Leftist Feminists Slam Tebow

The left is enraged by Tim Tebow and his mother’s Superbowl ad touting a pro-life message. While none have seen the ad, read the script or know anything about it sans for the general message, several women’s groups are up in arms over the audacity of CBS to show such an ‘anti-choice’ message.

Let me throw in a disclaimer. I like Tebow, I admire his guts to stand up for his beliefs on such a large stage. It’s easy to stand up for something when you are someone like An Informed Mind, relatively unknown (as for now) and without having your face out there in the public eye. I think his mother did the right thing when she said that she would not have an abortion. She lived her belief that abortion was, is and always will be wrong.

I tried looking through a pro-choice person’s eyes (hard as it was) to see if there was any reason to attack Tim or his mother for the ad. I thought well maybe the ad attacks people who have had abortions. But CBS wouldn’t allow something like that anyway. Ultimately the only thing I could think of was that if offered a logical, coherent and entirely believable and heartwarming alternative to destructive and life ending abortions.

This begs the question, do liberals hate babies? They certainly hate them before they are born because they go to great lengths to provide alternatives to letting the child live. I contend that we are the midst of the greatest genocide in history at the targets are the unborn. Liberals are actively promoting abortion as a facet of both health care and reproductive freedom. But they don’t want pro-lifers to have the right to express their reasons for not choosing abortions nor do they want them to be able to offer alternatives to impressionable and confused young women who are trying to decide between abortion and carrying the baby to term.

This speaks to the tyranny of what used to be a noble or at least freedom oriented political philosophy. Liberals used to be all about rocking the boat and trying to afford individuals the freedom to express themselves. Oh they still are, as long as you agree with them and are pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, pro-big government, pro-socialism.

We need to stand up for the unborn and if it means ideological conflict, bring it on!

Massachusetts Race a Referendum on Obama

While most of the country watches intently, Massachusetts’ voters could unwittingly, be deciding the future of the country. The Democrat is Martha Coakley. She has run one of the most terrible campaigns possible, snubbing her nose at rubbing elbows with the people due to the ‘cold’ and instead opting to have a fundraiser with top drug companies, calling Curt Schilling a ‘Yankees fan’ and really having no message whatsoever. On the other side we have Scott Brown, a relatively unknown Republican up until now who wasn’t given a chance to win by anyone. However, Independents are breaking for him at a clip of nearly 68-21 percent.

Why is this vote important for the country? Because Brown has pledged to be a vote against health care reform and Coakley has pledged her support for Obama’s socialist style health care system. If Brown wins, or even comes close in this heavily Democratic state, it shows that people are fed up with Obama, fiscal irresponsibility and the health care bill. If Coakley wins convincingly (which I am certain she won’t.) then Obama and the Dems power full steam ahead.

This issue is so important to the democrats *cough* socialists *cough* that Ed Schultz (hereby referenced as ‘Fat Ed’) openly advocated vote fraud to elect Coakley over Brown saying: “I tell you what, if I lived in Massachusetts I’d try to vote 10 times. I don’t know if they’d let me or not, but I’d try to. Yeah, that’s right. I’d cheat to keep these b*stards out. I would. ‘Cause that’s exactly what they are.” [Edited to obscure profanity] Someone’s feelin’ jittery eh?

The polls close in Massachusetts at 8 o’clock EST. Here’s hoping that we can win this one and set the tide for a Republican, Conservative resurgence in 2010.

SHOCKING MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE!

The miscarriage of justice for military members accused of crimes has been ratcheted up over the past two years. Last March, 1st Lieutenant Michael Behenna was slugged with a 25 year sentence (which was later reduced to 20 years) for allegedly murdering a well known Al Qaeda operative Ali Mansur who was operating a cell inside of Lt. Behenna’s area of operations.

Here’s what happened. Mansur allegedly organized an attack on the Lt.’s platoon that left two of his men dead and another two wounded. Mansur was taken into custody but later ordered released. Lt. Behenna was ordered to escort the scumbag (er… the man) to his home.

En route, Lt. Behenna reportedly questioned Mansur, seeking information regarding the location of his terrorist confederates and inquiring about who was supporting them financially.

What happened next has been disputed. The Lt. says that the terrorist scum lunged at him and that he shot Mansur in self defense, killing him. However, the government, the same government that should be trying to protect our soldiers, charged Lt. Behenna with premeditated murder. In the trial that followed, expert testimony that surely would have exonerated the Lt. was withheld from the court.

