12:18 AM
Matthew
Personally, I don't know much about John Hagee. I've heard a few of his sermons via KFUO on Issue's etc. but other than that, all I knew about the man was he is a staunch defender of Modern Israel. Apparently, he's gone off the deep end.His new book, In Defense of Israel, should be an interesting re...
3:23 PM
Matthew
Here is Doug Powell, once again, refuting the Rational Response Squad's (RRS) silly arguments. Doug is far from an "upstart", indeed, he's a published theologian and appologist. He just put up another video continuing and explaining his argument for a transcendental God.I'm especially fond of his renaming the Rational Response Squad, the Irrational Response Squad, or more ironically(?), the IRS! Thought I'd just hide that one out of sight. Go and visit Doug Powell's website Here. He's a musician who's toured with Tod Rundgren.Either way, for those who don't know what the RRS is, it's led by a young man named Brian Sapient, who believes that anyone who believes in God is delusional. In fact, he and his cohorts would like to have belief in God classed as a mental illness in the next Diagnostic...
6:50 PM
Matthew
This is in response to a certain ELCA Lutheran's justification for "inclusiveness"."Check out their hearts: the hearts of a loving, committed gay couple look just like the hearts of a loving, committed heterosexual couple.Something tells me that THAT is where God looks first."That is true. God looks on the heart. But what does He see there? Even in the hearts of a "loving couple", He sees idolotry, bigotry, sexual immorality, deceit, malice, adultery, stealing, vanity, covetousness... People idolize their churches because those churches make it ok for them to sin, practice bigotry against those they do not agree with, hop from bed to bed on Saturday night before coming to church on Sunday, then lie about all of it with malice aforethought to...
2:40 PM
Matthew
Of late, Pope Benedict XVI has made a couple of interesting decrees. The one on the Latin mass is interesting in and of itself, but the latest decree is one affirming St. Cyprian's Dictum "Nulla Salus Extra Ecclesiam" (No Salvation outside the church). Actually it's not so much a decree as it is a restatement of what has already been said and understood as official Roman Doctrine.Having said that, what is most interesting about this is how The Pope makes a move concerning both Easter Orthodox Churches and Protestant Churches. In Reaffirming his document, "Dominus Iesus" and over and against what the 5th Lateran Council said (and Cyprian), he calls the Eastern Orthodox Churches "defective", a point that has never been made as far as I can find. He then lumps every other church body into one...
4:04 PM
Matthew
After a month long break from High Places, I'm back and announcing the blogsite is completed for our Church's Podcast, The Lutheran Difference. Four People enter, only one leaves... No, I'm only kidding. The show is a discussion of Lutheran Theology in light of today's modern evangelicalism. It's been a blast working on this. I'll be posting here again as well as at the show's blog. When you go to the site, you'll find you can listen right from the site, download the show as an mp3, subscribe to the show in RSS and iTunes, as well as find out about future programs and find programs you missed in the archives. Surf on over to listen to the show. I have a meeting later today with the participants to plan for more programs and su...
6:23 PM
Matthew
This is the ultimate in natural religion.What do I mean by this? It has all the natural human tendencies for religion simplified to the point of elegance. Here's how it works. First of all, since "Allah" is unknowable and far away, he is a very safe distance from his followers. Second of all, iSlam gives you all the rules you need to follow to keep "Allah" happy, which keeps him unknowable and at a safe distance. Third, if something goes wrong in your life, it's because you didn't follow the rules or someone nearby you didn't follow the rules. If it's not you breaking the rules, all you need to do is find out who around you did and deal with them.By the way, there are rules on how to deal with people near you who are sinning and messing up...
11:03 AM
Matthew
This past Saturday we taped our first ever podcast. We used the pastor's laptop, a 4-channel mixer from radio shack, four microphones plus a backup, four table microphone stands, and of course windscreens for the mikes to keep from popping the p's. It went well, although pastor felt that we wandered around too much... We had some good stuff come up in the conversation, and there's a lot there to edit and make good use of.We used Audicity to record the show. I didn't used to think too much of audacity as an editor, and indeed I still don't. But audacity has a few tricks up it's sleeve. Apparently, while we were taping the show, there was some interference that caused a low level buzzing noise in the recording. My heart sank when I auditioned...
