Do you have the same kind of pride for your Christian heritage as you do for your country, family, etc.? What are elements of Christianity that are not well taught? How could these items be incorporated into an exhibit suitable for a museum?
I got this email from my aunt and was frustrated by it. So I check to see if the info was true. What do you think?
Claim: A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave the country.
Status: True.
The story begins at Michigan State University
with a mechanical engineering professor named
Indrek Wichman.
Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Students Association.
The e-mail was in response to the students’ protest
of the Danish cartoons
portraying the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.
The group had complained the cartoons were
‘hate speech’.
============
Enter Professor Wichman.
==========================================
In his e-mail, he said the following:
===============================
Dear Muslim Association,
As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU,
I intend to protest your protest.
I am offended, not by cartoons,
but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians,
cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders,
murders of Catholic priests
(the latest in Turkey),
burnings of Christian churches,
the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt ,
the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims,
the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women
(called ‘whores’ in your culture),
the murder of film directors in Holland ,
and the rioting and looting in Paris, France .
This is what offends me,
a soft-spoken person and academic,
and many, many of my colleagues.
I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal,
and uncivilized slave-trading Muslims
to be very aware of this as you proceed
with your infantile ‘protests’.
If you do not like the values of the West
- see the 1st Amendment -
you are free to leave.
I hope, for God’s sake,
most of you choose that option.
Please return to your ancestral homelands
and build them up yourselves, instead of troubling Americans.
Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
=============================
As you can imagine,
the Muslim group at the university did not like this too well.
They are demanding Wichman be reprimanded
and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty
and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.
Now, the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray.
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
apparently does not believe the good professor
had the right to express his opinion.
==========
For its part,
the university is standing its ground
in support of Professor Wichman,
saying the e-mail was private,
and they do not intend to publicly condemn his remarks.
============================================================
We are in a war.
This political correctness mess is getting old and killing us.
This Sunday @ FBC-Humble Area, the church was doing a series about the other 6 days of the week. They spoke about how usually when people think of the ministry, they think of the pastors, the church (inside), the missionaries, and other people in “religious fields of work”. But we are all missionaries in all areas of work and God can use anything in our hands to accomplish His work. Some points the pastor made were:
Submitting to God in your workplace, where ever it might be, will change:
I am encouraged by this and plan on seeing Brink’s (my place of work) as God’s Holy ground. The pastor encouraged us to even remove our shoes and pray before entering the building (”Lord, this may not look like a holy place, people may not act like it is Holy, even myself, but I pray that my perspective would change and I would serve you in this place today. Let my work for you be whole hearted and may I glorify you in word and deed.”) I did this today, and I will continue to. I am excited to see how God can work through me at Brinks.
I encourage you to do so also. Have you seen God work in your workplace? Do you submit your work to Him? I admit it is so easy to get caught up in the actual work, and living life than to see it as God’s work. What is your perspective?
ps. you can view “The Other 6 Days” here. I didn’t see First Baptist’s sermon online, but you may check iTunes for a podcast.
My problem is the intertwined nature of healing and salvation under the banner of the Greek Word Sozo. It seems that we divide healing and salvation as meaning two separate things, but are they not many times the same thing if we go back to the original text?
Secondly, how can we say that sign gifts ceased when the New Testament was completed when there were those other than the apostles operating in the sign gifts? Is it possible that 1 Corinthians 12 is addressed only to that church for that time period? How can a cessation of the gifts be extrapolated from that text anywhere? 1 Corinthians 12:28 lumps teachers in with apostles and prophets. No one would argue that the “office” of teaching has ceased.
If there is any time frame given to the cessation of the gifts it is provided for us in Ephesians 4:11-13 “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”
To be sure we have not all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…..therefore saints still need to be equipped for this work. Equipped by whom? The apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Again, no one would argue that evangelists, pastors and teachers have ceased. If they are necessary for the equipping of the saints both then and now are not apostles and prophets likewise much needed in the church today?
Third, I have heard some Baptists say that we are filled with the Holy Spirit at the moment of Salvation. Since water baptism is clearly a post-Salvation occurrence isn’t it also possible that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a post-Salvation experience as well? Acts 19:2 Paul says, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” and 19:6 “when Paul had laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.”
What are your thoughts on the decline of people professing Christianity in the United States? This is in response to the Newsweek article published titled, The End of Christian America. The article highlights the percentage of self-identified Christians from a release by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It states America may be “post-Christian” due to falling 10 points (86 to 76%) since 1990 and those with no religious affiliation is on the climb.
What is this due to? Politics? Reformation?
What will the future look like? Will there be an enlightenment of sort?
How much concern should we have? What does this affect?
Anyone who has wandered onto RTO’s (Reef to Outback in Townsville, Australia) campus has learned something they never want to forget. So many speakers, teachers, studies, and experiences to take in and yet, it’s easy to go to a new place, or just get forgetful, and loose what we’ve learned. I’d love to hear what people learned just so we can be intentional about remembering!!!
