In the past few days, a whole list of things have made me want to hold my nose. Just for starters:

Toilet texting on the rise

Neal Augenstein, wtop.com

WASHINGTON — With today’s smartphones, more people are taking their work and personal lives wherever they go — even to the toilet.

A new study of mobile phone habits shows 75 percent of people have texted, emailed, used apps or surfed the web while nature calls.

More than 90 percent of people between 28 and 35 will return a call or text while sitting on the toilet.

One in five men joined a conference call while sitting on the toilet, despite the possibility of people on the other end hearing noises or accidentally hitting the FaceTime video conferencing button…

How about leaving your cell phone in your pocket or, better yet, at your desk?
If you use your cell phone on the toilet, you will most likely contaminate the phone. (All the more so if you DROP the phone.) Suppose you wash your hands, then pick up that phone again. You’ve just gotten the germs back on your hands.

McDonald’s drops use of ‘pink slime’ ammonium hydroxide in hamburger meat

Kristin Annable  Jan 26, 2012 – 9:24 PM ET | Last Updated: Jan 27, 2012 11:13 AM ET

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver can claim one more victory in his food revolution after McDonald’s stopped using what he called “pink slime” in its burgers.

On Thursday, McDonald’s USA announced it was discontinuing the use of ammonium hydroxide in its beef.

The Naked Chef had publicly denounced the use of the additive on his show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. He questioned how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could allow the compound to be used in foods.

Ammonium hydroxide is made of water and ammonia and is used to kill bacteria. Typically it is used in household cleaning products.

On one episode of his show, Mr. Oliver said that beef producers take beef “trimmings” that would normally go to dog food and wash it with the compound until it is fit for human consumption.

“Imagine how happy an accountant is, you just turned dog food into what can potentially be your kids’ food,” he said on the episode…

Yep, ammonium hydroxide is household ammonia – the stuff you use to clean windows, and janitors use to clean floors. It isn’t McDonald’s decision to stop using the ammonia “meat makeover” treatment that bothers me, but rather, the fact that they sold adulterated food to begin with. All of that nanny-state “nutritional labeling” has proven to be useless, when we aren’t even told the truth about what the ingredients are. How many people would buy a burger if the label disclosed that it contained meat scraps treated with ammonia?

More details from Yahoo News.

Breitbart: Hate Radio Host Berates And Belittles Black Republican

Memphis talk radio host Thaddeus Matthews insulted and humiliated Republican congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann during a recent interview. He ended the interview by saying, “get your stupid, ignorant ass up out of my studio.” As Bergmann was leaving the studio she extended her hand to the host and Matthews refused to shake hands because he didn’t want the “whiteness” to “rub off” on him.

Note: The video of the incident was clearly made by someone who doesn’t favor Republicans or members of the Tea Party.

Commenter claspur links to Thaddeus Matthews’ rap sheet.

Further details at The Blaze. See comments for contact information. (h/t: Sara Dipindy)

Jesus said, “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.” (Matthew 15:11 KJV) Indeed, Thaddeus Matthews defiled not only himself and his talk show guest, but also the entire citizenry of Memphis. I question the judgment and common sense of anybody who would advertise on Matthews’ show or even listen to it more than once.

Why is this important?

It’s because of the 2012 elections, and if you are a voter, it should matter to you what the candidates believe.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the Mormon faith for two reasons:

1. He was raised in it, and is incapable of admitting he is wrong;
2. The Mormon faith promises him that he, Mitt Romney, will become a god and rule over his own planet if he goes along with their program.

That makes Mitt Romney seriously deluded, a malignant narcissist, or both. We have had too many narcissists in the White House already, but this takes it to a whole new level. I am repelled by the thought of voting for somebody who wants to be a god. I had hoped that civilized western governments were finished with that nonsense once Julian the Apostate died.

If you are a Christian and you assume that Mormonism is a branch of Christianity, then either you know little about Mormonism, or you have not been properly catechized in your own faith.

From Bethany Blankley at HuffPo:

(h/t: Mystagogy)

Reading the results of the Pew poll about Mormonism, reminds me of what Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in “Strength to Love”: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

The fact that two thirds of mainline Protestants and Catholics believe Mormonism is a Christian religion is an unfortunate example of both.

The Mormon faith is not the same as the Christian faith. Examples abound. Consider these few.

