Ephesus

Ephesians 1:10-14

for the administration of the days of fulfillment to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him. In Him we were also made His inheritance, predestined according to the purpose of the One who works out everything in agreement with the decision of His will, so that we who had already put our hope in the Messiah might bring praise to His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation in Him when you believe were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. He is the down payment of our inheritance, for the redemption of the possession, to the praise of HIS GLORY!

I think this is an amazing passage. Think about it, this passage speaks for itself. In him we were also made His inheritance, predestined according to His own purpose not our purpose. He works out everything in agreement with his will not our will so we can put our hope in his son so we can bring praise to His GLORY not our glory. When we believe we are sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit. He is the down payment of our inheritance to the praise of His Glory! Not to the Glory of what we have done but to the Glory of what God has done. Its not about us! Its about Gods will and His Glory.

Randomness?

Ephesians

Ephesians 1: 3-9

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He so freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him.

Wow! Those are powerful words, words hard to take in at times.

Quote

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves" - Abraham Lincoln

Quote

“Government did not give [the right to life] and it cannot take it away.” – Huckabee

Religion Buzz

AP - Evangelist Creflo Dollar doesn’t plan to explain himself to the Senate Finance Committee anytime soon. Sen. Charles Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican member, asked six televangelists to explain how their lavish lifestyles and posh ministry headquarters squared with their groups’ federal tax-exempt status. Dollar told Grassley to obtain a subpoena for the information of refer the matter to the IRS.

Two organizations complied with Grassley’s request: Joyce Meyer Ministries and Kenneth Copeland Ministries. Benny Hinn Ministries said it would send information by Jan. 30. Two other groups did not provide information by the Dec. 6 deadline: Paula White Ministries and Bishop Eddie Long Ministries. Grassley said he is willing to give ministry leaders more time to compile information, but added: I want and expect full cooperation.”

The Word

Romans 14: 5-10

One Person considers one day to be above another day. Someone else considers every day to be the same. Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind. Whoever observes the day, observes it to the Lord. Whoever eats, eats to the Lord, since he gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the lord.

When you get up out of bed in the morning do you consider that day and every other day to be just the same? Sometimes I do, whenever I return to school and get use to my new classes and schedule I get into the same routine everyday trying to live that day for myself. But this passage says that we are to give the day to the Lord giving thanks to God our mighty creator and savior! We do not live for ourselves or die for ourselves. Instead scripture says we live to the Lord and we die to the Lord. We BELONG to him. We were bought at a price! The price of Gods precious son.

Romans 5: 7-9 says; For rarely will someone die for a just person though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves His own love for us that while we were still sinners Christ DIED FOR US! Much more then, since we have now been declared righteous by His BLOOD, we will be saved through Him from wrath.

Christ paid the ultimate penalty! Do we observe his love and mercy that he so graciously gave us everyday? Do we cry out to Him ABBA! Father! Thank you for paying the penalty for my sin which you despise! Thank you for saving me, raising me up when I was DEAD to my sin? You are the Lord of Lords and deserve to be observed on this day and everyday! Give thanks to Him!

Why So Serious?

When comes to movies I cant wait till this summer when "Batman: The Dark Knight" comes to theaters. At first I had my doubts when I found out that Heath Ledger was going to be the Joker but after watching the new Trailer My doubts are gone. I think Heath Ledger has pulled it off!

The Tube

The Real Truth on Global Warming...

I was reading a article which pissed me off so bad so I decided to write a two or possibly two part series on "The Real Truth on Global Warming!" This article may make your head explode!

In a campaign that has spread like wildfire across the Internet, a group of Israeli environmentalists is encouraging Jews around the world to light at least one less candle this Hanukka to help the environment.

The founders of the Green Hanukkia campaign found that every candle that burns completely produces 15 grams of carbon dioxide. If an estimated one million Israeli households light for eight days, they said, it would do significant damage to the atmosphere.

"The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won't need another miracle," said Liad Ortar, the campaign's cofounder, who runs the Arkada environmental consulting firm and the Ynet Web site's environmental forum. "Global warming is a milestone in human evolution that requires us to rethink how we live our lives, and one of the main paradigms of that is religion and how it fits into the current situation."

Cofounder Tom Wegner, who heads the public relations firm Update Marketing Media, spread the campaign via mass e-mails and through social interaction Web sites like Facebook and Hook.co.il. He said no money had been invested in the campaign, but it had already raised awareness around the world and made people realize that they have to consider the environment this Hanukka.

