Super True Stories (satire) on John Calvin

I saw this video on a blog I follow, and I thought it was really funny, lol funny in fact. It's a little over 5 minutes long.

After pulling up the video link on YouTube I found the author's blog -- so here's the link to the whole article that goes with the video.

Don't we ALL need a Savior ?

I know, I haven't posted a message here in several months. I've actually made notes for myself with at least a couple of web articles to blog about, but they're the sort of article that would take a bit of time to say what I want to say. (i.e. research, looking up scripture, etc.) Some blog posts can take a couple of hours or so to put together, and if I have something else I'm working on or reading I'll just put it on my 'to blog' list.

In addition, I've started another blog , though I haven't posted a lot on there, either. I started that blog because I thought it might be a better place to put the things of a more political nature. In some respects they both deal with truth vs lies, so in that respect it relates to spiritual warfare and the lines may get a bit blurry sometimes.

However, I was just reading this article titled Baptist leader says Weiner needs Jesus . And as I was reading the article, I read a line that said: There’s also some shock value in Mohler’s statement, since a number of Americans are uncomfortable with the idea of a Christian leader telling a Jewish person to follow Jesus. And I remembered, that used to be one of my 'stumbling blocks' to becoming a believer! I had (and have) some Jewish friends, and it was sort of understood that it was somehow impossible for them to be Christians, too.

I have since become a Christian believer, and also realize that when one says they're Jewish it frequently refers to their ethnic background rather than a belief in Judaism, the religion. I think it would be similar to being called a Hebrew 2000 years ago, though I'm not sure of all of the distinctions.

In addition, I have to admit that I don't follow the news closely enough that I'd even heard of the whole brouhaha with Rep. Weiner until someone asked my opinion and I had to confess I had no idea what he was talking about. I now know enough of the story that I don't need any more details. However, on the topic of salvation and the need to be 'born again', I have a definite opinion. We all need a Savior! He (Jesus) was what I was searching for, for many years, but I didn't know it then.

Since I happen to have a printed copy of the Jewish New Testament (translation by David H. Stern), I'll end with this bit of scripture: For I am not ashamed of the Good News, since it is God's powerful means of bringing salvation to everyone who keeps on trusting, to the Jew especially, but equally to the Gentile. For in it is revealed how God makes people righteous in his sight; and from the beginning to end it is through trust -- as the Tanakh puts it, But the person who is righteous will live his life by trust. Romans 1:16-17.

EFT for War Veterans

Someone left a comment on one of the articles on this blog that contained a link to a very good article titled Exactly How Does EFT work? That article contained a link to a Google video that I wanted to embed here, it's really good.

It lasts about 20 minutes and is titled EFT for War Veterans. I have the full-length DVD Operation Emotional Freedom that I haven't yet reviewed on here (it's not formatted for a non-wide-screen t.v. so I have to watch it again on my pc), so this video gives a good snapshot.

A different perspective on the devil

I saw a link to an e-book called Calvinism: A Closer Look by Daniel Gracely on another blog, a few weeks back. I've been working my way through it a bit at a time, and today I'm reading chapter 9. It gives some interesting information about the book of Job, and he's discussing some things about the nature of the devil that are also very interesting. One thing it mentions is

The book of Job is believed by most scholars to be the oldest book of the Bible.

Apparently I don't read many scholarly books, because I don't think I'd seen that before. I've really enjoyed what I've read so far in the previous chapters and I've no doubt I'll feel the same through the rest of the book which appears to be a total of 21 chapters. Here's an important paragraph from the 9th chapter I'm reading:

The position we have been advancing in this book is that God is a free will Person, and that He has made other free will persons. We also want to press forward the idea that all free will persons whom God has made, both angelic and human, have retained their free will. In fact, humans have retained it despite the Satanic activity which has affected human history, and also despite the unlawful acquiring by Adam of the knowledge of good and evil (a knowledge we inherit in seed through the male, Adamic line). In short, we believe the book of Job will show that God does not choose the choices of other persons.

Following are a few more sentences from the article, which certainly give food for thought.

For his own part Job never mentions Satan in any of his conversations, and he seems unaware of the role the Devil played in bringing about his ruin.

The Devil does not appear to be double-minded, however. By being single-mindedly set against God, Satan is all the more effective because he never gives his opposition—God and the believer—the benefit of the doubt. He always assumes the worst about God and us, and this assumption informs his protest.

Perhaps this explains why the Enemy presumed to believe the worst about Jesus, and why the demonic world was astonished when they learned that Christ had risen from the dead. In fact, the Bible tells us that had the demonic world known about Jesus’ resurrection they would not have crucified Him.

Thus, according to the Bible, God took all of Job’s possessions, including Job’s children, and put them into Satan’s power. God did this without directing Satan toward any specific end. God is not the causal agent for any of the disasters brought against Job, even though God speaks in an idiomatic way as though He were responsible for Job’s ruin by having removed His divine protection.

