Dr. Earl Bradley who received a 160 page indictment on 471 counts of sexual crimes against 103 children some as young as 3 months old...3 MONTHS OLD! He is currently being held on $2.9 Million cash bond. This is one of the most tragic events I have ever seen. Aol News reports the following:
"Charges against Bradley include first-degree and second-degree rape, first-degree unlawful sexual contact, first-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree assault, sexual exploitation of a child and continuing sexual abuse of a child. "These were crimes committed against the most vulnerable among us -- those without voices," Biden said. The crimes were "committed by someone with whom an entire community and parents had placed their trust." Bradley was initially arrested on 33 felony charges, including rape and sexual exploitation of a child. That arrest came on Dec. 16 after a 2-year-old girl told her mother that Bradley had taken her into a basement room of his office and hurt her. A search warrant executed on Bradley's medical practice and home resulted in the discovery of more than 13 hours of video recordings depicting multiple incidents of child sexual abuse, authorities said. It remains unclear how many of the alleged victims in the recordings have been identified. The number of alleged victims has significantly increased throughout the course of the investigation, prosecutors said. They said they expect to add more counts to the already lengthy indictment."
The Biden in the story is the son of Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Beau Biden.  Mr. Biden stated that reports on this molester go back as far as 2005. CNN reports that this may even go back as far as 10 years. It is also reported that everyone has joined in the effort to make sure that Dr. Bradley never practices or sees the light of day again. The Delaware Board of Medical Practice revoked Bradley's medical license at a public hearing last week. and reportedly stated the following:

"The order entered by the board today furthers its mission of protecting the public," board President Raymond L. Moore Sr. told NewarkPostOnline.com. "Our actions to date reflect the seriousness of the charges and of the impact on the victims. We are imposing the most severe sanction available under our statute by permanently revoking the medical license of Earl Bradley, M.D."
There are plenty of questions about all of this such as how did the Dr. get alone time with the children?
Where were the other professionals in this practice? Did they notice anything strange over the years?
Why did it take the court so long to move and respond off of supposedly credible complaints over the years?

In short, it was the video evidence that is the most damaging. Hours of videos of children being abused. What a tragedy. Parents hold on to your babies. I know I will.

Blessed!

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Was Paul A "Sinner" For Christ?

The Sinful Paul Thesis

Romans 7: 23-25 ~ "23-But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24-O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25-I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin."

In the comments of the post Does The Bible Deal With Sexual Orientation? I was amazed to find that some Christians view Apostle Paul as a person struggling with sin within his personal Christian life to the extent that he was overwhelmed by it within his own Christian walk. This view is held by some who interpret certain verses of Romans 7 to be Paul's confessional and personal declaration of his own depravity.  One thing to note, is that many who hold to that interpretation superimpose their life and struggle with sin on top of Paul's words in order to create a sinful Paul from his very own words in effort to make sense of their personal struggles. I call this the "Sinful Paul Thesis".

Assumptions such as these presuppose that Paul was "like us" in what he had been exposed to in life and that his sinful inclinations, propensities, and social conditions were similar to ours. The problem with this is that in order to make Paul like us, we have to strip him of his moral base. The life of a first century Jew was dramatically and drastically different than ours in 21st century Western America. Paul being a pious and zealous Jew was steeped in scriptural teachings and Jewish traditions which he readily admits. This by itself does not exempt Paul in any way from sin and that's certainly not the claim that we make, but it does set the backdrop of understanding that Paul would not have readily been a willing participant in issues that he knew were sin especially on an ongoing basis. Paul was familiar with certain disciplines that kept him from certain types of sins and sin in general. He introduces concepts of fasting prayer, meditation, supplication and immersion in the word of God in effort to give believers the strength to overcome personal struggles and to help edify the church and all believers in general. To take spiritual disciplines in Christ away from Paul is to miss his complete message as it pertains to overcoming sin through Christ and as it pertains to his understanding and explanation of what Christ actually did on the cross.  

