THE MORNING AFTER: A PLAN B FOR EMERGENCIES

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Soon, it will be legal for young girls of any age to pick up over the counter Plan B One-Step morning after pills that  would  protect them from pregnancy resulting from the previous night’s mistake or passion.   There will be no age restriction, no prescription needed, no point of sale interviews, no parental permission.  Just like Trojan condoms are available near the impulse section of grocery check-out counters,  these morning after pills will be easily available to one and all.

Why wait for weeks?  What is barring this from happening?

Mainly because the Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius blocked the unrestricted sale of these pills at a time when  a US District judge, Edward Korman of Brooklyn,  wanted it to move forward.  HHS previously limited the sale
to those who are at least 17 years old.  But the Food and Drug Administration announced early last month that it should be made available to girls as old as 15.
There were talks that it should even be made available to girls as young as 12.

These intramurals on an important health and ethical issue surrounding a pill was
described  by the government as creating  “substantial market confusion”.   Judge Korman said he ruled against the government by declaring that Secretary Sebelius’ action was “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency
precedent”.   Korman just wanted to move forward.  This issue has been debated for
over ten years, though the Food and Drug Administration was ready to release
the pills only  two years ago.

The confusion is happening at the same time that the country is racked by the
Gosnell Trial, a court drama convicting abortionist  Dr. Kermit Gosnell for seven counts of infanticide committed before 2010 at his clinic, the Women’s Medical Society.

What would have happened if the morning after Plan B One-Step Pill was available to the women who committed abortion?  Would they have gone to the Gosnell  abbatoir (see my blog, THE GOSNELL  ABBATOIR: AN AMERICAN DACHAU, at http://virginiasaunders.authorsxpress.com/2013/04/23/the-gosnell-abbatoir-an-american-dachau/ ) or any available abortion clinic?

Necessity is the mother of invention, and that is what the morning after pill is for.  It is a necessary evil that should be equal opportunity for all.  Mainly because we are human, we make mistakes, and we don’t want to add more evil to injury.

As a contraceptive, Plan B One-Step  prevents or delays the ovulation in a girl’s body, as well as interfere with the fertilization of the egg.  It may also prevent the implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterus by altering the linings of  the uterus.  At the moment, the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies are not united in the “prevent implantation” labeling.

Plan B One-Step  is not an abortion pill.  It will not kill or destroy the baby once a woman is pregnant.  It’s purpose is to prevent the sperm and eggs from meeting and fertilizing in the uterus.  It is more effective than contraceptive pills that contain estrogen and progestin which women take for their 28 day period.

One factor that would help Christians in accepting Plan B One-Step  is the knowledge that by using it at the right time, they are not killing a baby.  The pill merely prevents sperm and ovum from meeting during the ovulation period when a woman is most likely to be fertile.  It also bypasses the dangers and side effects of taking the 28 day contraceptive pills to control ovulation.

As a birth control pill to prevent unwanted pregnancy from unprotected sex,  the levels of progestin in Plan B One-Step  is  higher than birth control pills. It is a one dose regimen that should be taken  immediately after sex or within 72 hours after unprotected sex.  This is a step more effective than  the Plan B available in 1999 when it was a two-dose regimen taken 12 hours apart. The new FDA approved Plan B One-Step  contains 1.5 milligrams of synthetic  levonorgestrel.   If taken within 24 hours after sex, it is
95% effective.

Why just 95%?  First, you cannot take Plan Be One-Step before sex.  You cannot use it if you already know or suspect that you are pregnant, for that could cause defect in
your baby.  You cannot take it if you have abnormal vaginal bleeding, or a history of allergy and hypersensitivity.  Some side effects include nausea, abdominal pain, headache, menstrual changes, dizziness, breast tenderness, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Plan B One-Step can disable the ejaculated sperm by thickening  the cervical mucus so sperms have difficulty swimming through it;   or it could  prevent or delay the release of the egg in the ovary or  by preventing ovulation, or by making the lining of the uterus less receptive to the egg.

There has been controversy on how  effective it is in preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the lining of the uterus. The pharmaceutical industry is contesting the Food and Drug Administration for declaring on the label that Plan B One-Step can not  prevent implantation in the womb.   Once a fertilized egg has been implanted, Plan B One-Step will not work and pregnancy occurs.  That is why it should be taken right after sex or within 72 hours after sex.  However, RU-486, an abortificent, destroys implanted embryos.

Plan B One-Step, and Plan B, are often given by hospitals to women who have been sexually assaulted. The position of the Catholic Church on this is that “rape is not a
unitive act that requires openness to procreation.  It is an act of violence to another person, and the woman is allowed to take steps to prevent the possible fertilization of
her own egg.”  The following conditions must be met for a Catholic run hospital to provide Plan B One-Step.

1)    That the woman is not already pregnant from prior, freely-chosen sexual activity

2)    The woman has been sexually assaulted

3)    The  woman has not yet ovulated

4)    The morning after pill can reasonably be expected to prevent her from ovulating.

The Catholic Church views are echoed by Orthodox Jews who believe that Plan B One-Step provides few  “halakhic” problems. “All who share our goal of preventing unwanted pregnancies should join us in welcoming the long overdue decision to make this safe and easy way to prevent pregnancy more easily available to women across the country,” according to the  Religious Action Center’s Mark J. Pelavin.  The
conservative group  RAC joined the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church in urging the FDA to approve the over the counter pill.

Jews believe that according to the Talmud, during the first 40 days of pregnancy, the
embroyo is only “mayim be’elma, or simply water”, which is different from the
Catholic view that life begins at conception.  Both Catholics and Jewish faiths believe that condoms, which block sperm from entering a woman’s body during sex, changes the act of transmission of life and are not permissible.

However,both faiths believe that with Plan B One-Step, the sperm is waylaid or blocked
only from meeting and fertilizing the ovum, conception has not occurred, and is
therefore permissible.

Maybe the Gosnell trial will, after all, bring attention to the merits of Plan B
One-Step.  It will make it easier for women to naturally control their bodies, and help rape victims to not bear the consequences of their oppression.  Maybe we can start tallying the number of abortions from the time Plan B One-Step became truly available over the counter to any woman regardless of age, and stop thinking about Roe versus Wade.

Maybe the Morning After Pill could really be a woman’s  best friend.

 

By Virginia S Saunders ®

Posted May 14, 2013 at

http://virginiasaunders.authorsxpress.com/2013/05/14/the-morning-after-a-plan-b-for-emergencies/

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MARGARET SANGER: THE AMERICAN WEED WHACKER

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I first encountered the name Margaret Sanger in 1979 when I saw a book about her in the hands of a visiting nine year old American girl.  Her mother gave her the book.  I did not even know that Margaret Sanger disliked black Americans because “they grow like weeds”.

Fast forward to 2013, and Margaret Sanger, long dead, is still around whacking weeds, decimating the black population under the banner of Planned Parenthood, an organization she founded in 1916, and the National Abortion Federation.  From her tutelage and incredible technique and knowledge of social engineering, she has taken over American hearts and minds by turning the issue of abortion from murder into equal rights for women.

She got her epiphany about “increasing the quantity and quality of sexual relationships” in 1886 when she was 48 years old and became an advocate of contraception, calling it birth control.  But the epiphany morphed into a nightmare in 1939 when she focused on the reproductive practices of black Americans.  She formed a partnership with Dr. Clarence J. Gamble of Proctor and Gamble, to establish the Birth Control Federation of America.

