A Sad Story

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 Link to the Pals family blog:

https://joyofjapan.org/

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Jamison Pals was about twenty years old when he first started thinking about becoming a Christian missionary in Japan. In his blog he tells us he was inspired  by,

Christ’s command at the end of Matthew 28, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations..."

And also the words of the apostle Paul who expressed a desire 

“to preach the gospel where Christ [is] not known”
(Romans 15:20).

Jamison says that he initially tried to talk himself out of embarking on such a bold adventure, but eventually decided to press forward with the plan.


He married Kathryne in August, 2010 and she remembers a day,

In the Spring of 2011, I (Kathryne) was working as a pre-school teacher, and Jamison was finishing up his second year of seminary. One memorable day, he was at home studying, while I was at school working.  Out of nowhere, I got a text message that said something like, “What do you think about moving to Japan?”  I don’t think I even responded.  But, five years later, we’re now getting ready to move our family to the Land of the Rising Sun.
https://joyofjapan.org/2016/03/25/kathrynes-story/

During those five years Jamison and Kathryne prepared for their missionary journey to Japan and also started raising a family. Their first child, Ezra, was born in 2012. Violet was born in 2014 and baby Calvin arrived on May 21st, 2016.

On July 26th, 2016, Jamison provided readers of his blog with details about the children he loved so much.

Ezra. When Ezra grows up, he still wants to be a worker guy, and we think he will be a good one ...  He is learning to swim and can hold his breath underwater for 14 seconds.  Ezra understands well that we’re moving to Japan soon, though he wants to know if it’s a short or long drive from Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

Violet.  Her middle name is Joy, and that is fitting.  She is a happy soon-to-be two year old who loves babies and always wants to “go to Caribou (Coffee) tomorrow.”  She can normally be found talking on your cell phone with her Grandpa and Grandma or putting your chapstick on her babies.

Calvin.  Our little guy is quickly becoming not little–he’s already well over 14 pounds.  He loves to eat, smile and baby talk.  He’s probably our toughest baby yet, having survived the loving onslaught of his older brother and sister for over two months now.

Five days later on July 31st, 2016, the family piled into their mini-van and headed off to Littleton, Colorado, for a final session of training before leaving in late October to serve as missionaries with Christ Bible Institute in Nagoya, Japan.

Then, somewhere along Interstate 80, they were rear-ended by a speeding truck. Their car exploded in a ball of flames and the whole family died instantly.

Tears filled my eyes when I heard the news and now (a month later) I still get choked up whenever I think about what happened to them.

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Telegraph Herald reporter, Lyn C. Jerde wrote about the tragic accident under the headline: Believing in God's wonderful plan and she ended her story with the words, I’ll also continue believing and trusting that God is good.

I really have trouble coping with that attitude. God's wonderful plan? I just don't see it.


But it got worse: The Star Tribune printed an obituary for the family and in the comments section Sandra Barclay wrote: "God is so merciful. He took them all together."

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Link to the Pals family blog:

https://joyofjapan.org/ 

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Update (31/7/2017):

One year later and I'm still feeling sad whenever I think about the family.

Tick Tock - Ritchie Cordell

The delicious drivel that was rock'n'roll

 

Tick Tock - Ritchie Cordell (1962)

Original video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QywkhnqLvR4

Twenty years later Ritchie co-produced 

Joan Jett's "I Love Rock'n'Roll" (1982)

Original video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL5spALs-eA

Ritchie Cordell died at the age of 61 in 2004

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/ritchie-cordell-38410.html

Cunning Atheist Bastards

Matt Wilbourn donated $100 to the Murrow Indian Children's Home but it turns out the home is run by Christians who discovered that Matt is an atheist. They refused to accept his money. One of the charity workers told Matt that accepting his cash "would go against everything they believe in."

Dr Sharon Woolwine (President of the charity's board of trustees) said, “I don’t trust him. I think he’s using it to get more publicity for his organization.”