The Ministry of Jesus

In the 2 Nephi 5:21, in the Book of Mormon, in 600 B.C., Lehi, a Jewish prophet from the tribe of Manassah, left Jerusalem with several others, sailed east and landed in South America. Two of Lehi’s sons, Lamen and Lemuel, rebelled against God. God cursed them and gave them dark skin — birthing the Native American race. In 2 Nephi 12:3-12, in A.D. 34, Jesus Christ descended from heaven, baptized the Native Americans, called and commissioned 12 disciples, instituted sacraments, and taught the message of the Sermon on the Mount.

According to the first four gospels of the Bible, Jesus Christ lived and ministered in the region of modern-day Israel. He never appeared in the Americas.

The Virgin Birth

The Mormon Church teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, conceived Jesus through sexual relations with God the father. Brigham Young wrote in the Journal of Discourses 8:115, “The birth of the Savior was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood — was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.” Likewise, the Mormon Apostle Bruce McConkie wrote, “Christ was begotten by an Immortal Father in the same way mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers” (Mormon Doctrine, 1966, pg. 547; Read also, The Seer, by Orsen Pratt; Doctrines of Salvation Vol. 1; or The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson).

The Bible teaches that Mary, a virgin, “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). It is a miracle that is difficult for many to understand, but not one that occurred as a result of Mary having intercourse with a human or a spiritual being.

The Spirit World

Mormons believe that God, angels and humans are the same. BYU religion professor Robert Millet clarifies this concept in “The Mormon Faith: A New Look at Christianity” (1998, pg. 39): “Latter-day Saints believe that angels are men and women, human beings, sons and daughters of God, personages of the same type as we are. Parley P. Pratt, an early apostle wrote, ‘Gods, angels and men are all of one species, one race, one great family.’”

Additionally, angels are created through sexual relations, better known as “celestial exaltation” between God and his heavenly wife in the spirit world. In the LDS Church manual, Achieving a Celestial Marriage, celestial exaltation “includes the ability to procreate the family unit throughout eternity. This our Father in heaven has power to do. His marriage partner is our mother in heaven. We are their spirit children, born to them in the bonds of celestial marriage.”

Spirits are gender specific, immortal and eternal: “Each [male and female] is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” issued by the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles of the LDS Church, 1995).

Brigham Young stated:

Mankind are organized of element designed to endure to all eternity; it never had a beginning and never can have an end. There never was a time when this matter, of which you and I are composed, was not in existence, and there never can be a time when it will pass out of existence; it cannot be annihilated.It is brought together, organized, and capacitated to receive knowledge and intelligence, to be enthroned in glory, to be made angels, Gods — beings who will hold control over the elements, and have power by their word to command the creation and redemption of worlds, or to extinguish suns by their breath, and disorganize worlds, hurling them back into their chaotic state. This is what you and I are created for. (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 48; see also Doctrines and Covenants 93:29-33)

The Bible teaches that angels (immortals) and humans (mortals) are to worship God (the sole eternal being) their creator (Hebrews 1). Angels have taken on anthropomorphic characteristics but they are not human. They bore messages to humans from God (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:11, 26, 2:9; Acts 8:26) and assisted Jesus (Matthew 26:53; Luke 22:43) and his people (Psalm 91:11, 12; Acts 5:19; Hebrews 1:14).

Jesus and Satan

The Mormon church explicitly teaches in the Pearl of Great Price in both the books of Moses (chapter 4) and Abraham (chapter 3) that Jesus Christ and Satan are both sons of God and are not only spirit brothers to each other but are spirit brothers to humans and angels as well. Brigham Young referred to “the Devil, the mighty Lucifer, the great prince of the angels, and the brother of Jesus” in the Journal of Discourses 6:207. In an Ensign magazine (a publication of the Mormon church) answer to a question from a reader, “How can Jesus and Lucifer be spirit brothers when their characters and purposes are so utterly opposed?” the magazine stated, “On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some–especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers….But as the Firstborn of the Father, Jesus was Lucifer’s older brother” (1986, pg. 25).

The Bible teaches that God has only one son, Jesus Christ (John 3:16, 17) who came to destroy the work of the devil (I John 3:8).

Both Mormonism and Christianity make very different truth claims.

Christians must know what they say they believe otherwise their claim to faith is meaningless.

Margaret MacDonald is nearly 83 years old and suffers from lung damage (as do I). Standing outside in the cold at night could have killed her. Though she could not muster enough lung power to activate a breathalyzer, her blood alcohol level proved to be zero.

Unless we all want to capitulate to shari’a law, it’s time to put a stop to the moral panic about alcohol in Canada and the US.

