Imperial Valley Christian Center

Wrethchard over at the Belmont Club, (Wretchard is his writing name. He's actually a Filipino living in Australia who has a military background. His writing about the war in Iraq has been very good and his predictions have been very accurate.) has been discussing propaganda. The propaganda of the media, the terrorist and the U.S. government. Today he was making the point that if the "reporter's" predictions of the future are consistently wrong then that's a good sign it's propaganda, whether the reporter believes it to be or not. He then related this very interesting story, about his grandfather's experience in the Philippines during WW II, to support his point:

As a child, I listened to my grandfather recall how, during the War, Japanese-controlled radio nightly reported sinking half a dozen American battleships, a score of destroyers and countless aircraft carriers -- day after day. MacArthur, they said, would never return. Then one morning in late 1944 as gramps was walking along Manila Bay he heard the strange drone of approaching aircraft. As it happened, my father (he had not yet met my mother) was walking along the outer perimeter of Nielsen Field some miles away at that same moment and saw two Zeros begin to roll down the runway in a desperate scramble to get airborne. They got a few hundred feet into the air when Hellcats came right down onto the deck and shot them both down before his astonished eyes. Bam, and they were gone. Grandpa climbed the highest building he could find and watched, amazed, as carrier aircraft sank every Japanese vessel in the harbor, until but one resisted, settled on the shallow bottom. On the fantail of that single vessel, one dogged Japanese sailor kept up a steady fire with his Hotchkiss until a naval fighter came right to the water and traded tracers with the brave Japanese sailor until he was no more. What died that day wasn't simply the shipping in the harbor; nor even the Zeros at Nielsen Field, but the credibility of every Japanese-controlled radio station. What propaganda fears above all is truth.

Read the whole thing here.

From the this is probably only interesting to me dept. But I happened to run across this interesting live web cam.(Scroll down the page and look for the Central Park W @ 96 St icon and click on it.) It's a traffic cam operated by the NYC Dept. of Transportation. What's interesting about it is that it's outside Pastor Price's New York City Church, Crenshaw Christian Center, East. The web cam updates every few seconds showing the traffic right in front of the church, the sidewalk in front, a little corner of the building and Central Park across the street. Here's a little page which has a nice picture of the church and discusses it's history. It used to be the First Church of Christ Scientist.  Becky and I went to church here when we were in New York last year. What a small world we live in.

Don't know where he got it but the Derb over at NRO posted these, "Psychiatrists' Christmas Carols For Every Diagnosis" Here's a sample:

Schizoprenia --- Do You Hear What I Hear?

Dementia --- I Think I'll Be Home For Christmas 

Paranoid --- Santa Claus Is Coming To Get Me

and my favorite:

Manic --- Deck The Hall and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and.........

Check out the rest here.

"For many are called, but few are chosen." Matthew 22:14, KJV.

This scripture is a little hard to make sense of. The problem is the word chosen. Chosen and called, at least to my ear, sound pretty similar. If you called somebody doesn't that mean you've already chosen them? That's why you called them, isn't it? Why would you call somebody and then not choose them? Part of the difficulty in interpreting this scripture is our western habit of interpreting everything in the Bible through the lens of going to heaven when you die. This scripture is referring to being a disciple of Jesus not about going to heaven when you die.

The Greek word translated "chosen " here can also be translated "choice." You know like USDA "choice" beef. Meaning, "…the best of its kind or class, excellence, preeminent …" Robert Young's commentary puts it this way: "… lit. 'choice, select, excellent,'"

So… Many are called but few are "choice." or Many are called but few are "excellent." Here's a guy who has a really nice word study on it and he translates it " Many are called but few are "fit for it."  Well obviously if you read everything in the Bible as relating to, "going to heaven when you die" then you aren't going to like that translation of the word. Many are called but few are good enough to go to heaven when they die? Yeah, I don't think so.

