AMERICA - You have a choice!

We hear from our president and from our government that Islam is a religion of peace and Muslims and Christians worship the same God. But this is not so. This is one of their "politically incorrect" statements to try to conform the American people to the idea everything is the same. Any person can, The same as I did, take the Bible (any version will do for this) and a copy of the Koran and see that these two religions are a complete opposite of each other. The God of the Christian's Holy Bible and the god of Islam are not the same. To go a step further, the God of the Bible and the god of Islam are totally different in nature; they have different values, a different way of believing, and teach people how to behave differently. Here are some of the differences that I have found and I'm sure there are plenty more differences if we took the time to look.

The Koran says:(Sura 9:5):" But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait (ambush) for them in every stratagem (of war)"

The Bible says: " Bless them that curse you."

The Koran says[Sura 9:123] : " O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers ... .

The Bible says: " Love your enemies."

The Koran says:" Fight those who believe not in God [Allah] and his apostle [Muhammad], nor acknowledge the religion of truth [even if they are] of the people of the book [meaning Jews and Christians], until they pay jizya [humiliating tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued [enslaved]" (Sura 9:29).

The Bible says:"Do good to them that hate you."

The Koran says:"Therefore when ye meet the unbelievers [in fight] smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly [on them]" (Sura 47:4).

The Bible says:"Pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."

As we can see,The Bibleandthe Koran teach different thoughts, different ways of thinking, and a different morality. A complete way of living. In 1984, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed to the whole world: "In order to achieve the victory of Islam in the world, we need to provoke repeated crises, restored value to the idea of death and martyrdom. The important thing is to engulf the world in crises."

The Bible says: Be ye kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. " The God of the Bible and Allah are not the same being because One teaches man to do good and the other teaches man to do evil. One teaches love and peace, the other teaches war and hatred. One is really the Creator of the Universe and one is not. So which is a god worthy of worship? The One who teaches man to do good or the one who teaches man to do evil?

The koran says: " God forbid that he should have a son."

The Bible says:Jesus declared He is the Son of God and He also said that, "Before

Abraham was, I AM"  He said that He declared Himself to be God.

Jesus also said: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him,should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."

So how can we be serving the same God as our leaders are trying to make us believe. The fact is we are not and as for me and my house we will serve the Lord!

The Cross in Our Bodies

This is an article that I received today and it is a pretty neat story and an interesting thing that few of us know. It's brief, so please read. The story is from a doctor so you will find it very interesting.   A couple of days ago I was running (I use that term very loosely) on my treadmill, watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio... And I was BLOWN AWAY!  I want to share what I learned.... But I fear not being able to convey it as well as I want. I will share anyway. He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is... How He spoke the universe into being... How He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire..  Etc. Etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinating from a medical standpoint, you know.) . And I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God's handiwork. I remember so many times thinking..'How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this???'  Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart...how our loving Creator is also our sustainer. And then I lost my breath. And it wasn't because I was running my treadmill, either!!! It was because he started talking about laminin. I knew about laminin.. Here is how  Wikipedia   describes them: 'Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue' You see.... Laminins are what hold us together... LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules.. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what they LOOKED LIKE.. But now I do.  And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)....Here is what the structure of laminin looks like... AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it.... If you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see....                         Now tell me that our God is not the coolest!!!  Amazing.  The glue that holds us together.... ALL of us..... Is in the shape of the cross.  Immediately Colossians 1:15-17 comes to mind.             'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible And invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or Authorities;   All things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him All things HOLD TOGETHER.'                                            Colossians 1:15-17             Call me crazy. I just think that is very, very, very cool. Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin, Paul penned those words. And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint we are held together... One cell to another... By the cross.  You would never in a quadrillion years convince me that is anything other than the mark of a Creator who knew EXACTLY what laminin 'glue' would look like long before Adam breathed his first breath!!

 

IT"S A FAMILY TRADITION

It has been on my mind for some time now to write this article to all my friends and stress the point about families sticking together. Some time ago I made the statement to my cousin that there was not to many members of our family left to tell the history of our great family. The elders are just about gone. They are passing on to meet their reward. The torch is being passed on to the younger generation to carry on the family name and to keep the family history intact and to tell the stories of our forefathers and their fathers. How soon we would forget if it was not passed down from generation to generation, family to family, and reunion to reunion.