Matt thought that maybe the Christians would show an interest if he gave them more money so he started a Go Fund Me page with a target of $1,000.

A short time later a man named Tracy Hoos said Matt was just trying to "stir the pot," and said that he (Hoos) was also starting a Go Fund Me page for the Murrow Indian Children's Home. He encouraged Christians to donate to the cause.

So what do you think happened when large numbers of atheists - cunning little bastards that they are - began sending cash to the Tracy Hoos 'Go Fund Me' page? Tracy Hoos shut it down within the hour! How's that for 'Christian Love and Tolerance'?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/08/25/

It seems that the Christians are prepared to help children, only if they can get all the credit for themselves. If they have to share the credit with non-Christians, their attitude seems to be, "Fuck the kids, we're going home..."

Meanwhile Matt Wilbourn's Go Fund Me page collected $28,000 for the children but the Christians at the Murrow Indian Children's Home told him to stick it up his arse! They wouldn't accept a penny of it! (He donated the cash to another charity that also caters for children.)

It's A Funny Old World

From the Philippines:

When the Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Duterte, took office in June, he announced a sweeping crackdown on drug trafficking in the island nation.

In the seven weeks since, nearly 1,800 suspected drug dealers have been killed. 

Under Duterte, 712 drug suspects had been killed in police operations since July 1, while 1,067 killings were carried out by vigilante groups during the same time-frame, National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa, told a Philippines senate committee on Monday, according to the New York Times. 
http://www.businessi...016-8?r=US&IR=T 

From Wikipedia:

The Philippines is an active supporter of the United Nation's peacekeeping and humanitarian development programs.
https://en.wikipedia..._United_Nations

Religious Miracles - Unbelievable Evidence

The Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk was the postulator for Mother Teresa. It was his task to gather evidence for the miracles allegedly performed by Mother Teresa; miracles that had to be verified before she could be made a Catholic saint.

Miracle #1

Monica Besra had a stomach tumor. On September 5th, 1998, a nun took a medal that Mother Teresa had supposedly touched during her lifetime. The nun put the medal on Monica's stomach and some time later the tumor disappeared.

Miracle #2

A Brazilian named Marcilio Haddad Andrino developed hydrocephaly in December, 2008. His wife prayed to Mother Teresa for nine days and doctors decided to operate on December 9th. Before the operation could begin, however, Marcilio completely recovered.

But what is the proof that these were real miracles with no medical or scientific explanation? The Catholic preacher (Reverend Brian Kolodiejchuk) says:

You don’t ask the doctors whether they think it’s a miracle. You only ask them, “Can you explain this medically?”

How easy is that?


Original NY Times article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/

Details of Marcilio's miracle here:

https://zenit.org/articles/mother-teresa-s-miracle/

Prophecies For Jesus

According to one Christian website:

There are ... 300 prophecies (ALL proven correct and detailed) on the implications about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There are no prophetic failures.

http://evidence4christianity.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/6.html 

And you can find a list of 353 prophecies here:

http://www.accordingtothescriptures.org/prophecy/

You've got to be fairly gullible, however, to accept some of those texts as prophecies about Jesus. For example, number 4 on the list, says the ascension of Jesus was prophesied in Genesis 5:24. So what do you think that text tells us? Does it tell us that, 'some time in the future a chap named Jesus will ascend into heaven in front of eye witnesses'? Nope! It says:

"And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." (Genesis 5:24)

As it happens, most Christians will secretly accept the idea that Genesis 5:24 is a prophecy about Jesus, but they are cunning enough to realise that they won't gain many converts if they repeat the story to an outsider, so they prefer not to mention it.

In fact they prefer not to mention more than 300 of those 353 prophecies because they are so vague and so laughable. On most Christian websites you would be hard pushed to find a list of more than forty alleged prophecies about Jesus. Forty-four is a popular number these days:

http://christianity.about.com/od/biblefactsandlists/a/Prophecies-Jesus.htm

But take a look at #1 on the list:

Jesus would be born of a woman! That's supposed to be a prophecy? The Christians are really pushing shit uphill if they think that's a prophecy. A baby is born to a woman and the Christians start shouting, 'hallelujah, praise the lord, only a true prophet could have imagined such a thing'.