She wrote a book for teens entitled “What Every Boy and Girl Should Know.” She wrote, “It is a vicious cycle, ignorance breeds poverty, and poverty breeds ignorance.  There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things.  Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence.  Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them.”

And if contraceptive pills did not work, her answer was: Whack them!

In 1939, she and Gamble created a paper called “Suggestion for Negro Project” with the purpose of exterminating unwanted children born or carried by black women who were deemed either unfit or too impoverished to support children.  Sanger believed that the plan was unsellable unless they co-opt black Americans by putting them in charge of some conferences or organizational responsibilities, while couching the Planned Parenthood language in more palatable terms than “extermination”.  Throughout the formative years of Planned Parenthood, they put into office articulate black men and women who would present abortion and contraception as two separate and different ways of population control.

By softening the language, they seeked out endorsements for the Negro Project from black religious leaders like Bishop David H. Sims of African Methodist Episcopal Church. By 1949, they had garnered the support of the entire black leadership and religious and social organizations in the country who threw in the weight of their organizations for Planned Parenthood.

Contraception as a way of controlling breeding appealed to the lowest income group. Sanger then moved her cause to a higher level by bringing it to the halls of Congress by presenting the Negro Project as the answer for economic betterment and lower incidence of infant mortality.  Birth control programs were tax-subsidized, and Planned Parenthood offices opened in areas that had the largest concentration of black people.  According to BlackGenocide.org. the president of Planned Parenthood Alan Guttmacher in 1964, “was desperate to show policy makers that birth control should produce a situation whereby minority groups who constantly outbreed the majority will no longer persist in doing so.”

But while contraception through birth control pills was advocated, so was abortion.  Since Sanger first thought of advocating it, this method of family planning has become pervasive in United States.  Black women accounted for 35.4% of all abortions in 2009.  Everyday up to 1300 black babies are aborted, far greater than white or Latino babies.  The Center for Disease Control reported that in 2009, there were 1.21 million abortions in Unites States, of which 286,623 black babies were killed through abortion. Since Roe versus Wade in 1973, there have been a total of 60 million babies aborted, of which 35% were black babies, while 20% were Hispanics.  Sixty million is equivalent to the population of a medium sized country.

Margaret Sanger, in her own morbid way, has created a ferocious beast that has invaded American religious, social and political life.  Born from a large family of 11 children, she associated larger families with “poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jails”, according to her book “My Fight With Birth Control”.  Her parents were Irish  free thinkers and anti-Catholic. She believed that too many children and 18 painful childbirths and miscarriages caused her mother to suffer death from tuberculosis.  She considered the birth of her own son as “mental torture”.

Her transformation into a social activist came from watching and treating a number of women who had undergone back alley abortions, or tried to self terminate their pregnancies.  She objected to unnecessary suffering, and sought to make birth control information and contraception widely available.  However, her views on abortion as a method of birth control, and the Negro Project for population control, has made her a devil’s advocate for family planning.  Many of her written statements were considered racist, but not too many Americans today know that.  In fact, only 34 percent of Americans know that the Planned Parenthood she founded carry out abortion.

Last April, President Obama became the first president to appear in the Planned Parenthood’s annual conference, and praised the organization for their hard work, while criticizing conservatives who have marched for 35 years in Washington D.C. calling for respect for the sanctity of human life.  Planned Parenthood is now in many countries, and many  have passed laws that support contraception, including abortion.  Obama’s speech came at the same week when the courts were trying the abortionist, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, for seven counts of infanticide.  But what conservatives found creepy and disturbing about the speech was when Obama told Planned Parenthood, “God bless you for what you do.”

It is quite interesting that President Obama would support a cause by a woman who wanted him exterminated.  This is just an indication of how much Margaret Sanger had sold Americans a bill of goods, that women could kill their babies without thought of damnation, and call the act “women’s equal rights”.  As the president seriously said, “God bless you for what you do.”  Whack him, Margaret?

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EVIL IN DISGUISE: YOU WILL BE LIKE GOD!

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I was in France watching television in my hotel room when French TV showed  five bald Frenchmen in orange long garb, sitting in yogic position, with eyes closed.  They were bouncing up and down on their derrieres, moving from one end of the yard to the other, levitating above ground like Las Vegas  magician, Criss Angel . The smiles on their lips showed spiritual ecstasy as they floated around, having conquered the magic  of levitation. The narrator was in awe; he said they floated on their own without external devices.

Many have been taken and fascinated by this. “I saw it with my own eyes!”  No matter that the morbid looking Criss Angel  has already exposed his trade secret of levitation. We are so easily impressed. Scientists said that we only use ten  percent of our brains. Obviously, magicians use 11 percent as they continue to awe us and play with our sense of unreality, magic and sorcery.

The Bible said these things happen.  Simon the magician was even mentioned in the Bible in Acts 8: 9-25, confounding the people of Samaria  who were known to have
acknowledged him as  a man who has the power of God.   When Simon saw the apostles  Philip, Peter and John laying their hands on people, praying over them and curing the sick, he was so astounded  by their magic, that he wanted to pay them
money if they would only teach him their trade secrets.  “Repent of your wickedness!”,  rebuked  Peter. “This is not for sale!”

How do we know what is of God, and what is not of God?  If satan can do signs and wonders the way God does signs and wonders, how do we know who to believe?  The Bible attests  that satan perverts our faith  to entrap us, for though he  trembles at the very  mention of the name of God (James 2:19),  he uses God’s  laws to waylay us.  The devil is real.  He comes in the guise of good intentions and  social equality, invading our hearts and minds,  even playing with biblical verses according to his own purpose.  He did this with Adam and Eve, telling them “If you do this, you will be like God!”

The devil uses the laws of God to condemn, but he targets our hearts of flesh in the
process of condemnation.  “A  baby must be covered with love.  It is not good that a baby should be born unwanted.”  This  counterfeit  statement of love  has covered a
multitude of sins which has caused the abortion industry to prosper in United States, with 60 million dead children since Roe versus Wade in 1973. It does not even recognize  that a man and a woman’s sexual relationship is ordained by God but could also lead to unwanted pregnancy if used wrongly.  It is the same vein used by  Margaret Sanger,  Planned Parenthood founder, when she rooted for destruction of black babies  because they “grow like weeds”.

Another statement that has been perverted by the devil is marriage between a man and a woman.  This has been stated unequivocally in Genesis 1:24  and Matthew 19:5 (A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh), and Genesis  24:4 (Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shall cleave unto her and none else) . Because  of the ideal goal of social equality,  the traditional marriage between man and woman has been perverted to include unions between man and man, or woman and woman. The Bible tells us that this was the cause of the fall of Sodom and Gomorah.  Until we know scientifically and medically why we have the sexually confused Third Gender, the verses in the scripture on marriage between man and woman will be perverted with counterfeit equality.

How do we fight  the perversions of evil in our faith?  I was listening to a sermon by
the late Adrian Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, who  spoke about counterfeit Christianity.   He gave three suggestions:

1)     Don’t be dazzled by  the  satanic force of  False Religions.

