Josiah Concept Ministries

My brother-in-law Matt is facing time in prison in Japan. In order to help raise money for my in-laws to visit him overseas, trial preparation, missing work, and other expenses, the collector of our family is putting up for auction an assortment of foreign coins from his collection. If this is something that you’re interested in bidding on (or if you want to help our family), please visit the auction to place a bid. If you know someone who is a collector and would be interested in making a bid, please forward the link to that person.

Any prayers will, of course, be appreciated as well. Thank you!

Check this out!! The Pope is calling for a meeting on the 16th to discuss the problem of married clergy. This is in response to the excommunication of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo in September when he installed four married bishops.

I think that it is about time that the Catholic Church relax the celibacy rule; readers of my old blog know that I have always spoke in favor of this.

We can only pray that, whatever the Pope does, that it is in God’s will and that it will bring Him glory.

A schism could arise over the issue of celibacy, however it is unlikely that it will be lead by Abp. Milingo. I pray that this impending disaster is averted by the Pope’s action.

I already guessed that I wouldn’t have the only response to Elton John’s recent derogatory comments about organized religion. This is from Metropolitan Community Church of East London:

But the Pastor of MCCEL, the Revd Jane Clarke said, “Before you give up entirely on religion, come and see how we do it here.”

This was in response to Elton John’s statement to the press that organized religion should be banned because it turns people into “hateful lemmings.”

The pastor says,

I am certain that Elton will get a better idea of that [sic] faith can do if he came to see the love of God demonstrated for all people here at our church. We would be delighted to welcome him.

Get the whole story here!

I hope that a church does welcome Elton John and that he is able to see that God loves all of His Creation. God has blessed Mr. John immensely with musical talent, and I’m sure that He set the events of Mr. John’s life specifically so that he would meet Tim Rice. Together, those two have produced beautiful music for quite a few Disney movies.

I pray, however, that Mr. John declines this particular invitation. The Metropolitan Community Churches advocate homosexuality as a normal and natural expression of love. This probably surprises readers of my previous post on this topic. Don’t misunderstand the thesis of that post: I am not suggesting that we call a duck a horse. Homosexuality is most assuredly a sin (Rom 1:26-27). Read more »

Stu Hasic, the author of Parallel Divergence and webmaster of this site that sells software to schools, wrote two articles that seem to be getting quite a bit of attention in this little corner of the blogosphere. As a Christian apologist, I thought that I would take the time to write a response to the articles in question. They are “How Hubble Killed God” and “Which is Stronger, Manfluence or Godfluence?“

Stu has hit on one of the hardest questions for the apologist to answer, because only Christians can really accept the idea. And truly compassionate Christians even have a hard time with it. I even have difficulty with it as I write it. The world, the universe, this entire mixed bag of goodies, is not about us. It is all about God.

If you don’t understand that, the rest of this response will mean nothing to you. But for those that are still with me, the next point is that God created the world that would bring the greatest glory to Him. It is reasonable to assume that this meant creating a world with free-willed creatures that can choose to accept Him, or choose to deny Him. It is His glory that we choose to follow Him.

Stu is asking about those people who have never heard of God or are born into a culture which teaches a different concept about God, and what happens to those people. I can offer a well-reasoned response, but I know that I’m not going to come along and suddenly answer the question with such certainty that everyone who reads this article will suddenly convert because I have erased their last doubt. Read more »

“I think religion has always tried to turn hatred toward gay people,” [Elton] John, who has a home in Atlanta, said in the Observer newspaper’s Music Monthly Magazine. “Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays.”“But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion,” he said. “From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organized religion doesn’t seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it’s not really compassionate.”

Homosexuality is sin. There are ways around it, but I’ve never read a way around that fact that doesn’t try to skirt the issue, soften the plain text of the Bible, or take some other artful dodge aimed at obscuring the meaning of God’s Word.

Addiction is also sin. But people who are suffering from addictions do not have the same attitude toward organized religion that Mr. John has summarized for us, an attitude shared by many within the LGBT community. Organized religion has helped so many people overcome addictions by teaching these people that there is something better than drugs or alcohol–the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

The current relationship–or lack thereof–of the church with the LGBT community is one of the largest modern failings of the church Christ has founded. I think that He would be sickened by the way Christians respond to their homosexual brothers and sisters. Christ Himself personally ministered to the deposed members of society, miring Himself deep within the sinners of His day. Many Christians today don’t really want to be bothered with that. We treat gays with disdain, contempt, and, yes, even hatred.

But this should not be so. We should not neglect the message of salvation–the Gospel entrusted to us by Christ–by not transmitting it to the LGBT community. We welcome sinners of all sorts with open arms and an understanding heart. Why is this not so with members of the LGBT community? How many of their number feel the longing in their hearts that can be filled by God alone and we neglect preaching the Good News to them because they are gay? Read more »

As the title to the post suggests, it has been a looooong time since I’ve blogged. And people scanning down the page will note that there is nothing here except this particular post! So that begs the inevitable question, “What do you mean a long time since you’ve blogged?”

Here is the answer: this is my first post on WordPress. That much is true. However, I was orignally using Blogger-in-Beta, which I haven’t updated since November 1st. I am going to switch to WordPress for good, since it has many more useful features, such as the Blog Stats. Using the stats, I can figure out who is accessing my site, how they came across it, and that will help me better market it.

Over the next few weeks, I will be transfering posts from here and pages from here. Then I will fully manage all of my apologetics work from this site.

On a down note, I was hoping to address the book Letter to Christian Nation by Sam Harris, but J.P. Holding from Tekton Apologetics Ministry has already done that here. Oh well. I need to learn to be faster. But I suppose that is the disadvantage to being a full-time Burger King manager rather than a full-time writer. I’m hoping to change all of that, but that will come one step at a time, and only if that is what God has intended for me.