What happens when same-sex marriage is permitted?

Think it can't affect you or affect many different spheres in society? Think again! Watch this video which is being used to rally people to the pro-family cause in California. You will be alarmed at what happened in Massachusetts when same-sex "marriage" was legalized there. As we await the Connecticut's Supreme Court decision in the Kerrigan case, please keep praying earnestly for our State.

Be sure to use the video menu to email it to others who care about our State and our children.

There is no Christianity without Christ

Earliest known icon of Christ as Pantocrator (Almighty)

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Col. 1:16-18)

Stirring words, pointing to the centrality of Christ. There can be no Christianity without Jesus Christ - not the Jesus-as-moral-teacher of the modern "progressives," but the one of Whom the Apostle Paul was speaking in the passage quoted above. Remove Him from the edifice and you remove every support. Remove the Cross and you have deprived yourself of God's remedy for what you are. Strip Him of His Deity and you have gutted His demand to obedience and His intrinsic authority to command, so forcefully, in that Sermon on the Mount which seems to be highly prized nowadays. As if that Sermon contained only Matthew 7:1 and not Matthew 7:13.

Or 7:23.

We are nearing the time - it's almost here - when society will drop the pretense of the name of Christian. If only they would do it today, simply call their churches and their selves by another name!

The latest window into apostasy is provided by Canada's National Post, in a story featuring the Rev. Gretta Vosper of West Hill United Church in Toronto.

There is a Bible on a pedestal in Gretta Vosper's West Hill United Church in Toronto. She would prefer it did not have a special place, she said, because it is just a book among other books. In a similar way, the cross that is high above the altar has no special meaning, but there are a few older congregants for whom the Bible and the cross are still nice symbols so there they remain.

Though an ordained minister, she does not like the title of reverend. It is one of those symbols that hold the church back from breaking into the future -- to a time "when the label Christian won't even exist" and the Church will be freed of the burdens of the past. To balance out those symbols of the past inside West Hill, there is a giant, non-religious rainbow tapestry just behind the altar and multi-coloured streamers hang from the ceiling.

"The central story of Christianity will fade away," she explained. "The story about Jesus as the symbol of everything that Christianity is will fade away...."

Ms. Vosper does not believe in the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and the sacrament of baptism. Nor does she believe in the creeds, the presence of Christ in communion or that Jesus was the Son of God.

In With or Without God, her book that was formally launched this week, she writes that Jesus was a "Middle Eastern peasant with a few charismatic gifts and a great posthumous marketing team."

What is striking is the blatancy and self-assuredness, the willingness to reach beyond and no longer even feel the need to appeal to Jesus for anything of substance. Typically, love is all that is said to matter:

The focus of her "spiritual" life is love. And since love is the common bond between all people, it is really the only thing worth believing in.

"Here in the context of seeking out harmony with all things, the purest understanding of those values that enhance and sanctify life becomes the foremost spiritual practice," she writes.

"We call it love, radically inclusive love. It is here, in the caring, challenging, prophetic role with which it is so familiar that the church can really shine."

If only love were the common bond between all people. But, the reality of this life is that Man is at enmity with himself, with others, and with God. The Christ of Christianity is the answer to this problem.

Read the whole thing here.

A Christian blog worth reading - from an unlikely source

Over the years many Christians have looked down their noses at Charisma magazine. Some complain that its too gossipy, others that it's simply one big advertisement. Although some may consider the magazine an unlikely source to generate a blog worth reading, I continue to be impressed and challenged by the "Fire In My Bones" blog written by author J. Lee Grady, Charisma's editor.

Grady is seemingly on a personal mission to grab the American church by the lapel and slap it. I think he's succeeding. His latest column shares a meeting the late Kenneth Hagin had in 2003 with various preachers in which he attempted to correct their overemphasis and outright false teachings on giving and propsperity:

4. The “hundredfold return” is not a biblical concept. Hagin did the math and figured out that if this bizarre notion were true, “we would have Christians walking around with not billions or trillions of dollars, but quadrillions of dollars!” He rejected the popular teaching that a believer should claim a specific monetary payback rate....

Hagin condemned other hairbrained gimmicks designed to trick audiences into emptying their wallets. He was especially incensed when a preacher told his radio listeners that he would take their prayer requests to Jesus’ empty tomb in Jerusalem and pray over them there—if donors included a special love gift. “What that radio preacher really wanted was more people to send in offerings,” Hagin wrote.

