By Joseph DeCaro, Worthy News International Correspondent

Islamabad, Pakistan (Worthy News)– Pakistani Christians are troubled by a Bible ban from radical Muslim clerics whose own prophet had never outlawed it.

Nevertheless, Muslim clerics recently asked the Supreme Court of Pakistan to rule that some scriptures have been added to the Bible and that they violate the Islamic nation’s blasphemy laws by depicting biblical figures revered by Muslims as flawed; they allege that these additions were inserted to show the prophets guilty of “a variety of moral crimes, which undermine the sanctity of the holy figures.”

Although Muslims accept the Pentateuch, the Psalms and the Gospels, many believe the rest of the Bible is a “corruption” of the original texts.

The clerics claimed their actions were in response to the burning of a Qur’an by Pastor Terry Jones, but local Islamists have become even more vocal after the targeted assasination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by American troops while he was secretly living in Pakistan.

Naveed Walter, president of Human Rights Focus Pakistan, said Islamist clerics “usually attack individuals, groups, churches and communities of Christians, by falsely accusing them of blasphemy, but this time they are planning to ban even the Bible in Pakistan.”

Although the Qu’ran instructs Muslims to respect the “people of the book”, it also exhorts Muslims to fight Christians and Jews who don’t accept Islam, until they pay a “jizra,” or tribute tax as inferior dhimmis.

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Tags: Bothers, Pakistans, Bible, christians

 

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Oh brother, here we go again.

Another false prophet—dare I say that?—is predicting exactly when Christ is coming again, even though Jesus Himself said that no man knows the hour of His return, including Himself.

From the early days of the Church to the present day, hundreds of millions of Christians have affirmed, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

But now a group is trying to fear people into thinking theyknow when Jesus is coming. May 21, 2011 is the day, supposedly, of Christ’s “secret” rapture (doesn’t sound too secret to me).

The latest prophets of doom have managed to get their message out in a series of billboards and bus ads. In my humble opinion: What a waste of money and what a mockery they make of people’s faith (if the message said simply “Judgment Day is coming—get ready to meet your Maker,” then I would whole-heartedly endorse that message. It’s the specific date that’s the problem).

Do I think Judgment Day is coming on May 21? Well, let’s talk it over on May 22.

In addition, October 21, 2011, according to these people, is the End of the World.

Who are “these people”?

The main leader is Harold Camping, who has a network of Christian radio stations. You would think he would be gun shy about setting a date for Christ’s return.

He wrote a book about it, predicting that 1994 would be the year. I own a copy of his book explaining the details. It’s called 1994.

Another man predicted that Jesus would return in 1988, and he listed 88 reasons for it.

But you can always tell that such predictions are wrong. Why? Because they are specific. The fact that they’re setting a date in the first place violates what Jesus said.

In Matthew’s Gospel, He said about His return: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (24:36-37).

I’m tempted to say to these people who give a specific date—like May 21, 2011—What part of “no” as in “no man knows the hour” don’t you understand?

I even read one such prophet who essentially said—with a straight face: Christ didn’t tell us the day or the hour of His return, but that doesn’t mean we can’t know the year, the month, or the week!

It’s tragic to me that the watching world looks at such predictions that come and go and just laugh, justifiably so, at those who think Christ will return one day.

I am as sure of the return of Jesus Christ to planet earth some day, as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow.

But I have no idea when, nor will I engage in speculation based on “jigsaw theology.”

Jigsaw theology is when you cobble a Bible verse over here with a Bible verse over there to create some sort of timeline for the Second Coming.

The group that has made the May 21, 2011 prediction says this: “The Bible has opened up its secrets concerning the timeline of history. This information was never previously known because God had closed up His Word blocking any attempt to gain knowledge of the end of the world.”

But now they know, supposedly.

A friend of mine noted this is like modern day Gnosticism.

The Gnostics were an early Church heresy that got the basics of the faith wrong. They claimed that the way of salvation was not Christ crucified, for sinners died and raised from the dead, but rather some sort of secret knowledge.

People have been wrong often throughout Church history as to the return of Christ.

Many were convinced that Jesus would come in AD 1000, so they sold everything and went to Jerusalem and waited. And waited.

Others sold everything they had and waited for Christ to return in America in the 1840s. And waited. The Seventh Day Adventist denomination was born out of that experience.

When Hitler was alive, some people thought he was the Anti-Christ. Can you blame them?

Through the ages, even otherwise-wise servants of Christ have made the mistake of predicting a specific date of the end of the world. Included in this category are Christopher Columbus, Sir Isaac Newton, and Cotton Mather.

How come can we keep repeating this same mistake? I’m reminded of the little poem by British poet Steve Turner: “History repeats itself. It has to. No one is listening.”

