Yes, legalizing so-called same sex marriage has opened a BIG CAN of WORMS! Now, ‘A Christian wedding photographer has filed a complaint against New York over a state law that requires her to service same-sex wedding ceremonies despite her religious objections.
Emilee Carpenter of Emilee Carpenter Photography sued multiple state officials, with the lawsuit being filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the Western District of New York.
Named defendants include New York Attorney General Letitia James; Jonathan J. Smith, interim commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights; and Weeden Wetmore, district attorney of Chemung County.
At issue, according to the litigation, are provisions in state law that require businesses like Carpenter’s to provide services. This included New York Executive Law § 296.2(a), which “unlawful discriminatory practices … because of” sexual orientation in “any place of public accommodation.”
The Southern Baptist Convention has its problems but Beth Moore has solved one of those problems by leaving the Convention. Now, ‘One month after announcing her departure from the Southern Baptist Convention, Beth Moore has apologized for her role in elevating complementarian theology to a “matter of 1st importance.”
On Twitter, Moore, head of Living Proof Ministries, addressed complementarianism, a theological framework that says women have distinct roles in the family and church and are forbidden from holding certain offices in the church. By contrast, theological egalitarians insist that Scripture does not warrant such restrictions.
“Let me be blunt,” Moore tweeted to her 979.8K followers on Wednesday. “When you functionally treat complementarianism—a doctrine of MAN—as if it belongs among the matters of 1st importance, yea, as a litmus test for where one stands on inerrancy & authority of Scripture, you are the ones who have misused Scripture. You went too far.”
Yes, Beth, you are wrong and God’s Word is correct.
1Corinthians 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
Ephesians 5:21 ¶ Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. 22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. 24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. 25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
1Timothy 2:9 ¶ In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; 10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. 11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. 15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
‘Maybe the question of the title got your attention. It sounds like that’s what I was trying to do, but I wasn’t. Instead I jumped into the car and turned it to the 24/7 radio station of the biggest Calvary Chapel in our area of Oregon. The son, who is now the senior pastor, was preaching on worship, a subject that is near and dear to me, as you readers know. In the midst of his talk, he had his crowd turn to Ephesians 5:18-19, which read:
18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
He didn’t break down verse 18 very far, but he related being “sloshed,” a word he used twice to refer to being drunk. He said that alcohol itself was fine, just not being drunk. To start, that belies the grammar of the verse. Look at it. Speaking of the “wine,” Paul said, “wherein is excess.” In other words, in the wine is excess, which is riotousness. The “wine” itself isn’t innocent. This is also how the Bible reads about alcohol or “wine” that can get someone drunk. It must be alcoholic, so in it is excess or riotousness, which are both sinful.
The Calvary Chapel senior pastor then said that there is a kind of singing when someone is sloshed. He compared to drunken revelry, and he said that was a contrast here. One can imagine the pub where a group of men are staggering home off pitch and slurring a popular song, what today is called a drinking song. I know this happens, but is this what Ephesians 5:18 is talking about? No. It really misses the point.
Being drunk is contrasted with being filled with the Spirit. There are at least two points that Paul is making with this contrast and it does relate to worship. One, drunkenness puts alcohol in control of someone. He’s controlled by the alcohol. The Greek words for “filled with” mean “be controlled by.” The believer is commanded to be controlled by the Holy Spirit and not alcohol. The alcohol is related to worship, but someone is never to be controlled by anyone or anything but the Holy Spirit. That means in every area of life, which the next twenty something verses reveal.
The control of alcohol brings excess and riotousness. The control of the Holy Spirit results in something else, what follows in the proceeding verses. Alcohol really does control. Someone can understand that. With that understanding, come to the Holy Spirit and imagine His controlling instead. Alcohol almost totally takes over with limited human control. Holy Spirit control is almost total control with a background of human control. A person is still doing something, but he’s controlled by Someone else as a whole, the Holy Spirit.