But there is a much smaller list of eight prophecies that has become popular with modern Christians because somebody worked out the odds against those prophecies being fulfilled. To many people, the list seems to be almost scientific, which probably explains why it has remained popular since the day it was invented more than 70 years ago:

http://www.goodnewsdispatch.org/math.html

At the Good News Dispatch website the reporter goes on to multiply all the probabilities together and concludes that the odds against one man fulfilling all eight prophecies is:

1 x 10²⁸ 

or 

1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

But if we go back to the original source ("Science Speaks" by Peter Stoner, 1944) we find one more adjustment has to be made before the final figure is revealed. Peter Stoner went on to calculate the number of men who have lived since the time when the prophecies were made and concluded that: 

...the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10¹⁷.
http://sciencespeaks.dstoner.net/Christ_of_Prophecy.html#c9

So the odds are 100,000,000,000,000,000 to one against Jesus fulfilling those prophecies by sheer chance and therefore, according to Peter Stoner:

...these prophecies were either given by inspiration of God or the prophets just wrote them as they thought they should be. In such a case the prophets had just one chance in 10¹⁷ of having them come true in any man, but they all came true in Christ. 

This means that the fulfillment of these eight prophecies alone proves that God inspired the writing of those prophecies to a definiteness which lacks only one chance in 10¹⁷ of being absolute.

Well that's the way Christians explain the situation. Here's what really happened:

The earliest information we have about Jesus comes from Paul's letters written about twenty or thirty years before any of the gospels were composed. In those letters of Paul we are told almost nothing about the earthly Jesus; nothing about his birthplace; his family; his travels; his teachings; his healing powers, or his miracles. Paul (and those who followed Paul) knew only that Jesus had lived some time in the past, died, gone to heaven, and would soon return to save all mankind.

But the years passed by and Jesus didn't return as promised. People began to realise that things were not as clear-cut as they had first thought they were, and so they began asking themselves questions about Jesus: Who was he? Where was he born? What did he do during his life on earth? When is he coming back and what will he do when he gets here?

And it was the gospel writers who attempted to answer those questions. But the gospel writers had no more information about Jesus than Paul did, so they went back to the Old Testament looking for clues.

Regarding the birthplace of Jesus for example: Matthew didn't start with the "fact" that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and then go back to the Old Testament looking for the prophecy that said he was born there. No, Matthew started with no idea where Jesus was born and then went back the Old Testament looking for any text that could be interpreted as if it might be a prediction about where Jesus was born. Micah 5:2 is the text he found. It wasn't really a prophecy about the birthplace of Jesus, but it was all Matthew could find so he took it. He knew it was a lie but he didn't care; he wrote it in his gospel anyway.

The same thing happened regarding the betrayal of Jesus: Forty years after Jesus had died nobody had ever heard about the messiah being betrayed by Judas. That story simply did not exist until Mark invented it while he was writing his gospel in 70AD.

Mark didn't start with the "fact" that Judas betrayed Jesus and then start searching for a prophecy about it in the Old Testament. Instead Mark trawled through the Old Testament looking for any obscure information that he could possibly transfer into his story about Jesus and eventually he came across Psalm 41.

That Psalm is nothing more than the prayer of a sick man who complains that people are cruel to him and they talk about him behind his back. He says "Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me." (Psalm 41:9)

Mark thought that sounded pretty dramatic and so he decided to regard it as a prophecy about Jesus. He decided that Jesus was betrayed by a friend and he further decided that the betrayer was Judas. (Mark 14:10-18) Nobody had ever heard that story before: Mark made it up about forty years after Jesus had died.

Ten years after Mark wrote the lie into his gospel, Matthew copied it into his own gospel and added some extra information as well. He said that as soon as Jesus was arrested, Judas hung himself. (Matthew 27:1-5). In other words there were only eleven apostles left alive when Jesus was crucified.

