preach the gospel

I wish I wasn’t so shy in public to proclaim the good news. I am ashamed to admit that. So, I use my talents in other ways to spread the gospel. I leave tracts all over the place, am going to rearrange my website to preach the gospel and I have a blog on myspace that I preach the gospel on everyday. I get about 80 visitors there a day, so people are hearing it which makes me feel good, but I pray to God everyday he will send many more lost souls my way. Please pray for my Mom and Brother, guys, they are lost and I can’t get through to them. After all that Jesus did for me, I want to do all I can for Him. If I can save just one soul through my efforts, all the hard work will be worth it!

After living my life in accordance with God’s will and His plans, I want to boldly share my faith with those all around me.

Just this coming week I’ve got a bible study group meeting again and the topic is Evangelism, something our group leader is very passionate about. So she is wanting to go OUT and do something. I’m really stressing out about this as I find it very hard to do exactly that. Very hard… and I feel ashamed of that…

All I want to do is free up my time to study God’s Word more, Preach the Gospel, and Write informational products that will allow me to pay my bills. Simple but a worthy goal none the less!

www.receptionfanatic.com

Two Minute Radio Sermon: the Way to Heaven
We interrupt our regular programming for another moral advisory. I [for the time being] am Reverend Billy.
I live near the old St. Patrick’s cathedral on Prince Street, between Mulberry and Mott. This is the village common of my part of the city. The gravestones of the Irish, some of them dying so young in the 1800s, have the effect of taking the hurry out of a New Yorker. You look at the clouds, are surprised by an old memory or a new idea. As you walk along the famous sagging-inward red brick wall, the wonderful high trees seem to have been hurled into the sky by the lives that those dead lived.
One day, a four-story high rubberized billboard is unfurled down the side of an apartment building, right over the cemetery. On it is a gigantic sky-blue door with a website address. A phrase across it says, THIS WAY IN. It is an advertisement for an alternative heaven called Intel- this way IN. It towers over the dead and the living and addresses both with the same taunt.
Children, we must have a defense against this blue door. And our friends the dead- they give us that help. They seem to tell us, “You are in. You are way in your life now. Don’t open that blue door. It’s not heaven. No one has to sell heaven.”

Borrowed with implied permission from “What should I do if Reverend Billy is in my store?”, by Bill Talen.

With surveys showing a strong majority from conservative to liberal believing that religion is beneficial for society and for individuals, many Americans agree that their church-going nation is an exceptional, God blessed, “shining city on the hill” that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly skeptical world.

Fair enough, let’s see how true that is. Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies is an extensive study designed to test just that: the influence of religion on societal health.

The approximately 800 million mostly middle class adults and children act as a massive epidemiological experiment that allows hypotheses that faith in a creator or disbelief in evolution improves or degrades societal conditions to be tested on an international scale. The extent of this data makes it potentially superior to results based on much smaller sample sizes. Data is from the 1990s, most from the middle and latter half of the decade, or the early 2000s.

Excerpts from the results

Homicide

A few hundred years ago rates of homicide were astronomical in Christian Europe and the American colonies (Beeghley; R. Lane). In all secular developed democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows

Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developed democracies combined.

Life span

Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise (Figure 5), especially as a function of absolute belief.

STDs and abortion

[...] rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developed democracies

The U.S. also suffers from uniquely high adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates [...] The two main curable STDs have been nearly eliminated in strongly secular Scandinavia. Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator [...]

Conclusions

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion

Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion.

The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health.

The U.S. is therefore the least efficient western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health.

It was the Sunday after Carnival, where our StarTrek float had won its class, and the invites we handed out as we walked around, combined with a joint service with all 5 churches meant the 13th century building was packed!!!

Loads more scary but as I walked to the front I clasped my bible and prayed for peace. It appears I can preach so I’m looking into starting training as a local preacher.

Below are my notes for the sermon.

“A Biblical Prime Directive”

START, BREATHE, SMILE

Science Fiction is very old from Jules Verne’s “Voyage de la Terre à la Lune” and Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s travels” and is very new, witness puppets in church so why is it seen as geeky?

It’s that word “Science” and nothing else.
Think of it as just another way of telling the story.

But I want to talk about Rules, Laws and Directives

Firstly Rules in the Family –
Hands up those who, as parents, have rules.

Hands up those whose parents had rules

Wait.
As the father of a daughter I know all about rules. And how they changed.
It used to be
No
Then No because it will burn
Then No because it’s hot it will burn you, See
Then No don’t’ burn yourself.
Then don’t be silly
Now just a quizzical eyebrow is enough.

Finally she’s mature enough not to require any instruction.

The American Rap star, Will Smith, even sang about his rules, a pretty good set.

“Always tell the truth
Say your prayers
Hold doors, pull out chairs
Easy on the swears”

Next Directives in Science Fiction –
Presently millions of laws – so many no-one can even count them.
Then World Government – normally non-religious, always liberal, always peaceful with much reduced laws. For example, Foundation series by Isaac Asimov has a pan-galactic empire controlled by mutual respect and law.
Then Star Trek down to one law to control them the Prime Directive or “Starfleet’s General Order Number 1”

Finally Laws in the Bible
Old testament – There are 613 in the first five books of the Bible (i.e. the Torah or the Pentateuch) alone. Bruce Forsyth = Play your cards right.

Next distilled down to 10, They are found in Exodus 20:2-17 and were given to Moses.
We all know the Commandments or do we? Exercise !!!!

1. Do not have any other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself an idol,
3. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God,
4. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
5. Honour your father and your mother,
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
10. You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods.

Then Jesus, Our Messiah, came and the rules were tweaked again.
In fact, two were the greatest and can be found in Matthew 22: verses 37 to 39

1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.
2. Love your neighbour as yourself.

After Jesus we have “The Letters”.
St Paul (a lawyer / a Pharisee so lots of big words)
Philippians 3 13/14 gave us 1 directive, the “Prime Directive”.
“This one thing I always do” + “I trying to reach the goal and get the prize for which God called me through Christ.”
I would summate this as simply “Be like him”

This is, of course, very easy and extremely hard, simple and yet complex.
Just remember WWJD and then ponder on how hard this is.
Giving Love – Forgiving Pain – truly loving your enemies -

Therefore we need “Faith of the Heart” as God’s love in the form of Jesus means we are being treated as though we are mature; let us behave as if we are. And “Be like him” and let us share the peace.

The service has a Star Trek theme has its the one after the carnival. So something about directives is bubbling.

I have been asked to give the address during the 10am service on the Sunday after Carnival. I’ve just got to research, write and pray. What was St Paul before he become a preacher ?

The gospel of Christ has had tremendous impact in my life. it holds the hope which every living soul on this earth needs. I BELIEVE IN ITS POWER TO HELP SOMEONE IN ANY SORT OF NEED. THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD IS THE ENABLER FOR GOSPEL PREACHING. There is joy for the preacher as there is for the reciever. God enable us the more to preach. Amen