The Celebrity Christian

This has been rolling around in the back of my mind but something which happened recently brought it to the front and I decided to write about it. I do not have anything against most celebrity Christians. Those are Christians who are out in the public eye like Max Lucado, Ann Voskamp, Bonnie Gray, Margaret Feinberg, Beth Moore, Rick Warren, Billy and Franklin Graham and many others. I have a lot of respect for the Grahams and I really like Max Lucado because he is so uplifting. I like Roy Lessin, the founder of Dayspring and Ann Voskamp, too, and Bonnie Gray. I have some of Beth Moore’s books, too. So many are doing wonderful things to help their fellow Christian and non-Christian.

However, some I do wonder about. I came across something recently in which during a particular Bible study the celebrity Christian interjected something into the study that I found questionable and it was based on someone else’s conjecture. (like Heaven being some “intermediate or interim place and we’re really looking forward to the life after life or the new heaven and new earth as stated in Revelations. I guess the author of that thought never pondered where God the Father and Jesus are. Neither of them thinks of Heaven as some intermediate place. What hogwash!!)The problem I see with celebrity Christians is that oftentimes they have a stronger following than Jesus Christ. Just try bringing up an opposing point of view and see how many of the followers will descend on you. I am not saying it happened in this case but it has in others. The followers will defend the celebrity without even a thought as to what you were trying to say. And it may not have been a really bad objection but more of a disagreement of concepts or points of view. After all no where does it state in the Bible that we have to follow the celebrity Christian blindly without checking the Bible to see if what they are saying is true. BUT…they have no problem compromising the truth of Jesus and what He said as our Lord and Savior in the Bible. They will cherry pick which scriptures they want to obey and ignore the ones that out rightly go against their pet beliefs because what the Bible says is not politically correct!

Another problem is that the celebrity Christian can have such a huge following that they can lead hundreds, if not thousands, astray with some “new enlightenment” or “new truth” which ends up being false. No one thinks for themselves anymore but relies on others to do the thinking for them. This is true in the Christian world as in the non-Christian world. People in the world are so blind they divide things by political party instead of right and wrong.

My son, David, only reads the Bible and his Oswald Chambers devotional right now. He says everything else is a distraction and he’s right. Because if you don’t know that book back to front and front to back then it leaves you wide open for anyone to come along with whatever pet theory or “new truth” and you will fall into the trap and believe them and down the rabbit hole you go. Remember the Bible does admonish us to test the spirits to see if they are from God or not, especially in this end time. I John 4:1

So what is a Christian to do? First and foremost, stay close to God and study your Bible. Go to God with any doubts you have and He will steer you in the right direction. YOU are responsible for what you believe. Believe God because He is truly the only authority that is necessary. Yes, the Bible studies others put out are nice and so are some of the books they write. But not all of them. Be wary and be careful and rely on the Holy Spirit to lead you in the right direction. If something makes you feel ill at ease, stop and talk to God. It may be a prompt from the Holy Spirit not to go in that direction. Be warned. Be safe.

Godzilla And Mothra Should Be Arriving Soon

In case anyone has forgotten, Fukushima is still going full blast in its contamination of the planet. TEPCO is trying its best to convince everyone that its not that bad. They had a sudden unexplained rise in radiation that was 50 to 70 times normal. What is normal for Fukushima?? They did reassure everyone that not one of the MANY tanks storing the highly radioactive waste has leaked. And this was one of several incidents that have occurred in recent months. (What were the others??) http://news.yahoo.com/fresh-nuclear-leak-detected-fukushima-plant-092631572.html

In addition, there is ground water that has been coming down from nearby mountains that also happen to run under the nuclear plant and then out into the ocean. Ah, guess what kind of water is running into the ocean after it runs through all that contaminated land that Fukushima sits on? And Japan will be hosting the next Olympics. Well they will be saving on electricity since everyone there will be glowing in the dark anyway.

I will go hunting on the web and see what else I can find out. AH! On BBC’s website it says that 300 tons of nuclear waste has leaked from a storage tank! AND that it is much worse than reported. Well, it figures that our news would be wrong altogether. (here in the United States) Here is the BBC link: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-23779561 This article says that there is water leakage EVERYWHERE. The head of Japan’s nuclear regulation authority, Shunichi Tanaka, says that there will be more leaks. There are 1,000 of these storage tanks. The BBC article shows a cross section diagram of how the water from the mountains run under the plant and how leaking storage tanks contaminate the water as it runs toward the Pacific Ocean.

