Something for a church to be proud of?

Making the audience feel more comfortable

 

Peace, peace, where there is no peace (Ezekiel 13:10)

EU Presidency – A Caesar Over A Revived Roman Empire?

What do you think? Discuss.

Ouija Board Fright Drumming Up A Bit Of Publicity for Halloween – Or Something Serious?

Article from The Telegraph (link)

“Thorpe Park ‘may be exorcised’ after Ouija board seance

Thorpe Park bosses have suspended six members of staff and have called in a paranormal expert after a late-night Ouija board seance at the theme park was blamed for a series of spooky incidents.

The workers are said to have carried out a Ouija board session in the horror-themed rollercoaster SAW – The Ride, at Thorpe Park, following their shift on the opening night of the Park’s Halloween-themed ‘Fright Nights.’

It is thought the group chose the park’s newest ride, which boasts gruesome features mimicking the sinister torture scenarios from the film SAW, thinking it was the perfect setting for their antics.

But bosses at the Park in Chertsey, Surrey, apparently failed to see the funny side and are now holding the seance responsible for a series of eerie goings on.

Several bemused visitors have complained about an extreme drop in temperature inside the ride building.

And spooked workers have reported lights flickering and special effects starting up sporadically after being switched off.

Unable to find any technical reason for the malfunctions, bemused park bosses have now called in a paranormal expert.

Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe, the UK’s leading authority on the unexplained, is currently examining the suspect areas of the ride for any disturbances and, if required, will perform an exorcism.

He said: “Many people believe that the Ouija board is just a game but its power should never be underestimated, it may be a very dangerous tool if not used properly.

“It opens a gateway to another dimension and when people who, are not experienced spiritualists, play with Ouija boards mischievous entities can get through.

“If there is something that has been causing fear and bewilderment at the park I will hopefully be able to like a doctor with antibiotics and cure the problem.

He added: “If deemed necessary I will carry out an exorcism but at this point in time initial investigations are still underway.”

A source at the Park this morning commented: ‘It was a pretty strange sight to see a priest walking around Thorpe Park holding a bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other, I’m not sure what he was exactly doing but it all looked a bit unusual.’

A spokesman for the Park: “On the evening of Monday 12th October an unauthorised Ouija Board session was conducted by six employees at SAW – The Ride after Thorpe Park had closed to the public.

“A full investigation is underway and the six employees have been temporarily suspended pending the outcome of this enquiry.

“We take both staff and guest feedback very seriously and for this reason we have called in Lionel Fanthorpe, a leading paranormal expert to help us investigate some of the reports that have arisen as a result of this situation.

“Thorpe Park and SAW – The Ride remain open as usual for the Park’s Fright Nights season.”"

A Ministry in Coldness Is Not One To Be Sought

(Cartoon from here)

One of the more popular ministries (not giving a damn), excused and justified by the kind of obnoxious “super-spirituality” that is too common in too many churches today.

On the surface these ones pretend to be spiritual, warm and loving (“Christian” hugs and all!), even deceiving themselves that this is what they really are – but in truth these ones are unspiritual, careless, self-centred, cold and arrogant .

Read I John for how a person and/or church would act if it actually cared. Not “should” act – how they “would” act. The one that doesn’t love demonstrated in deeds doesn’t love, and certainly isn’t spiritual. It’s that simple.

 

 

Antichrist Watch – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed to have Jewish past

This following news article reveals a very interesting piece of news for prophecy watchers – the Iranian president allegedly has Jewish roots. This will make all the difference for some in assessing Ahmadinejad’s likelihood to be the Antichrist, as many think the Antichrist MUST be of Jewish descent because of scriptures such as Daniel 11.37 .

The news article is from the Telegraph, (link).

“A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior.

Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past.

Ali Nourizadeh, of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies, said: “This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s background explains a lot about him.

“Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith.

“By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society.”

A London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that “jian” ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews.

“He has changed his name for religious reasons, or at least his parents had,” said the Iranian-born Jew living in London. “Sabourjian is well known Jewish name in Iran.”

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London said it would not be drawn on Mr Ahmadinejad’s background. “It’s not something we’d talk about,” said Ron Gidor, a spokesman.

The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch.

Relatives have previously said a mixture of religious reasons and economic pressures forced his blacksmith father Ahmad to change when Mr Ahmadinejad was aged four.

The Iranian president grew up to be a qualified engineer with a doctorate in traffic management. He served in the Revolutionary Guards militia before going on to make his name in hardline politics in the capital.