This is the same way that God wants His church to work and to carry on. We need to pass on to our children and their children's children the wonderful blessings that God has bestowed on us as His children. The remembrance of camp meetings, brush arbor meetings, camp meetings, the revivals, and all the miracles that we witnessed should be told over and over again to the younger generation. It is our heritage and the stories should be told over and over again so they will never forget. As Christians it is our duty to do this.

Was not this, that I speak about, what our Lord commanded the Hebrews in the old testament after they left Egypt? They were to teach their children of how God delivered them and to teach them His commandments, how he rolled back the waters of the mighty Red Sea, how they were fed with manna from above, how their clothes

never wore out, and all the other miracles that took place. As God's people are we not to do the same? Yes we are! ^A

The fact of the matter is this: There is a falling away of God's teachings in the family home, a falling away of meeting God's standards. The family use to go to church together, then the parents just sent their children to church, and now the parents do not even send their kids to church. It use to be that the family gathered around the table, said grace, and had dinner together as a family. Family problems were discussed and dealt with. Now the kids eat at McDonalds and the parents at the club. There are no or hardly any family functions. This is what is happening in the majority of homes across the land. We must remember as a nation, that professes Christianity, it is the home and Godly parents that start the training of Godly leaders that will lead this country in the right direction. It is the home and the duty of good parents to plant the seeds of right and wrong, the church, the commandments, and the love of our Savior. The Word of God must be the criteria for all things; the command given to the Hebrews back then has not changed, it is the same today.

Our children have seeds planted in their minds everyday by the school they attend, what they watch on TV, and see on the Internet. The seeds of wrong are planted in their minds everyday and it is the duty of the parents teach them right and to help mold them into what they should be. I remember years ago when the former president Nixon said, “It is the family unit that is the building blocks of this country.”No truer words were ever spoken. It is the family unit and their relationship with God that makes the building blocks of this nation.

The seeds of wrong are already planted in our children's mind from the time they start to school and if they are not told in the home what is right then how will they know any difference? How will they know that is not alright for Steve to marry Eve when they are told in our schools, across the land, that it is a excepted style. How will they know that abortion is a sin when the schools are telling them different and a government that will give them an abortion on demand. Who will tell your kids about the Lord? Not the schools because prayer and Bible reading are not allowed anymore. There is no more Bible on the teacher or principles desk anymore. The list could go on and on. The point is the parents must take control of the teaching of their kids and training them in the things that are right.

One of the greatest blessings in my life is that I was raised in a Christian home by parents that not only seen that I went to church, they went with me. I was instructed, loved, and brought up to do right. Those things never left me. I did the same thing for my kids as my parents did for me and they are doing the same for their kids. Not only is it a duty, it should be a family tradition to tell the old, old, story of Jesus and His love to future generations. If we, as parents, sow good seeds now we and our children, will reap the benefits later.

A And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest In thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between Thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. (Deuteronomy 6: 6-9)

The Bread of Life

And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
After reading this verse of scripture it can have one of two consequences on a person. We can either receive Christ as our savior or we can reject Him. We have to make a Choice. To receive Christ means eternal life and to reject Him means eternal separation from God. Just as these Jews were given a choice, as we see in this verse, we are also given a choice to either receive Him or reject Him. It is that simple. us this bread” But we can see that this is where the similarity and likeness ends. The Samaritan women meant what she said, because when Jesus revealed to her that He was speaking of His self, she received Him, she was saved and ran into the city saying, “ Come see a man !” She had a well of living water springing up in her soul! But we can see that after hearing His words the Jews turned down and rejected to believe and went away hungry.
We satisfy our natural hunger by eating bread and meat digesting the food for the use of our bodies. Likewise we satisfy our natural thirst by drinking water. But it is the living water and the bread of life that can satisfy the soul and the inner man. Bread gives nourishment and strength to the physical body, but it is Jesus Christ that gives our inner man the spiritual strength that we need. Just as we cannot live physically without bread (physical food) we cannot live spiritually without Christ, who saves ad sustains us. We need to read God's Word everyday so we don't spiritually starve to death! Everyone of us that come to Jesus with a hungry heart will have their hunger satisfied. He has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us. We have heaven’s bread at our disposal whenever we hunger or thirst.

Remembering My Father’s House – can you?