There is a lot more going on that has not been reported. They can’t control it, they can’t decommission the plant and they can’t clean up the mess. What we are not hearing is what condition are the Japanese people in? I know I had previously read a few years back that tumors were showing up in the throat (thyroid gland) of the Japanese children. I can’t imagine how far this has advanced since then which is being hushed up.

New Creation Part II

Being a Christian, we are held to a higher standard which includes a higher form of behavior and thought than the rest of the world. Romans 6:1-20 Do we keep on sinning so that God can keep on forgiving? NO! We take on a NEW life, leaving behind the old. You cannot have a foot in God’s world and the other foot in the worldly culture. God considers all of you as being in the world. He does not compromise nor does He share you with the devil.

God creates us new: new mind, new character, new heart. The old way is dead. You are a slave to whatever or whomever you obey. Why are you accepting the world into your heart and mind that God has flat out prohibited?

The devil knows scripture very well. More than you do. He is not above using scripture against you. He is so unbelievably deceptive that he can convince you to go against God’s will and what God prohibits by using God’s love against you. In fact, he already has done that.

If you exclude anyone from your congregation, Satan will say, “Well, you are not showing the love of God.” Be very careful what you allow in your mind. Would a drug dealer walk into your congregation and say, “Well you don’t practice what you preach because you are excluding me.” Keep in mind, the drug dealer is saying, “I have no intention of changing. I cannot change because it is in my DNA and God created me that way.” (A lie.)
A pedophile would not walk into your church and expect to be accepted while NOT changing his perverted and demented behavior. When God says to change, it’s a command; not a suggestion. (Romans 1:26-28; 29-32)

We are commanded to love our fellow man but not to love the world, which is ruled by Satan. 1 John 2:15 Don’t just listen to the Word, do it. James 1:22

So why is one particular group pressuring Christians to accept them into the flock? Because they have no intention of changing. If they did, they would not make such a huge and vehement case for Christians to accept them as they are and even approve of their lifestyles regardless of what God says in His Word.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But we strive to overcome and to be holy as our Father in Heaven is Holy. We cannot do this by ourselves because humans have no power whatsoever. That is why He gives us His Holy Spirit and why Christ lives within us. The only way you can accomplish anything is by keeping in close contact with our Lord; by submitting to His will, not yours. NOT YOURS. What He says. Not what we say or the world says.

So how do we show love to another? Compassion for the sinner and allowing the light of Christ to show through. But don’t be deceived. If a person continues to blatantly sin and has no intention of changing, he is to be put out. Otherwise he contaminates the Body of Christ. We are to continue to show love and compassion to all because Jesus died for all, not a few. You can be a friend to the sinner but you still must uphold the standards that God has laid down. God does not compromise with what He says in the Bible so neither are we to. By submitting to the will of God and allowing the Holy Spirit to work, the sinner will see the Love of God through you. God will work through you to reach the sinner, whom He loves. But make no mistake, the sinner has to stop sinning. We have to stop sinning. God changes us to be like Him by the power of His Holy Spirit. Not an improved version of our old selves. But truly like Him. Satan hates this and has been on a rampage ever since he got the boot out of Heaven.

What the world does not understand is that once we are captured by Christ and repent and receive His Holy Spirit, we are no longer citizens of this world. We are citizens of Heaven. We are not attached to this world. We are attached to Heaven. We don’t obey the world. We obey God. We are no longer worldly. We are a completely new creation which the world does not understand, nor will they agree with any of us.

Set your sights on what is above. Not what is below. And above all, stay very close to Jesus. HE is the ONLY Way.

New Creation

2 Cor. 5:17- “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
Romans 7:6- “But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.”
Ezekiel 11:19- “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new Spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”
Romans 6:4-“We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

What is a new creation in Christ? According to the scripture, those who have given themselves over to Jesus Christ have His Spirit placed within them. Our old life literally has been washed away by the blood of Christ yet why do so many continue on in the old behavior patterns? Why do they still succumb to those old behavior patterns? I think we don’t fully understand what it really means to be a new creation and I think the devil has been doing a good job in keeping us blind to what it really means. He throws enough stuff at us on a daily basis that we end up focusing on that and the garbage of this world that we neglect the world we really belong to.