Ezra Levant on Canada neo-Prohibitionist fascists

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 12, 2012

To bully and berate an innocent senior then punish her without a trial for a crime she clearly didn’t commit.

This, apparently, is what Alberta has to look forward to under draconian drunk-driving laws inspired by our neighbouring province, where suspected motorists are guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

Fortunately for 82-year-old Margaret MacDonald, tears brought on by allegedly obnoxious B.C. RCMP officers didn’t blind her to protecting herself.

“I came into the house and burst into tears — then I stood here at three o’clock in the morning and thought ‘my word means nothing,’” said MacDonald.

“Three officers don’t believe me, so I phoned the hospital and took a taxi over to have a blood test.

“I’m not going to let the Mounties get away with saying I was drunk.”

At the Cranbrook Hospital, she obtained a laboratory document proving what she’d desperately been trying to tell police a few minutes before.

There was no alcohol in her system — not a drop — and yet MacDonald’s failure to provide a proper breath sample meant her car was taken away for a month and her licence suspended for 90 days.

Now, $6,000 out-of-pocket and in fear of losing her home, the Cranbrook senior will wait another six months for a ruling on her case, as the B.C. government tweaks legislation to comply with a court order.

It was May 21 when MacDonald was approached by an off-duty RCMP officer, just outside her home.

MacDonald, a near-teetotaler, was returning from an engagement party at a friend’s house when she mistakenly turned into the wrong lane. She assumed that’s why the police officer was there.

Even when the off-duty cop told MacDonald a breathalyzer was coming to test her for drinking and driving, she didn’t worry — her last serious drink was 60 years ago: “I really don’t drink,” she said.

What she didn’t count on was the lung power needed to properly blow into a police breathalyzer. Having suffered from serious pneumonia a few years ago, she couldn’t manage.

That didn’t stop RCMP from making her try — over the next two hours, MacDonald says she was forced to stand in the chill and told to blow 15 times by increasingly snotty RCMP officers.

“He pounded on the hood of his car and shouted at me to blow. He shoved this thing in my mouth and it fell on the ground, and he picked it up and put in back in again,” said MacDonald.

“I said ‘I don’t drink, I haven’t been drinking,’ and he said, ‘you’re sticking your tongue in there because you don’t want do this — you’re slurring, you’re drunk and you stink of alcohol.’”

RCMP officials are now reviewing the conduct of officers that night, but try as they might, the Mounties couldn’t get a sample from the shivering, teary-eyed senior, who was wearing only sandals and a thin dress.

Thus, MacDonald was cited for failing to provide a breath sample, given a Notice of Driving Prohibition for three months, fined $500 and told her car was to be towed.

MacDonald wept, but she was sharp enough to obtain proof of her innocence, because in Canada that used to be enough to make those in power see sense.

Not anymore. Under a system about to be adopted in Alberta, drivers suspected of driving drunk, even under .05%, can lose their licences and cars without a trial.

Even after MacDonald took her blood test to the RCMP station, she was told nothing could be done.

A helpful corporal on duty provided her with a letter, stating: “I believe it is only fair that this Driving Prohibition and Vehicle Impound be terminated and removed from your driving record as soon as possible.”

But it didn’t end there.

Despite proof of alcohol-free blood, B.C.’s superintendent of motor vehicles adjudicator still found her guilty — a decision now under review by direct order of B.C. Solicitor General Shirley Bond.

“Obviously, I am concerned with this circumstance but it is important that we get all the facts of the case,” Bond said in a statement to QMI Agency.

“As soon as I became aware of this, I directed the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles to review the case and that work is currently underway.”

The ordeal took a massive toll on MacDonald — a few days later, she suffered what doctors in Calgary told her was a mild, stress-related heart attack, leaving her bed-ridden in hospital.

Back in Cranbrook, all she can do is wait.

“I’m nearly 83 and you have to cope with life, but through my years I’ve never been this traumatized over anything,” she said.

“Especially when I’m totally innocent.”

- Calgary Sun

Piss off, MADD, you pathetic prohibitionists

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by SDAMatt2a on Jan 18, 2012

In Ontario the legal BAC limit is 0.08 per cent, but the blithering idiots at MADD have seen to it that your car can be impounded if you blow at the * legal * limit of 0.05. The cop has been made judge and jury. Your papers, please.

And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man’s heart. – Psalm 104:15, KJV

Jimi Belton responds to What Jesus Would Not Do:

From: Jimi Belton
To: 1389 Blog
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: Offensive article about #OWS by Warren Kinsella – Toronto Sun

I think a big AMEN is in order for your words of wisdom.