Just as the people of Samaria were dazzled  and bewitched by the magical powers of Simon the Magician, today’s generation are dazzled by witchcraft, astrology, sorcery,
and necromancy.   People fail to understand that there is supernatural power in these, and the power comes from the devil.  We stay away from it precisely for that reason. Satan can create signs and wonders just like God.  He can create miracles just like God, and He can heal just like Jesus.  In Revelation 16:14, it said that “during the great tribulation, the evil spirits will work miracles leading kings and potentates to assemble them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty”.  Revelation 16:13, prophesied that they will come out like “ frogs from the mouths of dragons, beasts and false prophets.”  A global index of religiousity conducted by WIN-Gallup Polls said that the number of Americans who say they are not religious dropped from 73 % in 2005, to 60% in 2012. The poll project was launched in 2007 by atheist Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

2)     Don’t be deceived by the superficial faith in  False Religions. 

Simon the Magician himself believed in the miracles he saw, but he was not a real believer of Jesus Christ.  The Bible said his heart was not right in the sight of God. People followed Jesus not because of Him as God, but because they wanted to see more of His miracles. We know that a real Believer undergoes a change of heart once
He believes in Jesus Christ, for that is the underlying experience that separates
a born again believer from normal “Christians”.  Born again believers undergo a supernatural experience that changed their lives and the way they perceive God.
They do not believe that certain doctrines changed them.  Being born again is a personal, physical,  emotional, and  spiritual experience, and it is reflected in a personal love for God, hunger for the Bible, and kindness to neighbors. I mentioned these spiritual transformations  in my book  ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME.

3)     Don’t be destroyed by the selfish focus of False Religions.

People who are not in touch with God suffer from two major emotional and
psychological pains :  bitterness and bondage.  These are caused by pride and
self-centeredness.  Jesus focuses on God’s will (“Not my will, but your will”), while satan focuses on his own will.  Atheists focus on themselves more than any other because they don’t focus on God.  Instead, they carry with them bitterness, unforgiveness, and resentment which put them in bondage until they recognize God and ask Him to do the healing. 1 Timothy 6:3, said “Whoever teaches something different and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the religious teaching, is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.” Sadly, we see these negative traits from among those away from God.

All false religions are self-centered because the Spirit of God  is not within them. Said  Dr. Adrian Rogers, “They will always feel  disillusioned, and they will never ever be
satisfied.  The unsaved person fears the consequences of his sin, while the saved person, when he sins, feels broken because he has broken the heart of God.”

 

April 29, 2013

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THE GOSNELL ABBATOIR: AN AMERICAN DACHAU

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It happened in Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, where pregnant women would go to the Women’s Medical Society to get a procedure.  For several years this  brownstone
building in the middle of the city, under the watchful gaze of Planned Parenthood, offered refuge for women who wanted an abortion and be relieved of the burdensome life within them. After a few hours inside, they stepped out of the doors feeling free of the burden.  It was good to be a citizen with rights and choices.

Left within the building  were the carcasses of their indiscretions.  Bottles of baby’s feet,
babies who moved even after their spinal cords have been severed at their necks, moaning babies stuffed in shoe boxes in the freezer.  Here, a Bhutan woman died from a botched abortion. Staff with no knowledge of anesthesia, injected  unsuspecting pregnant mothers.  Blood stains and cockroaches were everywhere.

Presiding in this clinic until 2010 ,was Dr. Kermit Gosnell, now being questioned in court
for seven counts of  first-degree murder, and damned by his staff who  co-opted in the procedures, all for the purpose of extending help to citizens with rights and choices. Dr. Gosnell parried that he was there to aid  women who needed urgent help.

It has become a political maelstrom.  Pro-choice women labelled the attention to
abortion as a “war on women”.  The mainstream media chose to ignore the Gosnell case, and although court seats were provided for the press, it remained empty except for one conservative journalist who came to represent the fourth estate.  Two Fridays ago, millions of Twitter conservatives used the social media to pounce on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, HuffPost, Washington Post, New York Times, and other mainstream media for ignoring what was a front page story but was given the silent treatment.  Lamont Hill, a journalist, said something telling:  “We chose to ignore the Gosnell Trial in order to protect abortion.”

Gosnell said he did not end the lives of these seven babies born and killed.  But the case is stacked against him. The court is wading through some 546 exhibits, pictures of baby parts, dozens of patient files, and documents showing that Women’s Medical Society had not abided with the health regulations stipulated for abortion clinics. In
Pennsylvania, abortions after 24 weeks are illegal.  But Gosnell performed procedures on out-of-state-referrals already beyond the second trimester.  Steven Massof and Latosha Lewis, two of the workers in the clinic, testified that Gosnell performed four
to five illegal abortions a week.

So many, that even the toilet was clogged with fetuses.  For later term abortions, Dr. Gosnell termed the procedure “ensuring fetal demise” by snipping their spinal cords.

Say that this is NOT America.  But it is.  What happened in Philadelphia is happening in
Virginia and Washington DC, all over the United States, where more than 60 million babies have been aborted since the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973.  This, in the interest of  “ridding women of unwanted babies”, as they hypocritically cuddle their cats, dogs, and horses.

It is too gruesome, gentle people do not want to even believe that these things happened.

But it did. This type of inhumanity has happened before – in Dachau, in Auschwitz, and in all countries where people, because of their gender, color, race, and poverty  were considered unfit to join a pre-determined race of super people.  Many were subjected to barbaric medical experiments conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele during World War II, with prisoners undergoing “selection”. Those who were judged gay, too sick or weak to continue working in the camps, were sent to Harthein “euthanasia” killing center near Linz, Austria.  Several thousand Dachau prisoners were murdered at Harthein as a result of these experiments.

Could Dr. Gosnell have escaped scrutiny and investigation if he had kept his clinic
clean, as per policies of the National Abortion Federation?  I was staggered to discover that there was even such an association.  NAF said that it upholds the strictest health and legal standards for its members.  After one of his patients died, the Bhutanese
woman, Karnamaya Mongar, Gosnell applied for  admission, but NAF denied him because appropriate records of patients were not kept or monitored.

No matter how twisted their reasoning,  pro-choice groups put the blame on  pro-life groups when pregnant women went to abbatoirs run by Dr. Gosnell whose fees were more affordable than other abortionists in big hospitals.  How he escaped  oversight on his activities, the grand jury reported:  “The reason no one acted against the Womens Medical Society run by Dr. Gosnell, was because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject is the political football of abortion”.

But why blame those who want to protect the unborn?  Pro-life groups have been marching to Washington DC for the past 35 years, reminding our president, senators and congressmen that life is precious and the unborn and defenseless must be protected.  The president would not listen,  and in fact abortion was in his mind before he went into office in 2008. So strong was his conviction, that the first law he signed on his first day in office was to revoke the Mexico Policy, a policy that banned federal funding of abortion here and abroad as a method of family planning.

I have always maintained that abortion is between a woman, her doctor and her God. If
she did commit abortion, it becomes her sin against God.  But it is a different  grievous matter when a government makes abortion the national standard for family planning. Then it becomes a national rebellion against God’s laws on murder, particularly of the innocents. It really stirs up God’s wrath.

Our problems with this issue could have been alleviated  had  we taught more about the gift of life through the Holy Spirit.  In my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, I wrote that our Holy Spirit gives us wisdom, discernment, kindness, self control.  We need these to navigate through our fallen world.  A Spirit-filled person will not destroy a
fetus out of social or  financial concerns, but will protect him/her at all cost because it is a gift of life.