But surely the gospel writers wouldn't tell lies about Jesus and invent prophecies about him? Let's go back and ask Saint Paul himself...

Paul founded many of the earliest Christian churches in the Roman Empire and he was on speaking terms with the other apostles who actually walked with Jesus during his lifetime. Paul had a meeting in Jerusalem where "James, Peter, and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers." (Galatians 2:9)

But now listen to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:5, where he is talking about the occasions when Jesus appeared to Christians after the resurrection. Paul says, "he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve."

He appeared to the TWELVE.

So Judas wasn't dead. Not dead and not regarded as the betrayer of Jesus either. Judas was still accepted as one of the twelve apostles and he was there when Jesus appeared to all twelve apostles at the same time.

Yes, the gospel writers really were liars. Ask Saint Paul. He'll tell you.

The Luckiest Man In The Bible

In Numbers 4:5-15 the Israelites are given specific instructions regarding the transportation of the Ark of the Covenant (the box containing the Ten Commandments). Aaron and his sons had to cover the ark; first with a curtain, then fine leather, and finally, a blue cloth. Then the carrying poles were put into position and after that the Kohathites (the clan of Kohath) had the job of carrying the ark - but they were not allowed to touch the box itself; only the carrying poles. As the bible says, "they must not touch the holy things, or they will die."  (Numbers 4:5-15)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+4

It was about five hundred years later when David decided to move the ark to Jerusalem, so he loaded it onto an ox-cart driven by two men named Ahio and Uzzah. At one point during the journey the oxen stumbled and Uzzah reached out to the ark to hold it steady. That was big mistake - the Lord God Jehovah killed him on the spot! "The anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God." (2 Samuel 6:1-7)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Samuel%206

Christians, of course, are quite used to reading torture porn in their bible so they think nothing of the incident. It's only the non-Christians who raise their eyebrows and ask, "How on earth can a loving and forgiving god just up and kill a human being for nothing more than touching a wooden box?"

As it happens the Christians have never been able to fabricate a plausible explanation for that particular murder because the bible makes it emphatically clear that Uzzah was killed for touching the ark; nothing else!

But Christians are nothing if not cunning, and so they tackle the problem from a different angle when they try to convince others that their god is not as big a bastard as this particular murder suggests that he is. What they do is prevaricate.

They pretend they are trying to get the whole story into context by referring to other bible texts and so they flip-flop back and forth through bible, quoting one text after another, until the original subject (the murder of Uzzah by god himself) is almost completely forgotten.

A good example of this technique can be found in the notes for a sermon by Carey Scott. A sermon titled Why Did Uzzah Have To Die? and which contains references to the following bible texts:

Exodus 37:5
Numbers 4:6
Numbers 4:15
Romans 15:4
1 Corinthians 10:11
Ephesians 3:1-11
Proverbs 16:2
Proverbs 16:25
Proverbs 21:2
Proverbs 21:3
1 Samuel 15:22
Micah 6:6-8
Hosea 6:6
Jeremiah 7:21-26
Deuteronomy 6:5-9
Deuteronomy 6:17
Deuteronomy 6:24
John 4:23-24
Galatians 1:8
Colossians 3:17
1 Peter 4:11
1 Chronicles 13:5-11
1 Chronicles 15:1-2
1 Chronicles 15:12-15

Now that's what I call prevarication.

But here's the bit that makes you realise that Christians really are the most despicable people on the planet when it comes to morality. Preacher Carey Scott points out that David became angry when Uzzah was murdered and finally understood that the ark should never have been transported on an ox-cart in the first place. David finally understood that he had made a mistake and was extremely embarrassed by his failure to follow god's rules regarding the transportation of the ark of the covenant. As Carey Scott tells us:

"Uzzah was the lucky one. David had to carry this burden with him the rest of his life."

Uzzah was the lucky one !!!


You can see the sermon notes here:

http://www.simplebiblestudies.com/Suzzahdie.htm