Matt's recent AgapePress column
posted by Matt Friedeman @ 4:40 PM
13 comments
Thursday, September 08, 2005
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'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world. (William Booth)
13 Comments:
Yes, God is speaking. If we read the Bible, we can even know what He is saying. John the Baptist came preaching repentance in Matt 3:1-2. Jesus preached repentance in Matt 4:17. He sent out the twelve to preach repentance in Mark 6:12. In Luke 13:1-5, Jesus said that persecution and disasters were not because of great sinfulness, but a warning to repent. All of us are going to die physically, sooner or later, because of sin: sometimes by ones, sometimes by many. But whether we repent of our sin and put our faith in God, through Jesus Christ and His shed blood for our sins, will determine our personal eternal destiny: heaven or hell.
Matt: Gambling already is land based in Mississippi...Tunica. My native home is Meridian, Mississippi. I am very proud of my native state. The story of the police officers, black and white, trapped in the Pass Christian library who helped one another survive and call each other "brothers" exemplifies the best of Mississippi, which often gets a bum rap in the national "mad" media. Kuddos to Haley for his leadership, as well.
M M Allen
I am so glad you do not presume to speak for God. We live in a fallen world and good and bad things happen to all people. We are so here and now focused that we forget God is focused on a much different plane. He does not necessarily look at the results of the storm in the next few weeks or months but in generations.
If God was going to judge the "bad" people, he could take out them only, just as He did in Joshua 10. The hailstones fell and killed the enemies of Israel while the Israelites were sword to sword with the enemy. God is so huge He can do whatever He choses. If we could figure Him out or understand all He does, He would not be a very big God.
I tend to believe that God has chosen to express His wrath in final judgement now that His will has been fully revealed through Christ. However, I can also believe that He can withdraw his protection and blessing from those who turn their backs on Him. But that being said, we should also remember that God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah if there had been but 10 righteous found.
The Bible tells us that God will speak to his prophets concerning things like this, and He has. A chilling, sober, and extremely acccurate prophecy was given on July 22nd by prophet Kim Clement concerning God's judgment on New Orleans. This prophecy details the time frame, the flood, waters rising, stench, and dead bodies coming forth on the water. This prophecy was given in a public worship service near Houston Tx, which demontrates it's truth and accuracy with many witnesses verifying it. I am passing this on because people need to know about these things, and you need to pass it on, because we are living in a time where people are wondering about the reality of God's intervention in the affairs of man. I have to say as a minister of the gospel, that I know that God does not want to have to resort to these things, just a parent does not want to have to spank their child. That is why the Bible says that if we judge ourselves we will not be judged. But when we don't, there is no other alternative, we will be judged. Let this be a sober awakening for us to walk uprightly before the Lord, and let people know that God truly loves them and doesn't want to have to judge them if He doesn't have to.
Concerning the prophecy of judgment on New Orleans that I previously mentioned, that was given July 22nd, it can be read at length, at www.KimClement.com. God bless.
Your article was just awful and incredibly insensitive to those of us with family in New Orleans affected by the hurricane. There are MANY decent Christians in New Orleans who certainly did not deserve the suffering that they've endured.
It's obvious that you don't know the love and forgiveness that Jesus Christ embodies.
Anon:
Re-read the column.
Matt
It's sadly been my experience that 99.99% of al Judeo-Christians these days view God as an unreliable Santa Claus rather than the most powerful force in the universe still capable and willing to seek wrath as a means to discipline His unwilling, arrogant children. Christians and Messianic Jews would rather spread nonsense they call "mother nature" than trust or fear God as a reality. Without fearing God wrath, where's the "meat" in the bible, God's word, God? Why obey Him? Is it any wonder more of His children don't receive rewards, blessings, healings, etc.? They don't understand He's not obligated to reward everyone who asks, a little thing called "obedience" is key.
By the way, your article would be stronger if you added a short paragraph including another major reason God chose New Orleans/MS for a direct hit: The absolutely immense concentration of petro-chemical plants there, including the 5 largest U.S. oil companies (paying their CEO's between $6 million and $38 million salaries annually, "The O'Reilly Factor" figures, while they gouge our last time for overpriced gasoline...) and the main plants for both Dow Chemical and Dupont which alone pollute our foods, our bodies, and our environment to an unprecendented extent. In fact, I have in prayer asked God to break their backs and the backs of the 50 major U.S. food manufacturers and the A.M.A. medical industry because combined they have murdered many hundreds of millions more Jews and Christians can Hitler ever dreamed of! What speak more of Satanic evil? Makes 9/11's Saudi/Moslem evil a cupcake by comparison.
On "The 700 Club" I saw evidence of Katrina as God's wrath. God taught me in recent years, to trust Him and believe in His protection. So living in hurricane-land aka Florida in an old flimsy mobile home (God's put me through a period of living & sufering as sick, poor folks in order to know their plight, His problems with govt. administration of them, and to write to them and about it), as each hurricane forms, I pray for His protection of this little place, so far so good, He's kept His word and everything around me is a mess but not my place.