Once we have God’s Spirit we become citizens of Heaven working our way through here; through this corrupt and dying world. We take on the mind of Christ and His character which grows within us. Under no circumstances are we to go back to the old ways. We are not to defile ourselves with the old corruption. Be warned the devil is very clever and can use scripture against you to weaken you and you end up falling into the trap and find yourself adapting worldly points of view, thinking they are “Christian.”

The Bible is very clear on what God considers sin and we are not to do that. Liberal points of view do NOT exist in Heaven and you can bet the farm on that.

God is Love. He is love beyond what we can imagine to be love. He is also Holy and we are commanded to be holy as He is Holy. To be changed to Christ means to be like Him. He does not tolerate the ways of the world. Why should we?

We become a totally different being. Human on the outside by Christ-like on the inside. We are priests, princes and princesses in our Father’s Kingdom and we are to act that way. You cannot put on a white glove, go out into the back yard after the rain has soaked the land and stick your hand into the soil and expect the soil to be “glovey”. You cannot skirt the realm of this world, dipping your toes into Satan’s world, and expect Satan to be Christian.

I get newsletters or blog posts from other Christians. One of them has an never ending theme of our failings and sometimes I cannot read it because I find beating oneself up on a regular basis is not only counter-productive but tiresome. I want to tell her to stop bleeding. We just have to get on with the business of following Christ and advancing the Kingdom. We have to make ourselves ready. We have to become super focused and not veer to the right or the left.

I find that when Satan is throwing one of his usual crap bombs into my head, if I turn from it and connect to Jesus, the thought diminishes greatly until it is gone. It took me eons to get that through my head. No matter how many times I read that we are to bring all thoughts under submission to Christ, it didn’t become a reality until I got so unbelievably fed up with that crap in my head, I told God to burn it out. I wanted to be done with this garbage Satan was hurling my way and did something about it. This can be applied to anything, any temptation. When God says He provides a way out, He does. It’s Himself.

I have a feeling this is going to be an ongoing series that will crop up between other posts. But right now I don’t want it to be so long that the reader gets weary of the length. Keep in mind, we literally become a new creation; a divine hybrid until the Day of the Lord when we will all be changed totally and completely to what He is.

Stop trying to drag the old crap into the Kingdom. It does not belong there and never will.

Auschwitz 70 Years Later

Since I had previously written blogs on Auschwitz it is worth mentioning that on January 27th it will be 70 years since its liberation. Auschwitz has been the symbol for terror, horror and abomination since it was built in 1941. It was not even finished when it was liberated in 1945. Today we cannot even begin to grasp the scale of what it was like to be sent there and even survive that horror. I found a video of a drone sweep of Auschwitz just so you can see how big it was.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/video/watch/video/vi-AA8B8eG?ocid=OutNUS&from=OutNUS&FORM=BWVOLC

Most won’t even pay any attention or even care about what happened back in the 1940s because it was long ago. The thing is, though, history is often repeated when humans don’t learn the lesson the first time. Can such a horrible thing happen again? Yes, it most certainly can but this time, the devil will bring it about in a different way. We won’t have a raving lunatic like Hitler ranting wildly at a crowd. No, this time it will be more subtle.

So as you watch the video reflect on what it was like for all those poor humans who were rounded up and no one to stop Hitler from killing them all. It is said that all that has to happen for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. However, in this current day and age, that doesn’t even matter because good is seen as evil and evil is seen as good. Humans are sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss.

There is only one Hope and that is Jesus Christ.

50 Shades of Darkness

On Valentine’s Day the world is going to be treated to a very much hyped movie, 50 Shades of Grey, which depicts the relationship between this wealthy, handsome man and a naive young woman. I have not read the book but I have read some reviews of the book and quite a few say it is poorly written. So how does this trash get to be made into movie? Please note: while returning to my table in the Barnes and Noble Starbucks cafe from the bathroom, my eyes fell on an end-cap display of not just 50 Shades of Grey, but two more of them. A trilogy of darkness.
This world has fallen so deeply into darkness that many will go to see it and many will start to practice whatever is shown on the screen. So we move from sex between a husband and wife which God said is good, into something dark and twisted. Evil has already become the norm in society and many embrace darkness and rebel against the Light. No one wants anyone to tell them what to do. That’s what Satan said and found himself tossed out of Heaven. Humans reason, “Well whatever goes on behind closed doors is no one’s business.” True. But your perversion is a poison that will infest all other areas of your life.