10:56 AM
Matthew
This week, the boys at the inn take on the question that Jesus asks us all: Who Do You Say That I Am? Of special note is Rod Rosenbladt talking about how the Jesus of protestant liberalism would never have been crucified. To protestant liberals, Jesus was just going around telling people to do right and be good rather than pointing out people's sins and proclaiming he was God... The would have given him the keys to the city!Click here to listen to the sh...
6:24 AM
Matthew
My mother and I didn't get along very well. I really don't want to get very deep into why, since she is dead. She's been gone since August of 1995, in fact. There is a lot that I could say about her, but most of the time it's very difficult to think of anything positive... There were some good times here and there but most of the time there was trouble.Either way, the reason I'm doing this post is because of the guilt I carry concerning my relationship with her. Yesterday my church, like many others around the world, was doing a service based around mother's day. Had I remembered what day it was I might not have gone to church. There was a children's message about mother's day, and the sermon consisted of one of our member pastor's asking people...
6:32 AM
Matthew
This is a video shot in the Philipines of a Piano Concerto Competition. The winner in the under twelve catagory was eight year old Hannah F. Hua playing Mozart's Concerto number 1 in F major. The orchestra needed some tuning, but little Hannah is amazing.What strikes me is two things. One is how incredibly far behind we are here in the US in terms of education. How so? Apparently most of the world still believes there's merit in teaching kids classical music, and studies show that studying music makes for better grades...But the second thing that strikes me is the Philipines is a high ranked destination for men from the US to go and have sex with underage kids. How did our culture get into this me...
7:56 PM
Matthew
I've been struggling. As a result, I stopped posting to this blog for the last seven days (among other things). What am I struggling with?One is an old man/new man struggle inside me concerning people hearing the Gospel. I've been working on two projects for our church, the most pressing of which is the radio program. This has involved both technical issues and programming issues. The program will, at first, be a podcast, which will be recorded in house using cheap but good equipment, which includes a mixing board, four headset microphones, a laptop, mixing software, and storage. There's still a couple of interface issues, both unforeseeable, but they can be worked out. In the programming area, I've worked up a schedule of topics, and...
7:27 AM
Matthew
This past Sunday evening, John Warwick Montgomery, author of How Do We Know There Is A God? (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1973), and Where is History Going? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969), joined Host Todd Wilken on issues etc for a discussion on "the new atheists". The number one and two arguments that today's atheists make are, respectively, that the "God of the bible is (insert ad hominem attack here)", and it would seem the age old accusation of antinomianism. The argument goes "God likes to forgive, I like to sin... let's go kill some infidels". Both arguments are nonsense, of course, but "field marshal" Montgomery makes short work of both of these and other arguments used by today's atheist.I find it to be very important to...
6:54 AM
Matthew
I have to highly recommend this book. Not only is it authoritative, highly detailed, and a good read, it's also a great reference book. The chapter on Luther is very good, although not exhaustive.Moments of revelation in this book include how the black plague had a lot to do with the innovation of the "sacrifice of the mass", and the number of churches all around Europe with many alters where the Eucharist was performed several times a day as many times as possible to appease God. Also, the author gives us quite a vivid picture of the politics of the times, including Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, who published commentaries on Paul's epistles in 1512, using language that described human works as "irrelevant" in God's salvation of humanity,...
6:27 AM
Matthew
This week, Discussion at the inn concerns Christ's view of Scripture. I just love Rod's take on John 2:22: "After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken." Now, it's not that they didn't believe the scriptures before Jesus was raised from the dead, but after he was raised, THEY REALLY BELIEVED! Also, for those who say Jesus didn't say he was God in any other gospel but John's, Jesus puts his own words on par with scripture by saying "heaven and earth may pass away, but my word will never pass away". No wonder they wanted him dead.Click here to listen to the show....