Thanks to the recent resurgence in bizarre donation schemes promoted by American charismatics, the prosperity gospel is back under the nation’s microscope. It’s time to revisit Hagin’s concerns and find a biblical balance.

Hagin told his followers: “Overemphasizing or adding to what the Bible actually teaches invariably does more harm than good.” If the man who pioneered the modern concept of biblical prosperity blew the whistle on his own movement, wouldn’t it make sense for us to listen to his admonition?

In his previous post, Grady had discussed the call to holiness being put forth by noted pastor Larry Stockstill:

Stockstill became alarmed about the anemic condition of American churches in 2006, when he had to step in and help bring discipline to Ted Haggard, the Colorado pastor who was removed as senior leader of New Life Church because of a moral failure. Stockstill offered correction and oversight to Haggard and his family and helped the leaders of New Life pick up the pieces after the scandal. Many observers praised Stockstill for his level-headed leadership and compassionate but strict adherence to biblical principles during the crisis.

What Stockstill learned during that painful process became the basis of a new book, The Remnant: Restoring Integrity to American Ministry. He hopes the message will trigger a movement of holiness and integrity in the American church, which has suffered a long string of embarrassing sexual and financial failures since Haggard’s fall 15 months ago.

“We look like a sleaze bucket in the eyes of the nation,” says the 54-year-old pastor, who has avoided the national spotlight during most of his 33 years in ministry. Once a missionary in Africa, Stockstill has focused most of his ministry on church planting and missions. Bethany has helped start more than 17,000 churches worldwide since 2000.

Stockstill says the level of dysfunction among American ministers concerns him because their unhealthiness is then passed down to their congregations.

This is all a good corrective to some of what's flying at us over the Christian airwaves.

Obama and the Book of Romans

Barack Obama weighs in on the Scriptures:

I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in the hospital or transfer property to each other.

I don't think that it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state.

If people find that controversial, then I would refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think, you know, is in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.

That's my view.

But we can have a respectful disagreement on that.

Here's the obscure passage I think Sen. Obama is referring to:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. Romans 1:26-27.

How are Christians treated in Egypt?

The double-standard that allows for no minority religious rights in much of the Middle East is beyond belief. In fact, it's a tenet of Islam that non-Muslims should have second-class "dhimmi" status. Watch this video to see the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the recipient of billions of dollars in U. S. aid.

The demonstrable falsity of Mormonism

I've been having a reasonably civil discussion in a comment thread with a lady who is apparently a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). The recent Mitt Romney stories have threatened to bring what Mormons really believe to the forefront. But American society has so compartmentalized religious belief that it will no longer analyze it rationally. True to form, most Americans either don't care what a person's religious beliefs are (which can in a sense be a good thing) or else say that a thorough inspection of a person's religion is bigotry.

What to do then with a religion which seemingly has no basis at all in historical fact? Does it matter at all that Mormonism purports to reveal (or restore) a lost revelation about God and history for which there is no evidence? The history of North America put forward by Mormons is such a fabrication that it is actually painful to relate it. It is not worthy in this regard to be compared to the historical evidence, say, for Christianity, and for the trustworthiness of the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Witness this excerpt from the Baptist Press:

Hill Cumorah is located in New York, southeast of Rochester. Joseph Smith claimed that when Moroni appeared to him, he was told that Moroni's father, Mormon, buried the gold plates upon which the Book of Mormon was based on the hill Cumorah just before the great final battle there (Mormon 6:6). In the Pearl of Great Price, Smith writes that the day after his second vision, he went to a large hill outside of the village where his family lived (the hill Cumorah) and found the gold plates (endnote 26). This identifies the hill where Smith dug up the plates as the same hill where Mormon buried them and where the great battle took place. In Mormon 6:10-15, it is claimed that hundreds of thousands of people were killed on or near the hill Cumorah during that final battle. It says that "their flesh, and bones, and blood lay upon the face of the earth, being left by the hands of those who slew them to molder upon the land, and to crumble and to return to their mother earth" (Mormon 6:15). In other words, their bodies were left there, unburied.

To help you understand the magnitude of casualties at hill Cumorah, let us consider another major battle. During the Battle of Gettysburg of the American Civil War, 55,000 soldiers were wounded, including 6,000 of them killed on the battlefield and 4,000 more whose wounds were mortal. Eyewitnesses said that there was so much blood from the dead and injured that there were parts of the battlefield that seemed like streams of blood. So many men and horses died that all could not be buried at once and many corpses were left on the battlefield until a few days later when others were hired to do the task.