The infestation of evil knows no bounds. This sort of trash, 50 Shades of Grey, gets made into a movie because Satan wants it out there as one of a series of final attacks on mankind to bring humanity so far down into the slime pit of darkness it will never get out save Divine intervention of Jesus’ return. Christians should not under any circumstance go see this movie because once it is in your head, you can’t get it out. If you put on a white glove and go out into your backyard after it rains and stick the gloved hand into the dirt, the dirt does not become “glovey”. It is so important to guard your mind because the enemy will not stop bombarding you. There are some days I just want to put aluminum foil on my head to keep out his crap. But our best weapon is calling out to Jesus. Just saying His name carries a lot of power. The devil has to submit and leave.

But I cannot emphasize enough to stay close to Christ and if your faith feels shaky go to Him and He will restore you. This movie has permeated other markets out there, too. I was looking on Sephora’s site for something which I can’t remember if it was a lipstick or something else. Anyway, I noticed under new items they had a makeup set by Makeup Forever that was from the movie. It seems that the makeup artist for the movie used certain colors on Dakota Johnson, the actress, and now it was being marketed and the box it all comes in also comes with a little key to unlock a compartment. I’m guessing this is to correspond to the key that Christian Grey has for his special room where the S&M take place. Urban Decay, another cosmetic company, has come out with a lipstick set in a grey box that is called “Full Frontal”. What in blazes is a full frontal lipstick? I am sure that by Valentine’s Day there will be a flood of 50 Shades of Grey items so that, unless you live on the moon, it will be impossible to escape it. Keep in mind, one of Satan’s best weapons is seduction and he is very good at it.

I dread to think where this is all leading because 50 Shades is only the tip of the iceberg. (especially when there is the potential for two more movies since there are two more books)

You have to guard your mind and heart because we are at war. We are citizens of Heaven, of the mighty Kingdom of God, and we must uphold all that our Lord wants us to uphold and not get soiled, defiled and corrupted by the seductiveness of our enemy. Not sure if this is going to be the only post on the subject either.

Bibles, Blankets and Burritos

On February 7th, Redeemed and Delivered Bikers are having a big event. We are going to feed a lot of the homeless in the Phoenix valley and give them blankets and Bibles. One of the main objectives of this church, aside from following Jesus Christ with all our hearts, is to help others less fortunate. We are a very tiny church but have big hearts and are very concerned about the homeless, many of whom are veterans.

When Pastor Maclellan told me about this, I wondered why are so many veterans, men and women who have served our country, homeless. This is totally wrong. How can you reward a person who is ready to lay down their life so you can have freedom with no place to live, no food, no money and just the clothes on their back and maybe a few more? We send billions to terrorist countries like Pakistan but do nothing for our own. We can fund terrorists but ignore the noble soldier. Yeah that’s right you bunch of phonies in Washington! I’m talking about you! Maybe all the soldiers should just quit and tell Congress to defend the country. Then we’ll see if they keep sending all that money to Pakistan and other countries that hate our guts. Why I think we’d all get whip lash watching Congress move so fast.

So I did a search on why are there homeless vets. One source said it was because they could not find affordable housing. Why are they not given a break? What would it take to have affordable and decent housing for veterans? Why isn’t there any job training for them? Why can’t we just take care of those who serve our country?

Some of the veterans have psychological problems like PTSD and also addictions. They need help. Many of them are having a hard time adjusting to civilian life, again. Okay…having an army is nothing new in this country so why were there not programs in place long ago by competent agencies since the VA is such a roaring failure?

There are some organizations that have started up to help the vet but there are just so many veterans that it is overwhelming. Oh forget about the VA. We already know they are more of a mess than the soldiers are.

Redeemed and Delivered Bikers cannot solve the problem. But they can offer HOPE in the form of Jesus Christ. For nothing is impossible with God and that’s the message that we want to get out to them. They need to be shown love and respect, which sadly this country has neglected in showing them.

If the homeless can’t get to us, we’re going to go to them. If any are interested in the cause on February 7th, 2015, they can contact Pastor David Maclellan at reverendmaclellan@gmail.com.