Os Guinness

Os Guinness Part 1 from CPX on Vimeo.

Os Guinness loves the truth!  A prolific author and an ardent social critic, he is in demand around the world as a speaker on issues of faith, society, and public policy. Guinness provides us with prudent and tenacious arguments against moral and cultural relativism. His latest book is titled The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends On It. (see below)

The Truth will set you free (John 8.32),

ron

Sympathy for the Devil! (The King singing)

Note: Roll mouse over Scripture reference (pop-up)!

Greetings (1 Peter 5.8),

Zechariah 3.2

Matthew 4.10

Matthew 12.26

Luke 10.18

Acts 26.18

Romans 16.20

2 Corinthians 11.14

Revelation 12.9

Revelation 20.2-10

In Christ (Matthew 25.41)!

Kant Song

THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION
of the Pure Concepts of Understanding

by Immanuel Kant

Translation by Roderick T. Long

Music and vocals by Paul L. Fine

© 1984, 1999 Paul L. Fine and Roderick T. Long

Click below link and enjoy,
ron

Life: A Human Right!

What is the greatest human rights question of our time?

Simple?

Should it be permissible to kill human beings because of their location, dependency, stage of development, or burdensomeness to others?

Christian, your answer please!

Christians today are hedging and trimming and tying themselves into intellectual and moral knots in order to hide their embarrassment about being out of step with the so called progressive spirit of the time (culture of death).

In order to oppose political candidates (including a presidential candidate) who explicitly and adamantly support an unlimited legal license to kill the unborn you will need to distinguish yourself from the surrounding pagan society

How embarrassing!

Be of good cheer, Ron
(1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

The discipline of difficulty!

“In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33.

An average view of the Christian life is that it means deliverance from trouble. It is deliverance in trouble, which is very different. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High. . . there shall no evil befall thee” - no plague can come nigh the place where you are at one with God.

If you are a child of God, there certainly will be troubles to meet, but Jesus says do not be surprised when they come. “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world, there is nothing for you to fear.” Men who before they were saved would scorn to talk about troubles, often become ‘fushionless’ after being born again because they have a wrong idea of a saint.

God does not give us overcoming life: He gives us life as we overcome. The strain is the strength. If there is no strain, there is no strength. Are you asking God to give you life and liberty and joy? He cannot, unless you will accept the strain. Immediately you face the strain, you will get the strength. Overcome your own timidity and take the step, and God will give you to eat of the tree of life and you will get nourishment. If you spend yourself out physically, you become exhausted; but spend yourself spiritually, and you get more strength. God never gives strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the minute. The temptation is to face difficulties from a commonsense standpoint. The saint is hilarious when he is crushed with difficulties because the thing is so ludicrously impossible to anyone but God.

Chambers, O. (1993, c1935). My utmost for his highest: Selections for the year (August 2). Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.

rejoice!

If we can't face it,God can't fix it!

God can fix it but we won't face it!

Father Barron on Bob Dylan

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3.8, ESV)

BTW: How does it feel?

rejoice, ron

God's Will!

“The disciple who abides in Jesus is the will of God, and his apparently free choices are God’s fore-ordained decrees. Mysterious? Logically contradictory and absurd? Yes, but a glorious truth to a saint.” - Chambers, O. (1993, c1935). My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year (June 7). Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.

You are God’s will!

enjoy, ron

Louis Armstrong - Danny Kaye

rejoice, ron

Cave Dwelling!

Click here to listen to a short mp3 recording (under 14 min) by philosopher Simon Blackburn on Plato's Cave. What is the nature of reality? Is the world as it appears, or is there something timeless behind the world of appearances?

In the above mp3 recording, the philosopher Simon Blackburn discusses one of the most famous images in Philosophy: Plato's cave.

Unfortunately, both philosophers (Plato & Blackburn) "suppress the truth in unrighteousness ... they became futile in they speculations..." (Romans 1.18ff).

"What really happened was God’s free positing of this world-reality. The unique thing about the “generation” of the heaven and of the earth is that it cannot be comprehended with the aid of natural analogies, but it can be described only by the word 'creation'”. - Karl Barth

"All created reality is inherently revelational of the nature and will of God." - Cornelius Van Til

enjoy, ron

TreeChair!

In the picture below a man is standing by what looks like a chair-tree. Now, you know nothing else about the tree other than what you can infer from a visual inspection.

Multiple Choice:

1. The tree probably obtained this shape through chance.
2. The tree probably obtained this shape through mechanical necessity.
3. The tree probably obtained this shape through a combination of chance and mechanical necessity.
4. The tree probably obtained this shape as the result of the purposeful efforts of an intelligent agent.
5. Other.

Select your answer and give supporting reasons.

PS. Kudos to Uncommon Descent blog for this one!

PSS. Romans 1.20ff

Enjoy, ron

Flying Man!