Wegner said he did not consider the campaign anti-religious. The unlit candle could be the shamash, which is not required for the mitzva, he said. But he said he would encourage people who do not keep mitzvot not to light a hanukkia at all for environmental and educational reasons.

"We have many environmental traditions in Judaism like Tu Bishvat and Succot, but there are also traditions like Lag Ba'omer and Hanukka that made sense when they were instituted but are more problematic now in the days of global warming," Wegner said.

"There are many people who just light candles for the tradition and for their children," he said. "To tell a child on the eighth day that we are not lighting the last candle as a sacrifice for the environment is an act that is not only educational but also will prevent the release of a huge amount of carbon dioxide that would hurt the environment."

Shas MK Nissim Ze'ev said he was not convinced by the environmentalists' argument. He warned that the campaign would take away from the light of Torah that each and every candle symbolizes.

"The environmentalists should think about how much pollution is caused by one solitary diesel truck on the road," Ze'ev said. "They should be fighting the trucks instead of Judaism. This is so trivial, so anti-Jewish and so anti-religious that even the worst anti-Semites couldn't think of it. Just like the Helenists, they are trying to extinguish the flames of the Jewish soul."

United Torah Judaism MK Avraham Ravitz called the environmentalists "crazy people who are playing with the minds of innocent Jewish people." He said the campaign would only convince people who do not light candles anyway.

"They should encourage people to light one less cigarette instead," Ravitz said.

Rabbi Benny Lau of Jerusalem's Ramban Congregation, who is himself an environmental activist, praised the good intentions of the people behind the campaign. But he said the environmentalists should be trying to reach out to observant Jews instead of running campaigns that turn them away.

"People in the green movement who have an agenda have unfortunately made it anti-religious," Lau said. "This makes religious people think incorrectly that anything environmentalist is against them. The damage ends up being a thousand times the benefit. Tikkun olam [fixing the world] must be done by adding more light and not by adding more darkness."

MYTHS ON GLOBAL WARMING

1. Planet earth is currently undergoing global warming.

Accurate and representative temperature measurements from satellites and balloons show that the planet has cooled significantly in the last two or three years, losing in only 18 months 15% of the claimed warming which took over 100 years to appear — that warming was only one degree fahrenheit (half of one degree Celsius) anyway, and part of this is a systematic error from groundstation readings which are inflated due to the 'urban heat island effect' i.e. local heat retention due to urban sprawl, not global warming...and it is these, 'false high' ground readings which are then programmed into the disreputable climate models, which live up to the GIGO acronym — garbage in, garbage out.

2. Even slight temperature rises are disastrous, ice caps will melt, people will die!

Parts of ice caps are melting yet other parts are thickening but this isn't reported as much (home experiment: put some water in a jug or bowl, add a layer of ice cubes and mark the level — wait until the ice has melted and look again, the level will have fallen). Data from ice core samples shows that in the past, temperatures have risen by ten times the current rise, and fallen again, in the space of a human lifetime.

3. Carbon Dioxide levels in our atmosphere at the moment are unprecedented (high).

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, currently only 350 parts per million have been over 18 times higher in the past at a time when cars, factories and power stations did not exist — levels rise and fall without mankind's help.

4. Mankind is pumping out carbon dioxide at a prodigious rate.

96.5% of all carbon dioxide emissions are from natural sources, mankind is responsible for only 3.5%, with 0.6% coming from fuel to move vehicles, and about 1% from fuel to heat buildings. Yet vehicle fuel (petrol) is taxed at 300% while fuel to heat buildings is taxed at 5% even though buildings emit nearly twice as much carbon dioxide!

5. Carbon dioxide changes in the atmosphere cause temperature changes on the earth.

A report in the journal 'Science' in January of this year showed using information from ice cores with high time resolution that since the last ice age, every time when the temperature and carbon dioxide levels have shifted, the carbon dioxide change happened AFTER the temperature change, so that man-made global warming theory has put effect before cause — this shows that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a futile King Canute exercise! What's more, both water vapour and methane are far more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide but they are ignored.

6. Reducing car use will cut carbon dioxide levels and save the planet

The planet does not need saving, but taking this on anyway, removing every car from every road in every country overnight would NOT produce any change in the carbon dioxide level of the atmosphere, as can be seen using the numbers from Fact 4, and in any case it is pointless trying to alter climate by changing carbon dioxide levels as the cause and effect is the other way round — it is changes in the activity of the Sun that cause temperature changes on earth, with any temperature rise causing carbon dioxide to de-gas from the oceans.