If 6,000 men died on the battlefield at Gettysburg, what would a battlefield look like with hundreds of thousands dead? Since they were left unburied at hill Cumorah, wouldn't there be some artifacts made of metal and stone? Bullets by the thousands are found at Gettysburg. Nothing, however, has been found at hill Cumorah.

University of Rochester paleontologist and stratigrapher Carl Brett has worked in the Palmyra, N.Y, area where hill Cumorah is located and is familiar with the hill and its geologic conditions. He says that if hundreds of thousands were slaughtered at the hill and not buried, there would still be skeletal remains on the surface today, even after 1,600 years. Scavengers and weather conditions would account for why much is gone, but there would still be quite enough left to look at. Metallic artifacts from weapons and armor would also be easily found (endnote 27). But nothing has ever been found at hill Cumorah.

This is just one of many things that could be cited. Is it wrong to discuss this type of information, or to discuss Mormon teachings about the spirit brotherhood of Jesus and Satan?

Not only is Mormonism not a Christian religion, it also is untrue as a matter of historical fact. We know there was a Pontius Pilate; we know that James the Lord's brother was killed in a certain manner; etc. But there was no battle at the hill Cumorah.

How can you make sure people leave your church this Christmas?

Sadly, this is an all-too-common example of the rhetoric that drives people from churches. The Rev. Dr. Gary A. Wilburn of New Canaan, Connecticut says:

“When I hear language like, ‘You can’t be saved unless you accept Christ as your personal savior,’ I know that it is usually sincere and heart-felt. But what it most likely means is ‘We are on the inside and you are on the outside. Ours is the only true faith. If you do it our way, you’ll have better access to God than the followers of Buddha or Mohammed, or Mary Baker Eddy, or Charles Darwin, or the ‘inner light,’ or whatever, We welcome everyone into God’s family as long as you’re willing to become like us,” he said.

“That kind of insular theology makes Christianity a religion of exclusion, not inclusion,” Dr. Wilburn added. “A far cry from the universality of which the Bible speaks when it claims, ‘There is one God who is father of all, over all, through all and within all,” and “God is love, and anyone who lives in love, lives in God and God in him [or her].’ As a progressive Christian, I see in Jesus the true image and likeness of God. For me, Jesus is the face of God, the heart of God, the way of God. Jesus shows me what a life full of God looks like. For Christians, Jesus is our access into the realm of God. But at that same time I recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for their access into God’s realm. Because at the end of day, I believe that God is bigger than any of our ideas about God.”

But what if there actually was a revelation from God that told us what God thinks about things and, particularly, about Himself, who He is and what He is like?

At the risk of sounding rude: Attention! People go to Christian churches because they want to worship God through Jesus Christ. When liberal Christian theologians stop castigating people for - well, for believing what it is that Christians believe, they may be able to reverse the trends of departure and demographic winter in their denominations.

Garage bands for Jesus

...but with high production values.

Dressed in a faded black T-shirt, jeans and skateboard sneakers, he bent his shaved head. “God,” he said, “I hope these songs we sing will be much more than the music. I know it’s so difficult at times when we’re thinking about chords and lyrics and when to hit the right effect patch, but would you just help that to become second nature, so that we can truly worship you from our hearts?...”

The house bands that play every weekend in High Desert Church — there are a dozen or so — scavenge some of their musical style from the radio and television. They reflect popular taste, though with lyrics about the power of God, not teenage turmoil.

They are not aiming for commercial success. Church-based Christian rock — often referred to as C.C.M., for contemporary Christian music — does not exist primarily to compete in mainstream culture; it exists first to bring together a community.

“When you start a church,” said Tom Mercer, 52, the senior pastor, “you don’t decide who you’re going to reach and then pick a music style. You pick a music style, and that determines who’s going to come.”

Interesting look at modern worship from the New York Times.

A Night To Honor Israel, October 21

On Sunday evening, October 21, Gateway Christian Fellowship in West Haven will host Connecticut's first annual "A Night To Honor Israel." The Christian community in Connecticut is invited to come and demonstrate our love and support for the State of Israel.

A Night To Honor Israel is a non-conversionary tribute to the nation of Israel and the Jewish people of the world. Its purpose is to promote esteem and understanding between Christians and Jews and to emphasize that the beliefs we hold in common are greater than the differences we have allowed to separate us.