7:07 PM
Matthew
Warning! I'm about to put this peekaboo hack to good use with a blog post about some garbage I got to see for free with this new service called "joost". It was offensive stuff, so I'm warning everyone who might read this not to read it in case they might be offended. There's no pictures or anything like that, but I'm going to describe some things in detail as a warning to people not to use Joost. I recently recieved an invitation to try out this new service from a company named "Joost". It's a Peer to Peer (P2P) client you install on your computer, and video content is delivered to you to be watched when you want to, how you want to. Now, at first glance, this seems like what a lot of people are looking for in a video on demand service....
2:28 PM
Matthew
One of the things that's going on right now in modern evangelicalism is it's tendency to try and blend into the culture while maintaining the label "Christian". Put "Christian" in front of anything, just like Apple Computers puts the ubiquitous "i" in front of anything, and you have something that is odd and at odds with what it means to be Christian.Oh, doesn't all this seem so helpful? I mean, take what is the culture's, slap a Christian label on it and you get... This. You Can't make this stuff up, folks. On the one hand, I can understand what they are trying to do with stuff like this. They want to be able to have their own culture that is free of various corruptions, foul language, smutty ads, borderline unethical ideas, but this...
5:42 PM
Matthew
First in a series of silly errors running around in modern Christianity. First up?21 Days to a Complaint-Free Life: No complaint bracelets. The website exclaims (with a picture of Oprah Winfrey) "The complaint bracelet has changed the lives of millions of people by helping them to break their addiction of complaining. Over 1 Million people across the world are wearing these complaint-free bracelets and they have been featured on OPRAH, The Today Show and in People magazine. To get your free no-complaint bracelet and to learn more about them please enter your email address below to continue." Click here to watch video from MSNBC.com. Rev. Will Bowen of Christ Church Unity came up with the idea for this while taking a shower. The bracelet...
4:27 PM
Matthew
I just implemented an awesome hack on my blogsite. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with trying to hack people's computers. What it does is allows me to make huge posts, but have after a paragraph or two a "read more" link that opens up the rest of the post. Click read more... to read more!I found the hack on this website name Hackosphere. It turns out, as long as you make sure you locate the exact places to put the new code and copy and paste, you wont break your template. I've wanted this functionality for a while but bloogle didn't add it to the recent beta upgrade. Now, anyone can have it. Keep in mind, this particular hack only works for the new blogger. There are hacks for the old blogger. I'm putting a permanant link in my sideb...
8:59 PM
Matthew
I just read on the associated press that Johnny Hart, creator of B.C., died of a stroke on Saturday at age 76. He was at work at his drawing table and apparently suffered a stroke. He died doing what God called him to do.At the right I put up a copy of one of his easter sunday comics from a few years back. His simple way of putting things was always refreshing. I know I will miss his wit and humor, and his family will be in my prayers.Rest in Christ Johnny. Till we meet on God's golden sho...
4:03 PM
Matthew
Is What We Know of Jesus Wrong?This week, Mike Horton interviews Ben Witherington, author of What Have They Done with Jesus: Beyond Strange Theories & Bad History - Why We Can Trust the Bible. Recent books by Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), Bart Ehrman (Misquoting Jesus), John Shelby Spong (The Sins of Scripture), as well as the entire issue of the "Jesus Tomb" supposedly have many Christians questioning the particulars of the faith, but the truth is always stranger and more difficult to accept than conspiracy theories and modern day myths. Click here to listen to this special Easter Program that affirms Jesus is Risen! He is risen inde...