The prosecution alleged that the Lt. stripped Manur naked, seated him on a rock and executed him. However, the highly respected forensic expert Dr. Herbert Leon MacDonnell, director of the Labratory of Forensic Science in Corning, N.Y. informed prosecutors that the forensic evidence showed that the blood spatter on the rock was consistent not with an execution style murder but with self-defense shots.

However, after this explanation to the prosecution, he was sent packing and was not called as a witness. Surely his testimony would have exonerated and freed this good man and cleared his name. Nevertheless, it seems that the United States government is more committed to avenging the death of a sworn enemy of the United States than they are with protecting American lives and honor. May God help us.

Radical Islam and Radical Stupidity

My friends, the latest foiled terror plot was again carried out by a radical Christian, gun-toting, fundamentalist, Bible thumping hick from the sticks… oh wait… typo… that’s wrong. Once again the terror plot was hatched and nearly executed by a radical Muslim from Nigeria. The Christmas day attempt at blowing up a plane over Detroit was foiled only when the explosives didn’t explode and a courageous man leaped over seats to subdue the burning would-be bomber.

And once again, very few mentions that this guy was a Muslim. I have said it time and time again that Islam is not a religion of peace but of war and strife and subjecting their enemies. While the majority of Muslims probably are peace-loving, friendly neighbors/friends, they are akin to Christians that go to church but don’t really buy into the whole relationship with Jesus. They may believe in allah and so forth, but really are not following the Koran to the word. If we look inside the Koran we can see that it is full of murder, violence, subjection of women and beheading of infidels.

People might come up to me and say, “Well what about the Old Testament? What about those strict rules of conduct?” The difference is, in Jesus we are set free from the Law and the Law is no longer binding on us. The rules of no mixed wool/polyester shirts is done away with, the prohibition against pork is removed (Can I get a Hallelujah?) In the Koran there is no such removal of the violence and commands to spread Islam by the mouth first but by the sword if people don’t answer. Jesus Christ never once commanded his followers to kill infidels and he actually restored the servant of the high priest’s ear when Peter drew his sword and cut it off. (See Luke 22:50-51) Jesus did not defend himself when tried before Pilate, nor did he allow his disciples to. On the contrary, Muhammed allowed for the slaughter of women (read about the poet who was slaughtered as she nursed her infant) the slaughter of Jews (“A day is coming when the tree will cry out, ‘there is a jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”) etc.

As much as we want to deny it in our politically correct and squeamish society, Islam is at war with us. There are moderate Muslims that don’t want to fight America and love America but the fundamental religion of Islam is, and always will be at war with the U.S. and the entire modern world. Islam hates those that deny Muhammed, allah or the Koran. Christians are taught to love those that use and persecute them.

Time and again we see that those that wish to do us harm and to destroy our way of life are overwhelmingly Islamic in nature. We see people chanting in the streets of Iran ‘Death to Israel! Death to America!’ We see people that say they love death more than the west loves life. We see a religion that promises those that kill themselves for allah 72 virgins in heaven. Christians are promised that we will see the face of God in heaven and enjoy His presence when we pass from this world unto life eternal. But Islam, in an excellent political and military move, promises a carnal and sexual reward to entice young men to be willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause that will almost certainly lead them to death. Christians value life because the Bible teaches that all men are known by God in their mother’s womb and that He cares for us and sent His Son to die for us so that we may be free from our sins. Muslim terrorists love death because they anxiously wait for their reward of 72 virgins to fulfill their carnal desires.

Also, they are taught from the Koran that an unbeliever is an enemy of allah. Christians are taught that unbelievers are to be witnessed to that they might be won for Christ and pass from death to life. Islam teaches that a man cannot know his eternal destination save for those that die fighting for him. Christians can know that as long as they believe in the only begotten Son of God, their sins are forgiven and heaven is their eternal destination.

As President Obama says, “We are not at war with Muslims.” This is true. We are not at war with Muslims. But we are at war with an ideology that teaches hatred, violence, subjugation and death. We are at war with a religion that kills those that do not convert. Until America can shake ourselves awake from our stupor on the situation pertaining to Islam, we will continue to suffer attacks. America needs to wake up and realize that if we want to win this war, we have to know who we are fighting.

KJV-onlyites and New Translations

Christians have long held the view that the Bible is God’s infallible word, speaking directly to the hearts of men and containing therein the entirety of His law and revelation. However, in the past 100 years or so, Christians have become split on the issue of WHICH Bible translation to use.

