Anglican Mainstream

If God's people had always 'steered clear' of politics: 

1. The Hebrew midwives wouldn’t have disobeyed Pharaoh to save the baby boys;

2. Moses wouldn’t have confronted Pharaoh in order free his people from slavery;
3. Rahab wouldn’t have lied to save the lives of the Hebrew spies;

4. Nathan wouldn’t have confronted David about Bathsheba; there would be no Ps. 51;
5. Daniel wouldn’t have disobeyed the new law about prayer and there would be no story about Daniel in the Lion’s den;

6. Daniel’s friends wouldn’t have disobeyed the king’s decree and there would be no story about their rescue from the fiery furnace;
7. Esther wouldn’t have risked her life in an appeal to King Xerxes to save the Jews;
8. The wise men wouldn’t have disobeyed King Herod to protect Jesus;
9. John the Baptist wouldn’t have confronted King Herod about his adultery;
10. Jesus wouldn’t have called Herod a “fox” and told his followers to: “Render unto Caesar [only] the things that are Caesar’s.”

11. Peter and the Apostles would have obeyed the authorities and would not have said: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29);

12. St. Paul would not have appealed to Caesar in his own legal defense (Acts 25);
13. Ignatius would have obeyed the emperor and escaped the lions in the Colosseum;
14. Polycarp would have obeyed the governor and not been burned at the stake;
15. Justin would have appeased the governor and escaped martyrdom in 166 A.D.;
16. Cyprian would have appeased the emperor and escaped beheading in 258 A.D.;
17. Telemachus wouldn’t have given his life to stop the gladiator fights in 404 A.D.;

18. Becket wouldn’t have challenged Henry II and been murdered in 1170 A.D.;
19. The English nobles wouldn’t have challenged royal tyranny in 1215 A.D.;
20.  Luther wouldn’t have told the emperor: “Here I stand.  I can do no other;” nor would he have translated the Bible or started the Reformation;

21. Tyndale wouldn’t have translated the Bible and been burned at the stake in 1536;
22. Robert Raikes wouldn’t have challenged British child-labor laws to begin the Sunday School movement in 1780 in an attempt to reach children for Christ; Read the rest of this entry »

Monday 19 October 2009

Condoms Encourage Promiscuity which Leads to More Infections: Namibian Bishop

Bishops also lambast Western media for spreading "abuse, lies and hate or derogatory propaganda"

ROME, October 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The belief that condoms are an effective means of stopping HIV/AIDS is "unrealistic" and groups pushing condoms in African countries are making the problem worse by encouraging promiscuity, "which leads to more infections," a Namibian bishop said last week.

The bishop also claimed that foreign experts are using the media and government funding deliberately to conceal the failure of condoms to prevent the spread of the deadly disease.

Bishop Joseph Shipandeni Shikongo said at the African Synod that is currently taking place at the Vatican that while the Catholic Church has "an extensive HIV/AIDS program" in Namibia, the government’s "expatriate expert advisors" have access to greater funds and access to the media of TV and radio to influence the people to use condoms. "Thus secular and relativisitc views of sexuality are propagated," he said.

"For them, the most predominant concern is to prevent infection; and the most important means is the condom … The failures of this means is deliberately ignored or explained in dubious ways."

The AIDS rate in Namibia is 15.3 per cent of the adult population, with a total of 200,000 people living with AIDS according to 2007 statistics.

Bishop Shikongo also pointed to the practice of pharmaceutical companies that he says are using African countries as a dumping ground for drugs that "are not approved" in the countries where they are manufactured. Citing a report by the World Health Organisation, the bishop mentioned the hormonal contraceptive Depo Provera, saying that some drugs are being sent to Africa for "experiment."

"It is said that Africa is most exposed to these kinds of medicines because of the limited capacity to investigate, test or monitor as to what is happening." Read the rest of this entry »

Given the insidious nature of the entire sex industry, including pornography — read below how even among Christian pastors
over half surveyed had viewed pornography in the past year — the church must respond.  Here is one encouraging way of doing so.  This comes from World magazine, 10 October 2009. 