So at best individuals claiming that Paul was somehow a closet sinner do the gospel a disservice by actually taking Paul out of the context in which he existed, stripping him of his value set, and recreating a Paul who affirms and suits 21st Century struggles and failures. Further they create a message of Christ that is powerless to effect the practice of sin in the flesh. As we can see not only is this a bad way to read the bible it will never allow one to come to an accurate understanding of what's being communicated and it has some far reaching impacts.

The Impact Of A Sinful Paul

The fact is that Paul certainly sinned. That is not in question. However, for one to suggest that the overarching premise of Paul's life was sinful, is not only an perversion of scripture, it is a totally absurd and unsupportable view. This is the focus of what we are discovering in this post. 

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Friday, February 19, 2010

Does The Bible Deal With Sexual Orientation?

Or at least so says Rev. Dr. Martha Simmons, Creator and Director of The African American Lectionary. During a Feb. 18th 2010 interview with Santita Jackson on Chicago's WVON 1690 She appeared along with Dr. Brenda Wade who we will feature in another article. Dr. Simmons stated that not only does the bible not address the issue of sexual orientation, but the word which many people claim that was used to address this issue  (Gk: arsenokoites)  was a word of unknown origin and meaning and was allowed to creep in later translations of the bible. She stated that this word was defined by scholars as 1- sexual behavior or 2- sexual orientation. She says that most biblical translations only refer to homosexual sexual behavior not homosexual orientation.   
Here is the verse in question.

1 Cor. 6:9~ "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,"

Ἢ οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ἄδικοι θεοῦ βασιλείαν οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν; μὴ πλανᾶσθε· οὔτε πόρνοι οὔτε εἰδωλολάτραι οὔτε μοιχοὶ οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται (arsenokoites)

Dr. Simmons also stated that the Gk word paiderfastis would have been used by Paul to point out homosexual orientation in the verse. She also says that the bible is ambiguous or does not address  how atoms split or when slavery should have ended,  but it does lay down the greater principle of how we should live and that is rooted and grounded in love. 

What Do We Make Of Dr. Simmons' Assertions?

Aside from the fact that Dr. Simmons got a "whole bunch" of things wrong in just a short and limited period of time, she leapt into a pool of erroneous and irresponsible doctrine.

First, we have done an article on The Dunamis Word 2, Homosexuality & The New Testament, addressing this specific use of the word arsenokoites, and how the word was derived and why Paul used that word rather than paiderfastis.

In that article we clearly state that although paiderfastis was used to describe homosexual behavior, it was the word used to describe men who had sex with young and fair skinned boys. In other words the use was limited to refer to same gender sexual relationships between men and boys. In actuality Paul's words were not limited to pederasts or those who's object of sex was young fair-skinned boys or females. Within the scripture arsenokoites opened up and broadened the meaning and spoke more completely toward men and women who had same gender sexual relationships. Therefore, the use of arsenokoites was used to imply a much more broad category of same gender sexual relationships covering adult to adult and adult to child relationships. 

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Thursday, February 11, 2010

The New Enlightenment Pt. 5

Energy Psychology & The New Healing Movement
EFT's & Meditation


"The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system" 
~ Gary Craig

What eliminates, guilt, weight, fears, depression, phobias, headaches, pains, trauma, stress, emotional scars and just about all physical illnesses in less time than it takes to tie a shoe? According to many EFT does the trick every time.

Gary Craig, an ordained minister, and a Certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-linguistic programming, is the founder of EFT or Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) also known as needleless acupuncture. This self-healing method is a member of the growing field of "energy psychology". It involves finding pressure points on the body discovered and mapped out by eastern religions over 5,000 years ago upon which acupuncture was formerly the leading treatment. It is said that these are the points where "negative feelings" are housed. They (the negative feelings) can be purged by first bringing them to the surface, speaking to them (making friends with them) and purging them from the body by tapping particular points on the body over and over and reciting certain phrases such as,  "Even though I have this (whatever the illness, negative emotion or feeling), I deeply and completely accept myself." or "I love and accept myself even though I have this(whatever the illness, negative emotion or feeling)."