The second point of Paul is to relate to the false worship of Ephesus at the temple of Diana that the audience of the church at Ephesus would know. In the base of the pillars were ornately carved grapes. Drunkenness was part of the worship. It would bring a state of ecstasy, which was confused with a kind of divine control. This out of body type of experience of drunkenness gives the impression that someone is out of control, which he is, but that he is under the control of divine power. He isn’t. It’s the alcohol. Paul contrasts the false worship of Ephesus with the true worship of the true God. It isn’t ecstatic, which unfortunately and ironically is the worship of these Calvary Chapels.
The rock music of the the CCM that even originated with the first Jesus’ movement of the first Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California gave the impression of something spiritual occurring. It wasn’t. It was entirely fleshly, ecstatic, like the drunkenness of the worship of Diana. Fleshly music brings a kind of ecstasy like that produced by alcohol that gives a counterfeit, false experience of spirituality. It might be “a spirit,” but it isn’t the Holy Spirit. It isn’t Holy and it isn’t Spiritual. Spiritual worship does not arise from the flesh, from alcohol, or from rhythm. These churches manipulate their listeners, giving them the wrong understanding of true spirituality. It is a form of idolatry.
There is actually no contrast in the worship of the Calvary Chapels with the world’s temples. They incorporate the ecstatic experience of the world into their so-called “worship.” In so doing, their people develop a false imagination of God. Their worship gives them a false god that does not have the same nature as the One and True God.
The local Calvary Chapel pastor compared drunken singing to the singing of Ephesians 5:19. First, he approved of alcohol as long as someone isn’t “sloshed.” He was saying this in a mocking tone, like he was embarrassed to be preaching about something bad related to alcohol. He was approving of alcohol as long as it didn’t result in drunkenness. In many people’s minds, being “sloshed” is a further level of drunkenness than the mere term drunken or legal drunkenness. This is missing the teaching of the verse and is dangerous to his audience.
The worship of Ephesians 5:19 proceeds from the control of the Holy Spirit. This is not carnal or emotional. It might result in emotions, but it is not emotional. Colossians 3:16 is a parallel passage and it compares Spirit filling to being controlled by the Words of Christ. If someone is controlled by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, the first way that will manifest itself is in true worship.
The participles of Ephesians 5:19 relate to being controlled by the Holy Spirit. You can or will know if someone is saved and then filled with the Spirit, based upon your worship. Worship comes first in this list of manifestations. False worship is controlled by something other than the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t have to be alcohol. It could also be fleshly music that brings a closely related ecstasy to that occurring in the false worship in Ephesus.’https://kentbrandenburg.com/2021/03/31/how-is-alcohol-related-to-worship/
Their latest attack against Christians is the fact that many of us refuse to get jabbed with an experimental vaccine for a virus with a 99% survival rate among the vast majority of the population.
Risks aside, Christians also face a moral dilemma with regard to the fact that “fetal-cell lines played a vital role in the development of all three vaccines.” Perhaps this is why the vaccine, like abortion, has become a de facto religious ceremony for the followers of the demonic critical theory religion that is sweeping Western society.
Do you remember anyone ever virtue signaling online about getting a flu shot in the past? I sure don’t. Suddenly it’s “cool” and “hip” to let the entire world know about your medical history as a sign of your commitment to the “cause” of oligarchic tyranny.
How utterly stupid and foolish.
In other news: half of Americans support a “vaccine passport,” which means our society is rapidly fragmenting into two distinct economies: the economy of sane and rational people who do not want an experimental vaccine injected into their body and those who handed over their bodily autonomy as a science experiment so things could “go back to normal.” Newsflash: things are never going back to normal, just like they didn’t after 9/11.
This is one of the many reasons I have been pushing Christians to start building our own economy separate from all of this madness. Soon enough, we won’t have any other choice.
Ultimately the Oligarchs in power want us all worshipping the State, “stuff,” and “science” as god. God Almighty gets in the way of that. They want us enslaved to sin to become even more spineless, docile, complacent, and obedient pigs. Christians and God stand in their way of total and complete control. The experimental vaccine isn’t about health and it isn’t about politics.
It’s about power.
Power over your body. Power over your mind. Power over your soul. Resist. Keep the faith. We are children of God.