7:36 PM
Matthew
In Luther's day, in the Augustinian monestary, when one of the monks was on his death bed, it wasn't uncommon for them to be thinking in terms of what they had done in life and whether they had done enough good works to make the cut in God's eyes. This is when someone would hold a cross or crucifix before the dying man, and then they would finally remember where their salvation lies. In the end, every Christian has only the cross of Christ to look to. Even Roman Catholic Christians, who when their head hits the pillow at night are thanking God that He sent His son to die for their sins. Today's evangelicals live by an odd paradox. They have such a shallow view of sin and grace that it's a wonder they cling to any faith whatsoever. I'm not trying...
11:52 AM
Matthew
It's taken a bit of trial and error to find a host for my churches podcasts that's reliable, but I think I've found one. Switchpod actually offers 200 megs of hosting for free with real urls for each file.Click here to listen to the podcast and tell me if it worked and what the quality was like.This file is a larger higher quality version of the above fi...
10:40 AM
Matthew
O crucified Jesus, Son of the Father, concieved by the Holy Spirit, Born of the Virgin Mary, eternal Word of God,we worship you.O crucified Jesus, holy temple of God, dwelling place of the Most High, gate of heaven, burning flame of love,we worship you.O crucified Jesus, ruler of every heart, in you are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, in you dwells all the fullness of the Godhead,we worship you.Jesus, lamb of God,have mercy on us,Jesus, bearer of our sins,have mercy on us,Jesus, redeemer of the world,grant us peace.Almight God, look with mercy on your family for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and to be given over to the hands of sinners and to suffer death on the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and...
6:20 AM
Matthew
Lazarus(John 11:1-44)There’s so much going through my mind right now. What is death? What is Life? Who can know how to answer these questions? O Jesus, you should know. You called me out from the grave. Now, we’ll have to prepare a grave for you.Who am I? I am Lazarus of… Bethany. Yes, I’m the same Lazarus, the onethat that man up on that cross raised from the dead. Why is he up there if he can raisepeople from the dead? That’s a good question. The reason he’s up there… Is because of me. About two weeks ago when I was still back in Bethany, I started to feel sick. It wasn’t like an ordinary sickness, like the kind that makes you feel run down but isn’t so bad that you can’t keep working and doing your normal daily routine. No, this was different....
4:23 AM
Matthew
Pastor Tom Baker has a daily radio show at KFUO called Law and Gospel. He has many sayings he loves to use, but perhaps the most insightful (inciteful?) statement he makes is "theology is the art of making distinctions". In a post just three spots down from this one, I wrote a piece about The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr. and his statements about genetic reasons for homosexuality and curing it if such a thing were possible. That's fine. He can make his distinctions if he wants to, although there are a lot of people who disagree with the distinctions he makes.But that's not what this post is about. I have some great teachers, not the least of which is the Holy Spirit, but both Pastor Tom and Pastor Gary (of Risen Savior Lutheran Church and School...
8:09 AM
Matthew
Female Judge in Frankfurt Germany says Koran Verse allows Husband to beat Wife.In an absolutely bizzarr ruling, a divorce Judge in Frankfurt German quoted a Koran Verse that is often interpretted to mean a man can beat his wife if she is "unchaste".The woman wanted a "quickie" divorce from her husband because he hit her and threatened to kill her. The judge ruled that being "castigated" by a husband was not sufficient grounds for a divorce.It's seems to me that the judge missed the point. What we have here is a man threatening to kill his wife... That's murder folks. The west needs to wake up and rethink this stupid notion that Islam is a religion of peace. Case in point...There's more youtube video of this nature than anyone can realize. If Sharia law were to come to the United States, and...
7:01 AM
Matthew
Psalm 91He will cover you with his feathers,and under his wings you will find refuge;his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.You will not fear the terror of night,nor the arrow that flies by day,nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,nor the plague that destroys at midday. (4-6) This Psalm is often seen as a messianic Psalm, for two reasons. One is because it seems to point to someone other than your average Israelite (including David), and the other because it includes a passage that Satan used to tempt Jesus. Satan had taken Jesus to the top of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: " ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands,...
