Last minute warning! Don't wait! 12/30/2013

The whole world would have us believing that the Allah of the Muslim religion is the same as the Christian God. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The translation of Allah is loosely ‘the god’ and in no way is the same as the Christian God of Creation. Allah is ‘the god of the moon’, the Christian God’s creation. If you don’t believe it, then look it up! The Christian’s in this world are being mislead.
        As in the past, in Elijah’s time as when he went up against the followers of Baal, Satan wishes to mislead people into following the Creation, instead of The Creator. The Muslim’s have already been doing this for generations but now the Christian Church is being mislead as well. They have been told over and over again that the God we worship is the same god that the other religion's worship.
        First, The ‘god’ they worship is the god of this world, not the God who Created this world. And Second, as Christian’s we should not have a religion, but instead have a relationship with the Creator of the Universe. If you were to let someone inside you to have complete control over you and your actions, would you not like to have a relationship with them? A really close relationship with them.
        The word Baal is translated ‘The Lord’ and that is what they were worshiping. God The Creator was angry over the way the priests of Baal and the King Ahab and his wife Jezebel had led so many astray from the true God and his following. Just as it was in Elijah’s day, we are seeing it happening now.
        Just recently, The Pope, leader of the largest denomination in the christian churches, called for all denominations to put aside their differences and join together and become one church. He also called for the church to be more ‘inclusive’ of those groups, like the homosexuals, who do not live by the beliefs held by those who believe in the Bible, The Word of God.
        Basically, The Pope both called for the church to do away with it’s worship practices, and to include the ones God The Creator had called an abomination in His Sight. God did not use the word abomination about many things, but the few things He felt very strongly about. in the over 788,000 words in the Bible, Abomination is only used 166 times and often is depicting the same thing when mentioned. This is less than 3 thousandths of the entire scriptures so these times must have been important.
        Both of these things had been spoken of by Jesus and others in their prophecies of the End Times and the things to come. We were to experience a time like unto that of the times of Noah. When men were lovers of self and only made passing acknowledgment of God. The world is now in that way. The Southern United States, where I live, Is one of the last places where the true Christian Faith is practiced. In the rest of this nation and in the rest of the world the majority of people are secular or only give passing acknowledgment of God in their lives. We are living in dangerous times.

Do we bow our heads to pray 12-13-13

As we bow our heads to pray, how often do we find ourselves questioning, Why are we bowing our heads? Many of us are used to this practice, but few really know the reasoning behind it. I am going to reveal some of the reasons to you in this article. 

You see, for years the only place that was acceptable to pray was in a holy prayer room at the Church in the area. If we had requests for God to hear, they must be brought to our Priest and he was alone allowed to present them to God. Supposedly this was loosly based on Matthew 6:6 saying that when we pray we are to enter into our prayer closet and pray alone and in secret to others.  

The idea behind Martin Luther and other reformists in the early Roman Catholic church was to open up both the scriptures and the other things that only the priests did to the general partitioners bring before God instead of only the priest. It cut down drastically on the workload of the priest, while at the same time giving much more responsibility to the individual. 

The idea of bowing your heads came later though as each individual was urged by his church leader to devote a room in their home or somewhere to the practice of prayer and reading of the scriptures. This practice became harder and harder as the people got closer and closer to each other and the population increased.  Soon it became very hard to give up the room for God’s use and for His purposes alone. Soon afterward people were finding themselves in smaller and smaller spaces attempting to continue their practices of praying and studying God’s Word. Soon afterward, it became expedient to men to no longer leave prayer and the study of the scriptures to a special room or place and make a more open way to continue it. 

This is when the bowing part comes into play. Men began to, even though the bible says for them not to do it, pray in public places. This was a compromise made by men to save themselves the time and effort of devoting a room and place of their own to prayer and study of the scriptures. Men, and women, would bow their heads and close their eyes, to simulate to themselves being in a closet where they could be alone with their prayers to God. The Israelites do the same thing to this day by bowing their heads and pulling their prayer shawls over their heads as they pray. This is where the verse, written by Paul, that has received so much controversy about women keeping their heads covered and men not, comes from. 

This is also the reason Paul is referred to as a tent maker in the New Testament. Pulling a prayer shawl over your head to pray is making a personal prayer tent for yourself and so the making of big burly tents made of goats hair and cloth and being very cumbersome to transport, was most likely not Paul’s trade, however the making of prayer shawls out of cloth found almost everywhere he went. And containing the corners with the blue threads interwoven in them as prescribed in Exodus by Moses, was very possible. 

