To Hunt or Not to Hunt?

Sunday night, after all the festivities from the Easter weekend had settled down, my wife and two boys were driving home, we asked our oldest why we celebrate Easter.

Despite hearing about it many times over the last several weeks, he responded, “Because the bunny left a basket.”

When I have picked him up from Sunday school, over the entire season of lent, he has proudly showed me a picture of Jesus that he has colored relating to one of many aspects of the resurrection.

Once he proclaimed, “Jesus is alive!”

Another time he said, “The soldiers took Jesus.”

Or the most recent, “the stone was rolled away and Jesus wasn’t there.”

Despite all of this emphasis put on the resurrection, the part that stood out, was the bunny bringing a basket.

That concerned me greatly.

Granted, he is only four, but still, the message, the most important as a Christian, was lost to a bunny and the promise of candy instead of a Savior and the promise of eternal life.

There really should be no comparison, but in the mind of a four year old, there is.

The positive side of me wants to see it as just an innocent part of the day, after all, isn’t it too graphic for a child to learn about the brutality of crucifixion? That can come later, let them hunt for eggs and eat candy for now.

Right?

The conspiratorial side of me wants to believe that it is a way that secular society has found a way to subvert our holiest of days by turning it into another cartoon and candy driven holiday void of Christian meaning.

For my children, I know that they will learn the true meaning of the holiday, just like they will know the true meaning of Christmas, despite the excitement generated by the coming of a paunchy prowler bearing gifts.  

My concern is for the kids on the edges and beyond of true Christian households. Will they ever get the true meaning? Will they ever know the otherworldly joy of salvation over the temporal joy of cream filled chocolate eggs?

Should the church do a 180 on what has become a tradition, and in some cases outreach, by canceling egg hunts to the peril of alienating secular society by once again coming off as Ebenezer Scrooge? Should the church try to kill of the Easter Bunny?

Or, is it more loving to remind secular society what Jesus did for us and that they can have a much more meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ than a sugar filled weekend?

A Revival-lution needs to be drastic, but it also needs to be somewhat calculated. It has to be about the truth, but handled with kid gloves.

It's time for a Revival-lution!

Easter attack on Christians in Pakistan.

Everyday Christians across the world are suffering persecution and are sometimes under attack.

Today, on our greatest holiday, our brothers and sisters in Christ in Lahore, Pakistan suffered a devastating attack at the hands of Islamic terrorists. This attack follows several similar attacks across Europe over the past few months.

Despite such a shocking event those who had accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are currently experiencing the promise of Matthew 5:12 and are beginning eternity in Heaven because of their persecution.

We should feel blessed to not have to deal with this type of persecution in the US on a daily basis, but we have to remain vigilant not to allow our nation to slip into a scenario where this becomes the norm.   

It's time for a Revival-lution! 

http://news.trust.org/item/20160327150234-v8xig

If this is our nations future...our nation has no future.

Students at Emory University in Atlanta are reportedly "scared" and "in pain" after Trump and Trump 2016 was written in CHALK around campus. 

If a man's name written in chalk has the ability to cause pain and fear in our nations youth, we are in serious trouble. We might not have any hope. 

It's time for a Revival-lution!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3506491/Emory-president-Students-scared-Trump-2016-chalk-signs.html

Unpopular Christianity or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Persecution

Do you like to be called foolish? Do you like to be called bigoted? Do you like to be called hateful?

Nobody wants to be labeled as foolish, bigoted, or hateful.

Its human nature to avoid being ridiculed. Most people will admit to wanting to be liked, if not revered.

In school we want to be popular. Many people will adjust who they are so that they can fit in to the popular crowd because for a teenager, whose world is small and misguided, it is often everything.

Unfortunately, adults are not always any more enlightened.

All too often adults, especially young adults, get drawn into what is effectively rebellious conformity.

A perfect example is the phenomenon known as hipsters. This is a trend where many adults have rebelled against the establishment en masse by wearing trendy clothing, only listening to music nobody else knows about, and covering their bodies with tattoos meant to individualize them along with the other millions of hipsters who have the same tattoos.

Even through our rebellion we conform.

People like to belong.

Is there anything wrong with belonging? Of course not, unless it forces you to compromise your Christianity.

Compromised Christianity is a very dangerous thing.

In Romans 12:2 Paul writes…

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

James 4:4 also states…

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Obviously, as Bible believing Christians, we should not conform to certain aspects of society.

We are not supposed to be completely separate from society, but we should differentiate ourselves from it.

That is exactly why I believe that the most important verse in the Bible for Christians is Matthew 5:11…

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

This is counterintuitive for most, maybe even all people. To say that you are blessed because people are insulting you, persecuting you, and saying all kinds of evil against you…just because you are a follower of Jesus Christ.

Not only do I think it is the most important I also think this is the most difficult verse to come to terms with, because it is so counterintuitive.

This is at the heart of becoming a Revival-lutionary for Christ.