Another place where Jesus was telling a parable about the good farmer finding idle men in the city at the first hour, and sending them to the field to work for x amount, and doing this same thing again and again, and on till the eleventh hour; all got the same wage, and the ones that had worked twelve hours for their money grumbled about the ones working for one hour for the same amount. Jesus rebuked that kind of UNION mentality, and praised the good farmer for hiring them all. Thus there go the Union Hacks and their claims.

Thanks for your response….jimi

Matthew 20:1-16 (KJV)

¹For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.

²And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

³And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,

⁴And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.

⁵Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.

⁶And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

⁷They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.

⁸So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.

⁹And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.

¹⁰But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.

¹¹And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,

¹²Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.

¹³But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?

¹⁴Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.

¹⁵Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

¹⁶So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Julian responds to What Jesus Would Not Do:

And John the Baptist might have told them if they had two iPhones, to give one to the poor; and if they saw a man with no laptop, then to give theirs to him.

What I find especially repugnant about such hypocritical b**tards is that they wish to use Jesus as a puppet to speak their lines; but they do not add, “What would Jesus say to those who are openly fornicating and committing adultery? to those using illegal drugs? What would he say about abortion? About people who have access to soap and water, or to showers, or public restrooms, but choose to live in filth, share body lice, and defecate in public places? And a subtle distinction – at least in my opinion – is that in Jesus’ day, even the beggars were ‘working’ after a fashion; they would actively beg alms, but did not scream at passers by that they were entitled to some of the passers-by’s wealth because it was owed them. They did not curse the Jews in the midst and call them ‘f**king Jew b**tards”, like the young men caught on video at OWS.

And factually, if they had been creating such a stir, I have no doubt that the Legions would have calmly dispatched them with spear and sword, instead of coddling them cleaning up their filth and allowing them to block the passing horses, camels, and foot-traffic to the marketplaces.

Just a thought or two. Keep up the good work. God bless.

VanGrungy sent me the following link to an article in the Toronto Sun by Warren Kinsella.

WWJD? Join hands with the Occupiers

I will not excerpt the article here because I consider it too blasphemous to repeat. But I have to rebut it somehow.

No way would Jesus ever have joined any kind of a mob.

Moreover, the Nazis, Communists, jihadis, and other anti-Christians who populate the “occupy” movement have made a career out of rejecting Jesus and everything that He stands for.

It is true that Jesus exhorted each of us, as individuals, to help the poor. But Jesus NEVER said that Caesar or Caesar’s officials should tax anybody to give that money to the poor. HUGE difference.

Kinsella’s assertion that “Jesus was no capitalist” is meaningless, in that the concept of capitalism did not exist in the ancient world. At present, the word “capitalist” has devolved into a slur that leftists hurl at their political enemies.

In the parable of the servants and the talents, Jesus made it clear that investing one’s assets (whatever those might be) in a prudent and productive manner is the right thing to do. Yes, I know, Rush Limbaugh used to joke about it, but all of our talents are on loan from God, and it behooves us to use them well, both out of respect for God, and so that we will have some surplus to use for helping others. There are good reasons why sloth is counted as one of the seven deadly sins.

It is always a bit dangerous to try to guess what Jesus would do, but I will give it a try; may He forgive me if I am wrong. I think that Jesus would have advised the “occupy” mobs to bathe, comb their hair, and put on clean clothes; to stop spewing hatred and envy; to serve others instead of demanding more for themselves; and to thank their Creator for the many advantages that they already have enjoyed.

- Blog admin 1389

The Australian: Dead sea scrolls published online

TWO thousand years after they were written and decades after they were found in desert caves, some of the world-famous Dead Sea Scrolls went online for the first time today in a project launched by Israel’s national museum and web giant Google.

The appearance of five of the most important Dead Sea scrolls on the internet is part of a broader attempt by the custodians of the celebrated manuscripts – who were once criticised for allowing them to be monopolised by small circles of scholars – to make them available to anyone with a computer.

The scrolls include the biblical Book of Isaiah, the manuscript known as the Temple Scroll, and three others. Web surfers can search high-resolution images of the scrolls for specific passages, zoom in and out, and translate verses into English.

The originals are kept in a secured vault in a Jerusalem building constructed specifically to house the scrolls. Access requires at least three different keys, a magnetic card and a secret code.

The five scrolls are among those purchased by Israeli researchers between 1947 and 1967 from antiquities dealers, having first been found by Bedouin shepherds in the Juddvean [sic] Desert.

