You Tube is a reflection of a sick society

I have been on you tube for over a year now. It’s been an up and down experience, mostly down. On the surface it seems like a great idea. People can upload videos of just about anything and share them with the world. There’s just one problem. The world part. You see much of the world is sick and twisted.
There’s a movie out called “Untraceable”. In the movie a psychopath kidnaps people and puts them on a streaming live internet feed. The people are bound and contraptions are rigged so that depending on the number of viewers the page gets the faster the person dies. I’m afraid that isn’t too far from reality.
Most of the people who tune into You Tube, especially in the religion category, aren’t really there for any meaningful dialogue but to see drama and harass others. The big problem with You Tube is that anyone can join with only an email address and they can have as many accounts as they like without ever showing their faces. And while You Tube claims to have a terms of service agreement they rarely ever do anything to enforce it.
What you have is a chaotic mess of people threatening one another and members with no formal training in any one area putting up videos as if they have some sort of PHD in the subject.

Recently there has been a rather large drama unfolding regarding a ministry that is charged with having aberrant teachings but one quick look over a large portion of the so-called Christian videos there you will find that much of them contain aberrant teachings, heresy, and just a wide array of different opinions and beliefs. In fact if one is not well grounded in their faith they could actually find themselves questioning their faith.

In addition to these problems a large amount of the site has become pornographic in nature. Because the site has a large number of partners who actually get paid for views many of these partners have resorted to placing images of scantily clad women in order to get views, and sadly, it works.

I originally got on You Tube because I saw a large audience of unbelievers saying things about Christianity that just were not true. After I got there though I was shocked to find out that a large amount of people that called themselves Christians were far more hurtful than anything atheists could ever do. You see them fighting one another, making heretical statements, and acting very un-christ like. Even I fell into the trap. As I said you have to be very much on guard in such an atmosphere.

Sadly after over a year of being on You Tube and even closing my account and reopening it a couple of times I have decided that it is not the place for me. I wish the best to the Christians that remain there making videos. There are a handful of decent people and a ton more that are in need of some kind of help. Some Christians left that arena a long time ago to focus on newer mediums such as Stickam.
Maybe one day You Tube will get a better handle on it’s members and actually take action against those who violate the rules there but I doubt it. I think you tube is a good reflection of just how sick our world is getting. I hope as many people can be saved as possible but the selfish part of me wants Jesus to return and clean this mess up.

The Sabbath

I became involved in a discussion today regarding the Sabbath and whether or not we should still honor the Sabbath since it is one of the ten commandments. We know that the commandments are still valid because in Matthew Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

In the creation week outlined in Genesis God used the 7 day week that we still have on our calendar today despite the fact it has no astronomical meaning. Think about it, a 24 hour day is the result of the Earth turning, a year is the completion of a trip of the Earth around the sun.

On the seventh day God rested from his work and the command is that we rest from our work and honor God by recognizing the Sabbath day. The very purpose of this was a direct mirror of what our plan for salvation is. The salvation message is right there in the 7 day week. The days of creation are representative of the work that God does in us when we attain salvation. We are formless and void and we see the light through God’s word and we are baptized by the holy spirit and we begin to bear fruit.

So the question for some is whether or not we should still observe the Sabbath today? We are made in God’s image. God gave us the 7 day week to pattern after for ourselves. The bible is all about God’s promise to man and his message of salvation and the one who would come and free us from bondage to sin.

As a direct result of sin we were put under the law. In order to be right with god it was necessary to obey the 10 commandments and attain salvation through works. When Jesus came he bought us with his blood at the cross and not only freed us from sin but from the law. Because of the work of Jesus Christ we can now rest in him. Since nothing we can do gets us salvation and we cannot measure up to the law we need Jesus Christ as the way , the truth, and the life.

We all fall short of God’s holiness because keeping these laws is impossible. Jesus took this burden from us and by repenting and having faith and trust in him he becomes our sabbath in which we can now rest and honoring the Sabbath means following and honoring Jesus Christ. So now we don’t simply refrain from our work one day a week but we rest on the work that Jesus Christ has done. Our works are simply a result of our salvation, a byproduct of the light we now have within us.