Follow the science say those in authority, but whose science? Wear a mask and then don’t wear a mask! This stuff is scary!
‘Quoting from the results of a study carried out in 1963 by Stanley Milgram, Chuck Colson predicted the kind of C0V1D-19 lockdown authoritarianism that was birthed by Communist Chinese authorities and copycatted all around the world.
The Milgram ‘shock experiment’ was a study into “the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience.”
Milgram’s aim was to see how “easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities, for example, Germans in WWII.”
He designed the study to answer questions raised by the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, and the defence’s justification that those on trial “were only following orders.” [i]
“I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.
“Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.”
Colson explained that up to 80% of those who participated in Milgram’s experiment were willing to “inflict painful electric shocks on another person if an authority figure told them to do so.” [ii]
In 2007, Santa Clara University’s, Jerry Burger ‘replicated the experiment, and Burger’s results were nearly identical with Milgram.’
This prompted New York Times’ Adam Cohen to conclude that “ordinary Americans are about as willing to blindly follow orders to inflict pain on an innocent stranger as they were four decades ago.”
Colson, not surprised by the results said, “the two experiments are a huge cautionary tale of how people respond to authority.”
The studies, he said, show that “nothing changes about human nature; we really do blindly follow authority, and very few people challenge it.”
Colson wrote, “when there’s social chaos, people will choose order over liberty. It’s the reason why, if you give a prison guard or a government clerk a little power, they become abusive.”
The “only real barrier preventing people from inflicting pain is conscience,” which Colson explains is our God-given “internal moral bearings” (see Romans 2:15) that have to be nurtured into maturity.
The problem and its cause are, as the Milgram/Burger studies infer, a lack of Godly nurturing, which is the consequence of “the breakdown of the family and moral decay in American life.”
The abdication from nurturing our God-given internal moral bearings blinds us to tyranny and binds us to sinful participation in it.
People will obey a lawful authority without question because there’s no acknowledgement of God; no other authority or power higher than Government fiats and stuffy, bloated Bureaucratic rules.
This is God vs. Government-become-god territory.
Where unjust laws are obeyed because, as Colson argued, “people have lost the concept of a law beyond the law.”
Which, says Colson, leads to a rejection of civil liberties, because “given a choice between order and chaos, Americans will always choose order – even if it shuts down some of our freedoms.”
The act of civil disobedience, he said, also becomes a farce, because “in a morally relativistic era, there’s nothing that kicks in and tells us that something is wrong.”
A docile, conditioned polis simply can’t know what they’re protesting, or find reasons to justify why.
It was a dismal prediction. Now a C0V1D-19 reality.
Atheist, secular humanist Governments following their Communist Chinese counterparts turned neighbour against neighbour. The police were weaponised against the people they’re paid to protect, and fighting the virus became about denouncing people perceived to be lockdown “lawbreakers.”
The highest civic duty was the surrender of civil liberties, wearing a mask, not questioning the mandated medical advice from bureaucrats, applauding their disaster porn, and staying glued to the media’s daily “briefings.”
As Milgram, commenting on the outcome of his experiment noted: “The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”
To paraphrase Colson, the only sure-fire way to protect civil liberties, and live out just civil disobedience, is by ‘courageously asserting the law beyond the law’; disobeying unjust laws that are contrary to our internal moral bearings, informed as they are, by the self-revealing God of Grace, and His objective moral law.
Though it may seem like we are being “plunged into the abyss of hell,” Charles Spurgeon once said, “God does not leave us there alone.”
References: [i] McLeod, S. 2017. The Milgram Shock Experiment, Simply Psychology [ii] Colson, C. 2015. My Final Word, Zondervan (pp.58-59) [iii] Spurgeon, C. Not Left to Perish, Faith’s Checkbook March 3rd
‘Proponents of assisted suicide repeatedly spread falsehoods to promote their lethal and ableist agenda. The February 8 op-ed, “Aid in dying is not assisted suicide” is no exception.
