Christian High School Teachers Teaches That

Allah and God are the same God and that Muslims and Christians are serving the same God who goes by different names.

Of course this has become cutting edge thinking even among some current missiologists. The thinking goes that the word ‘Allah’ is the Arabic word for God and in light of the fact that Muslims believe that God is one there is no reason to think that the Jehovah of the Scriptures is the same as the Allah of Islam. Missiological reasoning also contends that such an approach makes evangelism either. If missionaries can approach Muslims by allowing that Allah and God are different names for the same God then it is supposedly easier to make progress in evangelistic conversations. It is difficult to imagine Raymond Lull, Henry Martyn, or Samuel Zwemer taking this approach but why should we be concerned about that?

The teacher at this ‘Christian High School’ used C. S. Lewis’s ‘Tashlan’ to support her cockeyed theory. The reasoning was that sincere Muslims, because of their noble intent, are really worshiping the God of the Bible when they worship Allah. Lewis was brilliant but on the whole Tashlan thing his boneheadedness is unmatched.

Some of the covenant children in the church I serve related to me this account while I was teaching the worldview class. They said they had protested this understanding with their friend who had embraced this ‘understanding.’ Now what is interesting is that the parent interjected that her child must of misunderstood because the teacher would have never taught that.

Well, my money is on the fact that the teacher did teach that since this idea has become so prevalent in some putatively Christian circles.

Let this be a warning about ‘Christian’ private schools. All because you slap the word ‘Christian’ on a high school doesn’t mean that it is Christian anymore then a wine bottle full of urine is wine just because the label on the bottle says ‘Wine.’

Hillary’s Argument

A look at some of Hillary’s victories during this Democratic primary season.

State — Electoral Votes

California – 55
Texas – 34
New York – 31
Florida – 27
Pennsylvania – 21
Ohio – 20
Michigan – 17
New Jersey – 15
Massachusetts – 12
Tennessee – 11
Arizona – 10
Oklahoma – 7
Arkansas – 6
New Hampshire – 4

Total Electoral Votes – 270

Clearly if Hillary were to seize the Democratic nomination she couldn’t count on winning all the states that she has won in the primary. Just as clearly if Obama were to get the Democratic nomination he would win some of those states in the general election that he lost to Hillary in the primary. Stipulating all that, what Hillary has done in her victories is that she has shown that she can win where Democrats need to win in order to be elected.

Hillary Clinton’s argument for the Democratic Presidential nomination thus becomes a bit more believable after last night’s sizable victory in Pennsylvania. Hillary needs to argue that even though she is behind in the delegate count she has won the states that a Democrat needs to win in order to be elected in November. With her wins in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island Hillary can argue that she can hold the Democratic New England stronghold. With wins in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey she can argue that she can hold the rust belt. Ohio is particularly important since in 2004 Ohio was the state that made the difference in that Presidential election. With a win in Florida Hillary can make the case that her chances are greater in another key battleground state that Democrats need to win if they harbor hopes of the White House. With wins in California and Texas she can argue that she has shown the ability to capture large percentages of the Hispanic vote (a key minority constituency for Democrats) AND she can boast of showing muscle in states with huge electoral power. Hillary needs to pull out the Electoral maps from 2000 and 2004 and show that she has carried those regions that Gore and Kerry carried.

Further Hillary needs to delicately continue to emphasize that Obama isn’t winning the White vote which any candidate must win if they desire to live in the White House. In Pennsylvania yesterday Obama lost every White vote age bracket – almost all of them by convincing margins. If Obama can’t carry the White vote in a Democratic contest it is difficult to see how he gets enough White votes to win in a general election. As I have been saying all along, America, under normal conditions, is not ready to elect a Black Marxist who disregards hard working White people.

On this point a major newspaper of questionable trustworthiness reported,

The results of exit polling, conducted at 40 precincts across Pennsylvania by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press, found stark evidence that Mr. Obama’s race could be a problem in the general election. Sixteen percent of white voters said race mattered in deciding who they voted for, and just 54 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election; 27 percent of them said they would vote for Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 16 percent said they would not vote at all.

Hillary, also needs to continue to argue, as she has been, that despite Obama’s huge financial advantage, and despite the Democratic machine and the major media doing everything they can to nudge her out of the race she still continues to do something that Obama can’t do in key Democratic states and that is WIN.

Further, Hillary needs to argue that in many of the places where Obama has won there is no way in hades that Obama can repeat that victory in November. For example, the Red states in the deep south that Obama has won will not be won again by a Democrat in November. Hillary needs to argue that those Obama victories are irrelevant. (This is why an Obama win in North Carolina will be irrelevant.)

