"Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."
(1 Corinthians 10:12)
I thank those of you who responded to my e-mail/tirade from Berlin on the election in America, but I want to assure you that I was not soliciting a "pity party." That e-mail was sent in absolute disgust with the American Church, of which I am always quick to point out, I am a part. I just pray that the American Church will wake up and realize that with all the bravado of the last 15 years, we are substantively impotent.
Our text is a warning to men and nations. I have no illusion about my ability to stand. Without a moment by moment utter, desperate dependency in Jesus Christ and a living obedience to the "God-Breathed" Word, falling is inevitable. On the other hand, if I am radically committed to Jesus and His Law-Word, standing and triumphing is inevitable.
On this recent mission in Europe, I was embarrassed with questions concerning the America of my fathers. That America is gone, and who knows if that nation will ever return. But though the America of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the forty ordained pastors in the Constitutional Convention passes or returns, I stand on, "The grass withers, the flower fades, (as do nations) but the word of our God stands forever." The Faithful Church of Jesus Christ has built her life on this Isaiah passage and "nothing less than Jesus' Blood and Righteousness"---- Jesus Christ Himself through the centuries. We will continue to. "Kings and kingdoms may all pass away (fall), but there's something about That Name"----------------- Jesus.
Father, in Jesus' Name, I do not surrender to anything or to anyone---- but You. "Take my life and let if be consecrated, Lord, to Thee." Amen.
****************************
More photos coming of the recent mission.
News, Commentary: www.antipasprayerforce.blogspot.com
"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
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Watchman
Sentinel
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Photos From Recent Mission (More Later)
Kristallnacht Memorial at a synagogue in the eastern part of Berlin
Approach to the synagogue
Police turn away approaching van
Note the date-- I was five months old. I was here on this spot exactly 65 years to the day after these Jews were shipped off to their death. (Europeans use the day/month/year format)
This is the Grunewald Train Station, Track 17, from which over 50,000 Jews were sent to the death camps
"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
**************
One site has it all. Your email accounts, your social networks, and the things you love. Try the new AOL.com today!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212962939x1200825291/aol?redir=http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp%26icid=aolcom40vanity%26ncid=emlcntaolcom00000001)
Approach to the synagogue
Police turn away approaching van
Note the date-- I was five months old. I was here on this spot exactly 65 years to the day after these Jews were shipped off to their death. (Europeans use the day/month/year format)
This is the Grunewald Train Station, Track 17, from which over 50,000 Jews were sent to the death camps
"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
**************
One site has it all. Your email accounts, your social networks, and the things you love. Try the new AOL.com today!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212962939x1200825291/aol?redir=http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp%26icid=aolcom40vanity%26ncid=emlcntaolcom00000001)
Monday, November 17, 2008
The Kingdom Knows No Limitations
"Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community ... all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program. This quote is from the article which I sent to you earlier. Even though it is a description of Islam, it is exactly the theology of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom "of our Lord and of His Christ."
There is no area outside the reign of Jesus Christ. John 3:16 says that "God...loved the world...." John 3:16 is not just about getting saved. It reveals that the Living Triune God loves the world, i.e., "the earth...and the fullness thereof...." The Muslims simply came along centuries later to propagate the moon god religion and counterfeit Kingdom principles. No wonder Islam is advancing around the world. The radicals actually believe their "word." America and Western Europe particularly are headed in this direction.
You and I must have the same mentality concerning the Word of God. We will need the continual saturation of the "God-Breathed" Word if we are to live a victorious life of total commitment and obedience to Jesus Christ. The only plumb line the Blessed Trinity will drop in our daily life and the life of the nation will continue to be the "God-Breathed" Word, the same Word which a Godless Supreme Court took out of the state school system 45 years ago. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God," and I might say, "Your life and my life and the life of nations are 'framed by the [the same] word of God."
If your dependency on Kingdom theology and living comes only from apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor/teachers, written, in conferences, or showcased in the media, then you are in a most precarious place. If, however, you and I say with the psalmist, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you," then we will see that the Kingdom of Heaven/God "is all one seamless program"---------------------- and we will live and govern our lives accordingly.
Father, in Jesus' Name, show me the All-encompassing Kingdom." Amen.