For many years, there was only one translation in English that was widely available. William Tyndale completed the first New Testament in English. He printed it in either 1525 or 1526. He faced great persecution from the Anglican church and his New Testaments were confiscated and burned by the king and the bishops. However, copies continued to be successfully smuggled into England. Eventually Tyndale was betrayed, strangled and burned at the stake. His last words were “Lord open the eyes of the king.”

The first complete Bible in English was the Coverdale Bible. October 4th, 1535 was the printing of the first complete English Bible. At that point the church lost its grip on the Word of God. The common people could now read what God spoke without the church and could see the un-Biblical practices that the church indulged in. After that, the next complete Bible was the Matthew’s Bible. Published under the pseudonym of ‘Thomas Matthew’ John Rogers completed the Matthew’s Bible, which was in large part a translation from Tyndale. In 1539, Thomas Cranmer published at the request of the archbishop of Canterbury the ‘Great Bible’. It was the first English Bible authorized for public use. Copies were sent to churches and chained to the pulpit. Every person was entitled to a reader so that the illiterate could hear the Word.

Then there was the first widely used and nearly exclusively used English Bible: the Geneva Bible. This was the Bible that Pilgrims carried to America and founded this nation upon. It contained 90% of Tyndale’s work and was the first Bible in English to add verse numbering to make referencing easier. For over a hundred years it was the standard Bible, even after the King James was released in 1611.

The Geneva Bible had a very harsh stance against the church of the day (inflammatory marginal notes etc.) and the Anglican church desired a less hostile version. As such, the Bishop’s Bible was introduced. But the populace never gained a liking for the Bishop’s since the Geneva was already well trusted and loved.

The Catholic church wanted a translation that was based on the Latin Vulgate. It was called the Douay Rheims version. Compared to the Geneva Bible however, there was glaring mistakes and inconsistencies and the Rheims version never gained widespread acceptance outside of the Catholic church.

Then in 1611 the King James version of the Bible was released. It was released as a Bible for everyone, rich and poor, old and young, commoners and royalty. It replaced the marginal notes calling the pope an anti-Christ and instead simply translated the Word of God into English for Protestants and Catholics alike. While it took many years to replace the Geneva Bible, it eventually overtook it and began it’s reign as the undisputed Word of God for almost a quarter of a century.

However, in 1885, the Revised Version of the Bible rolled off the printing press. It was a revision of the King James and became popular among British Christians though the KJV retained its top status.

In 1901, the RV came to America in the form of the American Standard Version or ASV. Nearly identical to the RV, the ASV changed the proper name of God from THE LORD to Jehovah. This was the beginning of the first translation war between KJV advocates and ASV advocates. Ultimately, the KJV prevailed again against the ASV, though the ASV is still used in some places.

Far more popular however was the Revised Standard Version. First published in 1952, this translation was the absolute first to give the King James a serious challenge to its pedestal of best translation. However, the KJV only people came out in force with this translation’s printing. Fudamentalists and Evangelicals alike agreed that the RSV seemed to tamper with Christ’s divinity by translating Isaiah 7:14’s ‘virgin’ into ‘young woman’. They concluded that this was an assault on the Virgin birth and therefore on the entire divinity of Jesus. Some opponents took their opposition to extremes. One pastor in the southern U.S. burned the RSV with a blowlamp AT THE PULPIT. Although it has been replaced with more conservative editions such as the ESV, the RSV is still widely held by many as a worthwhile Bible. (As for An Informed Mind, my stance is that the RSV, though no doubt done with excellent scholarship, should never have translated ‘virgin’ as ‘young woman’. I recommend newer and more accurate translations.)

Since then, beginning in 1971, there has been an influx of translations in English, starting with the New American Standard Bible (1971) and continuing with the English Standard Version (2002) and beyond with the yet to be named NIV 2011 (tentative title).

As you have seen, the English Bible has a long standing history and the King James is one version in a long line of them. But there are some that state that KJV is the only version that God has allowed and preserved. They claim that there are perversions of the text in the newer versions that corrupt God’s word, rob Jesus of His divinity, or present inaccuracies that make the Bible contradict itself.

But I will make the argument that newer translations actually present a clearer, more accurate and more faithful reading:

The first problem with the KJV and the one most often brought up by today’s Christian is the use of archaic nouns and verb usage. Such issues as adding the ‘eth’, ‘est’, or sometimes ‘th’ to the end of a verb is confusing and robs the reading of a flow that speaks to the reader. ‘Thee’, ‘thou’, ‘thine’ etc also are lost on today’s reader. Sentence structure is also dated as well. Let me give an example of archaic language and sentence structure in the KJV: “O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. Now for a recompense in the same, (I speak as unto my children,) be ye also enlarged.” II Corinthians 6:11-13 KJV. Try reading it in any other version and it will become much clearer.