If someone would have told me at the beginning of the primary season that some Democrat would be easier to beat in the general election then Hillary Clinton, with her huge negative approval numbers, I never would have believed it, but Barack Obama clearly is a candidate that cannot win the general election short of a Republican implosion. The Clinton’s know this and have been saying it within their inner circle for some time.

If the Democrats swallow Barack Obama as their candidate only a implosion by John McCain (a real likelihood by my estimation) in the general election will save them from a landslide of the proportion of Bush over Dukakis in 1988.

Now, keep in mind that I’m handicapping this as someone who loathes all three candidates of the major parties that are left in the race. I really don’t care which socialist wins the White House. My fondest hope would be that a way might be found for all of them to lose.

I Went To A Pro-Life Supper This Evening

I was pleased to say that I only heard one thing that set alarm bells off. The speaker was an elderly Doctor who has been a pro-life champion all his life. He was a big fan of former (and recently deceased) Congressman Henry Hyde, who was himself a pro-life champion during his whole career.

Anyway… the speaker closed with the following quote from Henry Hyde. I was burdened that the speaker found the quote so meaningful and that the gathered group were so seemingly moved by the quote.

Here it is,

“When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, “Spare him because he loved us,” and God will look at you and say not, “Did you succeed?” but “Did you try?”‘

I gave the closing prayer, shortly after the main speaker had finished with this quote. I thanked God that in Christ the eschatological judgment was already finished and that it is not lonely nor full of terror because Jesus is our advocate and pleads for us before the Father. I thanked God that we are saved because of Jesus living and dying for us and that not one whit of our effort has anything to do with making it past judgment.

I seriously doubt that anyone noticed that I was making a conscious effort to contradict the final quote.

It really does saddened me that Bishop Sheen, and Henry Hyde thought and that the speaker tonight thinks that judgment has anything to do with our trying.

I was conflicted tonight. On one hand I was ecstatic that this medical doctor had given so much of his life to the pro-life effort and yet on the other hand I was saddened that he apparently had attached his efforts in pro-life to the eternal destiny of his soul. I was saddened that he thought the chorus of the voices of the unborn would have a leverage with God that the voice of Jesus didn’t.

There has been a great deal of work lately in some quarters to suggest that Roman Catholicism isn’t as extreme as many Reformed types make it out to be. Tonight I heard a professional who has spent his life in the Roman Catholic Church and it was crystal clear that Roman Catholicism is everything that the Reformers rose up against. If anybody tells you that there is no difference between Roman Catholicism and Biblical Christianity don’t you believe it.

One Of Those Little Incongruities

“It’s not news to anybody these days – not if they watch any television or glance at the covers of the magazines lining the checkout counters at the grocery stores – that we live in a sex-saturated society where supposedly the majority of young people are “doing it,” more often than not without “benefit of marriage.” The Playboy Philosophy and its derivatives are trumpeted by a thousand voices that glamorize casual sex, while most of the shrinking mainline churches present pitifully watered-down messages about morality that confuse rather than clarify.

Academic institutions, particularly the women’s studies programs, promote the idea that marriage is optional and young people are advised to “just do it!” The secular mantra, heard from middle school on up, is that sex will make you popular and happy; it’s great recreation that is free and fun.

There is a mountain of media out there promoting a phony philosophy about the joys of casual, risky sexual experimentation; one need look no further than the junk advice featured in magazines like Cosmopolitan to see just how pernicious it is. Even the relationship advice columns in many daily newspapers spread the expectation of sexual activity even for the youngest of our teens.”

Straight Talk About Casual Sex
Janice Shaw Crouse
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/straight_talk_about_casual_sex.html

So, on one hand we have more sex going on at younger ages then you can find in the pages of Huxley’s ‘Brave New World.’ Furthermore, in the government schools we teach the children about sex at increasingly younger and younger ages and in doing so push sex. The culture has given its imprimatur of approval on such adolescent coitus.

But on the other hand when teen sex putatively breaks out in the context of polygamy and communal living among consistent Mormons in Texas (FLDS) suddenly pop culture is abhorred and just can’t get over the indecency of it all?

Somebody help me out here.

Naturally, as a Christian, I am foursquare against both the scenarios painted above but to be perfectly honest if I were forced to choose between the kind of fornication that is being pushed among and pursued by adolescents in our schools and the kind of polygamous marriages that might be being pushed among and pursued by adolescent girls in a FLDS commune I could see an argument being made in favor of the FLDS commune. Think about it. In the former scenario you have children contracting STD’s, or you have pregnancy out of wedlock with the eventuality of either unprepared single parents, marriages between unprepared children, or abortion. However in the polygamous FLDS compound I would bet good money you would find few STD’s, you’d find a community that is going to support the marriages and you find older men who are likely more able to support their family (even if augmented by Welfare checks) then the average teenage adolescent boy.

