Very Interesting Article About Joel Osteen

http://www.internetmonk.com/archives/2005/01/019842.html#more

The Stranger

A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later.
As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love the Word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures, mysteries, and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening.
He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill, and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.
The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up - while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places - go to her room, read her Bible, and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave.
You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house-not from us, from our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted.
My Dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his home not even for cooking. But the stranger felt like we needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (too much, too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man/woman relationship were influenced by the stranger.
As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave.
More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Drive. But if I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.
His name?......We always just called him...TV.

Pastor in Prison for Preaching Homosexuality Sinful

Pastor gets prison for sermon
Sentenced to month in jail for offending homosexuals
Posted: July 8, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

A Swedish court has sentenced Ake Green, a pastor belonging to the Pentecostal movement, to a month in prison, under a law against incitement, after he was found guilty of having offended homosexuals in a sermon, according to Ecumenical News International.
Green had described homosexuality as "abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumor in the body of society" in a 2003 sermon.
Soren Andersson, the president of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights, said on hearing Green's jail sentence that religious freedom could never be used as a reason to offend people.

Hate Crimes & Reverse Persecution

Criminalized thoughts?
By Amy Doolittle
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Jokes about political correctness have been around for more than a decade, and many Americans now take for granted conflicts over manger scenes on public property and Christmas carols in public schools. Hostility toward religious expression is no joke, however, to advocates concerned that "hate crimes" laws could be used to rob Americans of religious freedom, which they say is already the case in some parts of Europe. Exhibit A: Ake Green, a Swedish pastor who was arrested for speaking against homosexuality from his church pulpit.


While American hate-crime laws currently punish criminal acts motivated by bigotry, William Murray, chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, says the principle behind such statutes could be "worse than a slippery slope" toward restricting fundamental freedoms. "In the '40s, '50s, '60s and even '70s, we were taught that the difference between the free world and the communist bloc was that in the free world if you committed a crime, you were going to go to jail for what you did, but in the Soviet Union and other countries, you would go to jail for what you thought," Mr. Murray said. "Hate-crimes laws are not really hate-crimes laws — they are really hate-thought laws," Mr. Murray says. "We have a movement in the entire Western world ... for people to go to jail for what they think." It is not mere speculation to think that hate-crimes laws could be used to quash free speech, he says, citing an October protest in Philadelphia. On "National Coming Out Day," a Christian group held a demonstration on a public walkway outside a homosexual-activism event called "Outfest." Protesters at the Oct. 10 event were informed by police that they could stand wherever they wanted, since the festival was being held on public sidewalks. However, when their demonstration was interrupted by a group called "the Pink Angels," the police ordered the Christian group to relocate and later arrested them. Ten of the demonstrators were held for 21 hours and released; one member of the group was held for 10 days because of confusion involving an outstanding parking ticket. All were charged with eight criminal counts, including "ethnic intimidation," a second-degree felony. The Philadelphia case, says Mr. Murray, is the perfect example of the "hate crime" mentality gone bad. The movement from a "hate crime" to a "hate thought" is "worse than a slippery slope," Mr. Murray says. "A slippery slope you go down slowly — this thing is a cliff. These people were peaceably demonstrating, but they were demonstrating for something that was politically incorrect." That the Philadelphia demonstrators were charged with a hate crime based on speech does not fall in line with the specifics of Pennsylvania's law against ethnic intimidation, says Brain Fahling, attorney for the protesters. He says they will not be convicted of the charged crimes because they didn't commit them. "The ethnic-intimidation law has conduct associated with it, which means that to be guilty of it requires something more than speech," Mr. Fahling says. A videotape made by an independent San Francisco film company of the protest and subsequent arrest shows no hate actions at all, says Mr. Fahling, just a group of people proclaiming their religious beliefs. "There is nothing in that videotape that would demonstrate that my clients did anything other than exercise the rights the constitution allows them to exercise," he says. But Christians aren't the only ones who think that hate-crimes law should not dictate thoughts. Joe Perez, owner and contributing writer of the Gay Spirituality & Culture blog (www.gayspirituality.typepad.com) says he understands that every person has a right to speak what he or she thinks to be true, even if it makes him uncomfortable. "Hate speech is not a behavior that I ... want to see made illegal. The line that's drawn in the United States is generally between the speech that is simply offensive to a great number of people and speech that incites violence within a group — and that's a line that I feel comfortable with," Mr. Perez says. "If someone says that I think a group is wrong, or a group is acting immorally, or a group is wicked, or evil or condemned to hell, I may find that offensive and objectionable, but I don't think it should be illegal." In fact, as Mr. Perez argues that condemning Christians for speaking against homosexuals is no different than condemning homosexuals for speaking against Christians. "Can you imagine the outrage if a Christian fundamentalist intruded in a private gathering of queer activists, overheard a speaker say, 'Fundamentalism represents an abnormal, a horrible, cancerous tumor in the body of society,' reported him to the authorities, and then the laws of our land permitted the speaker to be arrested and imprisoned for a month?" he writes on his Web log. "That speaker would become a martyr and hero to the cause, a victim of the unjust, evil times in which we live and rage would ferment against our 'enemies' and all that they represent." Mr. Perez also warns that laws that punish ideas are not only unfair, but are counterproductive. "Using the laws of a state to imprison folks who do not understand or agree with us, or who say mean-spirited things, cannot create a culture that makes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folks safer and more secure," he says. "Instead, it will taint all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activism with the stench of extreme political correctness gone amok."

Consider this Prophecy

I neither endorse nor condemn this prophecy, it is offered for your consideration and comment.


http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Prophets/The.5.Angels.of.Continents.html

Matthew 4:37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

The following link is to a radio transcript from the John Merrow show. The topic is preteen sexual activity in America. I propose that the immorality of our generation is the most blatant sign that Jesus is coming soon and we are living in the end times. If you click this link, be prepare to read a shocking report about the evil in our midst, sin so dark that our children have become perverted.

http://www.pbs.org/merrow/tmr_radio/transcr/pgm06.pdf

I feel intensely about this subject.

I feel an intense sense of the imminence of the coming of the Lord. All of the scriptures point to HIS return at such a time as this. In my personal life, I feel an overwhelming unworthiness and gratitude for salvation. I want HIM to come, and I want HIM to find me working for HIS harvest.

http://www.messiahrevealed.org/

This is a very good link. The site is administered by a group of Messianic Jews.

Jesus Christ is the Messiah

Messianic Prophecies Fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth
This list is merely an example and is by no means intended to be exhaustive. The Old Testament Prohecy is followed by the New Testament fulfillment. Click any of the links below for the complete lesson.

1
The Messiah would be announced to his people 483 years, to the exact day, after the decree to rebuild the city of Jerusalem.
Daniel 9:25
John 12:12-13
2
The Messiah's hands and feet would be pierced.
Psalm 22:16c
Matthew 27:38
3
The Jew's authority to administer capital punishment would be gone when the Messiah arrived.
Genesis 49:10c
John 18:31
4
The Messiah would be killed before the destruction of the temple.
Daniel 9:26c
Matthew 27:50-51
5
The Messiah would be rejected.
Isaiah 53:3b
Matthew 27:21-23
6
The Messiah would die for the sins of the world.
Isaiah 53:8d
1 John 2:2
7
The Messiah would be born of the "seed" of a woman.
Genesis 3:15a
Luke 1:34-35
8
The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
Micah 5:2a
Matthew 2:1-2
9
The Messiah would be sacrificed on the same mountain where God tested Abraham.
Genesis 22:14
Luke 23:33
10
The Messiah would be killed.
Daniel 9:26a
Matthew 27:35