Oh Pentebabbleists…

It started as a standard church meeting, but a Sevierville man claims it left him broken and bruised.  Andrew Byrd of Sevierville has filed a lawsuit against the Family Chapel Church of God in Pigeon Forge, saying he was assaulted by church leaders on Feb. 21, 2012.  After nearly a year later, Byrd is taking action against the church.  In the lawsuit filed in Sevier County on Feb. 15, Byrd says he went to what he thought was just a regular meeting at the church.  He says just a few minutes after the meeting began, he was thrown to the ground, beaten and told that demons were being cast out of him.

Everyone knows you can’t beat the demons out.  Everyone knows that…  Well, almost everyone…  Everyone except the pentebabbleists who – like the ‘Enthusiasts’ of the 16th century- don’t need Scripture since they, they erroneously believe, have the Spirit.

Modern Montanism.  That’s what it is.  But this did make me smile… just a bit…

Byrd says Pastor Joel Arwood and his wife Theresa Arwood requested he attend the meeting there.  The suit claims that during the meeting, Theresa said he had a “demon or spirit that needed to be cast out.”  The suit alleges the pastor and his wife, along with a man named Charles Shields, all of Sevierville, pushed him to the ground and held him there while Pastor Arwood struck him and Theresa shouted instructions.  Byrd says he begged to be released, but they wouldn’t let him go.  The suit claims that afterward, Pastor Arwood told the congregation he had “punched the devil and knocked the devil’s tooth out.”

He. Knocked. The. Devil’s. Tooth. Out…..  HA!  That’s priceless.  You can’t make that stuff up.

I Know One 2 Year Old Who Isn’t Safer Because There Was a Gun in the House…

In fact, there are thousands and thousands of injured and dead folk thanks to those ‘safe’ homes with guns…  This is just another in a long line of ‘safe’ people…

A 2-year-old boy was in critical condition this morning after he was accidentally shot late Thursday in a small community in Fayette County.  Owen Harris was flown to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, where he was being treated for a gunshot wound to the head.  State police in Belle Vernon said the boy somehow gained access to a handgun owned by his stepfather that was in his mother’s purse.  The boy apparently accidentally shot himself in the head and was taken first to Uniontown Hospital before being flown to Children’s Hospital.  State police said the mother and stepfather were home at the time of the shooting.

Safe…   What a very strange definition of ‘safe’ the ‘anyone who wants a gun ought to have a gun’ crowd has.  Congrats NRA.  You have more blood on your hands than just about anyone.  Ever.

Related Articles

• Child Shot in Fayette County (pittsburgh.cbslocal.com)
• Boy, 2, shot in face at home, critical (vindy.com)

No Wonder Newsweek Jumped the Shark… Its Reviewers are Lunatics

Look at the bottom of the Amazon page for one of NT Wright’s books:

Says who????  Based on what????  What nonsense.  Calling Wright the world’s leading NT scholar is like calling Rick Warren America’s Pastor.  I realize Amazon wants to sell books and they can be forgiven for unfounded and silly exaggeration- but Newsweek has jumped the shark and rightly belongs under the same umbrella as ‘The Daily Beast’, along with whatever reviewer (probably a sports journalist) who wrote that silly line.

Twitter Theology That Makes Me Sigh

Really?  So, 1) how would one go about demonstrating that claim?  And 2) who says the churches Paul planted succeeded?  3)  Do you consider the mess of the Corinthian church a ‘success’?  4) Why?  What on earth is good about that congregation and how could it possibly be a model for any church?   5) How do you know the churches Paul planted wouldn’t have been MORE successful if he had been able to be with them longer?  6) Paul’s work at Ephesus (!) certainly didn’t last and wasn’t successful even for 40 or 50 years (since it is the Church excoriated in Revelation for having lost its first love).  7) So what is success anyway?

It’s just more of the short sighted pseudo-scholarship twitter seems to accommodate most ‘successfully’.  If your ‘theology’ can be expressed in 140 characters, it isn’t a theology worth holding.

[No offense to the good people at IVP].

