Thursday, January 29, 2009

sticking my neck out

Washington D.C. based CAIR has launched a new $60,000 campaign throughout America that claims Jesus was a Muslim. The campaign says “ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.”



Nothing can be further from the truth. Islam is not the religion of Christ. Christ is the risen Son of God who is one with the Father. According to Jesus, Moses and Abraham looked forward to his coming as the Savior of the World. Muhammad denied that Jesus is divine and affirmed that you can be saved apart from the atonement of Christ. This is not the Way of Jesus. Jesus said, "I am the way … no one comes to the Father except by me."



CAIR’S Terrorist links




CAIR is now engaged in trying to proselytize by distorting the truth. This is not surprising. In 2005 three CAIR leaders in Texas were convicted on terror charges. Eleven more leaders have been part of terror investigations. CAIR was also named a co-conspirator in a scheme to get $12 million to Hamas terrorists. Considered a member of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR is part of the same jihadist movement responsible for al-Qaida, Hamas and other terrorist groups.




Omar Ahmad, founder of CAIR, is quoted as saying during a 1998 meeting with Muslims at an event in California, “Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”



Muhammad VS. Jesus Christ



To say that the differences between religions are insignificant betrays a profound lack of knowledge of the content of the two religious systems. For example, let’s compare Muhammad and his followers with the life and teachings of Jesus and His followers.

A very cursory overview reveals that Jesus and Muhammad are very different. They taught and lived mutually exclusive systems of belief, both of which cannot be true.


Jesus said, “Believe and live!”
Muhammad said, “Convert or die!”
Christ’s disciples were killed for their faith.
Muhammad’s disciples killed for theirs.
Muhammad ordered the Jews to be killed.
Christ said that the gospel should be preached “to the Jew first.”
Muhammad taught the value of having women in heaven is in their sexuality.
Jesus taught that sexuality is reserved for marriage in this world only.
Muhammad was a slave owner.
Jesus made himself a humble servant and washed his disciple’s feet.
Muhammad and had twenty-three different women, either as wives or concubines, one of whom he married when she was only nine.
Christ never married because He came to the world as the spiritual head and bridegroom of His spiritual bride, the Church.
Muhammad claimed that there is only one God, Allah.
Christ claimed that He was God.
Muhammad did no miracles.
Christ demonstrated his divinity by his sinless life, miracles, and resurrection.
Muhammad was the prophet of war.
Christ is called the Prince of Peace.
Muhammad preached, “Death to the infidels!”
Christ prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Christianity proclaims that God sent His Son to die for you that you may live forever in Heaven.
Islam teaches that Allah wants you to send your son to kill himself and others for Allah.
Muhammad’s tomb is occupied.
Christ's tomb is empty.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

reverence in the house of the LORD

"We will go into his tabernacle, and fall low on our knees before his footstool" (Psalm 132:7). "...that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth" (Philippians 2:10).
how do we express our humility, reverence, honor, love and respect to the King of kings? Some things (like kneeling) should never go out of style.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Timothy and Titus

I understand they named a chapel for them at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis:)
Lessons of leadrship from these two saints:
--we have nothing to stand on without the grace, mercy and peace of God our Father;
--the gift of God that can be stirred into flame is power, love and a sound mind;
--with the strength that comes from God we can bear our share of hardship for the Gospel;
--the church of the living God is the pillar and ground of the truth;
--obdience and humility are the hallmarks of Jesus' followers and true leaders.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

