I facilitate The Great Adventure Bible Timeline study at my parish on Sunday afternoons. This past Sunday, we read and discussed 1 and 2 Maccabees. Part of the questions and discussion centered around 2 Maccabees 12:39-46, which records Judas Maccabeus and his compatriots praying for the deceased. I...

“But no, rather, I also count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them to be dung, so that I may win Christ and be found in Him; not having my own righteousness, which is of the Law, but...

This is the final section from Straight Up regarding The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh Not listening: I have learned a lot from listening to even the harshest of comments this past week. I learned that there is debate about the term Arab Christians use for Jesus of which I was not aware. I l...

Why can Rush Limbaugh talk for hours every day on the radio and no one can call up their local station and demand a chance to respond? Because Reagan's thugs removed an excellent policy that had insured freedom of speech and had prevented companies like GE from buying tones of media outlets and turn...

Here's the next installment from Straight Up blog of The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh (Part 4): Distortion: Straw man argumentation is the practice of caricaturing the argument of your opponent and then dismissing the distortion. It would be humorous if it were not so sad to see the way peo...

This is part 3 of the excerpts I've been posting this week from Straight Up Blog on The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh Fear: The gift of discernment used in the flesh promotes fear. “God has not given us a spirit of fear,� (1Timothy 1:7). To fear anything or anyone other than the Lord is ...

On March 3, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., took the Fairness Doctrine and its often overlooked potential threat to Christian radio to the Senate floor. The Oklahoma senator gave a lengthy floor speech and mentioned that Sen. Jim DeMint's effort to force an up-or-down vote on the Fairness Doctrine issue, ...

We had close to 50 attendees at the "Evangelism, Outreach, and Assimilation Seminar" on Saturday. It was sponsored by the Confessional Lutherans for Christ's Commission (CLCC) and the presenter was Pastor Dan Freeman of Chehalis, WA. Gene White, the CLCC treasurer, and his wife Deanna, were there, t...

One of our main interpretive principles in the church of Christ is to speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where it is silent. I think that is a wonderful concept to try to attain. I respect our heritage and the overarching respect for scripture that our forefathers have brought to the table. ...

We're just a few weeks from the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war -- but the end is now clearly in sight. President Obama, earlier today: Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.Even better, as Obama told U.S. troops: "mission [kinda] accomplished."...