You can develop you spirit sense to the point where you can receive direction in every area of your life. To develop your spirit sense 1. Read your Bible so you can learn to recognize the voice of God. 2. Put God first in every area of your life. Ask his opinion about everything. Let God have the final word in every area of your life. 3. Instantly obey your spirit. Get in the habit of immediately doing what God through your spirit is directing you to do.
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Tony Cooke has some good, TIPS FOR MANAGING STRESS, THE BLUES, AND GRIEF DURING THE HOLIDAYS here's a sample:

18  Make a list of all the FREE things that can be enjoyed at Christmas…  light displays, church services, community plays, etc. Partake of some of  these.

16  Take care of your health – Eat right, get plenty of rest, and  exercise regularly. Common stress reactions during the holidays include headaches, over-eating, and difficulty sleeping.

11 Take care of yourself. If your tendency is to take care of everyone  else and neglect yourself, do some special things just for you, and don’t  let yourself feel guilty about it.

2  Prioritize and decide how much you can actually do, how much you can  (and should) actually spend, etc. You don’t want to start the new year with  bills that you can’t pay. Do your best to create an atmosphere that focuses  on "doing" rather than "having."

It's easier said than done but it can be done. Check out the rest here.

If at all possible Don't miss Ken Copeland's program from today. His guest is Bill Winston, a pastor from Chicago. They're talking about what Becky and I have been talking about amongst each other for the past couple of years and what I've been trying to teach on our T.V. program for the past year. (It may not all seem related to those of you listening but it's all one big sermon, including what I'm teaching right now and what I'm going to be teaching for the next few weeks.)  The programs are titled, Demonstrating God's Power To The World. It's available available in audio and video here.

We were watching A Charlie Brown Christmas last night. I believe it is from 1967. It's amazing what was taken for granted in 1967. This is a show that aired on network T.V. and yet they actually use the word "Christmas" over and over again and even read the Christmas Story from the Gospel of Luke including this, 

Luke 2:11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Wow how times have changed. Anyway at the beginning was this line of Charlie Brown's which was pretty funny mostly because it reflects how so many of us feel about Christmas. Charlie Brown has just checked his empty mail box and then he says:

Nobody sent me a Christmas card today. I almost wish there weren't a holiday season. I know nobody likes me why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it.

When us, Word of Faith, types start saying that the Bible teaches that it is always God's will to heal one of the frequent responses we hear is, "What about Paul's thorn in the flesh?" Included in that statement is an unspoken assumption that Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was a sickness. Here we deal briefly with that topic pointing out what the Bible says Paul's thorn actually was, who gave it to Paul and the meaning of God's response to Paul's prayer that it be taken away. This sermon is based almost entirely on a teaching of Tony Cooke's on this subject. Update: (I listened to this program again and I have to give it a 9 for content and a 7 for delivery. This is about as good as my preaching/teaching/whatever gets.)

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Yesterday, before church, I was walking around outside thinking about someone who had drawn back from church. This person still comes, but you can tell church has now moved way down on their priority list. I hope that God hasn't. (Moved down on the priority list, that is.  But I'm afraid that if you can't be faithful to the part of God you can see it will be very hard for you to be faithful to the part of God you can't see.)

I was kind of talking to God about it and I said, "I thought this person was going to be faithful." Then in an extremely clear way that surprised me, God said … (I don't mean I heard a voice but in my spirit, God is a spirit, and he speaks to our spirit. I like to think about it this way, God doesn't speak English, He speaks spiritese.) God said, "I did too."  Wow!

That really surprised me. Not because it doesn't line up with so called, "good" theology. (You know, some people will say, "God knows everything so He knew all along that this person wasn't going to be faithful." I don't know about that but I'm certain the guys spouting off that boilerplate theology don't either.) The reason I was taken aback was because there was a note of disappointment in His words. The person I care about most in the world was hurt by it. Wow!

But the next thing He said was even more bracing, "Are you going to be faithful?" Wow!

Hmmm…