So many have lost their way and have ignored the gift of life.  In Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the death camps where  more than one million people died,  the Allies  found thousands of emaciated detainees and piles of corpses.  In Dachau, the
crematorium spewed out ashes of executed, gassed prisoners who were previously
subjected to experiments on malaria, tuberculosis, hypothermia and other medical testings.

Is there a similarity with Dachau and Auschwitz?  Yes.

I am reminded of a story by my brother, a seasoned police reporter in Manila, who interviewed a murderer before his capital punishment.  When he asked how it  felt  to kill multiple people, the murderer  smiled, “It is only difficult  in the first or second murders.  It gets easier afterwards.  After several times, one does not even think about it.”

This is what happened at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, and many other abortion clinics  here and around the world. The heart has become hardened, it  does not see God.   How can American hearts not harden after  60 million babies in the US have been killed in and outside the womb?  The mind goes numb.  When a black baby was born, Dr. Gosnell even joked before snipping his neck that “this baby is so huge we can walk in the park.”

That’s it.  Abortion = it is  just a walk in the park.

 

April 22, 2013

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PROPHETIC GIFTS: WHY IT CAN’T WIN YOU THE MEGA MILLION

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The supernatural gift of prophecy is among the gifts given us by the Holy Spirit,
and it is one that has caused the most disappointment and embarrassment  among recipients. Frankly, it is hard to read the mind of God.  What exactly is He saying?  And yet, many who have received the charismatic gifts and who have yielded to the gift of prophesy are only responding because  words or visions were placed in their minds.

It is a three step process:  First, words and visions come into the mind. Second, the recipient has to determine whether it is his own mind producing these words and visions; and third, once he has determined that it came from the Lord,  he must have the boldness and obedience to proclaim it.

There are two kinds of prophecy.  One proclaims the word of God as transmitted to the recipient.  The other foretells a future event.  Many in the charismatic world have received the first kind, when God uses the recipient to send a message that will console or strengthen His people.  The second one is more intense and precarious, because it also overlaps with the gift of visions.  Skeptics disparage this as being caused by an
overactive mind.  But the truth is,  visions and dreams actually appear because God wants to send a message.

Now you know why we can’t use the gift of prophecy  to win the lottery. My friend Susan and I buy tickets to the Virginia Mega Million based only on this: “Who knows, God might favor us on Tuesday night, so we might as well have a ticket ready.”

Lottery aside, I will not even write here about prophetic words and visions which were
recorded richly in the Old Testament.  But the New Testament encouraged prophecy as a normal means of God speaking to His people.  The Pentecostal outpouring was
prophesied by prophet Joel and repeated in Acts 2:17 .  In 1 Corinthians 12:10, Apostle Paul said that the prophetic ministry is given to some.  It is still happening today
because the Holy Spirit is involved.  Among those in the charismatic renewal movement, prophecy is a regular and normal event during prayer meetings.

Some believers have stronger prophetic gifts, like David Wilkerson, author of The Cross And The Switchblade.  Wilkerson has been prophesying since the 70’s, and many of his prophecies were spot on. He once received a message to prepare thousands of sandwiches on the night of Sept. 10, 2001.  Not even knowing what they were for, he and his church prepared sandwiches. Next day, they were distributing it to thousands of dazed New Yorkers.

Why God didn’t just say “Terrorists will target the Twin Towers tomorrow and so you
need sandwiches”, is one of the enigmas of the gift of prophecy.  In my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, I wrote that some prophecies are given in stages, incomplete, each given on a “need to know” basis, at His own time, and His own will.

Even St. Malachy,  the 11th century saint whose prophecies were scrutinized right after Pope Benedict XVI resigned on February 4, 2013, was subjected to false readings of dreams and inspirations.  He wrote down words and  phrases which came into his mind,
prophesying the succeeding popes from 11th century onwards, giving these popes dramatic names such as Burning Fire, Angelic Shepherd, Pastor and Mariner.  What were the odds? If he was wrong, he would have been dead anyway, but he did get some prophecies right, such as a pope who was both pastor and sailor which turned out to be Pope John XXIII.  Reports said that New York Cardinal Spellman was so fascinated by Malachy’s prophecy that he rented a boat and sailed up and down the Tiber River in Rome, on the chance that he could become the next pope!

Another seer, a Spanish woman even co-opted the Virgin Mary into her prophecy by saying in 1962 that the Virgin Mary told her that there will only be two more popes
after Paul VI.  As we can see, Pope John Paul, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis turned her prophecy into a dud.

I also wrote that the gift of prophecy is a passing manifestation of the presence of God and that it would cease on the recipient.  Many who have received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit became filled with His anointing, and began receiving messages and visions in the initial stages of their renewal.  These messages come and go as God picks His people to deliver His messages at His own time.

How does one know it is the Lord speaking, and that one is being moved to prophesy?  The important book A Key to Charismatic Renewal In the Catholic Church” written in
1970 by Monsignor Vincent M. Walsh of  the  Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said, “First he sees an activity  is taking place within him of which God is the cause and not himself.  This could be a sense of “being filled up” or a special joy or peace of
feeling God’s presence.

“Secondly, the person perceives certain words or phrases going through his mind.  Or perhaps a certain  picture  comes into his imagination seemingly out of nowhere.  In other words, the person perceives God’s action and that divine activity results in an intelligible message.  The way this occurs vary  greatly. Some receive whole sentences, others partial words, or no words at all  but  just a sense of the message.”

I wrote in my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, how God tends to communicate in a most reticent way.  In the two instances I heard Him speak to me,
there were only two audible words on the first instance, and three audible words on the second instance. And yet, the meanings and implications of those words were multitudinous. It made me conclude that was the way He spoke to Old Testament prophets and scribes as well as  the apostles and disciples who were evangelizing in the name of Jesus.  For example, in John 17, when John wrote about Jesus’ discourse with God as Jesus was praying, I doubt that John was present with pen and ink. He may have overheard, but it was the Holy Spirit who expanded in John’s mind  the
Jesus prayer which since the 16th century has been called the “high priestly prayer” of Jesus as an intercessor.

It is also the nature of the prophetic word that it should be proclaimed because it is a message from God.  In my case, when I was actively receiving prophetic messages, I took every opportunity to proclaim it during church petitions.  People who receive the words and don’t proclaim immediately suffer extreme sadness and guilt because the words are just boiling within them and it must be proclaimed.

I wrote in my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, that in 2002 I received the message that I must lift up in prayer petitions the following Sunday the new president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.  During petitions, I boldly lifted him and asked that he be protected from assassination.  Three days later Karzai survived an assassination attempt on his life when his own personal bodyguard tried to kill him. Only the action of his quick thinking American bodyguards saved him as they gunned down his assassin.  Karzai publicly told CNN that he credits God for his survival.

Now you know. But  yes, buy the lottery ticket. You never know when God will favor you.

 

April 15, 2013

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HEALING HANDS: YOU TOO CAN HAVE IT!!

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Jesus healed.  His ministry, as recorded in the Bible, showed Him healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, the dumb talk.  As attractive as He
already was as the  Anointed  One of Israel, news of His healing ministry brought thousands of sick and infirmed wherever He went.  More than any other miracles which He performed, His healing ministry spoke more for Him and about  Him  as the Son of God.