The scrolls, considered by many to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century, are thought to have been written or collected by an ascetic Jewish sect that fled Jerusalem for the desert 2000 years ago and settled at Qumran, on the banks of the Dead Sea.

The hundreds of manuscripts that survived, partially or in full, in caves near the site, have shed light on the development of the Hebrew Bible and the origins of Christianity.

The most complete scrolls are held by the Israel Museum, with more pieces and smaller fragments found in other institutions and private collections.

Tens of thousands of fragments from 900 Dead Sea manuscripts are held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has begun its own project to put them online in conjunction with Google.

That project, aimed chiefly at scholars, is set to be complete by 2016, at which point nearly all of the scrolls will be available on the internet.

YouTube: The Dead Sea Scrolls Online

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by Google on Sep 23, 2011

The Dead Sea Scrolls are now online; a project of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, powered by Google technology.

Explore them at http://dss.collections.imj.org.il.

Be sure to check out the links at Blazing Cat Fur.

We have already warned that Christians are becoming less and less free to express their beliefs in many historically Christian countries, including the US.

Man Found Guilty For Passing Out Bibles

(h/t: Noisy Room)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by specguests on Sep 1, 2011

Video Transcript:

This is not your grandparent’s America with headlines like the following exclusive WorldNetDaily story about a man who was found guilty of…passing out books of the bible!

WorldNetDaily reported that the pastor was arrested for ‘handing out bibles’ from a public sidewalk. The so-called ‘crime’ of giving away the books of John and Romans occurred near an Islamic center in Wichita, Kansas. Pastor Mark Holick was found guilty and sentenced to a $300 fine, a year of probation and ordered not to be within 1,000 feet of the Islamic center in the future.

In court, Pastor Holick of Spirit One Christian Center, declared, “Wichita you are confused, I am not your enemy, Islam is. Thou shalt have no other gods’ before me.”

So, if you thought it was safe to exercise your First Amendment right to freedom of speech and religion in the New America, …you may have thought wrong.

Kansas City Star: Wichita pastor told to stay away from Islam center

Posted on Fri, Sep. 02, 2011 10:08 AM

WICHITA | A Wichita pastor who preaches against Islam has been ordered to stay 1,000 feet away from the Islamic Society of Wichita after he was arrested while distributing Bibles in front of the center.

Mark Holick, pastor of Spirit One Christian Ministry, was also ordered Thursday to serve a year of unsupervised probation and pay a $300 fine for loitering and disrupting a business.

Holick was arrested in front of the society in August 2010 while he and a dozen followers handed out Bibles, The Wichita Eagle reported. Police said they arrested Holick after he ignored a request to move to a public sidewalk.

“The only reason you were the one arrested is because you were the only one who disobeyed the police orders,” Sedgwick County District Judge Phil Journey told Holick.

Holick was found guilty last month in Wichita Municipal Court on two counts of loitering and disrupting a local business. The case moved to county court after he appealed that conviction.

During Thursday’s hearing, Holick quoted Bible verses and accused the city of violating his First Amendment rights.

“Wichita is confused,” Holick said. “I am not your enemy. Islam is. The Lord said there will be no other gods before me.”

Journey told Holick that the First Amendment protected his right to express his religious beliefs but also allowed laws to regulate how he practices his faith.

“I want you to think about this,” Journey said. “What if the shoe had been on the other foot and someone from the Islamic Center had come to your place and tried to convert your members and had blocked your driveway?”

Spirit One has been a street and online ministry since a month after his arrest, Holick said, when he sold his building in south Wichita to another church.

The judge also reminded Holick that the Constitution protects people of all faiths, not just Holick’s.

“There’s nothing wrong with proselytizing or holding your beliefs. It’s the manner of how you carry them out, that’s the problem,” Journey said.

Holick could be sentenced to six months in jail if he doesn’t follow the conditions of his probation.

The pastor’s activities are not optional. The Bible requires us to make the effort to introduce “all nations” to the Gospel message. That includes Muslims along with everyone else.

OrthodoxWiki: The Great Commission

After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples and spoke to them saying,

“…All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matthew 28:18-20 KJV, also see Mark 16:14-20, Acts 2:38)

More information:

• The uploader of this video, Special Guests, may be contacted at 630-848-0750. They also have a mobile site.
• Spirit One Christian Ministry can be contacted here.

Psalm 50 (51): Chanted in English by the Greek Orthodox.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Uploaded by mishakol129 on Aug 10, 2010
A Greek Style chant.
I’m not sure who performed it.

The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2000.

