The Year of Moving Forward

The Year of Moving Forward
At our 4 person wedding reception in DC

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Reaching Out To the World

I looked at the stats on this blog yesterday and learned that there were visitors from 31 states and 21 countries over the last 500 visits. The states with the highest number of visitors (out of the last 361 from the U.S.) were Alabama (70), Florida (58), Georgia (23), Virginia (17), Pennsylvania and New York (14 each) and California (12).

Of those 500 visitors, 361 came from the U. S. and the other 139 came from places including Canada, UK, Australia, France, Hungary, Denmark, Togo, Israel, Serbia, Brazil, India, Mexico, Sweden and more.

Bessemer Opinions reaches the world. What I don't know is why some of those visitors come to Bessemer Opinions. Are they people with ties here wanting to find out what is going on? Or people who stumble here? Or people researching a subject and find us through google or another search engine?

Whatever the reason, thanks for visiting and check back often.

Another person reaching the world is Jay Bakker, the preacher son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Nice tats, by the way.


Here is part of how he describes his experience on his church web site, RevolutionNYC .

Eventually, Jay was able to conquer his demons and made a personal decision to find out who God really was. What he discovered floored him – God wasn’t some judgmental, condemning deity sitting on a throne waving an angry fist in the direction of sinners – rather, he was an understanding God offering his gift of love and grace with no strings attached. For the first time Jay wasn’t being driven to Christ out of fear; he was being drawn to Christ through love.

Jay recently spoke at another church about same sex marriage.



Here Jay explains to Larry King why he became a pastor and why his views are what they are. He gives a good explanation of why some evangelicals treat gays the way they do. He also says that Christians are the only army that shoots their wounded.

6 comments:

rev. bill said...

His theology is all wrong.
We've gone over this before, but let's try it again.
GOD IS love. He loves his creation. He loves everyone. He always has and always will. But God HATES sin. He was tempted by Satan just like the rest of us. He understands our struggles. But God DOES NOT ACCEPT sin in our lives. That is why he was crucified. That is why he died. So that when WE CONFESS OUR SINS and ask forgiveness and change our lives, he FORGIVES US. He does NOT forgive us and say "Hey look, you are forgiven, and oh by the way, feel free to go ahead and keep on sining." It doesn't work that way.

Bakker has no educational background in theology. He is just saying what he thinks, not what is true.

Sorry.

Joe said...

Bill,
It does not matter what Bakker's educational background is. One develops their theological philosophy from the own experiences, both with God and with those around him.

I don't think any of the followers of Jesus as recorded in the Bible had formal education to help them develop their theology.

When our sins are forgiven, they are forgiven past, present and future, with the full knowledge, per se, of Jesus, that we will sin again. Salvation does not mean we are made perfect (other than the knowledge that we are prefect in him, in a mystical sort of sense).

But there is more. Being a GLBT individual does not mean one is a sinner, due to that. Having a same sex relationship, in of itself, is not a sin, any more than having an opposite sex relationship is. Sure, anyone can abuse their sexuality by being promiscuous or using sex for an advantage. But a loving relationship, regardless of who the people are, is healthy and glorifies God.

You, like Bakker, are just saying what you think as well. That is how the mind, and communication, works.

rev. bill said...

Do you remember when Jesus "forgave" the prostitute? It was followed by the statement "GO AND SIN NO MORE". You are correct in saying that all our sins are forgiven, but that doesn't mean we have a free pass to go live like we want to.

"...a loving relationship, regardless of who the people are, is healthy and glorifies God." No Joe. You are very much mistaken. You are saying this b/c it supports your GLBT lifestyle. It goes back to a few days ago when we were discussing absolute truth. People don't want to hear it. They don't want to accept it. But there are SEVERAL verses in the Bible the would indeed condemn homosexuality. I've seen how you have twisted those verses, but the fact remains. You will not find ANYTHING in the Bible that would support homosexuality. Love, YES. Gay love, absolutely not.

Notice in the video how the crowd got quiet when Bakker started preaching this nonsense.

Joe said...

Most people get quiet when they are made aware of something they didn't realize and want to learn.

The prostitute falls into the category of "using sex for an advantage" to use my phrase from the previous comment.

It is so presumptuous of you to believe that you know and understand the absolute truth. it angers me, in fact, for you to propose that. People who believe that are the people who become cult leaders and religious extremists.

There are verses that support homosexuality. I will post such on the blog within a few days.

Joe said...

Steve: Garbage. Not the Bible. Your translation. There was not even a concept of a homosexual orientation when the Bible was written. The word that you insert as "homosexual" was not used in a translation until the 1950's. 1958 to be precise. There is not word in ancient Greek or Hebrew that means homosexual. The words in 1 Corinthians are Greek, malakois and arsenokoitai. Malakois means something like effiminate call boys or male prostitutes. The meaning of arsenokoitai is unclear, but most think it means the customers of the call boys.

At any rate, the words in no way refer to gay people who are in committed loving relationships.

Learn some Greek, get a reliable translation, educate yourself.

Joe said...

Ok gay haters. I am going to stop printing anti-Christian, anti-gay comments. I don't have time to continue to trying to educate you. If you have not learned the truth yet,you are hopeless.

You know who you are.