But we must allow God to describe Himself, not some theological system that differs from the Bible. As a friend of mine has pointed out, when Christians allow the latter, they end up going to church and worshiping theology (i.e., so called) rather than the God of the Bible. The point here is that Job teaches us that God is not sovereign in everything, but rather sovereign over everything. To be sovereign in everything would mean God foreordains ‘whatsoever comes to pass.’ To be sovereign over everything means God will ultimately judge how others have been sovereign in their own sphere of decisions.

There's a lot more there, absolutely worth reading.

Search engines and advertising

In order to increase visitors to my site, I've done some advertising with Google Adwords and Yahoo. Up to this point, my site comes up with a pretty good rank for certain search terms but I figured every little bit helps with only a few hits a day.

However, since Yahoo and Microsoft have some sort of sharing arrangement I've been getting notices from Yahoo that I have to move my campaign over to Bing. I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft but I thought I'd look into the logistics of moving my campaign. (Nor am I a big fan of Google, for that matter, though they are hosting this blog my issues are mostly with Adwords). But, the first thing I saw when I clicked on the link for migration information was a message that it was strongly suggested that I install some software called 'Silverlight'. I figured I'd play the game for a moment or 2 to see what happened, since I'm running Linux and/or OpenSolaris (OpenIndiana) which is obviously not going to run a Microsoft application that will most likely want a registered version of Windows installed.

When I clicked on install, it took me to a page to download a Linux version called 'Moonlight'. Before I opted to install I decided to do some research. I found some very interesting information. Here are some links:

Reject moonlight now
Moonlight is a lead pony
Shining some light on Microsoft's Moonlight covenant

So in the end, I've decided to pass.

What Love Is This? book comments

I finished reading the book What Love Is This by Dave Hunt about 2-3 months ago. I thought it might be repetitive after reading George Bryson's The Dark Side of Calvinism, but that wasn't the case. I got a lot out of the book, and at 533 pages it takes a bit of time to get through it all. I haven't been in a hurry to write this blog post, because of the time it took to decide which quotes to use; since there were so many good ones to choose from. In addition I've had to wrestle with the question of whether a 'little leaven' in my beliefs about God and what I was being taught about God was acceptable or not. I'm still working on that, but this book helped me gain clarity on some of those issues.

The book starts off with some of the history of Calvinism, as well as it's basis under the teachings of Augustine and Augustine's ties to the Roman Catholic church. Apparently Calvin (and Luther) and other 'protestants' were against some of the R.C. church doctrine, but they held to other (unbliblical) doctrines, such as infant baptism. It also highlights some of the similarities and differences between Calvin and other Reformers, such as Luther. I'd already read a good deal about how Augustine's writings had greatly shaped Calvin's theology in Bryson's book; what was new and rather disturbing to learn about in this book were some of the details about Calvin's propensity to use violence and the power of the (civil / state) government to silence dissent.

Calvin followed his mentor Augustine in enforcing church attendance and participation in the sacraments by threats (and worse) against the citizens of Geneva. ... Sadly, Calvin put into effect in Geneva the very principles of punishment, coercion, and death that Augustine advocated and that the Roman Catholic Church followed consistently for centuries. (pg. 52-53)

One of the major doctrines of Calvinism is that of 'sovereign grace', which isn't actually part of the TULIP acronym per se, but it underpins much of the structure of Calvinism and ties in with the U (unconditional election) and moreso with the I (irresistable grace). I already wrote a bit about that topic in my article about whether the devil needs God's permission to attack a believer? and will probably write more about it, as I gain more clarity on the topic. Here are some quotes that I liked from the book that I want to share here:

And the solution is so simple: acknowledge that God sovereignly gave to man a genuine power of choice, and God is exonerated and honored. ... Irresistable grace is a human invention imposed upon the Bible. (pg. 396)

So God could cause anyone and everyone to believe the gospel and irresistibly draw them to heaven -- but He only does this for a select number? This is Calvinism -- whether one calls it moderate or extreme! It has been imposed upon the Bible in violation of the entire tenor of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It is a libel upon the character of God, a denial of the nature of love, and an offense to the conscience which God has placed in the heart of every man. (pg. 423)

Here is an interesting quote on the topic of infant baptism, and Calvin's belief that it was sufficient to effect forgiveness of sins and grant one entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven:

Had he not maintained this Roman Catholic false doctrine, Calvin would have had to resubmit to rebaptism, which was repugnant to him. He derided the Anabaptists for opposing infant baptism. Their valid, biblical reason -- that an infant has not believed in Christ -- was scorned by Calvin, and his wrath and that of the other Reformers came upon the Anabaptists. These true evangelicals were persecuted and martyred by both Catholics and Protestants for being baptized by immersion after they were saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. (pg. 429)

The section on the 'P'erseverance of the saints was rather short at only about 8 pages, I wish there had been more but perhaps there isn't as much written material about it available. However, from what I've gathered it leads to a sort of 'works' mentality. Salvation by works is of course in contradiction to the truth about grace and free gifts.