The Psalms 51

A Prayer for Cleansing
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, 2.1–0.1 ; 0.12 ; -15.15 after he had gone in to Bath–she’ba.

1 Have mercy upon me, O God,
according to thy loving-kindness:
according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I acknowledge my transgressions:
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,
and done this evil in thy sight:
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest,
and be clear when thou judgest. Rom. 3.4
5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity;
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts:
and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness;
that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
9 Hide thy face from my sins,
and blot out all mine iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God;
and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from thy presence;
and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation;
and uphold me with thy free Spirit.
13 Then will I teach transgressors thy ways;
and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
thou God of my salvation:
and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
15 O Lord, open thou my lips;
and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.
16 For thou desirest not sacrifice;
else would I give it:
thou delightest not in burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
thou wilt not despise.
18 Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion:
build thou the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
with burnt offering and whole burnt offering:
then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Where do Barack Hussain Obama, Hillary Clinton, Lindsay Graham, Gen. Petraeus, and US military policy really stand when it comes to Islam, Christianity, Shari’a, and the First Amendment? Hear them in their own words!

Shariamerica: Islam, Obama, and the Establishment Clause

Uploaded by Acts17Apologetics on Apr 14, 2011

http://www.answeringmuslims.com/
The U.S. government condemns burning the Qur’an. Yet the U.S. government burns Bibles. This is a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Hear The Truth…

No, this is not my own parish church, but I did take the photo above.

I am certainly not the only one to notice that any attempt to predict the time and date of the Apocalypse is un-Scriptural:

Weasel Zippers: About That Whole Rapture Thing Yesterday …

News of the predicted apocalypse spread around the world. Observers in various time zones made a game of disproving the prediction:

Telegraph (UK): Apocalypse not right now: ‘Rapture’ end of world fails to materialise

Reports of the end of the world appeared to have been exaggerated today.

By Bonnie Malkin, in Sydney, and David Barrett

Inhabitants of New Zealand, scheduled to be among the first to meet the apocalypse according to a US fundamentalist preacher, this morning confirmed they were still in existence as the appointed time was reached in their time zone.

There were also unconfirmed reports that Tonga has, thus far, failed to boil into the Pacific.

Eighty-nine-year-old tele-evangelist Harold Camping had prophesied that the “Rapture” would begin with powerful earthquakes at 6pm in each of the world’s regions, after which the good would be beamed up to heaven.

This morning, Kiwis confirmed there were no signs of the dead rising from the grave, nor of the living ascending into the clouds to meet Jesus Christ.

Twitter users were disappointed by the absence of Armaggedon.
[...]
Vicky Hyde, spokesman for the New Zealand Skeptic Society said she was confident the Rapture was not imminent.

“These kind of predictions come up particularly in times of economic or social uncertainty – which is pretty much almost every year actually, you can track them, whether it’s commentary impacts or the rapture or giant space aliens or something.

“And the only thing they have in common is they are all wrong,” she said.

Camping spread his message of doom via Family Radio, which has a network of 66 radio stations and online broadcasts.

After today’s day of reckoning, he said non-believers would suffer through hell on earth until October 21, when God would pull the plug on the planet once and for all.

But after incorrectly predicting the end of the world in 1994, Camping’s prophecies have been met with derision. And it seems this time he was wrong again…

Sadly, some desperate souls looked forward to the predicted apocalypse, not because they wanted to be in the presence of God, but because they have given up on coping with life on Earth:

Patterico: Rapture Fails to Materialize; Losers Hardest Hit

Get out your small violins:

Keith Bauer, a 38-year-old tractor-trailer driver from Westminster, Md., took last week off from work, packed his wife, young son and a relative in their SUV and crossed the country.

If it was his last week on Earth, he wanted to see parts of it he’d always heard about but missed, such as the Grand Canyon and the Painted Forest. With maxed-out credit cards and a growing mountain of bills, he said, the rapture would have been a relief.

Hey, if you have a family and are deep in debt, the only rational thing to do is take a week off and travel around because you think the world is about to end.

Really too bad that Mr. Bauer couldn’t find the “relief” he sought.

Others saw the media brouhaha as an occasion for some interactive comedy:

Nothing Like A Good Prank…

Blogmocracy 2.0: After The Rapture
By Bunk X

[Tip o' the Tarboosh to CR.]

All I can think of is “that poor damned dog.” Of course, it could be that The Day of Rapture is different for canines, and one day there will be a leash laying on the ground beside a collar while its owner stands there dumbfounded.