During this year’s presidential debate on television he was goaded to admit that his name had changed but he ignored the jibe.

However Mehdi Khazali, an internet blogger, who called for an investigation of Mr Ahmadinejad’s roots was arrested this summer.

Mr Ahmadinejad has regularly levelled bitter criticism at Israel, questioned its right to exist and denied the Holocaust. British diplomats walked out of a UN meeting last month after the Iranian president denounced Israel’s ‘genocide, barbarism and racism.’

Benjamin Netanyahu made an impassioned denunciation of the Iranian leader at the same UN summit. “Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium,” he said. “A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies the murder of six million Jews while promising to wipe out the State of Israel, the State of the Jews. What a disgrace. What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations.”

Mr Ahmadinejad has been consistently outspoken about the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. “They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets,” he declared at a conference on the holocaust staged in Tehran in 2006.”

Benny Hinn says Obama is not the Antichrist

“… Obama is not the antichrist.” says Benny Hinn very firmly in a recent interview on Fox News. Hinn continues of Obama: “He’s a good man, a Christian man”.  (See the video here:  link)

“Evangelist” Benny Hinn has been so busy pimping for filthy lucre to feed his gluttinously lavish lifestyle, he has evidently forgotten the simple gospel of what makes someone a Christian, and what doesn’t  make them a Christian.

Hear me now, I’m not referring to President Barack Obama’s politics, or his color of skin and ethnicity that are seemingly enough to send shivers down the spines of certain those on the Religious Right making Obama, in their minds at least, a prime candidate for Antichrist (- but at the same time, I gotta say, what is  that with his nomination for the Nobel peace prize? – )…. I’m talking about the simple gospel message and its plumb-line that applies to, and measures, us all, high and low, black and white, Republican or Democrat. 

How to spot a real  Christian? For a start, a real Christian is one who knows the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and knows nobody comes to God the Father but by and through God’s Son Jesus Christ who is the ONLY way, truth and life.  A real  Christian cannot say there are other gods or other pathways to God, or other ways to inherit eternal life, and remain a Christian, as He would be denying all that Jesus is,  and all that Christianity is.

A real Christian then, clearly couldn’t and wouldn’t say the kind of things it was reported Obama did in this interview - Barack Obama In His Own Words Explains That He Is NOT A Christian or say stuff like this: Obama on many paths to God and embracing the divine within.

Nor does a Christian carry or use lucky charms, including one of a Hindu monkey god as Obama reportedly does - see the pictures of his assortment of charms here: Obama’s lucky charms.

And what about this possible revealing slip-up on TV? Obama on “My Muslim, err I mean Christian, faith.”

If Obama wants to be a Muslim, Hindu, New Age Hippy, agnostic or atheist,  that’s his lookout. But when Benny Hinn, who puports to be an evangelist for the Christian faith, claims on national TV that Obama is a Christian – well shame on you, Benny Hinn, for leading people astray.

And Benny Hinn, on the money front, you’re a smarmy no-good liar. I rebuke you for your relentless and ruthless pimping of God’s people for your own ends, and the rape, pillaging, beating up and leading astray of Christ’s lambs. May the Lord open up the eyes of your blinded deluded followers and bring them to swift repentance. As for you, Benny, what will you do as you stand on the doorway to eternity? Re-pent or re-pimp?

See also  -

Is Barack Obama Satan’s Warm-up Act? (link)

Barack Obama and Left Behind and Left Behind authors says Obama “likely” not the antichrist

Upon This Rock and All That (Entry #3 To The Religious Rubbish Hall of Fame)

A handy tape measure, complete with scripture quotation.

(Product source: link)

This product is for not quite the kind of building I had in mind when I called on the modern day “Nehemiahs” to rebuild and restore the church’s crumbling walls (see article on Eroding the church walls).

Entry #2 to The Religious Rubbish Hall of Fame

Walk In The Light torch, comes complete with out of context scripture verse and a choice of colors and styles. (from link).

 

Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich

Article by LAURIE GOODSTEIN from NY Times (link)

“FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.

Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.

“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.

Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.

The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “Fear will make you stingy,” Mr. Copeland said.

But the offering buckets came up emptier than in some previous years, said those who have attended before.

Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.

“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The crowd of more than 9,000 was multiracial, from 48 states and 27 countries. There was no fee to attend. There were bikers in leather vests, pastors, blue-collar workers, professionals and plenty of families with children.

A large contingent came in wheelchairs, hoping for miraculous healings. The audience sat with Bibles open, flipping to passages cited by the preachers, taking notes on pads and laptop computers.