4:49 PM
Matthew
The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Souther Baptist Theological Seminary, has created a furor by publishing and article entitled, "Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?" Click here to read his article.The furor comes over his admission that there could be a genetic cause for homosexuality and if so, could there be something done about it. Gays, of course, are up in arms over this because they still mix a strange worldview wherein they want free will but at the same time want to uphold that free will by saying they don't have free will (hence the genetic arguments).But that's not the issue I'm going to pick on. In a news article written by David Crary for the Associated Press, he reports that...
6:53 PM
Matthew
This week the boys at the Inn are joined by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, to discuss how to do outreach without it being "sellout" reach. In fact, Driscoll's point is that people in America have been so oversold on religion that they are done with it. Moreover, most of the time the niche marketing tactics used by today's church is seen to be, for the most part, insulting to people's intelligence.I tend to agree there. I know from personal experience that it's very difficult to go to a church where you are talked down to by people who don't know enough about a given subject to fill a gnat's naval. And it's even worse when you are being talked down to on a subject (like say, the Bible) and the person talking down to you...
8:21 AM
Matthew
But I thought this was pretty neat. I wish I'd had something like this when I was a kid. He's playing a video game called "dance dance revolution", which is played on a special control pad that you dance on. Daddy says to his son, "That's amazing", and the kid calls out to mom to come and look. It is amazi...
7:30 AM
Matthew
What is the point of Faith? The reason I ask the question is because there seems to be some growing confusion as to what faith is. Christians understand (at least Lutheran Christians do) that their faith is based on extra gnose, or knowledge that is outside of us. That knowledge comes from God in His word and is demonstrated in real human history by His acts and His intrusion into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. This Christ lived a life of perfect obedience to God's will, suffered on a real wooden cross, shed real RH typable blood, and died a real, true death. He was raised from the dead, really and truly, in the flesh, was touched by real people, ate real fish in front of his disciples, and breathed real breath on them. It's all...
9:26 PM
Matthew
The Pearl of Christian Comfort was written in the sixteenth century by a Dutch reformed pastor named Petrus Dathenus. The book consists of a series of letters written between himself and an aristocratic lady who was afraid for her soul.This is a short, sweet, masterful presentation of Law and Gospel. The book itself only costs 9.50 from Amazon.com, and I highly recommend it. Dathenus rightly places the law in it's accusitory position and shows us how our sin is so great that we have no hope of ever living up to that standard and allows us along with the woman to whom he is writing to look to Jesus as our Lord and Savior. He shows how the Law is fulfilled In Jesus Christ to it's fullest.What's particularly nice is how he responds to at first...
8:20 AM
Matthew
Tonight on Issues Ect. Tod Wilken talks to Dr. Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia, Canada about the new Documentary called "the Jesus Tomb". This program begins live on KFUO.org at 10 PM EST and is live for two hours. You can call the show with questions, just talk to Jeff and tell him Matt sent you."The Jesus Tomb" is a film made by film maker Schimca Jacobovici with hollywood director James Cameron (Titanic, Terminator). The claim that is made is that a tomb found in Jerusalem contained the remains of not only Jesus, but Mary Magdalene, another Mary, and a son named Judah. The claim is based on "statistical analysis" that shows that the odds are 1 in 600 that these names would be found in the same tomb and supposedly means...
8:03 AM
Matthew
This week on the Whitehorse, Mike Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, Rod Rosenbladt and Ken Jones take discuss "Finding truth in a world of Spin". Justice? How do we spin a word like that in today's culture? Sin? Grace? Do Christians understand what these words really mean with regards to God's word? Holiness? Does that have anything to do with man, or does it have everything to do with God? Rod Rosenbladt says that today's evangelical church is a "comfortable materialism". He believes that the materialism of our culture makes us blind to being frightened by death and a judgement by a just and holy God.Click here to listen to the show....
the big test
Since someone, somewhere, has seen fit to deprive the world of Issues etc and take a huge bite out of confessional Lutheranism at the same time, I will not take up the mantle of working to see that those who did it answer for their actions.