He told His apostles that they will do more than this when He is gone, though He cautioned  them  not to evangelize  until He has sent the Promised.

The Promised was the Holy Spirit whom He sent on the day of Pentecost.   On that day  His Church was born, and Jesus’ statement in Mark 16:18 that His apostles “will lay
hands on the sick and they will recover” was fulfilled.  The apostles and disciples who were gathered in the Upper Room were so filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit, that  they radiated  with healing energy.  Even Peter’s shadow radiated healing.  Paul’s handkerchief radiated healing.  For those following and trailing them wherever they went, it was an exciting time to be sick and infirmed  because  they  saw the hand of God at work.

Many articles I have read have been emphatic in their claim that the healing gifts
are no longer operative in the Church.  Rev. Thomas Tyree, Jr., pastor of Grace Bible Church in Costa Mesa, California, wrote, “ Healing does not exist today as a spiritual gift because it ceased with the completion of the Canon as did all other temporary spiritual
gifts according to 1 Cor. 13:10.”  He added that any healing today must come directly from God, and not through any delegated human authority or intermediary.

I beg to disagree.  He obviously belongs to the “cesationist” group, those who  believe
that spiritual gifts given to the apostles and disciples by the Holy Spirit  have ceased and are no longer operative today.  The “continualist” group believes  that  these
gifts  are still operating, although in a different manner, and largely among the charismatic renewal groups.  1 Corinthians 13: 9-10 states that “For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”

Can something so important just be swept away by one verse? Just re-read the verse.  Who is the perfect?  Jesus Christ?  If He is, then we are speaking of His second coming. He is not here yet, last time I looked.  The Church?  The church is not yet perfect, it is divided, and that is why ecumenism was pushed forward during  the Second Vatican Council.  The partial? How can the partial pass away if Jesus has not yet come?  The Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit was precisely sent so He can distribute the gifts, and from what I know, He likes these gifts to grow abundantly then, now and forever.

I was given the gift of healing hands  without my even knowing it.  In my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, I wrote that this gift is given to everyone who has received the Holy Spirit or been reborn by the Holy Spirit.  It is a passing experiential gift, and no doctrine taught or exposed by theologians  can dumb down a special gift from the Holy Spirit.  As the saying goes in university circles, those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.  And they might as well teach the whole truth, because those who have the experience will shoot  down the untried doctrine.

There are people who have been given the spiritual gifts a lot more powerfully than
others.  That is why we have people like Malcolm Smith from Yorkshire, England who has been healing for more than 20 years, restoring sight and hearing, curing cancers and other diseases.  There are faith healers who believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and who go through their normal days healing the sick and the infirmed, though nonbelievers call their actions “demonic”.  Is Pastor Benny  Hinn demonic?  He has the healing gift from the Holy Spirit.  Scott Hahn?  Father Leonardo Polinar? Francis McNutt of  Christian Healing Ministries? Pastor Joseph Prince of  New Creation Church in
Singapore?  Joyce Meyer? Rev. Vincent Walsh of Philadelphia  Diocese?  Pat Robertson?  All of them were given the healing gift, and I’ll be damned if anyone labels them “demonic”.

Every person called by the Holy Spirit have these gifts.  You don’t have to be a priest or pastor to have the healing gift;  all you need is sensitivity and compassion for others, the knowledge of the  Holy Spirit inside you, and the desire to extend the gifts.    The problem is that there is scratch knowledge of this gift which actually is highly operative the more you are aware of it. This gift of healing should not be classified as “reiki” or other strange Oriental or European terms.  As Christians, we were given by Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit who distributes this healing gift.   In addition, people with the gift do not go around showboating. They credit  every healing to God, because the healing comes from God.

Said Monsignor Vincent M. Walsh in his significant book “A Key To Charismatic  Renewal  In The Catholic Church”:  “That God would heal and raise up a healing
ministry in His church is a theological conclusion of basic belief and understanding of Christ’s preaching about the kingdom and of Christ’s redemptive act.”

Monsignor Walsh classified the three kinds of healings:  Physical healing, in which some diseases in the body are remedied; Psychological healing,  in which  unhappy memories and unhealthy psychological  attitudes are alleviated;  and  Spiritual healing,  in which the habit of sin or temptation is removed.

The laying on of hands is not only to pray away a disease.  It is important in removing the cause of the disease.  Stress cause heart attacks, anger cause strokes, envy and jealousy cause arthritis and bone disorders (Proverbs 14:30), resentment and bitterness cause tumors.  Our bodies respond negatively to every wrong and toxic  passion that our hearts and minds cause to happen.  This  is why the prayer for peace and serenity,  usually invoked  by one who is not spiritually broken,  is needed to successfully impart healing.

In my experience, I found that the recipient does not even have to believe in God in
order to be healed. I have prayed over people who were not of my faith, and
sometimes they did not even know they were being prayed over.   The Lord just heals them either to strengthen my faith, or to use that person for His own almighty purpose.  The gift is a passing manifestation of His power.   Again,  He has His reasons why . It could be to prevent us from boasting about the gift, or He is setting us up to use for
another day.

You must seek this supernatural gift.  How can you not want the gift of healing hands when it is so available, when you know that you could be the conduit between God and your sick family?   You  are probably hurting as you watch your parents get their second or third diabetic insulin injection every week, or you see your  sister being prepared for cancer treatment,  or  your daughter down with sexually transmitted disease, or your son hanging on to sanity after every panic attack.  The litany of ailments  goes on and on in our lives.

We all need  to be healed.  The landscape  is scattered with the lives of broken people who could use your healing hands.   The very first thing that Jesus wants to do
when a person is called by the Holy Spirit is to heal him and renew him.  Psychological and moral illnesses are immediately removed, transforming that person from a basket case to a winner worthy of God’s anointing as a healer.  Through  that person, God’s glory is magnified.

It is the Holy Spirit at work, and He is not finished with His job.  Until the last person in this world has been healed, He will keep on calling us to get healed and be a healer.  And all we need to do is humble ourselves and ask for His gifts.

 

April 8,
2013

 

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RESURRECTION: DUMB DUMBING CHRIST

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In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.  He proclaims thoughts and ideas that were shaped by a world seen from just an eye, filtered through cataracts and the dirty pus of infected sight.  To him, lies are absolute truths, for that is all he can see.  He cannot see beyond the horizon, he cannot see through the light.  It is blinding and painful to his eye.  What he sees are shadows and indistinct forms, and he proclaims these as the absolute truth.

This is our world.  We were given eyes to see but we prefer to be blind and be led by the one eyed king.  We were told that the real King is “the way, the truth and the life”, but He is too profound and too bright to see.  So we follow the one eyed king.  We have shaped the truth in ways we thought would be acceptable to all, to the young and ill informed.  And in the process, we bent the truth.

Every year in many past generations, we have softened the truth by making it appealing.  And so our children move gradually from the easter eggs, to the bunnies, to Friedrich Nietzche, to Bertrand Russell, and Christopher Hitchens, and Harry Potter, finding it neat that infinite wisdom could come from the mouth of Dumbledore.  Our one eyed king has taken on the power of celluloid and the glamor of lights, producing in his tracks pagans, progressives, liberals, left wing nuts, atheists and agnostics.

It is our fault.

In the land of the blind, we have dumbed down our faith to the point that we equate the powerful symbols of our God’s birth, death, resurrection and our salvation with the symbol of a hard boiled egg.