I own a lithograph of Mihail Chemiakin’s “The fall of Icarus” (the largest lithograph he has ever produced). Icarus, son of Daedalus, attempted to escape Crete by flight, but fell to his death. I'd wager that long before Daedalus fashioned a pair of wax wings for himself and his son, we've been trying to find some means to fly, with more than a few casualties along the way.

Well, several weeks ago (May 14), a Swiss man named Yves Rossy (a.k.a., "Fusion Man") made headlines when he strapped on an 8-foot jet-powered wing and leaped from an airplane, soaring over the Alps. Rossy spent years developing his device, and successfully flew the first jet-powered wing in November 2006. There's been a smattering of R&D on jet packs to propel human beings dating as far back as World War II; Rossy's invention is the first to combine a jet pack with actual wings (See more videos at his website).

Now, when I was a small child, I would have this recurring dream about flying. Inevitably I would be falling or jumping from some great height. At first a tinge of fear would come over me. But almost immediately I would begin to fly. Gliding effortlessly. Moving from side to side and up and down with the greatest of ease. It was pure ecstasy, interrupted only by awakening from my slumber.

enjoy, ron

Philanthropy & Humiliation!

Luke 16.19-31 & 1 John 4.16b-21

It is a frightful thing to say, but … there is indeed a love which is mere philanthropy, a sympathetic and benevolent concern and assistance which we can exercise with zeal and devotion without taking even a single step away from the safe stronghold of being without our fellow-man, but in a deeper withdrawal into our shell. There is a form of love - mere charity (the mere crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table)* - in which we do not love at all; in which we do not see or have in mind the other man to whom it is directed; in which we do not and will not notice his weal or woe; in which we merely imagine him as the object of the love which we have to exercise, and in this way master and use him. Our only desire is to practise and unfold our own love, to demonstrate it to him and to others and to God and above all to ourselves, to find ourselves self-expression in this sublime form.

There is thus a form of love in which, however sacrificially it is practised, the other is not seized by a human hand but by a cold instrument, or even by a paw with sheathed talons, and therefore genuinely isolated and frozen and estranged and oppressed and humiliated, so that he feels that he is trampled under the feet of the one who is supposed to love him, and cannot react with gratitude. The great tragedy is that it is perhaps in the sphere of the neighbourly love established and shaped by Christianity, in Christian families and houses and societies and institutions, that we seem to have more frequent and shattering examples of this than in that of the worldly love, courtesy, affability and fellowship which are so much more shallow and discriminating, and therefore so much the less exacting. - Barth, K., Bromiley, G. W., & Torrance, T. F. (2004). Church dogmatics, Volume IV : The doctrine of reconciliation, Part 2. (p. 440). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Doing all things in love begins with the realization that we owe everything to Jesus Christ, His Person & Work (the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us). God demonstrates God’s love in that Christ died for us; out of God’s great love God made us alive in Christ; and in that love we live, by it we conquer, and from it nothing shall separate us. “The love of Christ controls us” (2 Cor. 15.14). Indeed, our love merely reflects the love God first “poured into our hearts”. This love is directed toward Christ and toward others, whom we love for Christ’s sake!

Enjoy, ron

PS. I included the Luke 16 quote (parenthetical*) in Barth’s comments above

The test of self-interest!

If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left. Genesis 13:9.

As soon as you begin to live the life of faith in God, fascinating and luxurious prospects will open up before you, and these things are yours by right; but if you are living the life of faith you will exercise your right to waive your rights, and let God choose for you. God sometimes allows you to get into a place of testing where your own welfare would be the right and proper thing to consider if you were not living a life of faith; but if you are, you will joyfully waive your right and leave God to choose for you. This is the discipline by means of which the natural is transformed into the spiritual by obedience to the voice of God.

Whenever right is made the guidance in the life, it will blunt the spiritual insight. The great enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best. It would seem the wisest thing in the world for Abraham to choose, it was his right, and the people around would consider him a fool for not choosing. Many of us do not go on spiritually because we prefer to choose what is right instead of relying on God to choose for us. We have to learn to walk according to the standard which has its eye on God. “Walk before Me.”

Chambers, O. (1993, c1935). My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year (May 25). Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.

Enjoy, ron

Looky-Loo or Seeker?

And there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small of stature. (Luke 19:2-3 ESV)

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; (John 6.44 NASB)

For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. (Luke 19.10 NASB)

Jesus sought out Zacchaeus and Zacchaeus was transformed into a seeker: not, of course, an indecisive and indiscriminate seeker or one who especially knows what he is seeking. Yet a real seeker whose tax grubbing hands are empty, who has not yet apprehended, but wants to apprehend because he is already apprehended (Phil 3.12f). And Jesus does not allow Zacchaeus to be merely a casual or even friendly seeker, preoccupied with unraveling facile cultural barriers. Zacchaeus is no longer a looky-loo who divides his powers between this seeking and a possessing. No! Zacchaeus is a true seeker. He seeks this one thing, his life in Christ, and all other possibilities have passed away.

