Welcome to Transfigurations! This blog is intended to serve the orthodox Anglican community and the wider Christian community. We pray that all that is posted here will be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired word of God, speak the truth in love, edify, bless and transform this local body of Christ, and be an impetus for revival, repentance, prayer and intercession!
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Anglican Unscripted Episode 291
May 23, 2017
Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan, and Gavin bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglican.ink/donate
Manchester Suicide bomber identified; CNN: “Obama Was the Next Best Thing to Jesus” ...more
Manchester Suicide bomber identified
...CBS News confirmed Tuesday that the man who blew himself up the previous night at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, was 23-year-old Salman Abedi, who was known to British authorities prior to the attack.
In a generic statement posted online, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for Abedi's suicide bomb attack, which left 22 people dead, including children, at one of the entrances to the Manchester Arena...
Fox News reports that about 100 of the 400 children at Daisy Brook Elementary School in Fremont, Michigan attended the Bible classes which were optional and required parental approval, and which were held during lunch hour...
CNN: “Obama Was the Next Best Thing to Jesus”
Last month, CNN’s political commentator Angela Rye compared former President Barack Obama to Jesus Christ. Yes, the Jesus who died on the cross for our sins, performed miracles, and rose from the dead. “Barack Obama had to be the next best thing to Jesus and here we are, just two months in and some change, there is issue after issue.”
Now the backlash..
San Francisco’s Higher Minimum Wage Costing Hundreds of Jobs ...In the winter of 2016-17, 64 restaurants around the Bay Area have closed. And these weren’t your garden-variety restaurants that were parts of national chains; they closed all over the area, from Berkeley to Hayes Valley to Oakland to the Embarcadero to Inner Richmond to the Marina to the financial district.
But that possibility didn’t matter to the groups fighting for a wage hike, including “Fight for 15,” which stated, “We’re robbed on the job by our employers looking to cut corners. And it’s not like our employers are struggling — these are multi-billion dollar corporations.”
In April, the Harvard Business School, released a study that examined restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area between 2008 and 2016 titled, “Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit.” The study posited that a $1 increase in the minimum wage led to a roughly 14% increase in the likelihood of a median 3.5 star restaurant closing. The study concluded that over the next two years, San Francisco’s restaurant industry would shrink, meaning the workers would lose jobs...
Security forces now fear the terror network may hatch a twisted plot to contaminate Western food supplies with formulas that quickly dissolve in liquid....
The Feminization of Everything Fails Our Boys ...Our society is unlearning masculinity, it’s feminizing every stage of male life, and boys are paying a steep price. Consider the feminization of the home — occurring on two fronts simultaneously. First, and most important, the dissolution of the family brings increased fatherlessness, and for all of our culture’s single-mom worship (and moms’ sometimes — but not always — heroic efforts to fill the gap), boys need dads. It’s that simple. Men and women in general have different roles to play in their kids’ lives, and a boy sees in a good dad the fruits of properly channeled and properly lived masculinity. He has a model, often a hero, who lives in the closest possible proximity. But beyond fatherlessness is the increasing feminization of even the intact, two-parent household...
Is Your Child Being Manufactured Into a Sex Activist Pawn? ...Classroom manufacturing is the new and improved model of “grooming.” It expedites the process of brainwashing students into becoming sex activists, societal anarchists and “SJWs” (Social Justice Warriors). It compounds lunacy with delusion, and is now mandatory as approved school curriculum. This process deliberately creates confusion within children in the early stages of their development.
Children are currently being brainwashed into believing that there is no such thing as “male” or “female,” “boy” or “girl.” Such terms are now despised as being binary assigned societal gender constraints. Instead, children are informed that they can be any one of 63 genders depending on how they feel that day. One child in the Langley school district informed her parents that she was now a Caterpillar...
Gallup: Only 24% of Americans Believe Bible is Literal Word of God ...A new Gallup poll shows that only 24% of Americans believe the Bible is the "literal word" of God, which is a decline from the 1970s, but the survey also shows that the number of Americans who think the Bible is the "inspired word" of God, 47%, has stayed pretty steady over the last 40 years.
In addition, an overwhelming majority of Americans, 71%, believe the Bible is a holy document, inspired by God or containing God's own words...
Residents flee as suspected cases of Ebola outbreak in Congo grow ...Balenge was among residents from the northern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo who are hitting the road after the World Health Organization (WHO) said suspected cases of Ebola have killed three and sickened 20 people in the country’s north since late April. Officials are tracking another 125 people thought to have contracted the virus.
The number could be higher because officials have little access to the remote area.