What in the world does it have to do with the most profound sacrifice of God’s shed blood?

“Oh, an egg means new life. Jesus’ resurrection means new life.”  And every parent, including me before my renewal in 1993, got involved in dumb dumbing Christ because we did not know any better.  Our answer to the most profound sacrifice in the history of mankind is a boiled egg painted in yellow or pink and purple.  Our children grow  in the belief that Easter means hunting for eggs, and rabbits warming up chicken eggs.

I am so staggered by the realization of our stupidity.

Had we known better we would have enjoyed and taught our children the reason for our strength, our renewal, our healing.  It was Jesus risen from the dead.  That if He was not raised at all, we would still be in sin, wallowing in the thought that salvation is nowhere in sight, that the muck we grew up in is the natural order of things.

But it was not the natural order of things.  Jesus came exactly to change that thought. He came to bring light to a blind world ran by the one eyed king.

Sometimes I blame the Lord for coming so late in my life.  Had I known the real truth about the Lord, I would have told my children the truth about Hebrew 10:11-18, “Every priest stands daily at his ministry offering frequently those same sacrifices that can never take away sins.  But this one offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God.  For by one offering he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated.”

I asked, would a five year old understand that?  I wished I told that fact to my children when they were five years old, instead of taking them to the Hilton Hotel on Easter Sundays when the hotel cordoned off a part of their lobby to create a small Farmville of yellow chicks, bunnies and purple eggs.

I was following the one eyed king.  He never told me about the blood of bulls and goats that were sacrificed on the altar for the yearly forgiveness of Israel’s sins.  And I was too comfortable and thrilled to watch those cute bunnies to even dig deeper than the purple eggs, to learn that Jesus is the true payment, that He was the one sacrifice for sins forever, that after He died on the cross to offer His life for our salvation, He rose from the dead, and resurrected, then sat at the right hand of God because He had successfully put away our sins.

Why was that so difficult to understand?  Why didn’t I tell my children that?  I remember my five year old daughter snickering the first time she heard the priest say, “This is my body. Eat. This is my blood. Drink. Do this in memory of me.”  And she said aloud, “Eat my body, drink my blood! Yeach!!”  And I thought she was cute.

Maybe that is why the hard boiled easter egg from the one eyed king was a safer symbol of regeneration.

But I have progressed from that.  The Bible said that I have graduated from soft food to real adult food, and I can now proclaim what I have also heard, that “Jesus did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people live!”

We were dead in our transgressions, but Colossians assures us that by our Lord’s death and resurrection, the covenant He made with His Father for our salvation has been fulfilled, and we are free from all our sins, not just some sins, but all sins, our past, present, and future sins.  If there was one sin still unforgiven, Jesus would not have resurrected at all.  Nothing escaped God’s eyes.  Nothing would have satisfied the heart of God but total forgiveness of our sins.

So profound, so intelligent, so affirming of our faith.

But the people of the one eyed king prefer to dumb down Christ’s resurrection with hard boiled eggs.  Maybe those easter eggs are what makes us repulsive to atheists and agnostics, who are now rebuking us Christians for the stupidity of our faith.  They are a bunch who consider themselves intelligent and believe in intelligent life.  As Christians we had been given by the Lord the most intelligent reasons for our existence, but we preferred to supplant that with the hardboiled egg, built a tradition on the hardboiled egg.  Maybe we should no longer wonder why atheists and agnostics ridicule us by asking, “How can you believe that silly myth?”

It is our fault.  We followed the one eyed king and have dumbed down Jesus Christ.

We need to smart up and clean up our act.

April 1, 2013

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CRUCIFIXION: LOBBYING WITH GOD

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CRUCIFIXION:  LOBBYING WITH GOD

 

Our faith is  shaped  by our culture.  We feed it by our traditions and it grows, or
we starve it by “cleaning up” our act.  It is my observation that in countries where faith practices have been sanitized, faith and religion are  either dead or dying.  While in countries where faith is fed, the culture and worship of God respond and grow, enriched by traditions and personal dynamism.   In many countries where Spanish colonialists held sway, strange religious practices and  traditions  built on the ruins of old Spanish Catholicism have metamorphosed and are still being observed today.  Mexico, Philippines, Latin America, all share an intensity in their faith and religious  practices which makes sense to the  faithful  but are shocking to the uninitiated.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the practice of Lenten traditions.  I was watching some videos of Lenten crucifixions in Pampanga, Philippines and was transfixed by its intensity.   Last year 16 men asked to be crucified like Jesus Christ as 90 million Filipinos observed Lent.  They were continuing a tradition that has been going on for several generations within their families, though not necessarily within  the Catholic Church.

Some men have voluntarily been crucified 20 to 25 times. This year, ten penitents will be crucified on the afternoon of Good Friday to commemorate  Jesus’ own crucifixion.  They lead a host of penitents that include men who carry the cross in a path called “Via Cruxis”, followed by bareback penitents who flagellate themselves as they walk for five kilometers towards a peak where volunteers will be crucified.

This penitential walk  is part drama, part  tradition.  Men dressed like Roman soldiers act like persecutors in this colorful but morbid event, lashing the penitents as they go through their appointed destination.

There on the peak, the crucified are actually nailed on the cross.  Reenactors dressed like  Roman soldiers hammer long iron nails on the crucified’s  hands and feet.  If the movie “Passion of the Christ” shocked and disturbed,  these videos of  real crucifixions, devoid of cinematographic  manipulations,  should elicit deep emotions because  real nails pierce human hands and feet.  As the appointed persecutor hammers the nails,
weeping relatives and friends, gawkers and tourists, cry and shout  “aww!” with every painful  blow.  There on the cross they are made to hang for 15 to 20  minutes until they are brought down and the waiting emergency ambulance take them to the hospital for treatment.

Yes, the crucified Christ cries in pain.  But it is good pain. For in spite of all these, he knows he is fulfilling a “panata”, a covenant he made with the Lord, for himself or on behalf of his family.

This private covenant or “panata” is what the sanitized  Christian  or accidental tourist cannot understand until it is explained.  “Such savagery, so medieval, so primitive!”  I have heard pastors say,  “Get off the cross!  Your blood is not good enough!”  But they are missing the point.

The universal position of the Catholic Church when it comes to bloody penitence such as this is that “it is not necessary for you to hurt yourselves because Jesus has
already taken the punishment on our behalf.”  Crucifixion as a method of punishment for the condemned was  banned  in year AD 337  by the converted Roman Emperor  Constantine out of veneration for Jesus Christ.

Prior to Constantine’s conversion,  crucifixion was the preferred method of execution by the Romans. During the slave rebellion led by Spartacus, 6,000 men were crucified in the Appian Way from Capua to Rome in 73-71 BC.   Crucifixion was used among the Seleucids, the Carthaginians and the Romans.  Even in 18th century Japan, crucifixion was inflicted on persecuted Christians.

But what a transformation it has become after two millenniums!  What used to be a method of gruesome humiliation and long painful death for the condemned,  has now become not only a penitential rite, but a personal covenant with God.

Penitents explain their point of view:   they have made a panata or covenant with
the Lord on behalf of their families, for medical or financial relief, for various  kinds of succor and  salvation. As they lobby with God, crucifixion seems the only way they can show the depths of their sincerity.

