Did Chuck Swindol Overreact To Elijah's Declaration Of Despair?

A Facebook theologian has commented in agreement with Christian broadcaster Chuck Swindoll that we should never pray for God to take a loved one home to eternity.

It is contended doing so can apparently derail His sovereignty.

Apparently, if we believe that He is sovereign, we should know that He is fully capable of taking us home when He believes that the time has approached.

Isn't that formulation itself an affront to God's sovereignty?

For if God is sovereign in an absolutist sense and the religious thinker not precise in their statements worthy of considerable condemnation as the ultra-Reformed insist, doesn't God KNOW rather than BELIEVE?

In such a theology as being advocated by this Facebook theologian, prayer is not about bringing our requests and concerns to God but rather about formulating statements that we think will make us appear exceedingly pious before certain audiences.

Just how far are we to take the presupposition embodied by this religious postulation under consideration?

If it is wrong to pray for God to mercifully end a life that is suffering, is it just as wrong to pray that God restore life and vitality to a life that He might prefer to draw to a conclusion in this world?

And given that this criticism was posted by someone that is quite vocal in expressing their support of a predestinarian understanding of soteriology so thoroughgoing as to deny any place for human choice and liberty, it must be asked is it a sin to pray for the salvation of a family member that God would rather see slip into Hellfire and damnation?

As justification for this position, the account of Elijah is referenced.

In I Kings 19, while on the run from Ahab and Jezebel, Elijah succumbs to a moment of despair where he declares to the Lord, in verse 4, “I have had enough, Lord. Take my life. I am no better than my ancestors.”

From the Lord's response, apparently unlike Chuck Swindol, the Lord did not find what Elijah asked that much of an outrage.

Instead of chastising Elijah for his despondency, on two occasions the prophet was given a meal so that he might have strength for the journey that was ahead.

Thus, about the only conclusion that can be drawn from Elijah's lamentation that God end his life is that God does not always answer our prayers the way that we would like.

And if He does not, we might find Him lending us assistance in ways that we did not initially expect.

By Frederick Meekins

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The Southern Baptist Ethics & Leadership Commission insists that the true Christian will get their children inoculated. Down the road, the same propagandists will probably also insist that it is the Christian’s obligation to take the Mark of the Beast as well.

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Do The Truly Redeemed Retain Health Insurance?

An episode of a Christian talk show insinuated that, if you retain traditional health insurance or what still passes for it under the Obama regime rather than one of these cost sharing programs harped about during the advertisements, you aren't trusting in God.

Furthermore, it is pointed out, if you retain traditional insurance, you are sending your money to a large corporation rather than assisting fellow believers.

So long as I get the services I contracted for in a satisfactory manner, what do I care if a corporation is large?

The broadcasters claimed that insurance allows for control over people's lives.

Instead, believers would be better off if oversight over medical affairs were transferred to the church.

But what is to prevent the church from exercising increased control over people's lives or from allocating access to healthcare in a preferential manner?

For example, would ecclesiastical medicine be dispersed to the truly ill or to the missionary couple with the saddest sob story with so many children that you can't help bring to mind the old nursery rhyme about the old woman that lived in the shoe?

During the 1990’s, Christian broadcasters would dedicate entire episodes of their programs shilling for a telecommunications provider with the angle that if you remained with these companies you where as complicit with these companies in the part they played in furthering the agendas of pornography and homosexuality.

Despite such grandiose moralizing, the thing was that this service was a pain in the backside to use when you needed it the most.

Do you really want the same thing to happen to you in terms of securing essential medical services?

by Frederick Meekins

Cultic Holy Roller Threatens To Blow Nieces Brains Out If She Reported Televangelists’ Financial Improprieties To Authorities

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Is Satan's Whore Pregnant With The Anti-Christ?

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Too Spiritual By Half?

In an exposition of Mark chapter 3, it was observed that Christ's first miracle after the commissioning of the Apostles was the casting out of a demon followed by the healing of Peter's mother-in-law.

The Lutheran seminarian insisted that this symbolically represented the precedence of the spirit over the human tendency to emphasize the body.

The expositor lamented that such a characteristic was the result of the sin nature.

But how is it our fault that the aspect of reality that is the fist to overwhelm our perception on an instinctive level is the physical?

We did not ask to exist as embodied intelligences.

That was part of our original design even in the sinless state.

Unless the demon was cast out first of the person whose body Christ healed and He then had them wait in contemplation for a time before He healed their biological infirmity, isn't this reading too much into the passage?

If one wants to be that attentive to the text, the first miracle in the chapter is actually the bodily healing on the Sabbath of the man with the withered hand.

And what about taking the Four Gospels as a comprehensive totality?

If so, isn't the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast actually thought to be Christ's first miracle?

So do we want to start reading meaning into these as well other than what we are told in the text?

The case could be made that, in terms of a miracle, turning water into wine would appeal more to man's extraneous physical desires than a desire to avoid overwhelming pain and disability.

You make a choice for wine; by design you feel a compulsion to seek the alleviation of pain.

Furthermore, are Lutherans really sure they want to open the door of reading profounder spiritual meaning into the miracles beyond the miracles themselves?

John 2:3 reads, “And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said unto him, They have no wine.”

Since Christ ultimately relented to her request, why shouldn't we build detailed Christological speculations like one particular denomination does about how Christ's decisions are especially swayed by her contemplative petitions if we are going to read profound truths into something as commonplace as the order in which Christ performed these miracles?

If the definition of God's omniscience is that the Deity knows everything, wouldn't that also include alternative temporal potentialities?

Therefore, isn't it just as valid to conclude that, if Jesus went first to heal Peter's mother-in-law, Christ night not have gotten around to this particular demoniac before this pitied soul's life ended in some convulsive spasm?

Among Bible scholars and theologians, the Gospel of Mark is noted as a summarative action oriented narrative.

Why would there need to be some esoteric reason as to the order in which the events described transpired other than that this was the order in which events “organically” unfolded around Jesus?

By Frederick Meekins

Fox News Surrenders To Islamist Propaganda Over The Existence Of Forbidden Zones

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Daily Chapel Concordia Theological Seminary 2/3/15

Would Bishop Schori Have Preferred The Mediterranean World To Remain In Pagan Debauchery?

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