If You Think This Scenario Won't Expand, Think/Pray Again
- Nov 14, 2008
Fox News
Fox News
Shariah-compliant banking, sometimes called Islamic banking, is growing in popularity in the Western and Islamic worlds. But critics say American interest in the system at a time of economic crisis is opening the door to increased Islamic influence in the American banking system. Worse yet, some fear the banks may be helping to finance international terrorism.
In Shariah-compliant banking, lenders may not charge interest and investors cannot make money from forbidden industries like gambling, alcohol, pork and pornography.
Selling debt, devising derivatives and short selling are also prohibited, and investments must be closely tied to actual assets.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones Islamic Index tracks Shariah-compliant companies and funds, and funds have sprung up like the Amana Mutual Funds Trust and the Azzad Asset Management.
American investment funds, like those offered by TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab, can invest in Shariah-compliant companies, and those companies can offer investments in American companies. Top holdings in the Azzad Ethical Midcap Fund, for example, include Western Digital Corp., Southwest Electric Co. and Apple Computer, Inc.
But allowing Shariah-compliant finance in the U.S. is green-lighting a sedi tious system that supports jihad, said Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C.
"If you understand what Shariah is, you understand that it is a pretty awful system. Not something that you'd want insinuated in your society and becoming a major feature of your economic system," Gaffney said.
"Shariah (Islamic law as dictated by the Koran) governs all aspects of life, from the personal practice of the faith to how you relate to your family to how you relate to your business partners, to your community ... all the way up to how the world is run, and it is all one seamless program.
You can't say 'I'll take the personal pietistic practice ... and skip the beheading and the flogging and the stoning and the global theocracy,'" he said.
Punishments for some crimes under Shariah law include amputation and stoning to death. On Tuesday it was revealed that a 53-year-old Egyptian doctor had been sentenced under Shariah law in Saudi Arabia to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes for allegedly getting a Saudi princess in his care addicted to drugs.
But despite Islamic banking's association with Shariah's harsh practices, the U.S. government is taking an interest in it.
On Oct. 25, while on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert M. Kimmitt told reporters that the U.S. was interested in learning more about Islamic finance, and the Treasury Department held an "Islamic Finance 10 1" course in Washington on Nov. 6 to educate government officials on its ins and outs.
Islamic banking and investment products sprang up beginning in the 1970s when the Middle East experienced its first oil boom, and have been growing in popularity as oil prices soared in the past few years.
Yet it's unclear who is investing in Shariah-compliant mutual funds and other investments, Gaffney said. "An awful lot of them seem to be petrodollar-rich potentates and companies and royal families."
Nicholas Kaiser, fund manager at Amana Mutual Funds Trust in Bellingham, Wash., said that his company's Shariah-compliant mutual fund products are no different from any other religious funds and that the company carefully screens its investors.
"Our shareholders are American. We don't take money from non-Americans because of money-laundering laws. We have to know our shareholders and be sure they aren't engaged in nefarious activities. We screen and check and verify every shareholder," Kaiser said.
He disagrees with Gaffney's assertion that Islamic funds are a threat to the American way of life.
"We simply take people's money, invest it and give it back to them when they want it. We don't try and convert the country. We don't have any religious position. We aren't evangelical. We aren't zealots. We're money managers," Kaiser said. "I happen to be Episcopalian."
Azzad Asset Management declined to be interviewed for this story.
Estimates put the Islamic banking industry in the h undreds of billions of dollars. And while it's a small portion of the global finance industry, the Islamic sector is growing — by more than 30 percent in 2007.
A board of Shariah scholars determines which investments are compliant.
As Shariah law forbids charging interest, Shariah-compliant mortgages, like those offered by Devon Bank in Chicago and Guidance Residential, which operates in 23 states, are attracting pious Muslim buyers.
In one type of Shariah-compliant mortgage the bank buys a home and then either leases or re-sells it to the purchaser in monthly installments — interest-free, but at a higher price.
The bank's profit and the buyer's payments wind up being similiar to what they would be if the bank charged interest, said Ibrahim Warde, adjunct professor of international business at Tufts University.
"In the Koran there's a verse saying that making money from trade is good and making money from money lending is not, so basically whenever transactions are structured, they are sales transactions," he said.
Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, said that whether they're sound investments or not, conforming to Shariah shouldn't be American policy.
"We should not allow Islamic banking to continue and definitely not to flourish in this country," Ehrenfeld said.
"Muslims in the United States who want to conduct their business according to Islamic banks can do it with mortgages ... but to allow Islamic banking as a rule to operate — it's our money and we shouldn't be abiding by Islamic laws. Period. I don't want to have any kind of association with any laws that dictate wife-beating in Saudi Arabia," she said.
Ehrenfeld said that the practice of "zakat" — giving alms to the poor — while innocent on the surface can in fact be used to promote terrorism and the spread of radical Islam.
She said that that the money the Shariah banks give to charities goes to build madrassas and mosques and spread radical Islam and anti-American sentiment.
"They also send money to Hamas. They also send money to Al Qaeda," she said. "This is a huge Pandora's box. We don't know what the hell is going on with their charities ... even if nobody will say openly that they're giving money to terrorism."
In June, the Kuwait-based charity Revivial of Islamic Heritage Society was designated by the U.S. Treasury for providing money and material support to Al Qaeda, its affilitates and to acts of terrorism.
"It is illegal for anyone in the United States to provide funds to charities that have been designated by the Treasury Department as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224. If the Treasury Department has information that anyone in the United States were engaged in such activity, we would take appropriate action," said Treasury spokesman Andrew DeSouza.
Warde, however, said that there is no reason to think that all Islamic financial institutions have terrorist ties.< br>
"There are some people who equate all things Islamic to terrorism," he said. "Some people look at the world that way. We've seen that during the presidential campaign with the insinuations that Obama was a Muslim, therefore a terrorist. I don't think we should give much credence to that."
He said critics are not being fair to the system.
"People who don't like Islam and who are afraid of Islam would obviously not like the notion of Islamic finance. I'm not sure that those who hold this view necessarily know much about it, but it's some kind of visceral view that some people hold," Warde said.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Obama Is Being Obama
"The only thing worse than God not giving us our way is when God gives us our way." (Brother Charles Simpson)
So far President-Elect Obama is being true to himself. An Israeli newspaper reported today that he is calling for Israel to withdrawal to his 1949 borders! This means displacing 600,000 Jews, giving up the Temple Mount area, and East Jerusalem. America, you got what you wanted. Now you are going to have to live with it.
I have heard some reports that so-called Christians are saying, "Well, this must have been God's will." Nonsense. The presumption of religious people to think that since their prayers weren't answered, they must not have been praying God's will is just plain pride. America rejected God's will, and chose its own. My conclusion is that the American Church is not nearly as "tough" as it thought it was. Many, including myself, were praying for a McCain victory, the lesser of "two evils." With all of his faults, his positions reflected the Kingdom, Obama's did not. It is never Christ's will to put in place an anti-Christ system over an "pro" Christ system, unless, of course, judgment has come. All those prayer meetings, gatherings, "The Calls," the prophetic intercession, the decrees---- Don't blame this on God. There is something very alarmingly wrong in American Christendom. Only the Church can discover what it is, and if you think we were repenting, praying, and fasting before, the attitude should be, "We've only begun to fight." Quit now, and I believe it is the end of the America we have known. I told myself that I was not going to comment on the recent American election. I thought, "What's the use? No one really cares." But I cannot stop now. Most of the people on our email list never respond to anything we send, and at times I wonder if I am just sending words literally into the air. Nevertheless, I must remain faithful to the prophetic call of Jesus Christ--- "His Word has gone out to the ends of the earth."
In spite of the bad news coming out of the United States, I can say on a personal note that my time here in Romania has been one of the best ever------ 7 meetings in 6 days, and the "anointing" and receiving of the Word has never been more noticeable. The television crew taped my message at a Romanian wedding in Mircea's church meeting this morning. Nic said that we should be able to access it using online streaming. When I get more information, I will let you know if you are interested. Thanks again for your prayers. Will be back in the devotional saddle upon my return.
Make no mistake about it. Jesus Christ is still Lord of Heaven and earth. "Thy Kingdom is a Kingdom of all ages, and Thy dominion endures throughout all generations"------------ everywhere!
Your man in Europe,
Woody
Hebrews 12:2
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