Like Zacchaeus, once our Seeker finds us, our lives on earth may now be defined in “seeker-only” terms. This is the meaning of the imperative (Col. 3.1f): “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits.… Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” As K. Barth puts it, “To seek that which is above means that we are to seek here and now, but not in this here and now, not on the earth, because, … the true life of the Christian is with Christ, his true and exalted life, his own proper life, which begins with the death of Christ as his own death, the death of the old man. Christ is above, and so too is the Christian in so far as he is in Christ.”

enjoy, ron

Make a name for youself!

"Unless the LORD builds the house,
They labor in vain who build it;" - Ps 127:1

See Genesis 11.1-9

“So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city” (Gen 11.8). Is it important to see why God does not simply destroy the Tower of Babel? Perhaps it is if we consider the fact that it is not the building, the technical invention or the attempt at civilization facilitated by it, which constitutes the evil against which God takes His measures. It has more to do with the fact that “They said, ‘Come, … let us make for ourselves a name…’” (Gen. 11.4).

God’s judgment is not against the advancement of culture. Rather, “the Lord came down …” against the way in which humanity tries to facilitate and affirm and maintain itself, to make itself a name, to play the part of Providence. God’s judgment is against any attempt or intention of humanity to achieve a name for itself independently of God Himself.

You see, once humanity’s contrived object was taken away (unity through culture) the building process ceased automatically. “That it could cease shows that it was not harmless in intention but directed against God and therefore evil”, says K. Barth. According to Ps. 127.1, the building process had to cease because it was in vain. Again, Barth points out, “Everything is in vain, and moves self-evidently to destruction sooner or later, that is ventured by man with the same intention as this building” of the Tower of Babel.

enjoy, ron

Nazbo Rap II

As a follow up to the first “Nazbo Rap” made 2 years ago, we now have “Nazbo Rap II.” It was cut by some students at a mid-western Nazarene Theological Seminary. There’s some bizarre stuff here and there, but it’s entertaining even if you have trouble following Rap lyrics.

Enjoy,ron

Fear & Death!

A brief mull over Luke 12.4-7:

Death is a pawn in Satan’s diversion; an instrument at God’s beckon. “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.”

Death (and Satan) will be the subject(s) of God’s judgment. “But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.” Death and hell (Satan’s future temporary quarters) will be cast into the Lake of Fire!

“Yes, I tell you, fear him!” The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Therefore, “Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

enjoy, ron

Idol's Hillsong Song!

If you were in any doubt about the influence and reach of Hillsong's music, you might like to note that ‘Shout to the Lord’ was sung not once, but twice on two separate episodes of American Idol recently. You can see both on YouTube.

enjoy, ron

You're a Monster!

Below you'll find a very funny article where Sesame Street's Cookie Monster searches deep within himself and asks: is me really a monster?

Obviously struggling with his frequent out-of-control cookie binges, the Cookie Monster reflects on his own self-image. Who am I? Saint or Sinner or Both?

COOKIE MONSTER SEARCHES DEEP WITHINHIMSELF AND ASKS: IS MEREALLY MONSTER? by ANDY F. BRYAN

Me know. Me have problem.

Me love cookies. Me tend to get out of control when me see cookies. Me know it not natural to react so strongly to cookies, but me have weakness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn't normal. Me see disapproving looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.

When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can't stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don't think me is monster. Me just furry blue person who love cookies too much. Me no ask for it. Me just born that way.

Me was thinking and me just don't get it. Why is me a monster? No one else called monster on Sesame Street. Well, no one who isn't really monster. Two-Headed Monster have two heads, so he real monster. Herry Monster strong and look angry, so he probably real monster, too. But is me really monster?

Me thinks me have serious problem. Me thinks me addicted. But since when it acceptable to call addict monster? It affliction. It disease. It burden. But does it make me monster?

How can they be so callous? Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn't suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don't call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And the obnoxious red Grover—oh, what his name?—Elmo! Yes, Elmo live all day in imaginary world and no one call him monster. No, they think he cute. And Big Bird! Don't get me started on Big Bird! He unnaturally gigantic talking canary! How is that not monster? Snuffleupagus not supposed to exist—woolly mammoths extinct. His very existence monstrous. Me least like monster. Me maybe have unhealthy obsession, but me no monster.

No. Me wrong. Me too hard on self. Me no have unhealthy obsession. Me love cookies, but it no hurt anyone. Me just enthusiast. Everyone has something they like most, something they get excited about. Why not me? Me perfectly normal. Me like cookies. So what? Cookies delicious. Cookies do not make one monster. Everyone loves cookies.

Me no monster. Me OK guy. Me OK guy who eat cookies.

Who me kidding? Me know me never actually eat cookies. Me only crumble cookies in mouth, but me no swallow. Me can't swallow. Me no have no esophagus. Me no have no trachea. Me only have black fabric throat. Me not supposed to be able to even talk.

Me no eat cookies.

Me destroy cookies.

Me crush cookies.

Me mutilate cookies.

Me make it so no one get cookies.

Everyone right. Me really is cookie monster.

Enjoy, ron