The claim is that not only does EFT relieve bad feelings and emotional bondage, but when properly applied, also heals the physical body and should be hailed as the new instrument of miraculous healing. Mr. Craig downplays this aspect in his manual outlining why his materials don't focus more on the physical healing  aspect of EFT:
"This EFT Manual was written before I realized the profound and widespread nature of the physical healings. Accordingly, it stresses the emotional healings and doesn’t cover the physical healings in nearly as dramatic a fashion as they actually occur. Because it has proven to be such an effective teaching manual, however, I have decided to leave it as is rather than modify it to emphasize physical healings. It is the emotional and energetic causes that we need to understand and those are profusely illustrated in these pages." [EFT Manual 6th Edition pg. 3 PDF]
I remember Richard Pryor in the movie 'Which Way Is Up' writing Annabell (his wife) saying something like, "I would have sent you some money, but I already sealed the envelope."

Dr. Craig would have included a lot more on physical healing in his manual if it weren't for the fact that the manual was already finished and that he didn't feel like modifying it to reflect the abundance and wealth of information on physical healings that had come in after he wrote his nearly 85 page booklet. Yea Right!

Who Uses & Promotes EFT?
As stated EFT comes with its own instruction booklet, videos and manual. The program is readily accessible to anyone and certainly promoted as being for everyone. According to the EFT Manual many individuals in the following professions use this method:

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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Teaching Lessons & Zero Tolerance

The Alleged & Accused Predator:


This is Pastor Edwin House of the Light House Church Of God In Christ of Crescent, Oklahoma.

"Nothing is going to change at the church,”

Or at least so says Pastor House. Even though he is charged with 5 counts of  lewd molestation he can't get away from our church. You know COGIC? My church. The church with leadership that has recently enacted a ZERO TOLERANCE policy against sexual abuse, misuse, and crimes.

The Alleged Co-Defendant & Accused Conspirator:

I am quite sure that by all accounts Mother Lovenia House, charged with child neglect,  Pastor House's wife, (unfortunately as pictured here) is a great women and I hope that what I read (about them both) and am about to say IS NOT true.

The reason that Mother House was arrested and is in this picture is because according to NewsOK she said the following regarding the reason why her husband/pastor felt on, and I said FELT ON, her foster child's breast. They reported:

"Lovenia House told investigators her husband touched the girl’s chest to teach her how boys might act if she continued to dress provocatively."

Now that's only ONE of the alleged crimes that Pastor House committed here but that by itself is enough to make me ask like my caveman friends  
WHAT????

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Saturday, February 6, 2010

Was Death A Part Of The Good Creation Of God?

Genesis 1:27-31 ~ 27-So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 
28-And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29- And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30-And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31-And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day

Did God create and earth where death was a part of the natural and physical world?

Did God create anything and everything that he created to suffer death and die? 

Unfortunately, some Christians think so.

Ranging from theistic evolutionists to progressive creationists, some modern Christians feel a need to try to balance certain modern scientific discoveries with the very creation story itself as found in Genesis ch's 1 and 2. The problem is that today's argument has moved beyond asking about creation parallels from other literature, which are almost a dime a dozen and not significant to the biblical narrative, into discovery of just what God created when he created. One should be mindful that even though some aspects of early Genesis are poetic in nature and highly filled with symbolism, those things do not overturn or compromise the integrity of the actual events found within the narrative, neither do they minimize the importance of what God did and communicated to man and mankind. 

Section I: The Beginning

The Command

Genesis 2:15-17 ~ "15-And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16-And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17- But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

This was the command of God toward man. This was also outlined the result of man's rebellion. In that day tat he would he, he would die. Now some claim that Adam could not have known what death was without having witnessed it or having had the ability to witness it. That speaks nothing of the fact that if we are to

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