Suicide is defined as the act of taking one’s life intentionally. The person who intentionally ingests a prescribed lethal overdose more closely fits the dictionary definition of suicide than the despondent person who jumps off a bridge. The desire for suicide is a cry for help, even when redefined as a “medical treatment option.”
The Connecticut State Suicide Prevention Plan 2025 posits a clear intersection between assisted suicide and other suicide. Connecticut has the only state suicide prevention plan that includes disabled people as a high-risk population. To quote the relevant section (pp. 57-58):
Discussions about assisted suicide for those with terminal illness intersect in important ways with suicide prevention. The active disability community in Connecticut has been vocal on the need for suicide prevention services for people with disabilities… [William] Peace writes that “Many assume that disability is a fate worse than death. So we admire people with a disability who want to die, and we shake our collective heads in confusion when they want to live.”
Connecticut’s suicide prevention plan makes a number of important recommendations, including “Do not assume suicide is a ‘rational’ response to disability or chronic illness.”
In addition to attempting to redefine suicide, the assisted suicide lobby promotes other falsehoods.
They claim that their legislation is only for people in “deep and dire pain,” yet nothing in HB 6425 requires those seeking lethal overdoses to be in pain. Pain or the fear of it has never been in the top five reasons people give for seeking assisted suicide, according to Oregon’s annual reports. The overwhelming reasons people ask for assisted suicide involve not wanting to live the way disabled people do.
Proponents claim that there have been no abuses in states that have legalized assisted suicide, when the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund has documented a list of abuses and complications, including cases of prolonged and agonizing deaths. Moreover, as the Oregon Department of Health and Human Services stated: “We are not given the resources to investigate [assisted suicide cases] and not only do we not have the resources to do it, but we do not have any legal authority to insert ourselves.” The only reason more abuses have not been documented is that assisted suicide laws are designed to conceal them.
Advocates claim to be about patient choice, yet there have been instances when insurance companies would pay for assisted suicide but not curative care. A Connecticut state senator and leading assisted suicide proponent authored an op-ed proposing a separate bill that would “require the completion of advanced directives in order to sign up for Medicare, Medicaid or private health insurance.” He spoke of his proposal as a way of getting people to forgo curative care, thereby reducing healthcare costs.
Finally, proponents demand legislation that mandates the falsification of death certificates. HB 6425 requires the underlying terminal illness be listed as the cause of death. If Connecticut follows the lead of Oregon and Washington, this will forbid any mention of the lethal overdose. Connecticut’s Division of Criminal Justice has twice submitted testimony in opposition to death certificate falsification, stating:
Section 9(b) effectively mandates the falsification of death certificates under certain circumstances. It states: “The person signing the qualified patient’s death certificate shall list the underlying terminal illness as the cause of death.” This is simply not the case; the actual cause of death would be the medication taken by or given to the patient… The practical problem for the criminal justice system and the courts will be confronting a potential Murder prosecution where the cause of death is not accurately reported on the death certificate.
Life isn’t worth much to some! ‘An Australian nurse who refered to herself as the “angel of death” lost her nursing license on March 19 but will unlikely face criminal charges.
On March 10, the Queensland (Australia) Civil And Administrative Tribunal of the nursing and midwifery board of australia, in the Bannister case decided to:
disqualify her from applying for registration as a health practitioner for a period of two years from the date of this decision, and
prohibit, under the National Law s 196(4), from providing any health service for a period of two years from the date of this decision.
Maura Kathryn Bannister, 60, administered an unprescribed dose of morphine to an elderly and frail family friend who was receiving palliative care at home after a fall.
Knowing the woman had already taken one dose or morphine that morning, Ms Bannister then gave another dose “greater than that prescribed, without any direction from the general practitioner to do so”.
“Thereafter she did not render or arrange medical assistance for the lady, who passed away later that morning,” the findings read.
Lynch reports that Bannister referred to herself as the “angel of death” and stated that she was proud of what she had done.
The study indicates that in 2015 there were 7254 assisted deaths (6672 euthanasia deaths, 150 assisted suicide deaths, 431 terminations of life without request) in the Netherlands. The Netherlands euthanasia law did not prevent 431 terminations of life without request.