Another claim of the KJV-onlyites is that Christ is relegated to less than God and robbed of His Sonhood. Gail Riplinger is one of the leading purveyors of this nonsense and thanks to her book New Age Bible Versions (hereafter referred to as NABV) she has distorted and maligned new Bible versions to the detriment of many Christians. KJV-onlyites use verses such as Daniel 3:25 to claim that newer versions are from the devil. The KJV reads: “He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” Note the phrase “Son of God.” The NASB (1972) reads: He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods. Note the phrase “son of the gods.” They claim that this negates Jesus in the passage and instead inserts pagan deism into the Bible. Actually, Nebuchadezzar WAS a pagan and therefore believed in ‘son of the gods’ rather than ‘the Son of God’. This is a foolish way of trying to destroy perfectly good translations. Another verse they use is I Timothy 3:16: “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh…” KJV whereas NASB (1995) states: “By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness; He who was revealed in the flesh…” The thing with that is, in the KJV, the authors gratuitously inserted God there where He was in the original text. Also, he is capitalized in the NASB thereby indicating the Bible is referring to deity, IE God.

Now I am going to switch gears here. I am going to go on the offensive, not attacking the KJV, but showing instead that all translations have something upon which they can be improved. The KJV, reflecting the popular phrasing of the time, translated the correct Hebrew phrasing ‘Let the king live’ into the British saying ‘God save the king’. While this does not change the meaning of the passage, it does not accurately represent the correct Hebrew. The NASB, NIV and NKJV (among others) all translate correctly. The same is done with the British idiom ‘gave up the ghost’ for the accurate reading of ‘die’ or ‘expire’.

“Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.” is Acts 5:30, speaking of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross according to the KJV. This gives ammo to the critics that claim that Jesus was slain and then hung on a cross. The NASB accurately and correctly renders it “whom you had put to death by hanging Him on the cross.” This is one of the worst offenses from the KJV.

But even with those criticisms, KJV-onlyites continue to defend their translation. Some seem to hold the view of: ‘it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me,’ as if Jesus actually spoke Elizabethean English instead of Aramaic and Greek. The KJV is only one translation in a long line of good English translations. However, there are more glaring errors in the KJV that are fixed in other versions:

The KJV changes ‘lamp’ and ‘lampstand’ to ‘candle’ and ‘candlestick’. Other versions change to the correct.

The King James version also speaks of ‘unicorns’ and ‘dragons’ when their really mean ‘wild ox’ or ‘serpent’. People of the time of the KJV believed such animals existed and as such, they were inserted into the text.

I have shown a few reasons why the new translations are just as good as the KJV and in some cases BETTER. Also, when I speak of KJV-onlyites, I don’t mean people that only use the KJV, I mean the people that claim that the KJV is God’s only written word in English and that all other translations are either A. corrupt or B. Satanic. I have given ample evidence to the contrary and I hope that these people’s eyes will be opened before they alienate any further weak Christians.

BUCKEYES WIN THE ROSE BOWL!!!

“Oh come and sing Ohio’s praise,
And songs to Alma Mater raise,
While our hearts resounding thrill,
With joy which death alone can still,
Summer’s heat or winter’s cold,
The seasons pass the years will roll,
Time and change will surely show,
How firm our friendship,
O-HI-O!!!”

Hallelujah the Buckeyes are back on top after three long bowl losses. The rumbling, stumbling team from the frozen farmlands of Ohio has beaten the flashy Ducks of Oregon.

Before I get into the whole gloating and celebrating thing, we should break down how it happened. The Bucks got off to a 10-0 lead as the offense came out swinging. Eventually it was tied up as Oregon scored 10 unanswered points. It seemed like the Ducks’ offense was staging one of their famous comebacks but the Bucks stopped them and then moved the score to 16-10. Oregon scored a touchdown then and took the lead for the first (and last) time of the night. The score stood at 17-16. However the Bucks would score a field goal to make it 19-17. They would score one more touchdown to seal the deal 26-17.

Might I remind my readers that An Informed Mind predicted that the final score would be 28-17. And on a side note: TERRELLE PRYOR HAD A VINCE YOUNG-ESQUE BREAKOUT NIGHT!!! The young man threw the ball for 266 yards and ran for another 72 and was responsible for over 340 yards. He was terrific, scrambling for several key first downs and throwing for even more. He was affable and humble in his post-game interviews. This QB grew up in front of us today and as Buckeye fans, we have A LOT to look forward to in 2010.