Pastor's Blog

I love sports, especially basketball. But I utterly despise the arrogance that so many college and (especially) professional athletes display both on and off the court. So it was a real delight to get to read this about Kevin Durant.

Although this video suggests there are errors and contradictions in the Bible, it gives a good rebuttal of the teaching of the Qu'ran that the liberal media hasn't a clue about.

How should a Christian counsel and help someone who is here illegally? This is a good question and a very timely one, too. The Lord mentions immigrants in quite a number of passages. In Exodus 22:21, for instance, he says, “You shall not wrong a sojourner [i.e., an immigrant] or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” The Lord, then, does not allow us to take advantage of the vulnerability of immigrants. And I must say that this is true of both those who are here legally as well as those who are here illegally. We may not steal from them, harm them, or in any way abuse them. In addition to this, their disadvantaged position, along with widows and orphans, is recognized in Scripture as deserving compassion in the gleaning laws of the OT. You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge, but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefor...

There's a good discussion over at PJTV between Stephen Green, Scott Ott, and Bill Whittle about the move to do away with the electoral college .

Check out this video. A storekeeper shares the Lord with a would-be robber and talks him out of his dastardly deed. Turns out the man had never robbed anyone before but was facing eviction and needed $300 for rent to keep his family in a home. Thank God for this bold and faithful Christian in the work place.

One of the things that was so impressive about New York was the sheer size of the city, not only in terms of the number of people, but also the height of the buildings. We felt very small standing on the street next to them. The first picture shown here was taken while we were standing in line waiting to buy tickets to see West Side Story . I don't remember now what building this is, but its height is not at all exceptional for Manhattan. The second picture is of a building which is exceptional by anyone's standards. It's the Empire State Building, now the tallest building in NYC. There is an observation deck on the 86th floor from which one can get a truly amazing view of the city. The picture was taken from the sidwalk across the street. Click on the photos to enlarge.

In Matthew 5:42, Jesus says, “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” Does this mean we should give to everyone? What about people are poor because they are lazy? Whenever we talk about the poor, we have to distinguish between those who are deserving of help and those who are not. This is not a very politically correct way to frame the discussion, but it is biblically correct. When Jesus, “Give to the one who begs from you,” he’s assuming the begging is coming from the deserving poor. Not everyone who is poor is deserving of help. Those who are deserving of help are those who are poor through no fault of their own. It’s not that they have been lazy or irresponsible. It’s that they have suffered a set back that has either temporarily or perhaps even permanently made them incapable of adequately providing for themselves—widows and their minor children, for instance; also those who suffer from a mental or physical disability. These are...

From Newsmax... The mushrooming U.S. government debt burden may cause a new financial crisis by spurring a sharp rise in interest rates, warns Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Countries such as Greece already have seen such crises, as their debt buildups sent interest rates soaring and drove away international bond investors. The CBO projects that U.S. federal government debt will reach 62 percent of GDP by Sept. 30, up from 36 percent just three years earlier. Only once before has that figure surpassed 50 percent, during and just after World War II. The debt, of course, is created by massive budget deficits, with the White House projecting a gap of $1.47 trillion this year. Elmendorf sees two possible outcomes for our current predicament – one mild, one harsh. (Read more here .)

Please explain Luke 16:18. Is divorce and remarriage always wrong? The verse reads, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery." The first thing we need to note here is that Jesus is speaking to men, and is considering the question from the perspective of a man’s role in the divorce and remarriage. He says in the first place, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.” Taken by itself, and at a glance, this passage seems to imply an absolute prohibition of remarriage in any and all circumstances of divorce. But I think it’s better to understand Jesus as implying a very specific motive for the divorce, a motive which does not meet biblical standards of justification. When he says, “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another,” he is addressing the issue of a man who has found another woman he would rather be married to, and so he divorces his firs...

We were travel-worn and weary and hadn't been able to change our clothes for nearly 48 hours (our luggage didn't take the same flight we did), but we enjoyed our night out on the town. This pic, taken at the southern end of Times Square, was taken just after we saw West Side Story at The Palace Theatre. Wouldn't you know, as we were walking to this famous intersection we saw some fellow Kansasans right in front of us, a mother and her teenage son. The boy's t-shirt tipped us off that they were from Kansas. We learned that they live in Wichita and were in NYC to visit family.