true repentance

Sanctity of Life Sunday message from Metropolitan JONAH:
"Dearly Beloved in Christ: The Lord Jesus Christ emerged from the waters of Baptism, and heard the Word of the Father: "You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The Lord's word to each and every human being, to each and every being which bears the image and can actualize the likeness of God, is the same: You are my beloved. It is the very Word of God who, by His incarnation and assumption of our whole life and our whole condition, affirms and blesses the ultimate value of every human person--and indeed of creation as a whole. He filled it with His own being, uniting us to Himself, making us His own Body, transfiguring and deifying our lives, and raising us up to God our Father. He affirms and fulfills us, not simply as individuals seeking happiness, but rather as persons with an infinite capacity to love and be loved, and thus fulfills us through His own divine personhood in communion. Our life as human beings is not given to us to live autonomously and independently. This, however, is the great temptation: to deny our personhood, by the depersonalization of those around us, seeing them only as objects that are useful and give us pleasure, or are obstacles to be removed or overcome. This is the essence of our fallenness, our brokenness. With this comes the denial of God, and loss of spiritual consciousness. It has resulted in profound alienation and loneliness, a society plummeting into the abyss of nihilism and despair. There can be no sanctity of life when nothing is sacred, nothing is holy. Nor can there be any respect for persons in a society that accepts only autonomous individualism: there can be no love, only selfish gratification. This, of course, is delusion. We are mutually interdependent. First as Christians, but even more so, as human beings, we must repent and turn to God and one another, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. Only this will heal the soul. Only by confronting our bitterness and resentment, and finding forgiveness for those who have hurt us, can we be free from the rage that binds us in despair. Repentance is not about beating ourselves up for our errors and feeling guilty; that is a sin in and of itself! Guilt keeps us entombed in self-pity. All sin is some form of self-centeredness, selfishness.
Repentance is the transformation of our minds and hearts as we turn away from our sin, and turn to God, and to one another. Repentance means to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean to justify someone's sin against us. When we resent and hold a grudge, we objectify the person who hurt us according to their action, and erect a barrier between us and them. And, we continue to beat ourselves up with their sin. To forgive means to overcome that barrier, and see that there is a person who, just like us, is hurt and broken, and to overlook the sin and embrace him or her in love. When we live in a state of repentance and reconciliation, we live in a communion of love, and overcome all the barriers that prevented us from fulfilling our own personhood... We have to extend a hand to those suffering from their sins, whatever they are. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven, save the one we refuse to accept forgiveness for. Abortion not only destroys the life of the infant; it rips the soul out of the mother (and the father!). It becomes a sin for which a woman torments herself for years, sinking deeper into despair and self-condemnation and self-hatred. But there is forgiveness, if only she will ask. We must seek out and embrace the veterans who have seen such horrors, and committed them. They need to be able to repent and accept forgiveness, so that their souls, their memories, and their lives, might be healed. Most of all, we must restore the family: not just the nuclear family, but the multi-generational family which lives together, supports one another, and teaches each one what it means to be loved and to be a person. It teaches what forgiveness and reconciliation are. And it embraces and consoles the prodigals who have fallen. In this, the real sanctity of life is revealed, from pregnancy to old age. And in the multi-generational family each person finds value. This is the most important thing that we can possibly do. The Blessed Mother Teresa said that the greatest poverty of the industrialized world is loneliness. Let us reach out to those isolated, alienated, alone, and in despair, finding in them someone most worthy of love; and in turn, we will find in ourselves that same love and value, and know indeed that God speaks to us in the depths of our souls, You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased. With love in Christ, Metropolitan +JONAH

Friday, January 23, 2009

maximum determination

The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination. (Pope John Paul II)

Thursday, January 22, 2009

brighten your day

This web site will brighten the day of young and old alike!
www.classicsforkids.com

Enjoy:)

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

How do I feel?

"This is the day the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it!"
Now, more than ever, we need to remember our Creator, our Redeemer and our Comforter, the blessed and most holy Triune God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the one true God who scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
True leaders are those with a humility of heart that recognizes our complete and absolute dependence upon this God, sees that only by obedience to His Word can anything good or of lasting value be accomplished, and seeks to honor and protect all human life, made in the image and likeness of God, from conception to natural death.
O most holy Trinity, have mercy upon us!

Monday, January 19, 2009

a good prayer

Oh, that the Lord would guide my ways
To keep His statutes still!
Oh, that my God would grant me grace
To know and do His will!

Order my footsteps by Thy Word
And make my heart sincere;
Let sin have no dominion, Lord,
But keep my conscience cleaer.

Assist my soul, too apt to stray,
A stricter watch to keep;
And should I e'er forget Thy way
Restore Thy wand'ring sheep.

Make me to walk in Thy commands--
'Tis a delightful road--
Nor let my head or heart or hands
Offend against my God.

(Issac Watts, 1674-1748, alt. LSB 707)

Friday, January 16, 2009

Who loves life?

Who loves life? God does!
"What we have heard and know, and what our fathers have declared to us, we will declare to the generation to come the glorious deeds of the LORD and his strength. That they too may rise and declare to their sons that they should put their hope in God, and not forget the deeds of God but keep his commands, and not be like their fathers, a generation wayward and rebellious, a generation that kept not its heart steadfast nor its spirit faithful toward God."
(Psalm 78)
The right to life, liberty and property we would bequeath to the generation to come, to our posterity, in other words, to the unborn. Everyone is pro-life when it comes to themselves and those nearest and dearest. Those other people, now that's another matter entirely.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Blessed Epiphany!

I had always thought about the story of Simeon and Anna in this way: that they by the Holy Spirit recognized Jesus, the 40 day old baby boy, as the long-awaited Messiah, simply by virtue of looking at Him. Something I read recently completely challenged this assumption in the following way: It was by seeing the holy family and in particular by looking at Mary, the blessed virgin mother, that Simeon realized the time of promise was at hand.
If we can see Mary as a type or icon of the church, the body of Christ, we can realize that Jesus does not ordinarily will to be recognized apart from the church, the communion of saints in which fellowship he daily and richly gives us all things. As the courageous evangelical-catholic confessors said in 1530, "the Church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are adminstered rightly" (Augsburg Confession, VII); echoing Acts 2:42, "And they continued steadfast in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and the prayers."
Make of us, your unworthy servants, such a humble, holy family, O Lord!

Friday, January 2, 2009

ChristMass Prayer

This lovely prayer by Fr. Peter John Cameron (Magnificat) serves as my daily Christmas prayer:
Oh, divine fruit of Mary's womb, may I love you in union with the holy mother of God. May my life be filled with the obedience of St. Joseph and the missionary fervor of the shepherds so that the witness of my life may shine like the star that leads the Magi to your manger. I ask all this with great confidence in your holy name, Lord Jesus, Amen.