I took this video last night outside on the front driveway of my home and I only wish that my camera phone could have picked up the lightening better. It was non-stop lightening and thunder for several hours last night and I couldn’t help but go outside and take a clearer look. There are some long dark portions of this video, but when the lightening shows through it is so beautiful. God’s creation truly does show us His glory!
Category Archives: Testimonies
Miss California Shares Untold Story
Miss California Shares Untold Stories with Her San Diego Megachurch
By Eric Young
Christian Post Reporter
Mon, Apr. 27 2009 04:29 PM EDT
Miss California Carrie Prejean appeared onstage Sunday at the San Diego megachurch where she is a member to share about the events of this past week.
Since the Miss USA competition on April 19, Prejean has gone from interview to interview discussing her highly publicized comments on same-sex marriage – comments that many agree likely cost her the crown.
During the pageant in Las Vegas, openly gay gossip blogger Perez Hilton had asked Prejean whether every state should follow Vermont’s recent move to legalize same-sex marriage.
In her response, 21-year-old Prejean said she thinks “it’s great that Americans are able to … choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage.”
“And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman,” she continued. “No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman.”
Since then, Prejean has experienced a huge backlash from some liberal media outlets and some within the gay community, including Hilton, who fired back with a malicious video posting in his blog.
But more than criticism, Prejean has received a great deal of support, some of which has also come from members of the gay community, who told Prejean that people like Hilton are not a representation of who they are.
“I just want to thank everybody so much for your support, for the letters, e-mail, messages I’ve gotten,” Prejean said Sunday in front of her home church, The Rock Church in San Diego. “[And] I want to thank the gay community for their support, for apologizing to me on behalf of this man (Hilton) that said this to me and the personal attacks that he has on me.”
During her appearance Sunday, Prejean shared about her experiences from the time the politically charged question was asked to the several interviews that she went on to give, which included those on Fox News and NBC’s Today Show, among others.
A. N. Wilson on “Why I Believe Again”
James Grant says…
A. N. Wilson was once a Christian, but “converted†to atheism, rubbing shoulders with Dawkins and Hitchens and others. but now he has started to believe again. Why? He mentioned several reasons in this article, “Why I Believe Again.†It really is worth your time to read it.
He mentions watching people die, including his mother, and becoming convinced that purely materialists explanations for human existence do not work. He also explains that his atheist friends seem like people “who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love.†But one of the crucial steps in moving away from unbelief was a book on Nazi Germany:
- I haven’t mentioned morality, but one thing that finally put the tin hat on any aspirations to be an unbeliever was writing a book about the Wagner family and Nazi Germany, and realising how utterly incoherent were Hitler’s neo-Darwinian ravings, and how potent was the opposition, much of it from Christians; paid for, not with clear intellectual victory, but in blood. Read Pastor Bonhoeffer’s book Ethics, and ask yourself what sort of mad world is created by those who think that ethics are a purely human construct. Think of Bonhoeffer’s serenity before he was hanged, even though he was in love and had everything to look forward to.
That is powerful. But don’t stop with his article. The New Statesman has a Q&A with him too… [Continue Reading…]
Interview with Dr. John Frame about going to seminary
I currently attend RTS (Atlanta Campus) and I’m really enjoying my time there. I’m pleased to say that one of the best professors from RTS’s Orlando Campus has been interviewed about some of his writings and his experience teaching at seminary. I encourage everyone to listen to this, but especially those thinking about seminary or already attending it like myself. Here is a link to the full length interview, but here below I have posted the shortened You Tube form.
Islam: A Window of Opportunity
This link above will take you to a very good article from my seminary quarterly on the topic of Islam and the opportunity we have, at the present time, to engage the Muslim people in our own backyard with the Gospel. I hope that you will take the time to read it and pray about those Muslims that you know in your own area of influence. Do not take this time lightly or think that you are not qualified to share the Gospel with a Muslim. There are many free resource links (here and here) on my web site that will lead you do a better understanding of the Muslim world and what they’re all about, especially Muslims today.
It would also be nice to hear from anyone in the comments below if you have any experiences with Muslims and sharing the Gospel with them. Please leave your comments below.
In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,
Glenn Jones
Islam: What the West Needs to Know
[HT: David Wood]
The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
Genesis 19:23-29: “The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.
So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.”
Well, isn’t it amazing when we discover records from the past. Read the news article here. Below is an excerpt:
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700BC copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.
He referred to the asteroid as “white stone bowl approaching†and recorded it as it “vigorously swept alongâ€.
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.
A.D. 203: The Martyrdoms of Perpetua, Felicity and Companions
Today is the day in the Western Church that we celebrate one of the most well known martyrdoms in all of early Christian history. Here is the reading from my Church Year calendar produced by the Fellowship of St. James:
March 7: The eyewitness accounts of the martyrdoms of Perpetua, Felicity, and Companions were so popular in North Africa that Augustine had to protest against their being read publicly along with Scripture in church. While certainly not Scripture, they serve a purpose stated in the opening apologia: “If ancient examples of faith kept, both testifying the grace of God and working the edification of man, have to this end been set in writing, that by their reading as though by the showing of the deeds again, God may be glorified and man strengthened; why should not new witnesses also be set forth which likewise serve either end?
In other words, let us always remember those well-known faithful who gave their lives in service of the truth, but let’s also make room for the new faithful who give themselves up for the Gospel, setting to paper their witness as well and remembering them in the congregation. For further reading on the topic I encourage everyone to visit this site, which gives much more information about their lives and martyrdom.
In Christ and In Defense of the Faith,
The Best Super Bowl Ad to Date
You Were Made for Earth: An Interview
Trevin Wax over at the Kingdom People blog has conducted a great interview with Michael Wittmer. I encourage everyone to go read it and think about what Dr. Wittmer has to say. Also, Dr. Wittmer has written a book that I’m now very interested in buying. It is called:
Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Why Everything You Do Matters to God