An Urgent Plea

"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul." —J. S. Bach (1685-1750)

How about it Antioch, is our music bringing glory to God? Is our singing and worship through song refreshing our souls? I'll let you guys answer that. But, I know that we can and should be doing better. Hey, why not you join the choir? What is stopping you? You will never what a difference a big bellowing choir will make for our church, unless we have one. So, give up some time and come our sing. Remember Martin Luther (1483-1546) "Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise." By the way Bach and Luther were both Lutheran's, so us Baptist ought to able to make that happen! So let's make it happen! Sing, please, please sing!

Warming my vocal chords up for Sunday now, Pastor Phillip

Check This Out

Here is a great resource about that answers some of the questions people have about creation, age of the earth, and about the book of Genesis. Mark Driscoll is the writer, he is very humorous and very sound in his theology. Give it a read. You can check it out here. Answers to Common Questions About Creation

Book Of The Week III

I have been immersed in the book of Genesis all week in preparing for Sunday Morning. I have been reading a ton, but most sermon prep reading is sections of commentaries that explain just one portion of Scripture. But, this week I became immersed in a little book by the name of "How To Read Genesis." I almost did not buy the book, because I thought “I know how to read the Bible,” right? But, this book is not a commentary, but a guide to get your mind in the right mindset as you read the book of Genesis.

Now, I had some disagreements with some of the points of the author Tremper Longman III, but he offers great insight. He shows interpretative errors that people are prone to make (treating Genesis though modern scientific paradigms), and thoughts to keep in your mind as you read. Most important of these is the cultural background of the book of Genesis, which includes the other pagan religious creation stories of that day from Babylon, Egypt and Mesopotamia. He says you have to keep in mind constantly the message to the original hearers the Israelites who just been freed from slavery and now are wondering 40 years in the desert. Genesis would establish their beginnings and their understanding of the foundations of the entire world. It also shows the book of Genesis pointing us to Jesus. As my OT prof would tell us in seminary “If a Jewish Rabbi could preach your sermon, you have done something wrong.” The New Testament and Jesus tell us all scripture points to Him. It also offers small sections of commentary to aid in understanding large blocks of scripture. I have found it very valuable and will turn back to it through out our study.

I hope you are excited Sunday Morning at Antioch! Pastor Phillip

Common Humanity...

I have been studying Genesis chapter 1 this week and have been looking at the common brotherhood and sisterhood of all humanity going back to Adam & Eve. The Bible also says that all people are made in the image of God. Now, the phrase "Image if God" means that all people share in some "God-Like" qualities such as having a mind, a will, an intellect, emotions, communicating with others, and maintaining meaningful relationships. Now, sin distorts and corrupts this image, but we do not lose it. So, who did God make in that image? Everyone. Who does God desires meaningful loving relationships with? Everyone. So then we have to use our God-like qualities to seek to develop relationship with all colors, creeds, and kinds of people. There is no place for racism in the life of anyone made in the image of God (all people) and certainly not for Christians who have bent there knee to Jesus as Lord and Savior. The story below is both sad for the hating klansmen and yet hopeful for the New Beginnings Missionary Baptist Church.

Black Church Sues to Close 'Redneck Shop' That Sells KKK Merchandise

Tuesday , September 02, 2008. AP

Laurens, S.C. —
A black South Carolina pastor and his church claim they own the building that houses a so-called Klan museum and store where KKK robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs are sold, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The Rev. David Kennedy said the property was transferred in 1997 to his Laurens County church by a Klansman who was fighting with others inside the hate group. A clause in the deed entitles John Howard, a man who runs the store, to operate his business in the building until he dies.

Kennedy said he'd like to close the store, but at the very least should be allowed to inspect the property.

"We've been outright denied," said Kennedy, pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church. "Right now what we're focusing on is removing this cloud of doubt and this whole lie that we are not the real owners of the Redneck Shop building."

The lawsuit seeks to establish Kennedy's church as the legal owner of the property and stop Howard and associates from claiming to hold the deed.

According to the lawsuit, Howard and his associates have filed several court documents since the property was given to Kennedy's church that attempt to transfer the deed between various Klan-related owners, ignoring the church's claim.

"We think the actions they did were willful," said Kennedy's attorney Rauch Wise.

Howard, who calls himself a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon for South Carolina and North Carolina, said Tuesday he hadn't heard of the lawsuit and hang up the phone on an AP reporter.

The Redneck Shop has been the target of protests and attacks since it began operating in an old movie theater in 1996. A few days after it opened, a Columbia man crashed his van through the front windows of store and was charged with malicious damage to property. High profile black activists have staged several protests outside the Redneck Shop.

Inside the store, hooded Klan robes hang on the same rack as racist T-shirts. Pamphlets and pictures of burning crosses and of men, women and children in Klan clothing tell a partial history of the organization.

Kennedy has led protests outside the store since it opened but said he's never been able to close it because of the agreement that Howard can run the shop for life.

He hopes the building will one day be the home for his New Beginnings Missionary Baptist Church, which now meets in a doublewide trailer.

"Martin Luther King said this: 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,"' Kennedy said. "It's going to be a good day to see them in court."

Let us seek to always practice Colossians 3:12-14 Therefore, God's chosen ones, holy and loved, put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, (13) accepting one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive. (14) Above all, put on love--the perfect bond of unity.

Pastor Phillip

How Do You View Life?

I have made it clear that abortion is one of the major issues of the election for me. Now, some would say I am a single-issue voter, fine, I'll wear that label. Not completely true, I love economics, I love all areas of the political spectrum, but murdering the unborn is far more important that the amount of taxes I have to pay.