Dr. Jerry Newcombe is the senior producer and host of The Coral Ridge Hour. He has also written or co-written 21 books, including The Book That Made America: How the Bible Formed Our Nation. Jerry co-wrote (with Dr. Peter Lillback) the bestselling, George Washington’s Sacred Fire.

Publication date: May 18, 2011

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In his 1996 novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, John Updike told of the Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot, the fictional pastor of New York’s Fourth Presbyterian Church, who stopped believing in God one day in 1910. On that day, the Rev. Wilmot “felt the last particles of his faith leave him,” Updike wrote.

Rev. Wilmot’s crisis of faith was rooted in his loss of confidence in the Bible as the revealed Word of God. The influence of liberal critics of the Bible had reached him even at seminary years before, and now he saw the Scriptures as just another human book. In Updike’s words, the Scriptures were “one more human volume, more curious and conglomerate than most, but the work of men–of Jews in dirty sheepskins, rotten-toothed desert tribesmen with eyes rolled heavenward, men like flies on flypaper caught fast in a historic time, among the myths and conceptions belonging to the childhood of mankind.”

Updike’s brilliant and accurate depiction of the liberal approach to the Bible remains shocking. The Higher Critics, as the liberal scholars were then known, did indeed see the authors of the Old Testament as “rotten-toothed desert tribesmen” who could not see beyond “myths and conceptions belonging to the childhood of mankind.”

Well, the Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot was fictional, but Dr. Karl W. Giberson is not. Giberson is not a pastor, but a professor at Eastern Nazarene College near Boston. He is also a scientist involved with the BioLogos Foundation, a group committed to the defense and promotion of theistic evolution.

Just recently, Professor Giberson wrote an article published at CNN’s Belief Blog. In the article, Giberson claims that Jesus would believe in evolution, and that the rest of us should accept evolution as well. In the process of making his argument, Giberson castigates those who hold to a literal interpretation of Genesis for forcing the biblical text to be read as “a modern account of origins.” Instead, Giberson asserts, Genesis is “a story that began as an oral tradition for a wandering tribe of Jews thousands of years ago.”

Sound familiar? Giberson went on to argue: “While Genesis contains wonderful insights into the relationship between God and the creation, it simply does not contain scientific ideas about the origin of the universe, the age of the earth or the development of life.”

So, according to Professor Giberson, Genesis contains “wonderful insights,” but no authoritative revelation of how God made the universe. Evidently, he believes that the Bible is not making a claim to historical truth when it tells of the creation and function of Adam and Eve. “We now know that the human race began millions of years ago in Africa–not thousands of years ago in the Middle East, as the story suggests,” Giberson insists.

In making his case, Giberson uses the old argument that God has given humanity two books of revelation — the Bible and the created order. This is one of Giberson’s most frequently offered arguments. It is a theologically disastrous argument in his hands, for he allows modern naturalistic science to silence the Bible, God’s written revelation. In another article published last year, Giberson said, “I am happy to concede that science does indeed trump religious truth about the natural world.”

Later, he stated even more directly that “science does indeed trump revealed truth about the world.”

In other words, he throws the Bible under the bus. In language hauntingly reminiscent of Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot, Professor Giberson describes the human authors of the Old Testament as “ancient and uncomprehending scribes.”

In his new book, The Language of Science and Faith, written with Francis S. Collins, readers will find this strange paragraph:

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Audio recordings from conversations with 813 Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation clinics have been release to the public for the first time. These tapes show that 91% of the clinics gave advice and tips on how to cover up a pregnancy involving a person portraying a 13-year-old girl who became pregnant by a 22-year-old man. All 50 states have laws that require healthcare workers to report to law enforcement agencies incidents involving statutory rape when they have reasonable suspicion of child sexual abuse. Many abortion clinics routinely refused to comply with these laws. Some clinic workers would interrupt the girl as she was giving the ages of the involved parties. Others would tell the girl to lie about her age, address, phone number and other personal information. In several instances, the girl was told to have her 22-year-old boyfriend come in and pick up birth control pills. The clinic workers showed no concern for the child’s welfare, nor were they concerned that the child may be sexually abused by an adult.
Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood have no concern for the welfare of children. They cover up criminal activity involving child sexual abuse without showing any shame.

 

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Tags: Recordings, Massive, reveals, Clinics, Newly, Coverup

Ever since its entry into public education in the early 1990s, Planned Parenthood (PP), the leading advocate of “comprehensive sex education”—a morally void approach, which began in the 1960s under the leadership of former PP medical director, Dr. Mary Calderone—has condemned abstinence-centered education as ineffective, and even dangerous. Planned Parenthood, which continues to lobby state legislatures and local school boards, distributes brochures claiming:

Rigorous research shows that abstinence-only programs do not delay the initiation of sexual activity, they do not cause sexually active teens to ‘return’ to abstinence, and they do not decrease the number of sexual partners among young people. Abstinence-only programs do not reduce the number of teen pregnancies…. These programs do nothing to keep young people safe.