Mongoose, also on 2.0: The Blogmocracy, had thought of a good way to prank gullible passers by: leaving pairs of old shoes outdoors, and putting dry ice in them to create rising vapor. Mongoose told me why that plan went awry:

@ 1389AD:

That is what I was going to do but when I got to Goodwill there were no shoes left.

Someone stole my idea! (b–tards…)

Also see…

• Photojournalist Zombie went to the source to chronicle the Media Circus of Biblical Proportions at Armageddon HQ. Rival groups of protesters, pranksters, and placard-bearers turned out in force at the Oakland headquarters of Harold Camping, the radio preacher who started it all by predicting the end of the world on June 21. (Some pictures NSFW.)
• Ed Morissey at Hot Air asks: Is the Rapture schadenfreude turning sinister? He points out that the misguided and panicky activities of Camping and his followers have become an opportunity to ridicule Christians in general, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with this.

Al-Mutarjim on Big Peace: Top Islamic Scholars Say Jews and Christians Know Islam Is True, Purposely Removed Muhammad from the Bible

By Al Mutarjim

In my article on Big Peace this morning, I discuss the importance of certain fatwas issued by high-level Islamic shaykhs regarding Islam’s view of Jews and Christians and the Bible:

Muslim spokesmen and Islamic apologists in the West love to trot out the “shared Judeo-Christian-Islamic heritage and values” line, insinuating that Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians, and also revere their prophets and scriptures. For example, Dr. John Esposito, director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, asserted in his 1992 book Islam and the Straight Path that “Media images of Islam have often obscured the fact that Muslims, Jews and Christians share much in common. … Like Jews and Christians, Muslims worship the God of Abraham and Moses, [and] believe in God’s revelation and prophets…” Statements like these are carefully crafted to assuage Jewish and Christian misgivings about some of Islam’s violent and intolerant teachings. Unfortunately these statements have no basis in Islamic doctrine. When high-ranking Islamic clerics speak candidly on these same topics in Arabic, when they don’t think the West is listening, an entirely different picture emerges.

For example, Shaykh Faysal al-Mawlawi, the Deputy Chairman of the European Council of Fatwa and Research, in a 2002 fatwa accused Jews and Christians of purposely corrupting the Bible, in order to remove all mention of Muhammad:

Allah Almighty sent down the Torah and the Gospel, and charged the Jews and Christians with guarding them. They (however) distorted and changed them. … The Qur’an is overflowing with verses (which) reveal the reasons for the distortion and change, among which was wiping out the description of the Messenger (peace be upon him) which (the Christians and Jews) could find written in the Torah and the Gospel… [see Qur’an 4:46 and 5:41].

[...]

Read it all.

I have taken the liberty of mirroring this post from Jihad Watch, because they have done a far better Christmas blog post than I could ever do!

I recommend that all 1389 Blog readers either visit Jihad Watch every day, or subscribe to the Jihad Watch RSS feed. If you have a blog of your own, you can easily use this RSS feed address to post Jihad Watch headlines in the sidebar of your blog. You and your readers can click on them to get the latest counterjihad news stories.

Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers

The Byzantine icon above is the work of the 16th-century iconographer Theophanes the Cretan. Many Muslims around the world today would consider it offensive and insulting to Islam. Muslims in the Balkans just a few years ago have entered churches and destroyed icons like this one for precisely that reason.

How does this icon insult Islam? In many ways, including these:

1. It depicts human beings, which violates the traditional Islamic prohibition of images and would be considered idolatrous and blasphemous on its face.

2. It depicts Jesus not as a Muslim prophet, as this does:

Instead, it depicts Jesus in the traditional Christian manner, as the incarnate Son of God: his halo reads ο ων, the One Who Is, a title of divinity derived from the name of God that God gives to Moses in Exodus 3:14), in violation of the oft-repeated Qur’anic injunction that Allah has no Son (4:171; 9:30; 25:2; 39:4; 72:3; etc. etc.).

3. In line with #2, it depicts what Muslims would consider to be idolatry, as the holy child’s mother kneels and adores him.

4. In the beam or spear coming from heaven down to the child in the cradle, it depicts the activity of the Divine in the world, assuming the doctrine of the Trinity, which is rejected somewhat imprecisely in Qur’an 4:171 and 5:116.

5. The cradle resembles a casket, foreshadowing the core and heart of Christianity, the redemptive death of Christ, which is denied in Qur’an 4:157.