The Science of Pornography: A Plague Explained

Porn is a blight on American society.  A curse. A dire destroyer of life that the Church has not addressed sufficiently but which it must. Here, briefly, it is explained-

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Larry Hurtado's Blog

One of the many curiosities in the study of the NT and earliest Christianity is the early history and fortunes of the Gospel of Mark (hereafter, GMark).  On the one hand (assuming the dominant view of Mark’s priority), the GMark appears to have been very influential.  It is widely thought that the authors of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were likely prompted to write the kind of Jesus-books that they did by GMark.  Indeed, we scholars judge that GMark was the principal model and most significant source for them.  GMatthew appropriates about 90% of GMark, and GLuke uses ca. 60% of GMark, each of them also, of course, following the basic “storyline” of GMark, commencing Jesus’ ministry in the context of John the Baptizer and taking the story on through to Jesus’ execution and resurrection.   Indeed, a case has been made that GMark was also known and influential for…

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Today With Zwingli

On the 22 of February, 1519 Zwingli wrote to his friend Rhenanus

“Thanks for writing so carefully about M. Luther. But the Abbot of St. John’s has very opportunely sent me the letter of a certain tutor at Wittenberg, in which the writer felicitates him upon reading the writings of Luther, a man who really recalls the image of Christ. He adds that as soon as Luther got release from the Cardinal of St. Sixtus at Augsburg he returned straight to Wittenberg, where he now preaches Christ constantly, to the great admiration of all, prepared even to be crucified for him.… Luther is approved by all the learned at Zurich”.

A decade later things wouldn’t be so cordial.  Luther’s true colors would show by then.

Happy Purim: Netanyahu plays the part of Ahasuerus

via Ha’aretz on FB

That ‘Vatican Owns Beretta’ Thing? Yeah, That, it Turns Out, is a Hoax

From Beretta (in comments on the previous post)

«In relazione a notizie diffuse nei giorni scorsi circa la composizione dell’azionariato di Beretta Holding, la società smentisce nella maniera più ferma che IOR o società ad esso riconducibilisiano parte della compagine degli azionisti della società stessa o di società da essa controllate. Beretta Holding, che controlla un gruppo di imprese principalmente attivo nel settore dello sport, caccia e tempo libero, è un’azienda di proprietà famigliare da 15 generazioni».  

You can read it in the update of this article —  http://i.imgur.com/24X4S.jpg

There Are No Secret ‘Codes’ in the Bible, They Just Exist in Fertile Imaginations

In spite of what the ‘researchers’ believe.

Burying bad news is a common tactic in modern politics – but researchers say it was actually first used in the Bible.  British and American researchers say they have uncovered a secret ‘Genesis Death Sandwich’ that reveals a ‘striking pattern between the two key themes of ‘life’ and ‘death’’.   The opening and closing verses of the book contain frequent mentions of life, whereas mentions of death are only found in clusters in the middle,’ they say.

Well they aren’t very smart then considering the fact that the murder of Abel occurs in chapter 4, which by anyone’s reckoning isn’t in the middle of the book.  And even earlier, the threat of death if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is made use of.  And the book ends with death as well.

Whenever someone tells you there’s a ‘code’ embedded in the Bible, chuckle to yourself and move along.  The only ‘code’ that exists is in the mind of the perpetrator of the dilettantism.  And it only exists there because their imagination is overly fertilized- and we all know what fertilizer is made of.

Bunyan’s Cautions to Parents

1. Take heed that the misdeeds for which thou correctest thy children be not learned them by thee. Many children learn that wickedness of their parents for which they beat and chastise them.

2. Take heed thou smile not upon them, to encourage them in small faults, lest that thy carriage to them be an encouragement to them to commit greater.

3. Take heed thou use not unsavoury and unseemly words in thy chastising of them, as railing, miscalling, and the like: this is devilish.

4. Take heed thou do not use them to many chiding words and threatenings, mixed with lightness and laughter; this will harden. Speak not much, nor often, but pertinent to them with all gravity. — John Bunyan

Sage advice indeed.