Let me get back to my topic as I seem to be digressing. When we bow our heads and close our eyes we have less distractions to keep us from focusing on the prayer at hand. It is done now because it has become more of a learned behavior and to show reverence to God than for any other good reason. Personally I think that if we should find ourselves not being able to focus on the prayer, perhaps some personal alone time with God is needed by us to ask God to reveal to us the real reason why we cannot stop and pray.

Ready for Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving, What exactly are we thankful for? Are we thankful for the air we breath, or the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, or the life we live, or..... What all do we tell God we are thankful for and how do we tell Him? The best way to tell God we are thankful is to help someone else. The people in the world who are helping others 

are telling us to pay it forward instead of back. God wants us to do the same thing. We will feel better for the help we give someone than the help we receive from someone, or something. 

Too much of what we do is focused on ME the world is a very selfish place and we fit right in. Even in the songs we sing, trying to praise God we focus more on what God has done for us than on praising Him. I”LL fly away, Jesus loves ME, Rock of ages cleft for ME, Do we have to focus so much on ourselves? Think of what God has done and praise Him for His creation, His son, and the sacrifice He made, Yes, you may say, but to praise God we must think of what He has done for US! But most of how we praise tends to focus on ME and US rather than He or Him. 

Yes Jesus Loves ME, but the real reason to praise Him is the wonderful life He has given us to live, the world He has given us to live in. Instead we pray to God to help US and bless US and do for US, it’s all about me! At least for one day, please think on true praise for Him and not what He can do for you! We should examine ourselves and see if we are truly worshipping God or wanting God to worship US?!?

Are you Thankful for...?11/12/2013

Thanksgiving, What exactly are we thankful for? Are we thankful for the air we breath, or the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, or the life we live, or..... What all do we tell God we are thankful for and how do we tell Him? The best way to tell God we are thankful is to help someone else. The people in the world who are helping others are telling us to pay it forward instead of back. God wants us to do the same thing. We will feel better for the help we give someone than the help we receive from someone, or something.
        Too much of what we do is focused on ME the world is a very selfish place and we fit right in. Even in the songs we sing, trying to praise God we focus more on what God has done for us than on praising Him. I”LL fly away, Jesus loves ME, Rock of ages cleft for ME, Do we have to focus so much on ourselves? Think of what God has done and praise Him for His creation, His son, and the sacrifice He made, Yes, you may say, but to praise God we must think of what He has done for US! But most of how we praise tends to focus on ME and US rather than He or Him.
        Yes Jesus Loves ME, but the real reason to praise Him is the wonderful life He has given us to live, the world He has given us to live in. Instead we pray to God to help US and bless US and do for US, it’s all about me! At least for one day, please think on true praise for Him and not what He can do for you!

Do you believe anything you hear? Nov. 11, 2013

                 The biggest problem we have is knowing wether the things we are writing are really plagiarism or not. If the ideas we have are original to us, probably not, but if they are recycled from another, then they could be. there are several things we can do to avoid plagiarism when we are writing.these are  turning in someone else's work as your own,’copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit,failing to put a quotation in quotation marks, giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation, changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit, copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not’. From the article on Plagiarism 101. All these things can be construed as plagiarism. The most common way to plagiaries in the modern world with electronics is to copy and paste material. If we change the wording a little, or add a word here or there or maybe make a emphasis change a small bit we are still plagiarizing.

Many of the things we will do in college in our writing of papers will be involving using others ideas or words to get a thought across. From the plagiarism 101 website is the best advise we can get on the subject, when in doubt cite a source. If your source is too much, at least you won’t be accused of using others work.It makes you look smarter the more citations you use rather than less, because it seems to the reader that you have researched the subject thoroughly.

This I believe is the way in which many bogus articles are written. They appear to be well researched, but simply give citations to appear to be well researched when they are not. While some writers indulgence is understood, many are guilty of fraudulent attribution by making a point with the quotes they use to misconstrue the true meaning of the original author. This is what is often done with people using a verse or even part of a verse from the Bible out of its true context with the surrounding verses. It is a major way that false teachers use the Word of God to lead the people who know very little about the Bible astray. 

How should we battle against such a problem? Easy, just study the Word of God until the truth of what it means in certain verses are made clear to you, then you will know when you are being led astray. 

* Plagiarism 101 website