A priest said something that really struck me: that  Jesus Christ’s crucifixion was all about love of family. That God considers us His family, and Jesus considers us His own
brothers and sisters, and He was willing to take the punishment on the cross in order to save His family.

This is the heart of crucifixion, Philippine style.  Because of the “panata”, crucifixion has
attained a tradition worth repeating every year.  Family members in Pampanga vie for the honor to be crucified on the following Lent, each feeling duty bound  to  continue
the tradition.  Being the crucified Christ holds more importance and prominence than just being tied on the cross.  More pain, more gain!

In 1991 when Mt. Pinatubo  erupted  near Clark Air Base in Pampanga, one man made
a covenant with God:  he will volunteer to be crucified if only the Lord will stop the lava from devastating or even flowing near his town.  This request was granted, and as promised, he had himself crucified the following Lent.

A woman made a “panata” with God for medical healing for her and members of her family.  They were healed.  She had been crucified ten times. She showed where the nails pierced.  There was hardly a scar, for that is one of the “unexplainables” in this Lenten crucifixion.

Apostle Peter, when condemned, asked to be crucified upside down because he felt he was not worthy to be crucified like Jesus Christ.  There were many ways of crucifixion. Others were just tied to gibbets, or one pole without a crossbeam for extended arms.

Should crucifixion be banned in the Philippines?  Should lobbying with God be banned?

A penitent was asked why he wanted to be crucified.  He explained: “ I love Jesus Christ. I believe in Him. He died for us, and I want to know and experience the pain He went through.”

As I wrote at the start of this blog, we are shaped by our culture. In countries where primitive faith in God has been sanitized, appropriate penitence during  Lent is equivalent to abstaining from eating one dinner. That is real commitment.  What a laugh.

 

March 26, 2013

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THE LIVING, THROBBING BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST

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I have watched Mel Gibson’s  stirring movie “The Passion Of The Christ” several  times.
The part that really breaks my heart was when it showed his mother,  Mary,  down on her knees wiping  with linen rugs the blood of Jesus Christ  off the cobbled stones on the public square, after they have  unshackled Him from the  lashing post and dragged His bloody broken body away.  His blood was everywhere,  you  could smell it.  Mary was surrounded by it, as she numbingly tried to clean up the cobbled stones  from  the blood of her son.

If that was my daughter’s or my son’s blood,  I would go insane.  But Mary was stoic, though her demeanor showed her brokenness  from several hours of crying, weeping, sobbing, and helplessness, dismayed  that Jesus’ Roman captors could inflict so much damage on a man’s body.  Where was God when she needed Him?

And yet, it was God’s blood that she was wiping off with linen towels.  As the Son of God,  Jesus’  blood came from the Lord God Himself through the Holy Spirit.  Jesus carried God’s blood, not the blood of Joseph.  Did Mary know that there was divine power in Jesus’ blood?

I think of this every time I hold the cup of wine during Holy Communion.  As a liturgical minister, I have the awesome privilege of dispensing wine to communicants, uttering in reverence “The Blood of Christ” to each one.  If I can only embrace the Cup.  Looking into the dark red wine, sometimes glistening,  I know  that I am looking at the transubstantiated blood of Christ.  Often, when I really hold the Cup close to my chest, I can feel the warmth of a real person.  It is Christ Himself.

Our faith as Christians have propelled us to higher symbolisms  and  beliefs on the saving power of the blood.  We do not put our salvation on the blood of  sacrificial  bulls and goats.  In the Old Testament the Israelites  believed  that their sins were covered for a year through  their sacrificial offerings of animals.  In Exodus, when the Israelites were  witnessing the power struggle between Moses and Pharaoh, God commanded  Moses to tell the Israelites to mark the lintels of their doors with the blood of sacrificial
lambs, so that when the plague moves through the streets of Egypt, it will ignore every house marked with the blood.

It was carte blanche salvation.  Everyone in each marked house was saved. Mixed among  the pious inside each house were sinners, adulterers, murderers, liars, fornicators, and thieves, who would normally be damned under their laws.  But they were all saved by the mark of the blood on the doorpost.

As Christians we subscribe to the revelation that the saving blood of the Son of
God has more power than the blood of bulls and goats.  We are living under a new covenant drawn between God Almighty and Jesus Himself.  Without shedding of Jesus’  blood, we will never be released from the sin we inherited from Adam.

In all religions and culture  blood has connotations of sacrifice.  Covenants in
the Old Testaments were cut and officially marked with the shedding of blood,
either through circumcision or through sacrificial animal offerings.   But it is only in the Catholic and Christian religions where blood has virtually been removed  from our sight.  I read it was first predicted in Malachi 1:11  who  spoke of a “clean sacrifice”, unbloody forever.  What we now see are  squeaky clean representations of Jesus on the cross, with no blood to signify the lifeblood He shed for us.  I do not know if this is good or bad, but it  has certainly led Catholics and other Christians to ignore the importance or significance  of Christ’s  shed  blood.

This prophecy of a clean sacrifice was repeated by Apostle Paul in Hebrews 8:7-13 which tells us that we have a better covenant, because our cleansing is once and for all and forever.  As a “bloodless” covenant, it said  “I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord;  I will put my laws in their minds and I will write them upon their hearts, and their sins I will remember no more.”

In my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, I wrote of how our intimacy with God starts with our awareness of His sacrifice.  We all believe that the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ was shed for us, and His body was beaten to a pulp for us.  Every  part of the Lord’s body was hurt to redeem us.  We can look at His sacrifice as the healing source for our family.  I think of my children or anyone sick and needy in my family every time I receive the Lord, and silently say before receiving Holy Communion, “Lord, I receive  You for my children.  May  Your presence in me heal them, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.”  I do not see how the Lord could refuse that petition.

If our children, siblings or kin have turned away from God and have stopped going to
church, or have not received Holy Communion for a lengthy period, we can receive the bread and  wine for them and catch the anointing on their behalf.  In spite of their distance, we will find that by our consciously receiving Holy  Communion they will be protected, until the Holy Spirit decides it is time to take the scales off their eyes.

The Blood of Jesus is a healer. Guilt and condemnation cause sickness and keeps us in the dark and away from the word of God.   Many sick and infirmed or dying before their
time could have benefited from the Blood of the Lord by regularly availing themselves of this Grace through Holy Communion.  Said Pastor Creflo  Dollar in his teaching on the Blood of Jesus:  “Christians  feel guilty because they don’t magnify the Blood of Jesus which brings peace to a guilty conscience.”

It has pacifying powers. Feel the peace and calmness as soon as you receive Holy Communion.  There is a serenity that is unreal, and yet His very presence in you is
real.   In Colossians 1:19-20, it says “For in Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him,  making peace by the blood of
His cross, whether those on earth or those in heaven.”

Jesus’ Blood offers protection.  Even in our prayers, we can cover our family, marriages, jobs, careers, our debts, savings, business, or financial or material possessions with the Blood of the Lord, because Jesus’ Blood offers protection.  Do
this prayer of protection morning and evening, by covering everything and every
loved one with the Blood of Jesus.  Our faith in the power of Jesus likewise increases our faith in the power of the Blood.  It will protect those who we wish to protect in our prayers.