“The folks who are coming aren’t poor,” said Jonathan L. Walton, a professor of religion at the University of California, Riverside, who has written about the movement and was there doing research. “They reside in that nebulous category between the working and the middle class.”

Sitting in Section 316, eight rows up, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a Bible at lunch time, was a family who could explain the enduring loyalty the prosperity preachers inspire.

Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.

They say the Copelands rescued them from financial failure 23 years ago, when they bought their first truck at 22 percent interest and had to rebuild the engine twice in a year.

Around that time, Mrs. Biellier first saw Mr. Copeland on television and began sending him 50 cents a week.

Others who bought trucks from the same dealer in Joplin that year went under, the Bielliers said, but they did not.

“We would have failed if Copeland hadn’t been praying for us every day,” Mrs. Biellier said.

The Bielliers are now among 386,000 people worldwide whom the Copelands call their “partners,” most of whom send regular contributions and merit special prayers from the Copelands.

A call center at the ministry’s 481-employee headquarters in Newark, Tex., takes in 60,000 prayer requests a month, a publicist said.

The Copelands’ broadcast reaches 134 countries, and the ministry’s income is about $100 million annually.

The Bielliers were at the convention a few years ago when a supporter made a pitch for people to join an “Elite CX Team” to raise money to buy the ministry a Citation X airplane. (Mr. Copeland is an airplane aficionado who got his start in ministry as a pilot for Oral Roberts.) At that moment, Mrs. Biellier said she heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling her, “You were born to support this man.”

She gave $2,000 for the plane, and recently sent $1,800 for the team’s latest project: buying high-definition television equipment to upgrade the ministry’s international broadcasts.

Mrs. Biellier said some friends and relatives would say the preacher just wanted their money. She explained that the Copelands did not need the money for themselves; it is for their ministry. And besides, even “trashy people like Hugh Hefner” have private airplanes.

“I remember Copeland had to once fly halfway around the world to talk to one person,” she said. “Because we’re partners with Kenneth Copeland, for every soul that gets saved, we get credit for that in heaven.”

But while a band primed the crowd, Professor Walton called the prosperity preachers “spiritual pickpockets.”

“To dismiss and ignore the harsh realities of this economic crisis,” he said. “is beyond irresponsible, to the point of reprehensible.”

The Copelands refused an interview request, but one of their daughters, Kellie Copeland Swisher, and her husband, Steve Swisher, who both work in the ministry, spoke for them.

Mrs. Swisher said the ministry gave away “a minimum of 10 percent of what comes in” to other charities. Her father’s current favorite, she said, is a Roman Catholic orphanage in Mexico.

The ministry has resisted providing the Senate investigation with all the documents requested, she said, because the Copelands did not want to publicly reveal the names of the “partners.” The investigation, which could result in new laws, is continuing, a committee spokeswoman said. Among those being investigated is Creflo Dollar, one of the ministers at the Copelands’ convention.

Mr. Swisher said that even in the economic downturn, the ministry’s income going into the convention was up 3 percent over last year. Asked if they had adjusted the message for the economy, Mrs. Swisher patted the worn Bible in her lap and said: “The message they preach is the Word of God. The Word doesn’t change.”

At the convention, the preachers — who also included Jesse Duplantis and Jerry Savelle — sprinkled their sermons with put-downs of the government, an overhaul of health care, public schools, the news media and other churches, many of which condemn prosperity preaching.

But mostly the preachers were working mightily to remind the crowd that they are God’s elect. “While everybody else is having a famine,” said Mr. Savelle, a Texas televangelist, “his covenant people will be having the best of times.”

“Any time a worried thought about money pops up in your mind,” Mr. Savelle continued, “the next thing you do is sow”: drop money, like seeds, in “good ground” like the preachers’ ministries. “Stop worrying, start sowing,” he added, his voice rising. “That’s God’s stimulus package for you.”

At that, hundreds streamed down the aisles to the stage, laying envelopes, cash and coins on the carpeted steps.”

More articles on Kenneth and Gloria Copeland by following this link

A Discipleship Aid … Or Perhaps Not

Introducing Disciple Shades (http://discipleshades.com/)  whose inspiring product (inspiring for all the wrong reasons) can enter the Religious Rubbish Hall of Fame.

 

 

 

 

Disciple Shades company motto is Live in the Light.  Bible Quotes on the frames beautifully manipulated and distorted to fit include: MAT 5:14  You’re here to be light

You have got to be kidding me. Only in America. Really.