In their ongoing effort to portray proponents of abstinence-centered education as backwoods moralizers who are ignorant of the facts, Planned Parenthood has repeatedly argued that “Every reputable sexuality education organization in the United States, as well as prominent health organizations like the American Medical Association, has denounced abstinence-only education programs and supported comprehensive sex education” (Planned Parenthood brochure).

I imagine the folks over at Planned Parenthood are desperately trying to figure how they can best spin the latest results from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), released last month. According to a 2006–2008 survey commissioned by the CDC to the National Center for Health Statistics, sexual activity among teens has dropped dramatically. According to the study, 68 % of boys and 67 % of girls (age 15 to17) have never had sexual intercourse. This information corroborates another CDC report released just last week showing that teen birth rates have reached their “lowest levels in nearly 70 years” following a 37 % reduction since abstinence education began (CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, “Vital Signs: Teen Pregnancy—United States, 1991—2009,” April 5, 2011).

Amazingly, the mainstream media and PP have been noticeably silent about the report. I did however find one creative journalist, writing for the “venerable” SMU Daily Mustang who haphazardly declares that the decrease in teen pregnancy is “due in large part to the economic downturn.” Oh sure, that makes sense. Teens probably whip out their checkbook during foreplay, discover they’re broke and say, “I’d better wait; I ain’t got no money!” I know that was a little snarky—but seriously?!

As my good friend, Dan Bailey, executive director of Just Say YES states, “This report challenges the theory that anti drug and alcohol programs can change teen behavior but for sex education programs, just give them a condom.” He adds: “Even in the midst of our sexually saturated society, teens are choosing to avoid sexual activity.  As educators, parents and mentors, we should be providing resources and messages that promote this positive trend.”

Another national survey in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indentifies what may be the most significant contribution of abstinence education: it fosters increased communication with parents on the subject. The report states:

Adolescent exposure to specific topics related to sex and abstinence in a class or program was strongly associated with higher adolescent-reported communication levels with parents about those topics…. In general, our findings indicate that adolescent attitudes about sex and abstinence are more subject to influence from parents than to messages about sex and abstinence delivered in the context of classes or programs. However, adolescent receipt of information about sex, abstinence, and sexual values in a class or program was associated with increased levels of adolescent communication about sex and abstinence with parents… (National Survey of Adolescents and Their Parents: Attitudes and Opinions about Sex and Abstinence, February 26, 2009, Prepared for Family and Youth Services Bureau Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

In short, parents (and not the state) remain the most influential factor in shaping their teen’s values and choices and abstinence-centered education stimulates the conversations that most parents and teens otherwise tend to avoid.

That’s the good news! Now the bad news: Despite the dramatic decrease in teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock birthrates have reached record levels among adults. Forty-one percent of children were born out of wedlock in 2008! This number has increased every year since 1970, bringing roughly one million children into fatherless homes each year hence. This represents a fourfold increase in out-of-wedlock births since 1970, a figure that remained relatively stable (around 5%) for centuries until the 1960s. Historically, teenage mothers were the greatest source of out of wedlock births. Today however, 60 percent of out-of-wedlock births are to women between 20 and 29 and the remaining 17 percent are to women over 30. The fact is, more people are choosing to bear children without marriage.

Given the overwhelming and indisputable social research linking family dissolution and single-parenthood with increased crime, child poverty, economic inequality, and substance abuse, this is a disastrous societal trend proven throughout history to correlate with cultural demise (see J. D. Unwin, P. Sorokin). It begs the question, “What is happening here?” How can we be experiencing such dramatic reductions in premarital teen sexual activity while adults are going in the opposite direction?

In essence, while we are succeeding in getting kids to make wiser choices when it comes to sexual activity, our culture continues to disassociate sex and child rearing from marriage. Marriage remains an ideal but a greatly diminished ideal, which more and more people feel is no longer necessary for sex or parenting. Furthermore, if marriage is no longer linked to procreation, limited to one man and one woman, then what is marriage? Marriage has become a loose and voluntary compact, thereby losing its social, moral, and economic qualities essential to a healthy society. Beginning with the divorce revolution to its radical redefinition, marriage—stripped of it social force and support—is becoming meaningless.
Finally, the recovery of cultural values that exalt marriage and the natural family will not occur in the legislature or courts but in the church. It is in the daily life and practice of the church that marriage and family must be modeled first. This means that Christian husbands and wives must submit to one another, cease being selfish, and stop sinning by abandoning their marriages! And pastors and elders must stop being cowardly when the situation demands intervention and/or church discipline.

© 2011 by S. Michael Craven Permission granted for non-commercial use.

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Tags: Planned, Parents, Parenthood