The Meaning of Maundy Thursday.


“Maundy” is Latin for “Mandate” and is celebrated as the day of the Last Supper.
During which Jesus said to His disciples, John 13:34: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Christ then washed His disciples’ feet. Later that night He would be betrayed and arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.

“It’s common to hear from the pulpit that no one can fully appreciate the joy of Easter Sunday without experiencing the darkness of Good Friday. But the disciples would have been bewildered by both without the lesson of Holy Thursday. The day they received the command to love, had their feet washed by a king, and first understood the link between the Passover sacrifice, Christ, and the bread of life, shouldn’t be missed by any of us, even if the calendar shows a blank square.” Elesha Coffman

James Betrays Peter – Call it the JCB Gospel (inside joke to a non-blogger but a great friend)

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The Gospel of Judas Reawakens After 2000 Years of Heretical Hibernation


Christ Conspiracy + No Betrayal + Written some 150 years after Judas’s life = No Truth

Hooray, a new gospel. This one is by Judas. The “re-launch” is just in time to coincide with the DaVinci Code movie. And I do have an affinity for conspiracy theories.

You can read all about the gnosticism (eastern philosophy in the first centuries that taught they had an even more secret & special revelation to truth that was condemned as heresy in 180 A.D.). This is product of that.

To others this is their nail in their coffin confirming their disbelief. Someone more clever then me already noted that leave it to National Geographic to believe of all the gospels, this gospel one is inerrant. Neverthless, may God’s grace abound to them.

Listen, if people want to take what they believe from the fiction section at Barnes and Noble and from documents condemned as heresy, go right ahead. It’s the beauty of free will. No pastor or priest will launch protests calling for their beheading. One man’s fiction is another’s truth. One man’s heresy is another man’s certainty. It all comes down to faith in the end. What do you believe? How did you come to believe that? Why do you believe that? Have your answers. But let us remember, somebody’s epistemology is lacking, someone’s philosophy of life is wrong, someone’s faith is not true. It might be mine but then again, it might not be.

If you are interested in reading why check out:
Unmasking an Ancient Heresy

The Judas We Never Knew

No Reciprocation by Tony Perkins

No Reciprocation by Tony Perkins
A two-page color ad in a recent Washington Post celebrates the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, a $20-million “think tank” at Georgetown University in the District of Columbia. The ad shows one of Georgetown’s beautiful Gothic buildings, topped by a stone cross. In the night sky, above Georgetown, is a crescent moon and star — the symbols of Islam. How better to show the kind of “understanding” we will have? Christianity is to be subordinated, Islam is raised high — at a Christian university. Harvard also has a $20 million center provided by the Saudi billionaire prince.
What about the compromise of American liberties? There is no reciprocity here. All the talk on this side of the ocean is about “understanding.” Where are the study centers at Saudi universities? Does anyone there present courses on James Madison’s views of religious liberty? Does anyone there even suggest that feudal monarchies that deny their people fundamental human rights need to reform themselves?
Saudi Arabia is one of the worst violators of human rights on earth. No Christian can even carry a Bible on any street in Saudi Arabia. Converts there are beheaded. According to the U.S. State Department’s latest report on global human rights, recently issued, “The [Saudi] government has not provided legal protection for freedom of religion, and such protection did not exist.” Ditto for the freedom to establish political parties. Yet, here we have major American universities bending the knee for Saudi petrodollars. There have been persistent reports of Saudi-funded schools (madrassas) and mosques in America that teach hatred toward Christians and Jews.
And one more thought: has anyone told campus liberals, some of whom went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to keep military recruiters off campus because of the military’s “Don’t Ask — Don’t Tell” policy, about Saudi Arabia’s policy toward gays in the military?
(Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C.)

Jack: To some extent this is about reciprocation, but at this point, I would settle for basic religious freedom rights. It is not propaganda when it is reported that Christians are beaten to death for possessing Bibles – this is reality! Sure, let’s have centers for understanding. Instead of convincing someone that Islam is the truth put your sword and bombs away, and let us reason and discuss and search the truth. If anyone’s faith is threatened by intellectual debate, then you can put up the all the centers you want, it’s not going to help.

Sufjan Stevens Announces New Release – The Avalanche: Outtakes And Extras From The Illinois Album

You Heard it Here First! (I mean Thirty-First)

"Only Our Kind of Tolerance Please"

“They’re loud, they’re obnoxious, they’re disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco.” That’s what San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno told a crowd protesting against a Christian youth rally. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Battle Cry for a Generation is led by a 44-year-old Concord native, Ron Luce, who wants ‘God’s instruction book’ to guide young people away from the corrupting influence of popular culture.” The Chronicle editorialized, “The irony was obviously lost on the clueless San Francisco supervisors when they passed a resolution warning that a Christian youth gathering could ‘negatively influence the politics of America’s most tolerant and progressive city.'”

yeah, tolerance and progressive – very relative to perspective, huh?
Come on Mark Leno, let’s be fair. Activist groups of all kinds of met in your city and if the KKK is marching in your streets, don’t even accuse this Christian youth rally as a form of hate-speech.
Regardless of how one might feel towards Christianity, culture, social issues, this is attempted censorship.

With the exception of Christ Himself, I do not stand behind everything anyone says, including Ron Luce, (the president of Teen Mania Ministries that run these events). I am certain that I would have passionate disagreements with some people that gathered for this cause such as the lady who says, “same-sex marriage ‘is another sign of the end of times,’ said Sherilyn David, referring to the apocalypse that some fundamentalist Christians believe is foretold in Scripture.” But standing in the same room as her is this guy saying “I’m not here to hate anybody,” Scott Thompson said. “This isn’t about Bush or gays or anything other than being here to worship together.”

Just like anyone (including Christians) should not label all those in San Francisco with this lady, “I moved here to get away from people like you”, others should not label Christians either. In any case, this is not hate-speech, it’s not intolerance, but it’s ironic that some find it untolerable.

A great article from a Christian position that I find a lot in common with and an editorial I found:
Battlefield for a New Generation
Editorial from SF Gate

 

Sister Mary Timothy of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence shouts at evangelical Christian youths rallying outside City Hall
Photo by Paul Chin, SF Chronicle
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In a world already filled with hate, violence, mur…

In a world already filled with hate, violence, murder, strife, “they” have come to take away my Krispy Kreme as well. It’s a sad day.

 
 
 
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