Among the guests will be: Ambassador Asaf Shariv, the Consul general of Israel in New York; Roz Rothstein, the National Director of Stand With Us; David Brog, the Executive Director of Christians United For Israel; and Robert Stearns, Northeast Director of Christians United For Israel and Founder and Director of Eagles' Wings Ministries.

More information can be obtained from Christians United For Israel's Connecticut chapter (click here.)

Religious people are the happiest

Despite the recent disclosures about Mother Teresa's spiritual struggles, the data suggest that religious people are happier than the somewhat religious and the nonreligious alike:

Americans can be divided into three groups when it comes to religious practice. Surveys indicate that about 30% attend houses of worship at least once per week (I will call them "religious"), while about 20% are "secular"--never attending. The rest attend sometimes, but irregularly. These population dimensions have changed relatively little over the decades: Since the early 1970s, the religious group has not shrunk by more than two or three percentage points.

How do religious Americans compare to the secular when it comes to happiness? In 2004, the General Social Survey asked a sample of Americans, "Would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?" Religious people were more than twice as likely as the secular to say they were "very happy" (43% to 21%). Meanwhile, secular people were nearly three times as likely as the religious to say they were not too happy (21% to 8%). In the same survey, religious people were more than a third more likely than the secular to say they were optimistic about the future (34% to 24%).

The happiness gap between religious and secular people is not because of money or other personal characteristics. Imagine two people who are identical in every important way--income, education, age, sex, family status, race and political views. The only difference is that the first person is religious; the second is secular. The religious person will still be 21 percentage points more likely than the secular person to say that he or she is very happy.

More here from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.

More on Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol

Thanks to the sharp-eyed anonymous reader who alerted us to the fact that the Episcopal Diocese lawsuit against Rev. Helmandollar and church vestry members was mentioned today in the Bristol Press. (Link unavailable.) Other folks are now picking it up as well:

Hartford Courant (an AP story which was also picked up by Channel 3 and some newspapers)

Channel 8

Channel 30

I'm sure we'll be hearing about this one for months to come. I'll be interested to see just how deeply the Connecticut courts want to enmesh themselves in matters of church governance. Oddly, there are actually sections of our State statutes (see Sect. 33-266) dealing with the polity of the Episcopal Church:

The manner of conducting the parish, the qualifications for membership of the parish and the manner of acquiring and terminating such membership, the number of the officers of the parish, their powers and duties and the manner of their appointment, the time of holding the annual meeting of the parish and the manner of notification thereof and the manner of calling special meetings of the parish shall be such as are provided and prescribed by the constitution, canons and regulations of said Protestant Episcopal Church in this state.

Here's my short list of questions:

• Will the State follow this statute, and is it even constitutional for Connecticut to have legislated in this manner?
• What if the Episcopal Church has severed itself from the Anglican Fellowship worldwide?
• What if Bishop Smith has acted improperly in taking this step?
• In other words, should a Connecticut Superior Court judge be deciding this or should the Episcopal or Anglican bishops?

More on Asian Christianity...

Can the Western press understand what vibrant Christianity looks like? The abduction and killing of South Korean missionaries by the Taliban has spurred many to explore the growth of the faith there.

To understand the phenomenon of Korean evangelism, he says, you need to go to where it all began. It is 4:30 on a frigid Monday morning in Seoul, but the parking lot is full and the church filled to its 9000-person capacity. In a city that also worships the work ethic, this is how tens of thousands of Koreans begin their work week. At the Onnuri church, it's a two-hour prayer service. Onnuri calls itself an evangelical Presbyterian church. It began 20 years ago and has seen massive growth.

Rev. Yongjo Ha of Onnuri Presbyterian Church explains more about mission:

When we were hopeless, the Western missionaries came, and they introduced us to the hope in Jesus Christ, so we have a very holy obligation to share this hope in Jesus Christ with those people who are still in their misery.

Read more in this week's Religion & Ethics News Weekly Report from PBS. Hat tip: Titus One Nine.

Abortionist repents, prays for an end to abortion in America

Dr. Patti Gibbink at the recent The Call rally in Nashville

From LifeSiteNews.com:

During "The Call" rally, former Planned Parenthood abortionist Dr. Patti Gibbink stood up and testified, confessing her sins and begging God to end abortion. She told the crowds, "Ten years ago, I did abortions for Planned Parenthood." Here she paused, overwhelmed with tears.

