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He is Risen! Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Alleluia! Easter is always a time for celebration in the Christian Church. A time to move beyond the dispair of Good Friday and recognize the ultimate defeat of death made by Jesus. Easter day is joyous, exciting, and wonderful. And by most accounts, we see that it was the same way on that first Easter day nearly 2,000 years ago. All but one that is.
On one of my mailing lists a few weeks ago, an unrelated message morphed into a discussion on the Sabbath. This is a technical list that consists of those who agree to an Evangelical Christian statement of Faith, the former part of that meaning any discussion can come out of about every discussion and the latter meaning everyone seemed to agree on one thing: the observance of the Sabbath will not save you nor is it a required step toward salvation.
Again, Kevin Hartwig has posted a thought provoking piece at sakamuyo 2.0. In it he discusses how we shouldn't “disciminate against” homosexuals and other groups of people in the church. I agree that we should reach out to all people, but I am unsure if I agree with some of the “inbetween the lines” stuff in the commentary. Read on for a link to the original piece as well as my take on it (typos and all).
The “World Prayer Team,” and organization I'd never heard of before yesterday, is requesting that Christians pray at 3:33 P.M. today - That is, the third minute of the third sixth of an hour of the third hour of the third day of the third month of the third year of the third millenium. whew! I saw this in my church bulletin yesterday, and saw it again on blogs4God a few minutes ago. Read on for more information.
Kevin Hartwig of “sakamuyo 2.0” posted a message about the many issues of the Christian Church (as in organization). I was responding to the post (see the link, above), and my response grew into something less like a response and more like a blog entry, so here it is… my scattered thoughts on the Church and the problems within.
All I once held dear, built my life upon,
All this world reveres and wars to own;
All I once thought gain I have counted loss,
Spent and worthless now compared to this.
Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You
There is no greater thing.
You're my all, You're the best,
You're my joy, my righteousness,
And I love You Lord.
Okay, I'm starting the new Publicity taskforce at church, so you're just going to have to live with a few announcements. However, if you are going to be in the St. Louis area on Christmas Eve or Sunday, the 29th of December, I think these are worthy of your attention.
Sakamuyo posted a link to an interesting quiz to see what denomination one is most like. Most of it was what I expected, but the denomination it said I was most like suprised me.
I've known about it for awhile, but it deserves mention anyway. The World English Bible (WEB) is a Free, public domain version of the Bible based on the American Standard Version of 1907. Unlike the ASV and the KJV that proceeded it, the WEB Bible attempts to use modern English, and astonishingly, many of the books of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament are already converted to modern language.
If you are like me and are tired of supporting the liberal interests of the International Bible Society and Zondervan or if you just want a Bible translation you can freely distribute to whomever needs a copy, try this one on for size. The SWORD Project has WEB Bible support so Windows, Mac, Linux, Zaurus, and WinCE users can enjoy this Bible (as can anyone with web access via the online version of the Bible).
It's nothing really astonishing, in fact, I may have already heard this from somewhere else. Yet, it is still amazing to think about. It all started yesterday during the ABF (Adult Bible Fellowship, f/k/a Sunday School) hour at my church. A special six week class started up with a local missionary leading it.