So, when John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate it excited me. She is strongly pro-life. She is a woman who showed her principals in giving birth to a child with downs syndrome. I was amazed to learn that 90% of the babies who through amniocentesis are determined to have down syndrome are aborted. Sadly a vast majority of early screen positives are false. Since false positives typically prompt an amniocentesis to confirm the result, and the amniocentesis carries a small risk of inducing miscarriage, there is a slight risk of miscarrying a healthy fetus. So the goal of a prefect child is resulting in the deaths of thousands of God's great creations, sad. So, I commend Palin on allowing God to give her this her this blessing.

Then this weekend it came out that Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant. The media was sure this would be a huge scandal, but this is life. We sin and we deal with the repercussions of our actions, right. This is how Sarah Palin saw things.

She said "We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us. Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support. "Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates."

This is however not how Barack Obama views a pregnancy by a teenage girl. He said concerning his daughters’

"I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby."

Punished with a baby, he wants to save his daughters being punished with a baby by murdering and punishing his own grandchild. Wow, what a kind man. I wish Obama would read

Psalms 139:13-16 For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother's womb. (14) I will praise You, because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well. (15) My bones were not hidden from You when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. (16) Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.

Imagine the pain God feels watching his creations reckless killed.All I am saying, I respect Palin and her family for living out their strong pro-life convictions. A lesser candidate or politician or person would have “saved” him or herself and his daughters from the "punishment" of a child. Sarah and her family know that Psalms 127:3 says "Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him." May God be with Sarah's daughter and the "reward" and not the "punishment" she has coming her way. My hat is off to Sarah Palin and her family and we need to let the family have their privacy and be in prayer for them.

Praying For Our Nation, Pastor Phillip

Questions About Creation

Hey, let me know if you have any questions about dinosaurs, unicorns, fossils, Genesis, Adam and Eve and I will do my best to try and answer them. Just post your question under comments and we will see what we all can learn.

Getting Ready For Genesis: Anthropic Principal

I am getting excited about Sunday. I will be be preaching Genesis 1. In preparation I have been studying some very interesting, but slightly controversial material concerning the age of the earth, the week of creation, and how God did what He did in Genesis 1. Christians hold to wide range of divergent views and we must maintain a humility and realize that we are not God, we are finite probing the infinite, we are weak and frail probing the omnipotent, we sinful probing the holy. But, I think we can learn a lot from Genesis 1 and I am excited about that.

Here are some interesting facts from science that are referred to as the Anthropic Principal. This the notion that our world is amazingly finely tuned and the exactness and precession of seems to leave out blind chance and at least calls for a cosmic mind or deity to have out it into motion.
(Warning some serious science content is below, Sunday Morning's sermon will be more fun that this I promise. These come from Dr. Norman Geisler)

1. Oxygen comprises 21 percent of the atmosphere. If it were 25 percent, fires would erupt, if 15 percent, human beings would suffocate.

2. If the gravitational force were altered by 1 part in 1040 (that’s 10 followed by forty zeroes), the sun would not exist, and the moon would crash into the earth or sheer off into space.² Even a slight increase in the force of gravity would result in all the stars being much more massive than our sun, with the effect that the sun would burn too rapidly and erratically to sustain life.

3. If the centrifugal force of planetary movements did not precisely balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.

4. If the universe was expanding at a rate one millionth more slowly than it is, the temperature on earth would be 10,000 degrees C.³

5. The average distance between stars in our galaxy of 100 billion stars is 30 trillion miles. If that distance was altered slightly, orbits would become erratic, and there would be extreme temperature variations on earth. (Traveling at space shuttle speed, seventeen thousand miles an hour or five miles a second, it would take 201,450 years to travel 30 trillion miles.)

6. Any of the laws of physics can be described as a function of the velocity of light (now defined to be 299,792.458 miles a second). Even a slight variation in the speed of light would alter the other constants and preclude the possibility of life on earth.⁴

7. If Jupiter was not in its current orbit, we would be bombarded with space material. Jupiter’s gravitational field acts as a cosmic vacuum cleaner, attracting asteroids and comets that would otherwise strike earth.⁵

8. If the thickness of the earth’s crust was greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life untenable.⁶

9. If the rotation of the earth took longer than 24 hours, temperature differences would be too great between night and day. If the rotation period was shorter, atmospheric wind velocities would be too great.

10. Surface temperature differences would be too great if the axial tilt of the earth were altered slightly.

11. If the atmospheric discharge (lightning) rate were greater, there would be too much fire destruction; if it were less, there would be too little nitrogen fixing in the soil.

12. If there were more seismic activity, much life would be lost. If there was less, nutrients on the ocean floors and in river runoff would not be cycled back to the continents through tectonic uplift. Even earthquakes are necessary to sustain life as we know it.

As we study this week let us remember the wisdom of Psalm 19:-1-8

1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky proclaims the work of His hands.

2 Day after day they pour out speech;
night after night they communicate knowledge.

3 There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard.

4 Their message has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the inhabited world.
In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun.

5 It is like a groom coming from the bridal chamber;
it rejoices like an athlete running a course.

6 It rises from one end of the heavens
and circles to their other end;
nothing is hidden from its heat.

7 The instruction of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is trustworthy,
making the inexperienced wise.

8 The precepts of the LORD are right,
making the heart glad;
the commandment of the LORD is radiant,
making the eyes light up.

Thinking hard and enjoying every minute, Pastor Phillip