Being a Revival-lutionary is about living a public Christian life despite how unpopular it might be, never backing down, and facing our persecutors head on. We do that because of the promise of verse 12.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

When you look at it that way a little persecution isn’t so bad, in fact, it's good. Not good to be persecuted, but good knowing that the promise Jesus made is coming to fruition.

Recently it has become popular in the media to call Chick-fil-a a hateful organization. Mayors of Boston and DC have said that the popular chicken selling franchise is not welcome in the cities because they sell “hate chicken.”

Many other Christians and Christian organizations have been stamped with the same nomenclature, only because they quoted the Bible.

To the non-believer, and in some cases believers, love can only be expressed through total acceptance.

Unfortunately love is sometimes confused for apathy.

I love my sons, as much as I love anything in this world. I would do anything for them. If one of them wanted to run into the street and I stopped him, would I not love him? He wants to do it, but I know it’s dangerous.

Loving him I tell him no. If I was to say it’s his choice, I’m not going to get involved. That would be apathy, which is what many Christians are doing today.

We Christians know the truth and it is our duty to spread the truth.

It’s called the great commission.

We are not supposed to spread apathy, we are supposed to spread love and love is sometimes difficult. Love says the hard things. Love doesn’t take the easy way out and love doesn’t back down, even when it is not popular.

It’s time for Christians to control our narrative. It’s time for us to repudiate the lies and confused message that is being forced by the media and non-believers who want nothing more than to discredit the true loving nature of Biblical truth.

It’s time for a Revival-lution!

Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee.

Joe Biden, yes, Joe Biden and not Hillary Clinton will be the nominee for the Democratic Party in the upcoming presidential election.

How can that be? He's not even in the race, that's not possible, is it? 

It's more possible, and I would say more likely, than you may know.

After super Tuesday and the number of super delegates that Hillary Clinton has amassed she will in all likelihood receive the required number of delegates, 2368, needed to win the Democratic nomination. 

So why won't she be the nominee?

Because she is going to be indicted...and could go to jail.

A friend of mine from the FBI recently told me that they have more than 200 people working on this case. 

The FBI would not commit that kind of resources unless 1) it was a serious matter and 2) they want to make it stick. 

So this is my theory.

Clinton will win the most delegates from the primaries, more than she needs to receive the nomination, she is already almost half way there with 1121 delegates. In the next couple of weeks with primaries in states like Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio she could wrap up the nomination.

This is where it gets interesting.

Prior to, or possibly shortly after the convention in July Clinton will be indicted on very serious charges which will end any chance she has of winning the presidency and will force the DNC to ask her to step down.

Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't already asked her to end her campaign. If her surname wasn't Clinton I'm sure they would have.

If the indictment comes down prior to the convention then it's fairly simple. At that point the party will ask Joe Biden to step in and become their nominee, which, by the rules of the convention, he could do.  

When a candidate leaves a race the delegates that they have already won are put into a state of limbo. Usually a candidate leaving the race does so because they know they cannot win and at that point they typically put their support behind a different candidate. At that point their delegates now become sort of obligated to that candidate. 

This is a different situation. 

Clinton, being a Clinton, will not drop out, after all, this is her destiny...as she sees it anyway. 

In this situation I think the DNC will look at their options: Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, and they will choose Biden. 

This has likely been the plan all along.

Earlier in the cycle there was a push to get Biden in the race, but he declined. I think they decided to play both sides; see what happens with Clinton and if that goes bad they can plug in Biden.

This theory would be rock solid if not for one thing, Hillary Clinton, is still a Clinton, and scandals have a way of going away when you are a Clinton. After all, she is the wife of a man who, at best, is a serial philanderer and, at worst, a serial rapist who has received little repercussions for his actions.

This time I have a feeling she isn't getting away with this.

Mishandling of classified information is a very serious matter.

Classified information and how it is handled has several different designations but the basics are:

Top Secret: Exceptionally grave damage to national security

Secret: Serious damage to national security

Confidential: Would cause damage of be prejudicial to national security

Unclassified: Is typically open to the public but is understood to be for official use only

So far it has been found that, out of the emails she has actually made available, that she disclosed 1675 emails with classified information, 22 with Top Secret information.

So, at least 22 times she disclosed information that is exceptionally grave to national security. 

There are also times when she directly instructed her staff to strip classification labels from documents so that they could be sent in the clear. 

So, if you think this was simply a mistake, made by an older woman fumbling around with multiple devices, or an oversight, it was not, it was on purpose. 

I know a lot of people in the intelligence community who are angered that 1) she thought she could get away with this and 2) she could get away with this. 

The amount of time and training that the IC as a whole put into handling classified has been completely ignored by this woman who believes that she is above reproach. 

Obviously, many on the left don't believe that what she has done is so bad, or, maybe they just think this is another "vast right wing conspiracy," however, this is a very serious situation and is being handled that way.

From all accounts FBI Director Comey is taking great care to make sure that this one sticks.

If only she wasn't a Clinton.