Hope Award:  I Am a Treasure lavishes the love of Christ on women in the sex industry | Emily Belz 

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles. Near midnight. Industrial buildings. Empty streets. Full parking lot. Men wander into a nondescript building, "Fantasy Castle." Bouncers stand at the door. Inside, on stage. women dance to earn their rent. Men watch in the dark. Booze, perfume, and loneliness.

A group of young women with fistfuls of flamingo pink gift bags approach the bouncer and offer him cookies—yes, cookies. This is the second strip club they have visited, pulling up in a church minibus: They have five more on their list as they canvass neighborhoods north of Long Beach, south of Compton. The bouncer takes the cookies and lets them inside to the bar, the customers, and the dancers, who are all lined up on the stage.

Read here:

George Muller spent decades trusting in the Lord | Andrée Seu
   World

I was given just enough George Muller to inoculate myself. I kept hearing the same recycled incident in which his orphanage has no bread or milk for the next meal, and the needed provisions turn up on his doorstep immediately after prayer. With this token praise of the miraculous we establish our credentials. But whether by a conspiracy conscious or unconscious, the rest of the Muller story is carefully kept under wraps.

Everybody knows the 19th-century Prussian founded homes for poor children in Bristol, England, but I never heard why. The care and spiritual training of orphans was only the secondary reason. The first was apologetic, in the most glorious sense: "Our goal is to show the world and the Church that even in these last evil days, God is ready to help, comfort, and answer the prayers of those who trust in him" [emphasis added] (The Autobiography of George Muller).

Read here

When one group-say, the postmodern-hears a penetrating presentation of sin as idolatry, it opens them up to the concept of sin as grieving and offending God. Sin as a personal affront to a perfect, holy God begins to make more sense, and when they hear this presented in another gospel form, it has credibility.

When more traditional people with a developed understanding of moral guilt learn about the substitutionary atonement and forensic justification, they are comforted. But these classic doctrines have profound implications for race relations and love for the poor, since they destroy all pride and self-justification.

When more liberal people hear about the kingdom of God for the restoration of the world, it opens them up to Christ’s kingship demanding obedience from them in their personal lives. In short, every gospel form, once it hits home, opens a person to the other points of the gospel made more vividly in other forms. 

by Tim Keller   Hat-tip:  David Virtue
www.leadershipjournal.net

VOL: This article speaks directly to Mrs. Jefferts Schori statement at GC2009 that individual or personal salvation is a Western heresy.

The gospel has been described as a pool in which a toddler can wade and yet an elephant can swim. It is both simple enough to tell to a child and profound enough for the greatest minds to explore. Indeed, even angels never tire of looking into it (1 Peter 1:12). Humans are by no means angels, however, so rather than contemplating it, we argue about it.

A generation ago evangelicals agreed on "the simple gospel": (1) God made you and wants to have a relationship with you, (2) but your sin separates you from God. (3) Jesus took the punishment your sins deserved, (4) so if you repent from sins and trust in him for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified, and accepted freely by grace, and indwelt with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.

There are today at least two major criticisms of this simple formulation. Many say that it is too individualistic, that Christ’s salvation is not so much to bring individual happiness as to bring peace, justice, and a new creation. A second criticism is that there is no one "simple gospel" because "everything is contextual" and the Bible itself contains many gospel presentations that exist in tension with each other. 

Read here
 

Authors offer sound advice on giving without doing harm | Joel Belz

Are poor people poor because they’re paying the price for their own personal failures—or because the systems in which they find
themselves have been broken and have failed the people within them?

It is, of course, an age-old question. Authors Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, in a brand new book called When Helping Hurts, note that political conservatives have tended to stress the former explanation, while liberals have emphasized the latter. Which, they ask, is correct? 

Before jumping to their answer, I can’t help thinking how different the responses might be right now, if I posed that question to all of WORLD’s readers, from the answers I might have gotten 18 months ago. If a whole lot of us find ourselves poorer than we were at the end of 2007, how many of us are admitting that our new "poverty" is the result of our own failures and bad decisions—versus those of us who are complaining that a broken system has let us down?

Read here