"As of now we do not know the full extent of the outbreak,” said Peter Salama, executive director of the WHO's health emergencies program. "There are only (12 miles) of paved roads in this area and virtually no functioning telecommunications. So this is going to be an enormous challenge.”...
May 19, 2017 Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan, and Gavin bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglican.ink/don
"It's open faith; we're brothers," Ali Mohammad, an organizer of the mosque, tells North Carolina's News Observer.
The Muslims are stripping the church of its Christian roots, including removing any crosses and handing them over to pastors in the area.
When they opened on Saturday, Christian clergy, including Pastor Jim Melnyk of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, participated in the ceremony. Other pastors from Methodist and Baptist congregations were also present.
"I see it as an important statement of community, that we take each other's faiths seriously," Melnyk says. "I want to acknowledge how important it is to build bridges in the community when we're living in a time that is so anxiety ridden and there's so much mistrust going on in the world around us. It's important when we can find common ground and share our community."...
Albert Mohler: Performing Abortion is “God’s Work?” The Real Story of Christianity and Abortion ...The early church was decidedly, vocally, and courageously pro-life and opposed to abortion. One of the earliest documents of Christianity after the New Testament is the Didache, dated to around A.D. 80-120. The teaching describes two ways: the way of life and the way of death. The way of life demands that Christians “shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, … you shall not murder a child by abortion nor commit infanticide.” Both abortion and infanticide were common in the Roman Empire. Christians were forbidden to murder any child, born or unborn. The way of life honors the sanctity of life.
Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-215) made clear the sin of women who “in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs which expel the matter completely dead, abort at the same time their human feelings.” Tertullian (A.D. 160-240) taught even more comprehensively: “For us, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is just a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter when you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed.” These two are just examples of a pro-life position rejecting abortion that included — at the very least — Athenagoras, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, Ambrose, Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.
As ethicist Ronald Sider commented, “Eight different authors in eleven different writings mention abortion. In every case, the writing unequivocally rejects abortion.” The most comprehensive survey of early Christianity on the question of abortion comes from Michael J. Gorman in Abortion and the Early Church. As Gorman states, “all Christian writers opposed abortion.” Every mention of abortion in the early church rejects it, forcefully...
I get it. Culture is changing rapidly and radically. The methods we have used successfully for decades have become ineffective, even counter-productive. Heaven? Spiritual laws? Bible verses? These no longer spark spiritual interest. Evangelism training isn’t what it used to be, but in many cases is uncertain of what it should be.
This frustration is actually good news. Good because it is causing us to reimagine how we think about evangelism (see my earlier guest post on The Exchange) and, whether we like it or not, forcing us to redesign training tools and equipping experiences... Excellent ideas...
Franklin Graham: Christians under attack, should engage in politics ...
In reaction to a decline in church attendance and what he described as a national move toward secularism, Graham said Christians who think they can continue to sit quietly in the pew will see the practice of their faith placed in jeopardy.
Graham highlighted the 2013 incident involving the Oregon bakery Sweet Cakes by Melissa as an example of a couple punished for their faith.
The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries ordered owners Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer $135,000 in damages after the pair refused to serve the soon-to-be-wed same-sex couple on the grounds of religious belief. The business eventually closed in 2016.
"This has been happening across the country," he said. "It’s increasing. We are going to be attacked. Let’s pray and get Christians involved in politics."...
Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where and How to See It (Safely) On Aug. 21, 2017, people across the United States will see the sun disappear behind the moon, turning daylight into twilight, causing the temperature drop rapidly and revealing massive streamers of light streaking through the sky around the silhouette of the moon. On that day, America will fall under the path of a total solar eclipse...
May 12, 2017 Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan, and Gavin bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglican.ink/donate
A missionary bishop has been consecrated for evangelical Anglicans seeking a reformation for the reformed catholic faith in England. Participants in the 2 May 2017 consecration of the Rev. Jonathan Pryke at Jesmond Parish Church in the Diocese of Newcastle by bishops of the Church of England in South Africa (CESA) hope their ceremony will see a renewal and rebirth of the faith in England.
However, critics within the conservative movement warn this may be the start of the fracturing of the traditionalist coalition in the Church of England, with each faction opposed to the recent innovations of doctrine and discipline forging their own way forward...
Heather Cook denied parole for failure to be contrite
Former Episcopal Bishop Heather Cook's plea for leniency fell on deaf ears Tuesday morning (May 9) when the Maryland Parole Commission turned thumbs down on her request for early release from the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women.