Now remember, I think both scenarios reprobate but if someone put a gun to my head and told me I had to choose one of the two illicit sex scenarios for adolescent girls to enter into there is a part of me that would lean towards choosing the FLDS.

I find myself wondering if the real reason that our sex crazed culture is piously agog over consistent Mormons having sex is not because 15 year old Mormon girls are having sex with older men but rather it is because the same 15 year old girls are not having sex in the context of the predominant pagan culture with adolescent boys.

After all, if abnormal illicit sex is going to be the cultural norm, any abnormal illicit sex that isn’t abnormal according to the culture norms of abnormality must be seen for the abnormality that it is.

The Living Presence Of God

“The living presence of God in the heart of authentic Israelite culture, that is, in Israel’s laws and ordinances, explains why the Psalmist so loved the law and ordinances of God. They were sweet to him, a joy to keep and a light to ones path, because the Lord God of Israel was present in them. His presence gave to them their sweetness, their joy, and their light; to keep the law accordingly was to enter into the presence of the living God Himself. The life that one lived by keeping the law was the life of the Lord God Himself, and the character of that life was the character of the Lord God Himself. Biblical theology is therefore not produced but received from the God of Abraham Himself. Accordingly, authentic biblical theology is of a particular character, for it is a description of the particular Lord God who stands at the heart of biblical worship, who has brought Israel into being and given to him his distinctive character and identity.”

Kenneth Paul Wesche
Pastor — St. Herman’s Orthodox Church
Essay – Keeping The Faith

Let us posit that Wesche’s observations are correct just for the sake of argument. Let us agree that the living presence of God was in the heart of authentic Israelite culture, that is, in Israel’s laws and ordinances. Now as Reformed people we all confess that those who lived in the anticipatory covenant were living in an age front loaded with the eschatological ‘not yet.’ Now certainly there were adumbrations and lineaments of the eschatological ‘now’ but overall the age of the anticipatory covenant was weighted with the eschatological ‘not yet.’ Now, if even in the eschatological age that was weighted with the ‘not yet’ God’s living presence was in the heart of authentic Israelite culture how is it that so many Reformed people deny that in this age that is weighted with the eschatological ‘now’ — weighted so since the ‘age to come’ arrived in the advent of Christ — God could be be in the heart of authentic Christian culture?

Here we are living in the new and better covenant — new and better because the Kingdom has drawn near in the resurrected and ascended Lord Christ — and yet we are told by some that though the Israelites knew the living presence of God in the heart of authentic Israelite culture, those who comprise the new Israel must realize that the living presence of God cannot be possibly known in culture since there is no approximation of a such a thing called Christian culture.

Secondly, note the high estimation of God’s law that Wesche records about the members in the anticipatory covenant. Their delight was in God’s law and on it did they meditate both day and night. Now, quite obviously they did not love God’s law because they could use it as a ladder to acquire acceptability with God, but rather they loved God’s law because they were a Redeemed people, who being acceptable with God because of God’s provision in the sacrificial system, knew that life, shalom and vitality was found in a due respect for God’s law. Again, we should be reminded that this love for the law was found in the people who only dwelt in the anticipatory covenant. As Christians we are living in the ‘age to come.’ In light of that how much more should we find God’s law sweet to us? How much more should we as Christians, who will never increase our acceptability with God by loving the law, find God’s law a joy to keep and to be a light to our path? How much more should we testify that we love the law because the Lord God of Israel is present in them? Do we believe that God’s presence gives to the law its sweetness, its joy, and its light? Do we believe that to pursue the keeping of the law accordingly is to know the presence of the living God as Father?

Third, allow me to suggest that this quote gives hints that the supernatural comes to us in a way that is far different then the way we typically look for the supernatural. We look for the supernatural in the spectacular and the astounding. Perhaps though we should find the supernatural nearest to us when we participate in a community that is breathing with the presence of God as seen in its collective attention to and individual incarnation of God’s law. Is not the supernatural demonstrated and close to a people, who possessed by the Spirit of the Word of God, get that word of God into everything they touch and build? Is not the supernatural seen in families living out Christ? Is not the supernatural seen in Churches exalting Christ in Word and Sacrament? Is not the supernatural seen in communities that build their civil social institutional structures rooted in the Word of God? The Pentecostals have it wrong. The supernatural doesn’t normatively come to us in flashes of brilliance or demonstrations of strangeness but rather the supernatural comes to us in the rhythms of living in a community devoted to Christ the great Priest King. The living presence of God remains in the heart of authentic Christian culture.