This is simply evil. I have no truck with Mohammedanism, and I pray that Muslims hear the gospel and convert. But many people will go to the Mosque for religious festivals. And terrorists are saying that no mosque is safe.
A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a mosque in northern Afghanistan today, killing 35 people and wounding at least 70, government and hospital officials said.
The attack in the town of Maymana, capital of northern Faryab province, came as people were gathering at the mosque to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday, said Jawid Didar, spokesman for the governor’s office.
Top provincial officials, including the governor and the police chief, were inside the building when the bomber set off his explosives outside, where a large crowd had gathered, Didar said. The officials were not hurt, but the casualties included police officers and soldiers, he said.
“There was blood and dead bodies everywhere,” said Khaled, a doctor who happened to be in the mosque at the time of the blast. “It was a massacre,” said Khaled, who like many Afghans uses only one name.
The attack came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged Taliban insurgents “to stop killing other Afghans.”
In his Eid al-Adha message to the nation, Karzai called on the insurgents to “stop the destruction of our mosques, hospitals and schools.”
Now, in Islamic nations, no church is ever safe. The church is never promised an easy ride. And as the West becomes more and more pagan and this is reflected in the church, believers in the west are paying the cost. Ministers are being forced out of the Kirk. We are forced to all too often deal with fakes, who attract fakes, False Christians, Churchians.
So Mr. soul patch….you did it. You connected my man. You have a church that has no small number of folks like the ones right in front of me in attendance. And you make them feel good about themselves week in and week out. And you tell us that each morning the day begins with a $37,000.00 hole to fill, just to as you put it, keep the lights on.
Nice to know.
So I left after the service and I told my wife I will not go back. It is on me, she says, to find a new place. I’m grateful she sees it that way and she is correct. Sadly I am not optimistic about my prospects but I will try.
… [On the way home the author found a black teenager begging. Turns out his family cannot stay in the night shelter, as they have a son, and the nearest relative is hundreds of miles away. His wife helps them sort out a place to stay for a week]…
The idiot with the soul patch
The $37,000.00 nugget to run the place daily
The liberal white woman who chased away the boy that was forced to ask strangers for help
The shelter that turned the family away because GASP! A boy is part of the family
And the little girl, maybe 5, in a pink jumper and wearing a precious huge smile while waiting in the front seat of the car while older brother begs for money
I don’t like any of it.
Yes, I am getting to the lectionary. But our church has become too renamed with being nice, correct, politically correct, and allied with social services. We are not doing what we ought. For this is how we should think, feel and act.
1 I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!”
2 Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem.3 Jerusalem — built as a city that is bound firmly together.
4 To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.
5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up, the thrones of the house of David.6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:“May they prosper who love you.
7 Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers.”
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.”
9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.
Church should be shelter. It should be unity: the tribes of people may be diverse, but the should worship together. It should include family. And those families should be intact. It should be where the gospel is proclaimed, and the decrees of the LORD are taught, and obedience modeled, so that people are taught.
But this does not come automatically. There are forces outside the church that oppress. And there are the faithless inside who poison the well of truth. And no church is perfect.
We need to pray for Jerusalem, because we are commanded to.
But we need to pray more for the church, and judge the congregations of the church. For some a dead. And if a dead church is struggling in an zombie existence, heading down the liberal plughole as the Kirk of Scotland is, it is time to leave the zombies to rot.
I am glad to go to Kirk. But some Kirks are poison: it is not the denominational brand (Presbyterian in my case, which is why the Scottish example of mandating gay ministers and casting out those that oppose me winds me up so much) but the reality of life being there that matters. Denominational rigour helps, but we all can become corrupt. Church should be about repentance, reconciliation, and the joy of forgiveness, not a place where evil, instead of good, is preserved.
I am a Kiwi who has returned to the ancient faith, Orthodoxy. Yes it is about repentance … and also the synergy of God’s work and ours. It is a Church I don’t have to defend. I go home after a Liturgy feeling better than I did before, not angry and frustrated. Yes, corruption occurs within Orthodoxy, but with this difference: it is recognised as corruption. And there is much holiness; our NZ bishop is a holy man and this has far-reaching effects.
You make the good point that there is corruption, but it is minimal.
The post was driven by the frustration that occurs in evangelical circles. Personally, I have returned to the denomination that I grew up in (Presbyterian) despite my family “going Pentecostal”. I have nothing against my Dad;s church (he goes to Elim in Howick) but the local kirk has a more reformed faith, uses multiple ministers, and isolates the liberals in congregations I can avoid.
(Note that I have sympathy to the Orthodox. The Reformed are people who strip things back to bareness, but all the confessional churches have much more in common than they have apart in these fallen times.
if you have the time, Chris, google Our Life in Christ, check out the archives and listen to one or two of the many podcasts. Rightclick to download and then listen anywhere. I think you’d like them.
Well, I’m reformed… and the video on salvation missed a few things. I’ll comment over there.
I too up in the Kirk. I now live in England where the Presbyterian Church merged with the Congregationalists and the United Reformed Church which it became is now dying from an excess of liberalism. Following a bust up over homosexuality in our local Baptist church where I felt spiritually at home until the senior minister decided to preach that homosexual activity was not contrary to God’s Word, my wife and I decided to try the local churches. I had been very hurt by the misuse of canon law in an Anglican church and decided that I would not be going there. The Methodist Church and the Elim were left and aside from one couple we knew from the Anglican church, we were about the youngest by around 10 years in the Elim, and then our teenaged daughter decided she wanted to come to the Methodist Church and so our decision was made. But now we find that Young Methodists consider “cohabitation is both right and sensible” and the Methodist Church in the UK is preparing a resource on cohabitation for Young Methodists. I really do not want to change churches again, for the third time in 30 years without moving house, especially as the congregation and house groups are welcoming and generally positively Christian as opposed to churchian. I am wondering about staying where I am as a subversive evangelical guerrilla. The house group is certainly becoming more evangelical and better understands what its members each believe and we have fun while studying the Bible.
Part of our job is to confront ministers.
I have learnt to ask questions… such as how to make this compatable with this scripture, or this part of the confession of faith? And no, you cannot argue from gender or other forms of authority.
The site is called Dark Brightness for a reason. Being popular is not the same as being right.