More Junk Evangelical Concern From Outreach & Evangelism Ezine This Time

My email box got the latest email from "Outreach" today.

I like to stay informed about outreach opportunities and this has the potential to be a good source of "outside the box" ideas as they say.

But I'm getting sick at the way evangelicals who are desperately in search of "relevance" these days seem to seek that "relevance" at any cost.

We have no internal compass to judge the validity of the world's agenda, so we kow tow to their wisdom at every opportunity it seems.

The latest example of this for me is this article: Whose Earth Is It Anyway? - Outreach & Evangelism

It's about the need to replace all the light bulbs in the church to save the world in Jesus's Name.

It's amazing how Jesus never calculated on the incandescent light bulb as the true barrier to his plans for creating the new heaven and new earth... He just thought sin, death, and the devil were the real problem!

Forgive my sarcasm. But it does get me to my point.

I think American Christians have lost their minds. Or at least their (our) discernment. The "Copenhagen Consensus" (summary chart below) was compiled by secular and environmentalist friendly persons without an axe to grind. They simply asked ... "What gives us the most bang for the buck in addresseing global human needs while bringing demonstrable results?"

On the chart below, you'll see how everything in this article about warming and climate control ranks as a cruel joke to the world's truly needy.

That means our evangelical preoccupation with climate change nonsense is also our participation in a cruel joke on the world's truly needy.

The only thing "addressing global warming" guarantees is the frightening increase of totalitarianism, the greatest mass murderer in human history - if you're not counting the devil, of course.

God help us and give us some perspective on what justice and righteousness really mean - from the Sciptures and not from the pagans of this world.

As an example of why I concur with the Copenhage Consensus, I would ask you to consider the message of this advertisement from Acton Institute. This is where we really need to be devoting our efforts as stewards instead of dupes of the zeitgeist.

For the projected cost of Kyoto in just the year 2010, the biggest health problem facing mankind could be fixed. We could provide clean drinking water and sanitation for every person in the world. Permanently.

Currently one billion people in the world use unsafe sources of drinking water. As a result of this contaminated water and lack of basic sanitation, 4,500 children die each day.

Worrying about deaths from global warming is, at best, a case of misplaced priorities.

Obviously, we can’t ignore any real global warming threats. But, with limited resources, we need to make smart, moral choices about what we do. Technological advancement is the key to controlling environmental pollution. And it takes wealth to make those advancements. If saving lives is our goal, we must advocate policies
that will help developing countries prosper.

No Skeleton In God's Closet

My friend Phil Corr has a blog entry titled "No Skeletons In God's Closet". It's just the "Da Vinci Code" with the pretense of archaeological gravitas.

Phil quotes the historial Paul Maier:

Thanks for the profusion of e-mails I’ve received over the last two days regarding the Talpiot tombs discovery in Jerusalem, a.k.a., “the Jesus Family Tomb” story. Some of you also suggested that “life seemed to be following art” so far as my A Skeleton in God’s Closet was concerned. Believe me, this is not the way I wanted my novel to hit the visual media!

Alas, this whole affair is just the latest in the long-running media attack on the historical Jesus, which – we thought – had culminated in that book of lies, The Da Vinci Code. But no: the caricatures of Christ continue.

Please, lose no sleep over the Talpiot “discoveries” for the following reasons, and here are the facts:.

1) Nothing is new here: scholars have known about the ossuaries ever since March of 1980. The general public learned when the BBC filmed a documentary on them in 1996. James Tabor’s book, The Jesus Dynasty, also made a big fuss over the Talpiot tombs more recently, and now James Cameron (The Titanic) and Simcha Jacobovici have climbed aboard the sensationalist bandwagon as well. He

2) All the names – Yeshua, Joseph, Maria, Mariamene, Matia, Judah, and Jose -- are extremely frequent Jewish names for that time and place, and thus most scholars consider this merely coincidental, as they did from the start. One-quarter of Jewish women at that time, for example, were named Maria.

3) There is no reason whatever to equate “Mary Magdalene” with “Mariamene,”
as Jacobovici claims.

4) So what if her DNA is different from that of “Yeshua” ? That particular :Mariamme” (as it is usually spelled today) could indeed have been the wife of that particular “Yeshua.”

5) What in the world is the “Jesus Family” doing, having a burial plot in Jerusalem, of all places, the very city that crucified Jesus? Galilee was their home. In Galilee they could have had such a family plot, not Judea. Besides all of which, church tradition – and Eusebius – are unanimous in reporting that Mary died in Ephesus, where the apostle John, faithful to his commission from Jesus on the cross, had accompanied Mary.

6) If this were Jesus’ family burial, what is Matthew doing there – if indeed “Matia” is thus to be translated?

7) How come there is no tradition whatever – Christian, Jewish, or secular -- that any part of the Holy Family was buried at Jerusalem?

8) Please note the extreme bias of the director and narrator, Simcha Jacobovici. The man is an Indiana-Jones-wannabe, who oversensationalizes anything he touches. You may have caught him on his TV special regarding The Exodus, in which the man “explained” just everything that still needed proving or explaining in the Exodus account in the Old Testament! It finally became ludicrous, and now he’s doing it again. – As for James Cameron, how do you follow The Titanic? Well, with an even more “titanic” story. He should have known better.

There are more arguments, to be sure, but I want to get this off pronto.

With warm regards,

Paul L. Maier

I'd add that when you review the collected writings of the ante-Nicene church (pre 325 A.D.) you will find a letter addressed to Mary the mother of our Lord and her response.

Far from Jerusalem and any tomb there, Mary the mother of Jesus was living under the care of the Apostle John in Asia Minor and apparently travelling with him on at least some of his apostolic visits.

She was busy proclaiming the resurrected Lord "to all nations", not hiding away his bones and covering up a lie!