Now, whether you are a Christian or not, and whether or not you believe all or any of these things, the question that is before us with particular urgency this Christmas is whether or not people should be allowed to believe these things freely, without being brutalized or discriminated against, if they live in, say, Iraq, or Egypt, or Pakistan, or Gaza, or Indonesia, and whether free people of all creeds and perspectives should defend their right to do so.

In those countries, as well as in the Philippines and Nigeria where jihad attacks just took place today, Christians are being kidnapped, imprisoned, wrongly arrested, beaten, and murdered not because of anything they have done, but because they have dared to believe some of the things I have adumbrated above — beliefs that are considered blasphemous in authoritative Islam. And it is hardly better elsewhere in the Islamic world: nowhere in majority-Muslim countries today do people who believe these things enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims.

We see this at Jihad Watch every day. We see jihadists attacking Christians with increasing fury. We also see the world largely yawning and indifferent as all this goes on. Christianity is a large and multifaceted thing, with so many different and various manifestations, but in the mind of the opinion makers of the West it is Western, white, suburban, wealthy, comfortable, oppressive, and oppressing. Christians are, in the little dramas that play out in mainstream media stories every day, a bit cracked, a bit sinister, a bit dangerous, a bit grasping, and sometimes fanatically jingoistic and xenophobic. They are never victims. Muslims, by contrast, are in the daily mainstream media playlets always cast as non-Western, nonwhite, poor, wise, serene, and oppressed. (The Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan have recently been featured repeatedly in these roles.)

And so when it comes to the specter of non-Western, nonwhite Christians being persecuted by Muslims, the mainstream media’s circuitry explodes. They can’t handle it. They have no paradigm for doing so. It violates every rule in their playbook. So they either ignore it or mask the identity and/or motives of the perpetrators, and try to cast the focus elsewhere.

And so remember this Christmas: those Christians who are being persecuted in Iraq, and the Philippines, and Nigeria, and Egypt, and Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Islamic world, are standing in your place. The jihadis would just as soon attack you as well, and will eventually if they get the chance. Remember that the Islamic supremacist program has you on its list. You may not be a Christian. You may not be a Jew. You may not be a Hindu. You may not wish to pay attention to the jihad at all. But the jihad is universal, and relentless. And you are on its list.

So this Christmas, may all of us whose conversion, subjugation, or death is envisioned by the adherents of Sharia stand together. Let us stand together as Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, secularists, what have you, and stand up against those who would kill us or subject us to institutionalized discrimination because they find our beliefs offensive.

For be assured: if we do not stand together, they will prevail. And if they prevail, then all the richest manifestations of the unfettered human spirit, from Theophanes the Cretan above to the fashioners of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, from the Hagia Sophia to the temple of Keshava Rai at Mathura, from the works of Socrates and Aristotle to those of Moses Maimonides and Dante Alighieri and Winston Churchill and Oriana Fallaci, will be trampled into the mud, destroyed, exploded, ruined, effaced. We will all be the poorer. Our children will be the poorer.

It is time to fight for our life.

Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers who celebrate the Feast on this day.

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

Matthew 15:11 KJV

Dark art

As those who follow me on deviantART may have noticed, I seldom upload dark art, but there are times when I feel the need to communicate something about the dark side of life.

This is one of those times.

Perhaps it is because of the commercialization of Valentine’s Day and the desperation that some people feel as a result of past and present romantic deception. Perhaps it is merely because of my ongoing frustration at the nonsense that seems to pervade so much of the media.

Or perhaps it is because I saw the movie “Sophie’s Choice” last night before going to sleep.

The machinery of evil

There is a reason why lying is deemed to be a sin, a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Lying is the lubricant that keeps the machinery of evil in motion, and the lubricant that allows it to start. How far would evildoers get without the opportunity to lie to themselves and to others?

A relationship in which one or both parties is a liar, is no relationship at all. If someone lies to you, how much do you really know about that person, other than the fact that they have lied to you?

But there’s more.

As Homer Simpson said, “It takes two people to lie. One to lie, and one to believe.”

After the fashion of Yogi Berra or Casey Stengel, Homer Simpson conveys a truth, seen from an unusual angle. If the rest of us would be less gullible, if we would stop being so ready to believe gossip, slander, propaganda, and politically correct cant, then the liars who bedevil this world would get far less traction.

One can only hope.

Tech notes:

• To see a full-size rendition of the above image, please click on the image once to get to the gallery page on deviantART, and then click on the thumbnail again.
• Thanks to cavia for suggestions made on my previous attempt on this theme, Pierced Lips.
• Image was rendered in Apophysis 2.08 3D Hack using GlynnSim plugin by eralex61.
• Black background and signature added in GIMP.