Category Archives: Jesus

Merry Christmas

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It’s nine months until we celebrate the birth of Jesus and today is the Feast of the Annunciation.

I believe that the moment of conception is the moment a human being, made in God’s image, a person with an immortal soul, is created by God. For a Christian no other view stands up to scrutiny; no other view is logical.

Today, then, we celebrate the moment when God himself became fully Man while remaining fully God. Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. He emptied himself to the extent that he became a microscopic clump of cells embedded in the womb of one of his creatures.

EmbryoJesus came into the world at the moment of his conception.

Merry Christmas.

The only offensive word left: Jesus

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This advertisement was banned at movie theatres because it uses the name of Jesus to refer to the man who lived, died and came back to life 2000 years ago: that, apparently, is offensive, whereas  saying “Jesus” as a mindless expletive isn’t.

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/jesusad.flv 600 360]

 

h/t: A Reasonable Faith

Stating the obvious

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But I suppose it’s right and proper that the Pope does so.

The Jews are not to blame for Jesus’ crucifixion: since he died to atone for the sins of all, we are all to blame.

From here:

The Jews are not to blame for the crucifixion and death of Jesus, Pope Benedict  XVI said today.

In extracts released from his forthcoming book on Jesus of Nazareth, the Pope  completely exonerates the Jewish people of any culpability of the death of Christ.

He directly confronts the controversial text of St Matthew’s Gospel in which ‘the Jews’ demand the execution of Jesus and shout to the Roman governor Pontius Pilate: ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children.’

The passage has been described even by Catholics as a ‘rallying cry for anti-Semites down the centuries’.

But the Pope says the Gospel writer meant the mob in the courtyard and not  the Jewish people in general.

As such the crowd was representative of the whole of sinful humanity, he said.

Then he explains that the blood of Jesus was not ‘poured out against anyone, it is poured out for many, for all’.

The “Jesus was HIV-positive” sermon

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From here:

“Today I will start with a three-part sermon on: Jesus was HIV-positive,” South African Pastor Xola Skosana recently said in a Sunday church service.

The words initially stunned his congregation in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township into silence, and then set tongues wagging in churches across the country.

Some Christians have been outraged, saying he is portraying Jesus as sexually promiscuous.

HIV is mainly transmitted through sex, but can also be spread through needle-sharing, contaminated blood, pregnancy and breastfeeding.

However, as Pastor Skosana told those gathered in the modest Luhlaza High School hall for his weekly services, in many parts of the Bible Jesus put himself in the position of the destitute, the sick and the marginalised.

It hardly needs to be said that the premise of this sermon is idiotic. Jesus had compassion for “the destitute, the sick and the marginalised”, but he wasn’t sick, destitute or marginalised himself: he didn’t become a leper, he healed lepers. And, had HIV been in existence, he would have healed those who contracted it – even if they had contracted it using the preferred method.

Pornographic art portraying Jesus provokes outrage

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From here:

An exhibit at a Colorado art gallery is stirring up outrage from critics who say it depicts Jesus Christ in a sexual act.

Enrique Chagoya’s “The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals,” created in 2003, is a multipanel piece in which “cultural and religious icons are presented with humor and placed in contradictory, unexpected and sometimes controversial contexts,” the artist’s publisher, Shark’s Ink, said on its website.

The lithograph, on display since Sept. 11 at the tax-funded Loveland Museum Gallery in Loveland, Colo., is part of an 82-print exhibit by 10 artists who have worked with Colorado printer Bud Shark. It includes several images of Jesus, including one in which he appears to be receiving oral sex from a man as the word “orgasm” appears beside Jesus’ head.

Amidst worldwide Christian rioting, hundreds have been killed, taxpayers in Colorado have taken tax inspectors hostage in a local mosque – sorry, cultural centre – President Obama has called the exhibit “un-American”, media are refusing to publish photos for fears of reprisals and imams in notorious Islamo-fascist theocracies say they can’t understand what all the fuss is about.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is calling for dialogue with the artist.

Lebanese TV stations scrap Jesus show

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From the Jerusalem Post:

Controversial program describes Jesus from an Islamic point of view.

BEIRUT  — Two Shiite Muslim television stations in Lebanon canceled a controversial program about Jesus on Friday, saying they do not want to stir up sectarian conflict in the country.

The 17-episode program, which was produced in Iran, describes Jesus from an Islamic point of view. Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet and a teacher, but not the son of God.

The cancellation is supposedly out of respect for Lebanon’s “religious diversity”. There is a much better reason: the contention that Jesus was merely a great prophet and teacher is illogical and clearly untrue. Either Jesus was who he claimed to be – God incarnate – or he was a nut case. C. S. Lewis said it best:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to

Jesus offends

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Another reason to like him. From Fox:

A North Carolina pastor was relieved of his duties as an honorary chaplain of the state house of representatives after he closed a prayer by invoking the name of Jesus.

“I got fired,” said Ron Baity, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. He had been invited to lead prayer for an entire week but his tenure was cut short when he refused to remove the name Jesus from his invocation.

Baity’s troubles began during the week of May 31. He said a House clerk asked to see his prayer. The invocation including prayers for our military, state lawmakers and a petition to God asking him to bless North Carolina.”

“When I handed it to the lady, I watched her eyes and they immediately went right to the bottom of the page and the word Jesus,” he told FOX News Radio. “She said ‘We would prefer that you not use the name Jesus. We have some people here that can be offended.’”

When Baity protested, she brought the matter to the attention of House Speaker Joe Hackney.

An application of 1 Corinthians 1:18.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/09/pastor-yanked-capitol-jesus-prayer/