Oprah, can’t talk religion!

WHAT A SAVIOR WE HAVE IN JESUS! I never really thought that my blog would be read by so many people. I am a collegiate minister at Timber Crest Baptist Church and recently we added a collegiate web page to the churches already existing web page. On the collegiate web page we had linked an area where you can go right from the home page over to my blog. In the last few weeks I have had many people come to me and tell me that they had read some of my blogs and where very interested in what the articles I had read had to say about. What was most fascinating was that most of the people who had read the blogs went over to the articles as the watchmen fellowship website and read the articles themselves. One thing though that caught my attention was that most of the people who came to talk to me asked me if I had watched the short video clip about Oprah. I had not, so I went over to Watchmen Fellowships website and watched the clip, and man was it interesting.

In the video clip there is a women who was talking about two different types of powers that work in the world. Those powers being the “Good” power and the “evil” power. The good power is the power which refers to God. The other power, the power of evil, is the power which refers to Satan’s evil power that roams the earth looking to destroy (Jb. 1:7, 1 Pt. 5:8, Lk. 8:12). According to the video this kind of idea that Satan is out there and that God exist as one single person didn’t go over real well with Oprah. As a matter of fact what Oprah said, in a way, was that there was no such thing as GOD. Oprah says that there is two directions that a person can go you can chose darkness or light and if you chose light than it really dosen’t matter what you believed on the way there it only matters that you get there. To me, just hearing Oprah speak herself, is sounds as if she is laying her understanding of what she believes on a book called Ishmael. She stated herself that people need to be aware of the paths they take and she got into an argument about how what may lead to “your God” may not be the same god as someone else. Man this is when the film gets exciting. I am so glad to see that there are people out there that will take a stand against people like Oprah. A women on the show took a stand for Jesus, on Oprah’s show, and made Oprah look like she didn’t know to much. The only thing that Oprah could come back with was “I can’t discuss religion with you!” which to me sounds like she was bailing out. You can watch this video at Watchmen Fellowships website which I linked above and you should go over and read the profile Watchmen Fellowship has on Oprah at http://www.wfial.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=artNewAge.article_1.

The Children of God?

I am a collegiate minister at Timber Crest Baptist Church in Waco. We have just finished an Experiancing God study and I was looking for a discussion for the college group to look into to pass some time because we have a revival coming up this weekend and I didn’t want to start a major study two weeks before. I was looking around for different things that could tide us over for a little while, and I decided to share with the group some of the information that I had gathered during my Cults class. The group has been real excited about the topics we have been talking about. The way I set it up was I would share the beliefs of another cult and I would challange the class to tell how it differed from our beliefs. THe college group has access to my blog via the church website so I told them that I would continue to write blogs about different things (they seem to enjoy that). One cult the group took special interest in was “The Children of God” (linked is there profile). I had learned some about the cult in class, and I told the group I would go online to the Watchmen Fellowship website and see if there was more information about the cult. I found the profile online but I had already read it because it was required for class. But, I did find another article that I thought was interesting. In the article, The Family of “Love”?, it gave some very interesting bits of information that gives an over view of some issues the cult has. According to this article, The Children of God was given the name the ‘sex cult of the 80’s’ by the media. The founder of the cult is David “Moses” Berg, he is said to be the world’s end time prophet and that his writings are even greater than scripture. Berg had lead his group to believe all knids of lies that dealt mainly with sexual addictions. Under his teaching Berg would stress the importance of sexual libirites. He even went as far as to teach that Jesus had sexual relations with Mary and Martha, and he taught that the Holy Spirit, feminine in nature, is a “Dream Queen” or “Holy Queen of Love” in which he has the same type of sexual realtionship with.

The Children of God, have some literature that they try and sale. Some common names of the literature is “Heaven’s Magic” or “Music with Meaning”. The cult is very secretive, they mainly are located in large city’s so that they will not be easily noticed. They do most of there distribution at colleges or at Christian book stores and some times even sale there material door to door. This is a cult that needs a lot of prayer! Go over to the website linked above and check out the article about this cult it is sure to turn your head.

Is Joseph Smith a Prophet?

This week in class we are starting a study on Mormonism. I wanted to read a little about the group so that I could get a better understanding of there beliefs, so I went over to the Watchmen Fellowship website to see what they had written on the subject. I ran across a very interesting article called Joseph Smith and the Biblical Test of a Prophet. In the article it ask the question,”What is the test for a Prophet?”. According to the Mormons the Passage Moroni 10:4, is enough evidence to support that Joseph Smith is a great prophet, and they use the passage to support more. The article helps us to understand the what the biblical test of a prophet is by looking at a text from Deuteronomy 18:20-22. In this text it says that we can test a prophet by checking its prophecies. Are the prophecies true? Now, this may be a little hard for some to grasp, as a matter of fact it is obvious that some have not grasped this fact still, but pay very close attention. NO matter how many prophecies a person prophesies if one of the prophecies is not true than the prophet is not a true prophet. How can I make this clearer? If a prophecy never happens you may want to check the ingredients on your prophet. So the article continues, is Joseph Smith a Prophet? According to the rest of the article it seems to me that he would be a false prophet. The article gives you types of prophetic statements such as there are open dated predictions, self-fulfilling prophecy, and conditional prophecy. After looking at these different types of prophetic statements the article then begins to test the truthfulness of Joseph Smith in being a prophet. This is a great article that everyone should read.

Is Pilates for Christians?

The other day I was talking with my mother on the phone about nothing in general, when she mentioned that she was exercising more and that she had began a new exercise, new to her, that she was really enjoying. This exercise was called Pilates. At the time I didn’t think much of it, my mother was always looking into new and interesting ways to stay fit. I had finished my conversation with my mother and hung up when it hit me that I had seen an article recently at Watchmen fellowships website talking about Pilates. My mother had called me once before and had asked me if I knew anything about Yoga. I had gone to the same website and rummaged around through hundreds of different articles and learned much about the yoga practice. Once I had gathered my material for my mother I went to her house and we sat and talked and I was able to explain to her why doing Yoga was probably not something that a christian should practice. Now that my mother was looking into Pilates and since I recall seeing an article about Pilates at the Watchmen Fellowship website I decided to check it out and see just what this Pilates was all about. The article is called The Pilates Method. The article was actually very interesting, not to long, easy to read and not hard to understand. In the article it gives a brief History of where Pilates had originated from. Joseph Pilates had a great background in gymnastics, yoga, and injury rehabilitation. He was able to use this type of background when he had moved to America shortly after WWI. Because of the prime location of his studio in New York city, it did not take long for Pilates to become very popular form of exercise. Since Joseph Pilates there have been many other styles of Pilates that have hit the market, these different forms are what the article calls Pilate Hybrids. In the article you can read the section on Causes for concern in which can read about how there are some types of Pilates that you may watch-out for and it probes the question of should a Christian support some of the groups or company’s that publish different types of these workouts. I don’t believe the author is totally against the idea of working out to Pilates, especially the original Pilates, but he does raise some interesting points that you may want to look into.