7. The recent wet weather and flooding was caused by mankind through 'global warming'

Extreme weather correlates with the cycle of solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions or political elections, the recent heavy rainfall in winter and spring is a perfect example of this — it occurred at solar maximum at a time when solar maxima are very intense — this pattern may well repeat every 11 years until about 2045.

8. The climate change levy, petrol duty, CO2 car tax and workplace parking charges are justifiable environmental taxes.

As carbon dioxide emissions from cars and factories does not have any measurable impact on climate, these taxes are 'just another tax' on enterprise and mobility, and have no real green credentials.

9. Scientists on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issue reports that say 'global warming' is real and that we must do something now.

Scientists draft reports for the IPCC, but the IPCC are bureaucrats appointed by governments, in fact many scientists who contribute to the reports disagree with the 'spin' that the IPCC and media put on their findings. The latest report suggests that the next 100 years might see a temperature change of 6 Celsius yet a Lead Author for the IPCC (Dr John Christy UAH/NASA) has pointed out that the scenarios with the fastest warming rates were added to the report at a late stage, at the request of a few governments — in other words the scientists were told what to do by politicians.

10. There are only a tiny handful of maverick scientists who dispute that man-made global warming theory is true.

There are nearly 18,000 signatures from scientists worldwide on a petition called The Oregon Petition which says that there is no evidence for man-made global warming theory nor for any impact from mankind's activities on climate.Many scientists believe that the Kyoto agreement is a total waste of time and one of the biggest political scams ever perpetrated on the public ... as H L Mencken said "the fundamental aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" ... the desire to save the world usually fronts a desire to rule it.

More to Come

I Heart Huckabee!

Find more about him at http://www.mikehuckabee.com/

Political Plants

Ethanol! What is it and is it a good idea?

First off what is Ethanol? You here about it all the time from the news and politicians. Ethanol is an alcohol-based fuel made by fermenting and distilling crops that have been broken down into simple sugars. In the United States, ethanol is generally made from starch crops such as corn or sorghum. Ethanol production consumed about 11 percent of all U.S. grown corn in 2004. That number is expected to grow in years to come.

I don't like the idea of using food to produce fuel for vehicles. The amount of corn required to produce 32 gallons of ethanol (enough to fill pick-up or SUV) will feed one person for one year. Corn prices are already rising.

To make the existing oil last a little longer, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we are going to move away from oil that has only 2-3 major uses fuel, lubrication, plastics and move towards a resource "food" whch we all need to survive?

When more and more farmers begin growing corn instead of wheat, barley, alfalfa, soy etc. because of the huge demand for corn and the high price it commands, what will happen to the market for these other grains? They will be in short supply and the prices will rise. Who wants to pay more for food so that there vehicle can burn E85! This is crazy! Don't use food to run your car!

Brief Take

I no longer feel guilty at the gas pump. I now feel guilty eating beans…

I was reading Fox News and found this article in the Science section:

Researchers: Moose Gas Hurting Environment Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Researchers in Norway claim a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of methane a year, equivalent to the amount of CO2 caused by an 8,077-mile car trip, der Spiegel reported.

Norway’s national animal releases methane through burping and flatulence, as do cows, considered more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. There are estimated to be more than 100,000 moose in Norway.

Thoughts

Well its Monday and my 4^th semester is done. Its hard to believe its been 2 years sense I first showed up at Boyce College as a young shy freshman scared and uncertain about my calling into the ministry. Now two years have passed and I have changed so much. It is amazing to see were I was when I first came to Boyce verses were I am now. God has changed me in so many ways. I feel that I have moved away from milk and have moved onto solid foods. The main things God has taught me is patience! Waiting on God timing sense he knows best even though we think we know best and letting his will be done, not mine!

Even though I have come along ways I have along ways to go as Gods word continues to teach me and show me were I need to grow. I must fight the good fight and finish the race. Now that I am home there has been many distractions that have kept me from spending time in Gods word and in prayer with being home for the first time in 3 months. Distractions like Video Games! I have no papers to write, no chapters to read and no tests to study for. So I have spent a lot of time catching up on playing halo! Today I have made a stop to that! I have turned off the Xbox and unplugged it. I am making sure that Christ comes first. This morning I got up grabbed a notebook, pen and my apologetics study Bible and began reading in Ephesians, my favorite book of the Bible and began reading it and taking note and putting my thoughts on the verses, letting it soak into my mind and really meditating on it. On this blog I plan on posting some of my notes and thoughts on the word and of coarse other things that I find worth talking about.