"Oh Lord, oh God, God most holy and just," she continued, quoting Psalm 51, "You hate hands that have shed innocent blood. God, I acknowledge my transgression. My sin is always before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight."

"God, I repent. I repent for myself and all abortionists all over. We have sacrificed innocent lives to the altars of Baal and Moloch. God, God….Forgive me Lord and other abortionists. God, hear our cry. Be merciful to us. Jesus, I plead your blood over my sins and the sins of this nation."

She then cried out amidst thousands of cheers, "God end abortion and bring revival to America. God end abortion! It's time, it's time."

Others got up and gave their testimony, including one young woman, the daughter of a pastor, who had had an abortion when she was seventeen. She said, "I feared man, my boyfriend, more than I feared the Lord." Referring to her boyfriend, she said, "He set life and death before me, and I chose death."

That's what it comes down to.

Young people are leaving churches in droves. What's the answer?

Spiritual damage is harder to see than weather damage

What is the answer to the American church's inability to retain young people? LifeWay research points us the pressing problem:

Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 — both evangelical and mainline — who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And 34% of those said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. That means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.

"This is sobering news that the church needs to change the way it does ministry," says Ed Stetzer, director of Nashville-based LifeWay Research, which is affiliated with the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"It seems the teen years are like a free trial on a product. By 18, when it's their choice whether to buy in to church life, many don't feel engaged and welcome," says associate director Scott McConnell.

The statistics are based on a survey of 1,023 Protestants ages 18 to 30 who said they had attended church at least twice a month for at least one year during high school. LifeWay did the survey in April and May. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Any clues as to what will hold them and, more importantly, help them continue to grow into solid disciples?

The survey found that those who stayed with or returned to church grew up with both parents committed to the church, pastors whose sermons were relevant and engaging, and church members who invested in their spiritual development.

"Too many youth groups are holding tanks with pizza. There's no life transformation taking place," Stetzer says. "People are looking for a faith that can change them and to be a part of changing the world."

Read the rest here from USA Today.

What can churches do?

Photo by "cottergarage." Some rights reserved.

Connecticut minister takes part in delegation to Iraq

From today's Bristol Press:

Back from Baghdad, missionary Kris Keating said he and others in a Christian prayer delegation spoke with the country's prime minister about religious liberty and discrimination against the Christian minority.

"It went really well," said Keating, the missionary minister at Hillside Community Church in Bristol.

Keating was one of a group of six who recently traveled to Iraq as official guests of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to discuss what Keating said is the "very real" persecution of Christians there.

"We were able to speak frankly about some substantive issues that Christians face in Iraq," said Keating, who traveled with the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Organization in Washington and a former Bristol pastor.

Read the rest here.

The rise of Asian Christianity

Section of the Great Wall of China

As the risk of generalizing, it will come as no great revelation to anyone who has spent much time with Asian Christians that they are people of prayer and passion for souls. So it's not surprising to see so much in the news lately about the rise of Asian Christianity, including its missionary thrust. Part of this is due of course to the hostage situation in Afghanistan, but this has really only spotlighted the trend in Korean and other Asian missions work for a wider audience.

This week's National Catholic Reporter featured a column called The uphill journey of Catholicism in China, which discussed the massive growth of Pentecostal and Charismatic groups in China, while noting the relative lack of success of Roman Catholics here.

Perhaps the most remarkable burst of religious energy is in China's Pentecostal Christian population. At the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were roughly 900,000 Protestants. Today, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which puts out the much-consulted World Christian Database, says there are 111 million Christians in China, roughly 90 percent Protestant and mostly Pentecostal. That would make China the third-largest Christian country on earth, following only the United States and Brazil.

The Center projects that by 2050, there will be 218 million Christians in China, 16 percent of the population, enough to make China the world's second-largest Christian nation. According to the Center, there are 10,000 conversions in China every day.

Religious data is notoriously imprecise in an officially atheistic state, and not everyone accepts these eye-popping estimates. In the 2006 update of his book Jesus in Beijing, former Time Beijing bureau chief David Aikman put the number of Protestants at 70 million. Richard Madsen, a former Maryknoll missionary and author of China's Catholics, told me he would put the number still lower, at 40 million. That's in line with the CIA World Factbook, another widely consulted resource.

Various reasons are suggested for the relatively slow growth of Catholicism, but the writer, reporter John L. Allen, Jr., suggests the answer lies in the Pentecostals' expectation of the miraculous.

