When I heard about the 17 students at Gloucester High School who are expecting babies, it reminded me of the movie Village of the Damned, based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos, written by English author John Wyndham and published in 1957. The title of the novel refers to the way brood parasite cuckoo birds place their eggs in the nests of other birds that do not notice the “invasion.” Even after [...]
A report has shown that 25% of teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease. Surprised? We shouldn’t be. After it was learned that Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, had been going to prostitutes for the past six or ten years, Alan Dershowitz, his former professor at Harvard, came to the governor’s defense. “I feel terrible for Eliot and his family,” Dershowitz said. “But I feel [...]
The ostrich with his head in the sand is the usual picture we get of cultural indifference. This image assumes the ostrich knows there’s a problem and by hiding his eyes, the problem will go away. I believe a more accurate illustration is based on an old Chinese proverb that goes like this: “If you want to know what water is, don’t ask a fish.” Never having experienced another environment, a fish [...]
The debate between evolutionists and creationists has become so specialized that the average person with basic knowledge of biology cannot follow the argumentation. How many educated Americans know anything about pseudogenes,[1] Haldane’s Dilemma,[2] transposons,[3] abiogenesis,[4] junk DNA,[5] RNA,[6] exons,[7] introns,[8] pharyngeal slits,[9] and other terms too numerous to list here? Even knowi [...]
When people are pushed to live consistently with their worldview assumptions, all kinds of revelations come to light. Toni Vernelli was sterilized at age 27 to “reduce her carbon footprint” and “protect the planet.”[1] If pressed, I wonder if Vernelli would decry antibiotics to keep people from dying from disease and peace talks to avert war. While I am saddened that she will never experience the [...]
Three articles dealing with two less than small Christian colleges caught my attention. The first article was written by Hanna Rosin and highlights Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia.[1] Rosin is the author of the book God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America. God’s Harvard is Patrick Henry College. Of course, anyone familiar with American history surely knows t [...]
Jerry Falwell has made a number of transitions in his fruitful ministry. Few people had heard of Jerry Falwell prior to 1979. His Thomas Road Baptist Church was his mission in life. In a sermon delivered in 1965, entitled “Ministers and Marchers,” Falwell said: [A]s far as the relationship of the church to the world, [it] can be expressed as simply as the three words which Paul gave to Timothy—“Pr [...]
I just received a book notice from Moody Press for a new commentary on Revelation by John MacArthur with the title Because the Time is Near. At this time I will forego a critique of MacArthur’s use of “near” to describe an event he believes is “near” while the use of “near” by New Testament writers (e.g., James 5:8; Rev. 1:3) did not mean “near” when they used the same word. [...]
What happened at Virginia Tech was tragic. Seung-Hui Cho, the student who killed 32 people and then himself, left a long and “disturbing” note behind. There are a number of curious things that lead me to believe that Cho, a Korean, was a Manchurian Candidate. You might remember the movie that was released in 1962 and starred Frank Sinatra, Angela Landsbury, and Janet Leigh. It was based on a 1959 [...]
A prominent end-time advocate writes that “the church is not in the business of taking anything away from Satan but the souls of men.” This person also believes that working to change culture and society is outside of God’s redemptive plan, believing that Satan has control of this world until Jesus returns and vanquishes him. In truth, Satan is a mere creature who was defeated at the cross. If we [...]
For the past few days, I’ve been in Orlando, Florida, attending the National Religious Broadcasters convention. The last time I attended was about 15 years ago. Most of my time has been spent meeting with other ministries that share a similar vision with American Vision. I’ve been able to reconnect with people I haven’t seen for awhile, and I’ve made some new friends. Many of the old guard broadca [...]
On Friday, February 2, 2007, ABC’s “20/20” broadcast a show on the sex-cult “The Family of Love,” known today simply as “The Family.” Prior to its new designation, it was known as The Children of God (COG), a cult founded by David (Moses David) Berg, who used sex as an intoxicant to keep the cult together. Berg once said: “I practice what I preach! And I preach sex, boys and girls. [...]
The winners of any contest, whether intellectual, political, or military, work very hard to formulate the history of the conflict so their side of the story is told in the best possible light. As one might expect, there is a great deal of bias in the way history is reported. In order to put the historical accounting in the best possible light for those who are reading the history for the first tim [...]
Pastor Oliver “Buzz” Thomas’s article seeking moral justification for homosexuality based on science and the Bible appeared in USA Today (November 20, 2006) under the title “When religion loses its credibility.” He argued that science, like the science that Galileo proposed to support his theory of a restructured cosmos, is overwhelmingly in favor of the claim that homosexuality is genetically det [...]
And Tango Makes Three is an illustrated children’s book about two male penguins that raise a baby penguin. It’s based on a true story of two male penguins in New York City’s Central Park Zoo that “adopt” a fertilized egg and raise the chick as their own. Some concerned parents see the book as a homosexual propaganda piece and want it removed from the library’s regular shelves. A parent would have [...]
Muslims are killing other Muslims, blowing up planes, trains, and nightclubs, threatening to wipe Israel off the map, warning the Pope that if he comes to Turkey he will be killed, and promising to take over the world and force everyone to bow before Allah in a convert-or-die evangelistic thrust. So when I saw a full-page advertisement in the September 20, 2006 issue of USA Today warning America a [...]
Homosexuals have commandeered the entertainment business. It seems that every movie or TV program has a token homosexual featured in unnecessary story-line roles so viewers will grow numb to the idea that their behavior is what’s at issue. How many times have you watched Home and Garden Television (HGTV) to see a show featuring homosexual “couples” and their new homes or renovation projects? It’s [...]
“Even the most wicked men sometimes tell the truth or reason correctly.”[1] If you are about to lose a debate, call your opponent a Nazi! Such a charge brings all subsequent argumentation to a screeching halt. Calling someone a racist is almost as effective. The reductio ad Hitlerum, as University of Chicago Professor Leo Strauss named the fallacy, takes the following form: “Adolf Hitler, or Nazis [...]
Most Americans, many of them Christians, have had their worldview shaped, for good or ill, by information gathered through pop culture channels. There is nothing new in this phenomenon. Like electricity that follows the path of least resistance, pop culture makes its way into our homes through easily digestible media like newspapers, comics, novels, radio, films, television, music, sports, graphic [...]
The new Superman movie comes to the big screen on June 28th as Superman Returns. Continuity has been established with the earlier movie version that saw Christopher Reeve play the title character by sticking with but enhancing the original musical score and using archival footage of Marlon Brando who played Jor-El, Superman’s father from Krypton. Superman is an American icon. He is probably one of [...]
