During the most important part of the church service, the background music played is an anthem to their country. Pictures of their military are shown, some even with guns in hand, while the congregation meditates on the Eucharist-the body and blood of Jesus who said “blessed are the peacemakers.” At the end, the men’s choir who is usually brought in to sing the most stirring and powerful songs about the saving power of the Gospel puts words to the same song played earlier, singing about God’s favor for the country and the men that fought in bloody wars to keep it ‘free’. The final moments of the song were punctuated with video of huge guns being shot off and cheers from the congregation.
This is not a tale from some state-controlled church in a third world military dictatorship. This is from my church in Indiana, and to all of my non-american friends I say I am so sorry.
In thinking about Burma and China rejecting foreign aid for their disasters, I just wonder what New Orleans would have thought if a lot of Iranians would have shown up to help them after hurricane Catrina.
If someone was so addicted to a substance that they changed their monthly budget-even their food-to pay for that substance, wouldn’t you want them to withdraw from it, rather than try to make the substance cheaper? That is what I think about gasoline. listen
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Today gas cost 3.85 a gallon when it hits $4 I’m buying a bike. listen
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Jer. 16:14 “However, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when men will no longer say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’
Jer. 16:15 but they will say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their forefathers.
When the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, it wasn’t because of rebellion or faithlessness. The Bible actually doesn’t give a reason for it unless you read between the lines about Pharoah and then it seems like it was done for God’s glory (which will disturb the prosperity folks). But here God says there is going to be a whole other time of slavery and bondage just like the years in Egypt, and they are going to be so great, there is going to have to be a whole new deliverance just like the Exodus.
That whole new bondage is life apart from the truth of the Law and apart from God. It’s the true spiritual bondage that they have all been in since Adam. I can just see some old guys talking in Heaven someday.
“The Red Sea? Shoot that wadn’t nuthin. Did you see what Jesus did to that curtain when He died on the cross? That’s what I’m talking about! That’s an Exodus baby!” [then he high fives Jesus and they laugh]
[something about that just made me sob for a bit]