So the question as to whether or not we still honor the Sabbath is yes, in that Jesus Christ is our Sabbath. In fact he is our everything.

What really happened in the middle east?

What Really Happened In The Middle East

Here’s a You Tube video that does a very good job outlining the current middle East conflict. It’s too bad it does not go all the way back to the Old Testament but it does cover some modern questions.

World species dying out like flies says WWF

WWF’s Living Planet Index tracks some 4,000 species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and amphibians globally. It shows that between 1970 and 2007 land-based species fell by 25 percent, marine by 28 percent and freshwater by 29 percent.

Marine bird species have fallen 30 percent since the mid-1990s.

Be sure to read the whole article here.

Truman’s battle for Israel’s recognition revealed

Truman’s battle for Israel’s recognition revealed
Washington Post columnist details ‘epic struggle’ in Washington over how to respond to Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. ‘Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some policymakers who opposed Israel’s recognition,’ he says

Just For fun

Here’s a funny picture brother Joram from www.thedissident.ws sent me in an email. Lol.

Global warming?

The coolest April in 114 years

The average temperature in April 2008 was 51.0 F. This was -1.0 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 29th coolest April in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

2.39 inches of precipitation fell in April. This was -0.04 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 54th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.01 inches per decade.

God did it vs….

Continuing on my previous post regarding atheist tactics and arguments another famous one is the “God of the gaps” or “God did it” comment.
Many atheists believe that as science has gotten more advanced they have slowly ruled out God when really the possibility of God was and is still there.
The reason they think this is because of their interpretation of the bible. I think they take the bible far more literally than even a fundamentalist. But that’s another blog entry for another day.
They feel from their reading of the bible they have exposed many contradictions within the bible, all of which have been addressed in apologetics.
In fact one of the larger pieces of evidence for bible accuracy is the Big bang theory which seems to reinforce the first three words of Genesis “In the beginning”. It’s at the God part where they have a problem.
The next thing is that science has yet to answer what happened at the very beginning and before. We may never get those answers but several theories are offered such as brane or M-theory. Also experiments with the super-collider may yield more secrets behind the beginning.

So the result of this is the atheist believes the Universe was just the result of just it’s own happening. There was no ’supernatural’ cause, It just happened the way it happened. Richard Dawkins has stated that they are ‘working on it’. So when the subject comes up of origin atheists resort to just saying that we just keep saying God did it, as if we are engaging in a cop out. Their view really isn’t that much better to say there is no cause or the universe was always there or it just popped into existence.
To take that position at this point does seem to require a leap of faith.

The honest answer would be to just say as Dawkins has that they are working on it and we really don’t know and to wait for more data. So yes, as we did before we still believe now, God did it.

Hang it on the cross

HANG IT ON THE CROSS

If you have a secret sorrow,
A burden or a loss,
An aching need for healing…
Hang it on the cross.

If worry steals your sleep,
And makes you turn and toss
If your heart is feeling heavy…
Hang it on the cross

Every obstacle to faith,
Or doubt you come across,
Every prayer unanswered…..
Hang it on the cross

For Christ has borne our brokeness
And dearly paid the cost
To turn our trials to triumph…
Hanging on the cross.

Anonymous

Head knowledge and revelation

Continuing on from what I was blogging about yesterday regarding conversion it is completely possible to serve the lord and be a ‘nominal’ christian. One who has a ‘head knowledge’ but lacks a deeper understanding and relationship with Christ.
What I mean by head knowledge is that someone can know the high points of the bible but they have really yet to have that revelation from the Holy Spirit and gain real insight on the deeper meanings in the bible.
I’m not saying that Christians know all things, humankind still won’t have a full understanding of God and the deeper implications of the creation and ‘revelation’ will continue for us throughout eternity.
Speak to some Christians who have had ‘head knowledge’ and they will tell you it wasn’t until later that they really ‘got it’.