I am reminded of an incident mentioned by Pastor Joseph Prince of New Creation
Church.  As a teacher several years ago, he once yielded to a strong prompting and prayed for the Blood of Jesus to cover a young girl who was absent from his class.   The next day, newspapers in Singapore were ablazed with the story of the capture of Adrian Lim, a kidnapper who practiced the occult and killed children for sacrifice.  One of those he kidnapped was this girl who Pastor Prince prayed for and covered with the blood of Jesus.  Reporters asked Lim why he spared the girl and let her go.  Lim said that “the gods” told him the girl’s blood was unacceptable.

Saved by  the Blood of Jesus Christ!

 

2013/03/18

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NEW ATHEISM: COOL MOVES BEFORE THE BUS HITS

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NEW ATHEISM:  COOL MOVES  BEFORE  THE  BUS HITS

I would not be able to write this piece with strong confidence unless I had personally experienced the commanding presence of God, because everything that atheists say and confess as to what turned them into atheists are all so very intelligent, decent and emotionally raw.

Basically it boils down to this:  In their search for answers for the evidence of God, the Bible, Torah, Koran, religion, and faithful Christians like us have turned them away from organized religion and from even discussing with us who and what God is.  Christians are of no help.  The average Christians can not even discuss with intelligence the reasons for their faith and hides their inadequacy by spouting out scriptural verses like John 3:16 (God loves the world so much that He gave his only son…), or telling people “Just have faith!” “Pray to Father Pio!” “Say the rosary ten times!” as if the mere utterance of these words would bring a conversion of hearts.

Truly Christians are their very own enemies.  Don’t they realize that those touchy-feeley Facebook one-liners “I Love Jesus!  Say Amen and Share!” are very annoying and dumb-dumbing of the Lord?

Just have faith in what? they asked.  A God you do not even see?  A religion you cannot intellectually explain?  It would make you tend to agree with the atheist who have lost faith in God and their parents’ religions.  Many of these atheists were from faith-filled backgrounds, went to Christian schools, boarding schools where Catholicism held sway, where attending church is the Sunday activity,  where babbling the rosaries to mind numbing oblivion were the ritual.

But when asked this particular question, “If God loves the world so much, why did He
kill so many?”  “Just have faith!” from the average dumb Christian,  just does not
make it.  In a television clip by the Atheist Community of Austin, I watched two atheists read a list of “God’s killing by the numbers” as recorded in the Old Testament.  They have only gone as far as the third book of the Pentateuch and already God had  killed
2.7 million  people  out of anger, jealousy, and plain annoyance from stiffnecked people. And this does not even include the people who perished from the flood.

Is it any wonder why they don’t want to serve an angry God or even believe those threats in the Bible about an angry God?  One atheist said.  “Our current culture does
not even subscribe to those killings because we are more moral than the god of the Bible.  Why a God who loves people would even annihilate man out of jealousy and anger  is so shocking.  And yet Christians believe, accept, and  can not explain  why they accept.”

Atheists want to know why the God of Christians  are against women and gay people if they believe that God made them Himself.  Said one atheist, “What I find repugnant
about religion and tradition is the preoccupation with female chastity and double standard sexual code”.  She mentioned how a Levite in Gibeah (Book of Judges) was willing to give his daughter to be sexually abused by intruders in order to protect two male guests.  “And why are menstruating women always called “ unclean” and prevented from entering temples?”  This  is true it seems in all religions, from Judeo Old Testament to the Hindus, Shintos and Taoists and other pagan religions in Africa, Hawaii or Latin America.  Said one atheist: “ If you truly read the Bible, the Torah, or the Koran, you will really lose any faith you may have about God.”

And yet I was fascinated by the recent interview of Penn Jillette, an avowed atheist, who defended Pope Benedict’s resignation, when interviewed on TV by Piers Morgan, a
nominal Catholic. In his very intelligent discourse that would put most Catholics to shame, Jillette  answered Morgan’s questions on Catholicism’s views on condoms, priests not allowed to marry, sufferings, and the Pope’s unprecedented retirement.

Said Jillette, “If you have someone who is a conduit to God and speaks God’s Word, even if you see suffering, it still does not mean that you get to vote on what God actually believes.  Catholics believe in the interpretation of someone who is at times divine.  Once you have someone to do that interpretation, you either agree with it or you don’t.”  Jillette referred to Morgan’s question on why individuals can not interpret the Bible on their own.  He said, “You are subscribing to Martin Luther’s views.  You either have a deep relationship with God and with the Word of God, or agree with the Pope.”

In my book ENTER THE HOLY SPIRIT, EXIT ME, I wrote about how Christians are in a hurry to bring non-believers to the Lord without first knowing how to go about it.  Their enthusiasm has caused them to be rejected and been told to “stop shoving God down my throat”.  Because of the discord and widening gap, the art of “ apologetics” surfaced.  Apologetics is the intellectual defense of Christianity, where students are trained how to answer and rebut questions in an oblique way without creating enemies.
Apologists like Greg Koukl, a Catholic turned Protestant, and Lee Strobel, an atheist turned enthusiastic Christian,  have done a great job in shaping Jesus Freaks into evangelists/apologists.

Christian apologists have a lot to cover and explain.  Atheists have been shut off from government offices, and in retaliation, have become strident in their denunciation of God. Said Herb Silverman, an apathetic atheist who wrote the book “A Candidate Without A Prayer”, “South Carolina’s government prevents atheists from running for government office.  There is no need to talk about a flat earth.  Mine is personal with less emphasis on scientific documents. My book is for apathetic atheists and
religious people to help them understand that we are good even without God.”

There have been explanations about why atheists are what they are, from belief in the supremacy of science, to their lack of perception of the duality of morality.  Why would a moral God destroy his own people?  It is something hard to explain to those who don’t believe that man is  fallen  because of Adam’s transgression and the devil is running rampant around the world, that death and destruction were the norms  until Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit to tame passions and impart self control.

The atheist movement in the world is increasing in numbers.  Jillette said  that it has jumped by 20 percent.  But before atheists start to pat their backs, I have a question myself:  Is this movement which does not profess the existence of God, now being moved by God Himself by sending the Holy Spirit?  It takes the commanding presence of the Holy Spirit to understand the Bible and fall in love with the Word of God.

My observation was prompted by this:  Just recently, a report appeared that an atheist “church” in London has modeled itself after Christian churches by establishing assembly centers to bring a godless congregation to meet on the first Sunday of every month, to “hear great talks, sing songs, and generally celebrate the wonder of life.”   Now planning to add centers in 200 locations, the center is a service for anyone who wants to “live better, help often and wonder more”.  It was co-founded by UK comedians Sanderson Jones and  Pippa Evans,  who said, “it is part foot-stomping show, part-atheist church, and 100 percent celebration of life.”

If atheism as a movement is anti God and anti church, why form a church, unless the Holy Spirit is moving in different ways to help the lost and the broken?  Atheists consider themselves fully invested,  complete in mind and body. But forming a church?  What are the chances that within these churches, in the middle of their foot stomping, the Holy Spirit just comes in and  gives  them the Saul of Tarsus experience?

My ruminations about the atheist movement was answered by Penn Jillette , when
during another passionate interview, he revealed a deep part of himself and his
state of mind.  He said a good Christian whom he very much respected once gave him a Bible.  The man told him without insisting, “I don’t know what this will do, but just read it when you can”.

Jillette said, emotionally choked,  “He was a good man. And he did something that one would do if he saw someone who was about to get hit by a bus.”

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