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Jonathan McNair
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Tags: Admin
Here's an interesting article about two of the major players in end-time prophecy...
jmc
Tags: World News
Southern Baptist executive Richard Land was pleased at how religious Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally turned out to be.
Bishop Harry Jackson, a black evangelical leader, was pleasantly surprised that the Fox News talk show host said things "some of my close friends could have written."
And Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. was among the faith leaders to enlist in Beck's new "Black Robe Regiment."
In the wake of the conservative commentator's rally on the National Mall last weekend (Aug. 28), some evangelical leaders say he sounded all the right religious notes.
But others say Beck's Mormon faith clouds the message.
"Glenn Beck's Mormon faith is irrelevant," said Falwell. "People of all faiths, all races and all creeds spoke and attended the event. Nobody was there to endorse anyone else's faith but we were all there to honor our armed forces and to call the people of America to restore honor."
But other conservative Christians say Beck's leadership at an event attended by evangelicals and other conservatives was nothing short of scandalous.
"The answer to this scandal … includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim," Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog the day after the rally.
"It's sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ."
At the rally, Beck paced before the Lincoln Memorial as he described the "240 men and women," from a range of faiths who had joined his regiment.
"We can disagree on politics," Beck said. "These men and women here don't agree on fundamentals. They don't agree on everything that every church teaches. What they do agree on is God is the answer."
There is no doubt that Beck has a following. Gallup has ranked him as the fourth most admired man—just ahead of Pope Benedict XVI—and millions tune in to his daily broadcasts.
But, as his religious rhetoric attests, Beck has gone fishing for a new audience recently.
Weeks before the rally, he gathered about 20 prominent religious leaders for a dinner at which he said God was leading him to talk about revival in America, Land said. The night before the rally, he held a "Divine Destiny" event that promised to leave participants with a "strong belief that faith can play an essential role in reuniting the country."
That kind of language has some evangelicals upset.
"I believe that Beck used his conservative veneer and doublespeak to co-opt leaders of the religious right," wrote Brannon Howse, founder of Worldview Weekend, which sponsors Christian worldview conferences.
Others, such as Lou Engle, founder of The Call rallies across the country, said Beck will get qualified support.
"I think evangelicals will see him as a moral voice, not necessarily a spiritual voice," he said.
Experts say Beck's ability to reach evangelicals will depend on whether he speaks a broad message or delves more narrowly into his Mormon beliefs.
"Most evangelicals are friendly toward the idea of American civil religion and I think Beck's call sort of fit into that stream of history," said Stan Guthrie, editor at large for Christianity Today. "I think that as long as he doesn't get too specific about his Mormon faith … many people will be willing to get on board."
Tags: Social Trends · Uncategorized
...from the EUObserver
VIVIANE REDING
17.07.2010 @ 12:27 CET
People are always talking about what divides Europeans, but I find it more constructive to focus on what unites us. We are united in a European Union by common values.
In 1989, we witnessed the power of these values to transform lives and break down barriers. Basic freedoms such as the right to free assembly allowed what Vaclav Havel called the "power of the powerless" to make their mark on history and society.
Read More...
Tags: Prophetic Trends · Social Trends
By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, N.C. – About halfway through Sunday service at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, as worshipers passed around the collection plate, a chorus of screams pierced the air.
Chunks of the ceiling in the 52-year-old church near Hickory came crashing down on the crowd of 200 or so, striking about 14, who were later treated and released from nearby hospitals. A jagged piece of the ceiling, roughly 10 feet by 10 feet, dangled from exposed wires over the back pews as deacons struggled to guide panicking worshipers from the building.
"My jaw just dropped," the Rev. Antonio Logan said. "I thought, 'This can't be real.'"
Caring for old church facilities is an increasingly acute problem, particularly for mainline Protestant denominations. As membership declines and budgets shrink, the beautiful edifices of American Christianity can feel like weights dragging down churches that are forced to spend money on maintenance and repairs instead of ministry, charity and other Gospel-derived imperatives.
"It's hard times in paradise," said the Rev. William Quick, pastor emeritus at Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Detroit.
Tags: Social Trends
Jesus Christ Probably Did not Die on a Cross.
In a recent dissertation study at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, pastor Gunnar Samuelsson spent 400 pages describing the “Crucifixion in Antiquity.” His findings bear out what God’s Church has known and taught for decades—that Jesus Christ likely did not die on a “t-shaped” cross. As a devout evangelical preacher and believer in the “power of the Cross,” what Samuelsson discovered shocked him! In his in-depth research, he could find no clear references to the t-shaped cross. Samuelsson noted in an ABC News interview that “…for generations people have misinterpreted and mistranslated the Greek word ‘stauros’ [translated cross in most Bibles] to mean crucifix, when really the term just means a suspension device, which might have been anything such as a ‘pole or tree trunk’” (www.whas11.com, July 2, 2010). [Read more →]
Tags: News & Prophecy
Nine years after 9/11, a chilling complacency about WMD attacks.
I speak of the report from the inspector general of the Justice Department, issued in late May, saying the department is not prepared to ensure public safety in the days or weeks after a terrorist attack in which nuclear, biological or chemical weapons are used. The Department of Homeland Security is designated as first federal responder, in a way, in the event of a WMD attack, but every agency in government has a formal, assigned role, and the crucial job of Justice is to manage and coordinate law enforcement and step in if state and local authorities are overwhelmed.
Tags: Prophetic Trends
