shadman's old Musings

So here we are ending 2008, ready to start a new year, with a new president, an economy in recession and a nation that seems 'hell-bent' on continuing to throw away the very faith and values that created her and inspired a governmental structure unlike any other on the face of this planet. No, I'm not getting political or disregarding the 'too many to count' horrible things that have been done in the 'name of Christ' as so many like to point out. We all know these things to be true and are reminded of them continually by people whose motives most likely are suspect. So I'm not trying to put lemon juice on a paper cut, but I do think there's a hidden truth that seems to get overlooked by too many Christians feed up and tired of being brow-beaten with the actions of people that none of us knew, and wouldn't have been able to control had we been alive during their times, or present during their sinful actions. Trying to 'fix' that perception

Wow! It has been a really long time since my last blog. I have chosen to back out of a business venture because I just don't have time anymore; actually, I never had the time in the first place. It was an interesting little adventure and I'm glad I did it, but with a full-time job and all of my responsibilities at church, it was completely unrealistic to get involved with. As my partner said, "What we do for the Lord is much more important than what we do in the business world." He is of course correct. Every church has a slogan, ours is, "Relationship not religion". But slogans are not always easy to live up to, so the question we should all be asking, which I am, is, "does that slogan match what we really are?" A lot of the time its what we really want to be, but not always what we really are. And with all of the transitions going on at my church and after reading a short book, I starting thinking about this and its relationship to my topic, the

This is a comment I posted on a Jehovah's Witness' Yahoo 360 blog some time back, in response to a posting he still currently has on his site questioning the Trinity. I was turned onto this site by a friend who asked me what I thought of his post. I felt and still feel that he asked some really good questions and I really, truly felt, and still do, that he needed to enter into a discussion about the questions he asked, since he obviously does not understand Christian teachings. Its doubtful that he understands his own JW teaching either since it didn't take me long to discover that his questions came directly from one of his JW pamphlets, “ Should You Believe in the Trinity? ”, but I was hoping that he really wanted to discuss the topics he raised. Sorry, that was just a little sarcastic because JW's usually don't discuss or debate anything, and he was certainly no exception since all he did was delete my comments. Most unfortunate, but not unexpected. W

A friend of mine asked me a question about baptism a week or so ago. He has sat under the teaching that baptism is required for salvation as well as the teaching that baptism is ceremonial in nature. His question is one that has been around for a long time, and in some respects the questions is nearly as old as the church is. Is salvation really that simple: repent and believe? Or are there things I must do as well? Is baptism a work or a sacrament, a rite of observance that must be performed to seal the repentance and belief? It also reminded me of something I had recently taught in my little weekly Bible study, but we'll get to that in a few minutes. There are in fact three views on baptism: The first is that baptism is a means of salvation. This is normally called the Roman Catholic view, but I'm more familiar with it as a view held by the churches of Christ, usually the Boston and Indiana versions. The second view is that baptism is a sign and a seal of the new

I seem to have forgotten to post this from my Yahoo 360 blog. Posted Sept 13th .... I sometimes troll for Christians or interesting people on the Yahoo 360. Some times I run across an interesting person or something that peaks my interest. This happened as I was looking at a friend of one of my Yahoo 360 friends. Here is an excerpt from the blog of a friend of a friend, ... There is a Gospel known by the name the Gospel of Barnabas, which the church banned in 492 AD by the order of Pope Gelasius. It was confiscated everywhere. But there was still a copy of that Gospel in the library of Pope Sixtus V. Fortunately a certain Roman Monk called Framarino managed to bring it out. He had found the letters of Ireneus, where the came upon the name of the Gospel of Barnabas mentioned as a reference. His curiosity urged him to look for that gospel. When he became a close friend to Pope Sixtus V, he got that copy of the gospel and found in it that there would come a time when it would be claimed t