How would a "Christianized" China affect the region - and the world? Allen says,

By universal consensus, China is an emerging global superpower. Its economy grew at an average annual rate of 9.4 percent over the last 25 years, and today has a GDP of $11 trillion, making it the second-largest economy in the world after the United States. Foreign companies have poured more than $600 billion into China since 1978, far eclipsing what the United States spent rebuilding post-war Europe in the Marshall Plan. China now has a middle class of 200 million people, 80 million of whom are quite well-off. The country exports more in a single day than it did in all of 1978.

How things shake out religiously, therefore, is of tremendous strategic importance, even for people who don't feel any particular spiritual stake in the result. If Christianity ends up at around 20 percent of the population, for example, China could become an exponentially larger version of South Korea (where Christians are between 25-50 percent of the population, depending upon which count one accepts) -- a more democratic, rule-oriented, basically pro-Western society. On the other hand, if dynamic Muslim movements create an Islamic enclave in the western half of the country, with financial and ideological ties to fundamentalist Wahhabi forms of Islam in Saudi Arabia, at least that part of China could become a wealthier and more influential Afghanistan. If growing religious pluralism in China becomes fractious, it could mean that a well-armed and wealthy superpower is destabilized by internal conflict, posing risks to global peace and security.

Asia Times columnist Spengler discusses Allen's article in a piece entitled Christianity Finds a Fulcrum in Asia, exploring both the religious and geopolitical aspects:

Where traditional society remains entrenched in China's most backward regions, Islam also is expanding. At the edge of the Gobi Desert and on China's western border with Central Asia, Islam claims perhaps 30 million adherents. If Christianity is the liquidator of traditional society, I have argued in the past, Islam is its defender against the encroachments of leveling imperial expansion. But Islam in China remains the religion of the economic losers, whose geographic remoteness isolates them from the economic transformation on the coasts. Christianity, by contrast, has burgeoned among the new middle class in China's cities, where the greatest wealth and productivity are concentrated. Islam has a thousand-year presence in China and has grown by natural increase rather than conversion; evangelical Protestantism had almost no adherents in China a generation ago.

Read more here.

Photo by Michael Mooney, some rights reserved.

Miracles in Minneapolis

"As she's approaching the bridge, the Holy Spirit speaks to her to turn off of the freeway and take a different route home. She began to argue with herself. She said 'Pastor Rich I have never heard the voice of the Holy Spirit as loud as I did that day.'"

More on Minnesota miracles here from CBN. (Video interview with Pastor Rich Scherber of Minnesota Teen Challenge.)

Have you heard of other testimonies of God's grace in connection with this tragedy? Share them with us.

Photo by Joshua Nixon, some rights reserved.

A window into the occult in Connecticut

Nothing is more common in Connecticut these days than the local New Age shop.

And although she doesn't push it on customers, she also offers Tarot card readings for $5 — for those who can use a little of her intuitive insight.

In a small room lighted by a white candle on a mantelpiece and closed off with a thick drape, she demonstrated her reading ability for a visitor. Through card-reading, she was able to discern a variety of personal information about the subject, such as how old he was when he first got married. Then, having established a base of credibility for her intuitive abilities, she talked a little about his future.

More here (Connecticut Post).

Update to Christian search engine site

Our friends at Kingdom Engine have revamped their Christian search engine site with a more pleasant appearance and some useful custom search engines available on a variety of topics such as:

• The Bible
• Apologetics
• Creeds and Confessions
• Spurgeon
• Worship Music
  

You can also add these searches to your own site or blog, if you have one.

As they note, the Web has grown so much that searching for "King David" on Google gives you 84,700,000 results. Custom search engines limit searches to just a few hand-selected sites that deal with the topic you're interested in. They're great for research.

Happy searching!

Top Christian Books for 2007 announced by the ECPA

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) has announced its Christian Book Award (formerly Gold Medallion) winners for 2007. Here they are:

Christian Book of the Year: Ever After (Even Now Series #2), by Karen Kingsbury

Bible: Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk Through Biblical History and Culture, Edited by Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and Duane Garett

Bible Reference and Study: The IVP Atlas of Bible History, by Paul Lawrence

Children & Youth: Sexy Girls: How Hot Is Too Hot?, by Hayley DiMarco

Christian Life: What Jesus Demands from the World, by John Piper (Spanish version here)

Fiction: When Crickets Cry, by Charles Martin

Inspiration and Gift: Pearls of Great Price: 366 Daily Devotional Readings, by Joni Eareckson Tada