Well, I saw ONLY one family in Orleans/MS exercise the same trust in God as protector and source and one church-family. In both cases, everything in the cities was levelled like a flapjack EXCEPT THAT HOME AND THAT CHURCH EXCLUSIVELY. I like God's style and His aim.
I have sent letters to Congress, a long list of TV shows and major newspapers confirming the immediate need for Congress to get past its prejudices and stigmas against the sick & poor on Social Security, and others, by raising the average $7,000 yr. income of these excessively poor individuals up to a minimum of $25,000, considering the average white income is $100,000 yr. and average black income is less than $100,000. This will give them sufficient income to lead normal lives, as opposed to being needlessly destitute, hungry and unhealthy in unrepaired homes without homecare when they're sick, and....the means to EVACUATE.
I added to Sean Hannity and other media hotshots that the above goes for them, too. Had the media not been so reticent about supporting the poor and sick on S.S. and others, there is no way members of Congress and Senate could have gotten away with remaining unaccountable for decades for millions of cases of destitution, financial abuse, and other horrors against honest registered voters whose only "crime" is to be on an S.S. system controlled by a Congress giving themselves very fat annual raises (all administrations, both parties) while keeping us on 1950-sized incomes with 2005 bills to pay and leaving us behind in every castatrophe like sacrificial lambs aka Jesus. And let's not forget what the bible says about that:
"God judges a nation by how it treats its poor". Look at Katrina. He's judged. Unless we Americans don't take a dramatic swing back to obeying Him, there's no limit to the amount more damage He'll conduct in order to use up our reserves and leave this nation as destitute as this nation left His children.
My letter was polite but not subtle. It's one of hundreds of letters and emails I've sent on this topic to government at all levels. On May 13th, I was first in line of 57 to face one-on-one Gov. Jeb Bush on these issues for the S.S. disabled and poor. One of the results is the FL Medicaid Reform proposal, a progressive measure to give the poor & sick more control and decisions in their own treatments and living needs.
I am convinced and I suspect you will agree, Matt, that Katrina is God's wrath. God will whisper and knock to get our attention. When these don't work, we leave Him no recourse but to shout and act. He acted. For Christians and Jews to be raised in churches and temples where they are not taught that God created the universe, He owns it, and He can use any part of it He wishes for His agenda whenever He wishes and however He wishes, called His wrath or His blessing, very biblically-based principles, is wrong, in fact, pathetic. I am furious with our religious leaders and seminaries. They take the most exciting religious information in the universe and proceed to dilute it down to zip. Is it any wonder as Whoopi Goldberg put it in a movie, "people would rather go to Vegas than fill pews". I'm the most faithful religious person I know and I won't go to church or temple unless it involves a truly accurate holy leader, and there are none in my neighborhood.
Thanks, Matt.
Ms. Reed
Florida
I just read your article, "God and Katrina." Keep up the good work!
I was born in Gulfport and it was sad to see all the gambling and immorality on the coast. There has been gambling for as long as I can remember, but the casinos really topped it off.
We have relatives all along the Gulf Coast. We have not heard from some.
Sure, casinos are gone. Sure, Mardi Gras is gone. Sure the abortion clinics are gone, as is the southern decadence. Gone. Wiped off the map.
So are people's homes. The churches where they worshipped. The schools where their children went. People have lost EVERYTHING but the clothes on their backs! Many who are too poor to have been able to flee lost even more, they lost their lives.
Christians should not be patting themselves on their self-righteous backs and proclaiming divine intervention simply because the bad things are gone. They should be doing what Christians rarely do - show compassion to those who have lost EVERYTHING.
To have such a self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude at this point when many are still stranded, and THOUSANDS are still homeless, is the FARTHEST thing from Christianity I have seen since this whole NATURAL DISASTER happened.
And, think about it, a city surrounded on 3 sides by water, that is several feet below sea level, in a time when hurricanes are more active...let's stop and think about why this could have happened, shall we? Divine intervention? Or was it just inevitable given the location?
You, and those like you, make me ashamed to call myself a Christian. You give the rest of us, those who actually CARE and try to reach out with COMPASSION for our fellow man regardless of whether they are gay, straight, bi, have had an abortion, etc. much as Jesus ate with sinners - since, you know, we are ALL sinners. Their sin may be homosexuality, or abortion, but yours, like the Pharisees, is pride and self-righteousness.
What I was meaning to say was you give those of us who show love and compassion much the way Jesus did a bad name.
The night after the hurricane I became afraid of what could happen in the aftermath when I heard just how bad our situation was. I opened my Bible and immediately my eyes fell on the words 'Do not worry'.I read how we shouldn't worry over anything but in all things give God praise.I was greatly comforted. The next day I listened to the radio and that was enough to set my thoughts off again. I began pacing and worrying. Just then, I looked down and I was stepping on a piece of paper that came from my children's Sunday school class. The only words on the paper were,'Fear not, for I am with you.' Was God speaking to me or what?Praise God and I have not feared since. Glory to the Almightly God forever and ever.
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