Cook, who is serving seven years behind bars for the December 27, 2014, drunken hit and run accident which claimed the life of 41-year-old Thomas Palermo, had hoped to be able to serve the rest of her imposed sentence at home while on supervised parole. Maryland automatically provides the opportunity for non-violent inmates to appear for a one-time-only early release parole hearing after serving one quarter of their original sentence. Maryland does not list vehicular manslaughter as a violent crime.
The Outraged Are Always Right; Lesbian Methodist bishop defiant...more
The Outraged Are Always Right
...Polarization has become weaponized. Nobody wants to hear from people they disagree with. If I don’t like your Facebook posts, I’ll unfriend you. If I don’t like your column, I’ll boycott the paper until they fire you. I want to hear from good people who think and talk and live like me. That’s polarization. And polarization meets weaponization because many in our culture are willing to use whatever they have, whatever they can leverage, to make this polarization work for them–whether money, friends, jobs, hobbies, even sports. There are lots and lots of folks willing to blow up their lives to make sure there’s no presence of the people and ideas they hate...
Karen Oliveto said she is not the first gay bishop and will not be the last
The church's judicial council hearing took place in a hotel in Newark, New Jersey.
A decision will be issued in a few days on whether the Church's Western Jurisdiction had the right to elect her a bishop...
The Most Serious and Severe Departure from the Faith in Our Day ...Kathryn Tanner is not an evangelical. She is Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School. Many who claim to be evangelical Christians are embracing a view similar to hers. In Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity, Tanner declares that “the sacrifice on the cross has nothing essentially to do with a blood sacrifice for the expiation of sin; Jesus’s death is the simple consequence of the life he led on behalf of others – his soteriological mission – in a sinful world” (29-30). Elsewhere she argues that “God’s forgiveness is a statement of fiat rather than a consequence of Christ’s passion.”
In other words, Jesus didn’t have to die in your place, suffering the judgment you deserved by shedding his blood on a Roman cross, in order that you might be forgiven. No, says Tanner, God forgave you by “fiat,” that is, by a simple, sovereign declaration that you are forgiven. “Christ’s passion” was not the necessary precondition for forgiveness. His blood need not have been shed at all for you and me to be “freed from our sins.”
If Jesus did not in fact voluntarily, lovingly, and freely take upon himself the guilt and condemnation that our sin deserved, thereby setting us free from the well-deserved consequences of our moral and spiritual rebellion against God, we have no hope. More than that, we have no “good news” (no “gospel”) to proclaim to a lost and dying world. To lose this is to lose Christianity. This denial of the penal substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ is, in my opinion, the most serious and severe departure from the faith in our day...
Bravo to the Truth: What’s Wrong with Transgender Ideology ...When people feel that their biological sex doesn’t match their internal sense of gender, they are typically diagnosed with gender dysphoria. This is defined as “discomfort or distress that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth.” In other words, the medical diagnostician simply listens to and affirms the patient’s own verbal self-identification and self-diagnosis.
No objective tests can prove that the transgender condition exists. No physical examination, blood test, bone marrow test, chromosome test, or brain test will show that a person has gender dysphoria. It is a condition revealed solely by the patient’s feelings. Yet the recommended treatment is extreme—cross-gender hormones and sex-reassigning surgery.
Don’t be duped when trans activists conflate the unrelated condition of intersexuality with transgenderism to gain sympathy for a trans agenda. People with intersex conditions are not the same as self-identified transgender people. Being intersex is verifiable in the physical body; being transgender is not. People who identify as transgender usually have typical male or female anatomies...
May 2, 2017 Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan, and Gavin bring you news and prospective from around the globe. Please Donate - http://anglican.ink/donate
Anglican Unscripted is the only video newscast in the Anglican Church. Each Episode Kevin, George, Allan, and Gavin bring you news and prospective from around the globe.
Please Donate- http://anglican.ink/donate
GAFCON UK would like to thank the GAFCON Primates for their courageous spiritual leadership, consisting of clear re-statement of the essentials of the faith, and practical action to take forward the mission of global Anglicanism in the 21st century.
We appreciate the way in which the Communique both looks back – to the witness of those who brought about the Reformation of the Church in the 16th century; and looks forward – to the exciting vision of multicultural and united Anglicanism which will be celebrated at the third GAFCON conference in Jerusalem, 2018.
The statement also reminds us of the serious suffering experienced in many parts of the world, where Anglicans minister sacrificially with only a fraction of the necessary resources, yet they remain faithful, trusting in God to provide. As affluent Westerners we repent of our complacency and lack of compassion, and commit ourselves to partnering more intentionally to support the church where it serves in contexts of desperate need.