How does the Calvinist know he is one of the elect who have been predestined? His performance plays a large part in helping him to know whether or not he is among that select group. (pg 481)

On page 482 there is a quote by Piper and his staff having written "[W]e must also own up to the fact that our final salvation is made contingent upon the subsequent obedience which comes from faith." The theme of 'obedience' (to God) seems to be prevalent in Evangelical circles. In some respects that's not a bad thing -- it can help steer you out of danger or into wonderful blessings -- but it can and has become a tool of tyranny and manipulation in some cases. I think the difference is whether one is being led by the Holy Spirit or the doctrines of men.

I know I'll want to read this book again, and will certainly use it for reference in the future. I think it's very much worth reading.

eft-sw site offline on Sunday June 27 for a short period of time.

I just wanted to advise that I plan to have the eft-sw website offline for between 30 and 60 minutes on Sunday June 27th, sometime between the hours of 3-7pm in the U.S. Pacific time zone, in order to do some software updates. I should have some more real blog articles in the next couple of weeks.

I posted this originally using Drivel blog editor, and discovered it doesn't allow one to add a headline to the message.

Changing Website theme

I finally finished reading the book by Dave Hunt What Love is This? It was very good, and I'll write more about that soon I hope. I am also almost done reading Darin Hufford's book The Misunderstood God. That is also a very good book. I got them both for Christmas.

However, I decided that it was time to update the theme for my Drupal website. I configured Apache webserver for my PC with a couple of test site virtual hosts so I could play with some things without breaking my current set-up. Figuring out how to set up the virtual hosts was a project itself! And last week I discovered that a 'bargain' computer isn't always a bargain a few months down the road. I had to replace the hard drive, and re-install software and all of that.

Now I'm finally ready to play with some new themes, and I think I've decided on one in particular. I'll have it on the website by the end of the weekend, hopefully. Or not more than another week... again hopefully. I thought I'd share some screenshots of the top 3 contenders:


The one just above is called Marinelli. It's nice but it would have too many things I'd have to figure out how to fix.


This one is called Sky. It's a close second, though it would need me to figure out some color options. Next is the one I think I'm going to go with, it's called Waffles; though I'm not completely thrilled with the orange headers in some of the boxes. I'll also replace the header with an image that doesn't have the girl in the picture. Since I still have to fix some things, such as placement of the privacy policy, etc. there's a possibility that I'll go with Sky. It depends on whether what I want to do actually works, or not. If you have an opinion, please share!

Video about Harry Potter

I recently heard about this ministry and while reading an article, it had a link to a video about Harry Potter. I posted an article or 2 about that topic a couple of years ago. It's a short video, mostly information that shows some of the stuff in Harry Potter is very much authentic when it comes to the spiritually dark topic of witchcraft, and not just mostly harmless fiction, as some would maintain.

More recently, I've been watching the 'Celebrity Apprentice' show on tv on Sunday evenings; except on Easter / Resurrection Sunday when they featured some new attraction based on Harry Potter. I was going to, but didn't, research to see if there were any blog posts about the timing of that show (promoting witchcraft on Easter...)

Testing a new blogging client

I'm testing a new blogging client that I just discovered using a package search for 'blog', it's called gscribble.

A few weeks ago someone in Texas called me asking about EFT and our Christian faith. We chatted for a few minutes, and she asked how I learned EFT. (I have to put some of that information on the website, too) Then since my new-ish computer also has a DVD writer, I told her that I'm allowed to make up to 100 copies of the EFT DVD's to give to others, though I'd never made DVD copies before making that offer. I had burned CD's on the computer with no problem.

After an initial bad start creating a couple unusable DVD's, I did some research online, and discovered cdrtools / cdrecord; which has to be compiled on one's system. Then you have to remove the 'old' cdrecord program and link a file called cdrecord to the newly installed program. That required learning how to create links and which files needed to be removed and linked, etc. which was another research project. So after all of that, I did manage to get about 4 or 5 of the 7 DVD's for The EFT Course (the 'basic course' as it were) to burn successfully and then semi-successfully for the remaining ones. It will be a while before I make that offer again, and then only after I've tested that things are working right, first!

After that my website had several modules and a Drupal security update to install, and I always do that on my home computer first before I do it on the 'live' web site. While I was at it, I decided to change the theme color to one called 'deep blue', in time for spring-time and Easter. After Easter I'll possibly switch to another theme, but that won't be for a little while, In the meantime I've just finished fixing some pictures / images to update some of the layout of the site. If anyone finds something that doesn't look right, feel free to send me a message.

Lastly, in addition to the above I've also been listening to a lot of the audio mp3's from Andrew Wommack Ministries, and since January I've been reading a large book by Dave Hunt called What Love is This? Calvinism's Misrepresentation of God (3rd Edition) I'll blog about that when I'm done reading it. It's very good.