Ever since I was twelve years old I have been in church. I was not sent to church, but I went with the whole family. As I sit back and remember some of the things that happen in some of the churches that I attended it grieves my soul to see where the church of the Living God is today. The church has come a long way since my child hood and for the most part it is not the same church that I once knew and grew up in. Thru my eye sight and what I have seen in the past, to me there is a great falling away of our churches. You might ask me how I can say that when we have so many mega churches in the world today. You might want to say I am wrong because of all the mega churches and their thousands of people, but am I?

In the 1950’s and before there was great revivals, brush arbor meetings, camp meetings, and meetings in people’s homes because there was a great hunger for the things of God. People were saved, healed, and delivered from bondage. What a time that was! When we went to church the first place that we went to was the prayer room. You always got to church early so you could go to the prayer room. The church always had a standard and it was lifted high. In those day it made no difference what denomination you were, you held up that standard. The church was there to seek out and help the lost, the dying, and the sick. It was there to take the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world. I can remember listening on the radio to A.A. Allen, Oliver B. Green, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, R.G. Hardy, Jack Coe, and many others. Most all of these men were of different denominations, but they had one thing in common. The preached Christ and Him crucified! To me they were all men of God that preached the word of God to a lost and dying world. To me they were renown men of old. I wonder what they would say about most of the churches today? I can tell you this: They would cry out against the most of them.

I, personally, think that most churches today are not in the world, but the world is in the churches. I say this because of what I have seen down through the years. I can look back now and reflect on the falling away of our churches. And I also believe as our churches go, so goes our great country. When the standard of our churches are lowered so is the standards of this great nation. Just as I said earlier, and it needs repeating, the church is the foundation of this great country and as the church goes so goes this country.

Now I know that some of you will not agree with me in what I’m about to say, but I believe it to be the truth. Most churches today have a form of godliness, but that is just about as far as it goes. Most of them are way out in left field. What do I mean? For one example you have more people in the church that will go to a church dinner than will go out and seek the lost and dying. We have more preachers telling you how to get rich (preaching the prosperity message) than telling you about God’s Word. I always was taught and thought that God would take care of my needs according to His riches in Glory and by his blessed Grace He has. More people are flocking to churches today to here the prosperity message and how to get rich quick than to hear the Word of God.

It is also a shame that the churches of the Living God, The churches that once stood for what is right, now do not council people when they need help. They send the people to a psychiatrist or psychologist to get help with their problem. What better place can you go than to God’s House and to God’s man to have that yoke removed from your neck. IT IS THE ANNOINTING THAT BREAKS THE YOKE! Not the psychiatrist’s sofa! That is one of the main functions of the man of God to care for his flock. What we need in our churches today are men that can stand up and say: SILVER AND GOLD HAVE I NONE, BUT SUCH AS I HAVE I GIVE UNTO THEE.

We have, in our churches more chicken dinners, fashion shows, yard sales, soup days, bingo, and you name it than we have prayer meetings, revivals, and people saved. What a great falling away from the truth! Our churches, for the most part, have become social gathering places instead of churches. To me it is a shame and disgrace when we have in the front of our churches a sign that advertises the soup days, yard sales, and chicken dinners instead of what it should be saying: “Jesus Saves” or something on that line. You might not agree with me but it is a disgrace. Think about it, this is God’s house, not the local diner or the fire house.

Some churches use every way but the right way to bring the younger people into church. When I was younger it was the pure raw word of God, that was preached by a man of God, that brought me to Christ, not some of the drawing cards used by churches today. If Christ is in the mist a church needs nothing else. Your child will take home a gift that will never grow old.

Why do we not have Bible reading, and prayer in our public schools anymore? Why is the Bible and the Ten Commandments being taking out of our court rooms and government buildings? Why are homosexuals parading our streets and getting married in our churches? Some homosexuals are even standing behind the sacred desk. Why are unborn babies killed by the millions in this country? It is because of the great falling away of our churches from what is right and holy! If all churches, no matter what the denomination is, would stand up and be counted and say enough is enough there would be a great change in this country. Once again let me say: It is the church that is the foundation of this nation and as the church goes so goes the nation!

The church as a whole needs to return to their first love. We need to prays that God will bind us together and take a stand for what is right. We must return to God. We need to have less soup days, less chicken dinners, less bingo and yard sales. We need to have more anointed preaching, more of the love of God, and preachers that will stand up and speak the truth, because in the end it is the truth that will set this nation, the church, and the people free!