The Primates go on to talk about the challenges in the Global North, “the increasing influence of materialism, secularism, and the loss of moral foundations” which are “spiritually dangerous”. We recognize the need to repent of our participation in a weak version of the Christian faith which has too often failed to point out these dangers or even made accommodation with them.
This accommodation and ‘cultural captivity’ is seen in the failure by many Anglican leaders in the UK to hold to the key principles of Holy Scripture as speaking clearly to God’s will for human flourishing, and of requiring unequivocal obedience whatever the cost. It is shown, for example, in unwillingness to be clear about the uniqueness of Jesus and the authority of the Bible, and rejection of clear biblical teaching God’s gift of sex and marriage, and of celibate singleness.
This has contributed to the increasing concern that many faithful clergy and lay people in the Church of England, the Episcopal Church of Scotland and the Church in Wales feel about the revisionist trajectory of these churches. As the Communique points out clearly, some Anglicans are already outside of these structures and need Episcopal oversight; others may do so soon.
So we warmly welcome the decision of the Primates to consecrate a missionary Bishop who will fulfil this function. We appreciate the way GAFCON has recognized that this intervention is giving global support to one of a number of initiatives being taken by biblically orthodox Anglicans in Britain; others include the work being done to strengthen the Free Church of England. Meanwhile the Primates have generously expressed respect for and continued warm fellowship with those who for the moment are choosing to remain within the official structures and contend for orthodox biblical faith there, while warning that inaction in the face of revisionist pressure is not a faithful option.
We understand that more will be revealed about the plans for the consecration in due course. We commit ourselves to prayer about this and invite all who hold to the historic and trustworthy teaching of our faith to join us.
GAFCON's 'missionary bishop'–the spark to blow up Anglicanism? ...Ultimately, our view of this development is likely to be shaped by our foundational beliefs about issues such as the authority of the Bible, the nature of church unity, the place of church tradition in shaping belief – and, of course, the current presenting issue flowing out of all these, namely homosexual practice. In that sense, the GAFCON announcement is not unexpected, and seems an inevitable development arising from the conflicting trajectories of mutually incompatible theologies. These things have already followed such a path in North America... Christian Today
The Arrogance of Blue America; Bill Nye Has Had Enough Of Your ‘Extra Kids’...more
The health care industry is bound to collapse soon, experts say ...As industry spending and debt servicing rage out of control, health care is ranked as the No. 1 US “systemic recession risk” in a new report. The sums at stake are staggering: Spending in the sector accounted for $3.3 trillion in 2015, and is 18 percent of the US economy today. The industry generates 16 percent of private sector jobs nationwide, up from 10 percent in 1990...
Bill Nye Has Had Enough Of Your ‘Extra Kids’ ...The fight against climate change, Nye’s most passionate cause, is brought up by Rieder, who notes that children in developed countries use 160 times more resources than children in the developing world. This is where the creepy totalitarianism of the environmental movement starts to show itself. Nye asks, bluntly, “Should we have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?”...
Such information gathered through a system dubbed sentiment analysis could be used by advertisers to target young Facebook users when they are potentially more vulnerable...
The Arrogance of Blue America ...If you want to see worst impacts of blue policies, go to those red regions—like upstate New York—controlled by the blue bourgeoise. Backwaters like these tend to be treated at best as a recreational colony that otherwise can depopulate, deindustrialize, and in general fall apart...
CNN is ready to offend every non-Muslim religion on earth ...Nearly every episode of “The Believer” that aired has made some religion that isn’t Islam look freaky, unpleasant and threatening. Instead of breaking through the walls, it has surveyed different non-Islamic religions only to sneer at them as strange and weird.
Instead of Islamophobia, it offers Non-Islam-ophobia...
“The Believer” kicked off with an episode featuring a sect of cannibals whom the show associated with Hinduism. Its last episode spread fear over the threat posed by Orthodox Jews. CNN’s “Believer” clips offer Reza Aslan explaining why he’s a Muslim sandwiched between a doomsday cult leader who calls himself “Jezus”, voodoo, scientology and a Mexican death cult.
Bill O’Reilly, Fox News, and the pornification of conservative media ...Meanwhile, Fox has long earned itself a reputation for flaunting, beyond the bounds of decency, the physical features of its female staff. The network arguably pioneered - at the very least, enthusiastically embraced - the sleeveless cocktail dress uniform that has become the norm for female TV anchors. As Diane Dimond, a former female reporter at Fox, alleged: “There is a good ol’ boys’ network thing there at Fox … It’s a boys’ shop. You do not complain. You’ve got to wear your skirts short and your heels high, and you’ve got to put lots of makeup on if you’re a woman.”...
