shadman's old Musings

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...

I often wonder why God guides a person down the path he wants them to travel. When I became a Christian I can assure you that studying apologetics was not at the top of my list. At the time I didn't believe I had any perceivable gifts to speak of, and that may still be true! I have never had any desire to get embroiled in controversies, but I do seem to get involved in one from time to time. I would not consider myself to have any particularly intuitive or insightful perspectives on issues or beliefs, just more guts than brains. Frankly, I'm a 'nobody.' I'm sure I'm no more 'holy' than any one else. But here I am, wanting to contribute something of value in a cacophony of noise generated every day by so many that are so much smarter, more philosophical, and much more eloquent than I. After 4 or 5 blogs on Islam, I'm sure that some of you may be like me, left a little disturbed and dejected, hoping that some one, anyone will have some encouraging word...

And you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. (Mark 13:13) There is for you an excellent example to follow in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people: 'We are clear of you and of whatever ye worship besides Allah: we have rejected you, and there has arisen, between us and you, enmity and hatred for ever, unless ye belieive in Allah and Him alone. (Qur'an 60:4) Wow! Its actually been a month since my last blog. And the crazy thing is, I started immediately after I posted my last one. But then I got to looking at a really interesting Scripture related to the Trinity, and then a mild controversy by what I had shared about a particular verse. But, no matter – here we go! The Crusades are not one of the bright spots as you look at the history of the church, but that really has more about their outcomes rather than the actions of the participants. I'm not going to gloss over the things that were done...