Beautiful Lord

Enjoy this video and song called Beautiful Lord:))

A Triumph For Christianity in Qatar

With Islam on the march and warpath it may seem hopeless sometimes for some, but God is still in control in this world. Nothing is impossible with Him. The truth will stand even in darkness.

In the last few weeks in e-mails and during a chat with my Turkish boyfriend, he has expressed a desire to become a Christian. He says he wants us to be the same, and since as he says he dislikes Muslims because they think only about war and killing, he says he prays to Jesus now. His grandfather came from Greece and his grandmother from Bulgaria. He also told me recently that one of his grandfather's grandparents were Christians but was forced to become a Muslim by the Ottomans. I feel guilty because I have not be dilligent in sharing my faith, even with him. Still despite my laxity, he seems to be discovering Christ on his own. On a personal level Christianity may be triumphing.

Today I found this article about the first church being established in the Arab Gulf nation of Qatar. Truly God is in control and the church and the truth will not be defeated by darkness:

Christians in Qatar will celebrate Easter this year in a church for the first time in 14 centuries.

Next month, the St. Mary’s Catholic Church will be among the first of a series of churches to open its doors in the Qatar capital of Doha. Anglican, Greek Orthodox, and Coptic churches are expected to soon follow.

"A few years ago, opening a church in Qatar was sort of impossible, but Qatar has changed since the coming of the new emir,” Italian ambassador Igantio Di Pashi recently told a local Qatari newspaper, noting the significance of the country’s first church since the 7th century. (Continue)

Pakistani Christian Keeps On Preaching

I was and once again a big fan of a Christian radio station at Toccoa Falls College which is north of my town/city of Athens. In the last few weeks I have returned to the station to listen some evenings and also when I am dressing for work. What the station presents is a more intelligent and global way of telling about the Gospel instead of the usual American way of mixing politics with Christianity, or presenting God like a genie in the sky who will grant us all our worldly wishes for money and material things. What is occurring in the church widewide is often discussed. Last week a pastor from church in Bulgaria was interviewed. The week before I heard a news report about a street preacher in Pakistan.

The report said that there are few majority Christian neighborhoods in Pakistan. But in this case, where this Pakistani Christian was preaching on the street was one of only a few Christian communities in the country. While was he proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, two Muslim men came up to him and demanded that he stop preaching. He ignored them and continued doing what he was doing. The two men left, but showed up again and brutally attacked him. He was sent to the hospital, where he recovered. Once he was discharged, he went back to preaching in that neighborhood. At the time of the report it was said that the police had not yet located the preacher's attackers. In Pakistan it is said that when Christians are attacked or killed, the police tend to drag their feet in investigating such crimes.

Our Christian brothers and sisters in Islamic and non-Islamic nations like China and North Korea who live daily under the gun deserve so much praise and admiration for being determined to not back down when faced by so much hate, deception, and evil. They truly have the spirit of the early church, the spirit that God intended the church to have.

A New Discovery: GodTube

I was skeptical. I am still.

This week I glimpsed the title of an article on The Christian Post which had the words "GodTube" in it. Since I currently have The Christian Post as my homepage, I saw the article's title several times this week on my way going to other sites. One evening I finally stopped long enough to click on the title, and by doing so learned that GodTube which came into existence last year is the Christian answer to YouTube.

I admit that I love YouTube because it offers much to me who loves history, culture, art, music, and other cute curiosities such as videos of babies' reactions to eating their first lemon. Like I have said in an earlier post, I define myself as a "primitive" Christian, one who believes that the church in America needs to go back to its' roots and follow Christ's teaching of love, sacrifice, and pacifism. Elements in American Christianity need to see God as One who not only loves but Who also reserves the sole right to judge and to punish.

Too much of American Christianity is ruled by greed and ignorance of God and His Word The Bible. There are some preachers who meddle and dabble too much in politics. This has particularly been the case with the Bush administration where preachers like John Hagee has espoused pre-emptive strikes against Iran even though the country is mired in two wars. Many preachers, especially many African-American preachers have poor theological training and just preach God's Word according to how black preachers have traditionally gotten into their pulpits and spoken or shouted for generations. Others are slick con men and women. The problems in the end are not an issue of color because misinformation and deception are flowing from preachers of varying colors and of both genders. Church has become a business in America.

So often I do not find in American Christianity what I know The Bible and God is about. We do not have the humbleness or knowledge of the early church. It is very disturbing to see so much mediocrity and ignorance.

So what about GodTube? I cannot say very much right now. You watch and decide. The little that I have watched proves that Chris Wyatt, the CEO of GodTube and its' creator has offered nothing really creatively unique. Wyatt has admitted that he wanted to create a family friendly or sanitized version of YouTube. The idea in portions of the Christian community in America is that in order to draw more people to Christianity, the church should get ideas from popular culture and mold what it gets into a Christian copy. Often what popular culture itself offers is low in standard, so what the church ends up with is nothing to really inspire or bring a kind of passionate truth to the world.

The church in America is not growing. For all the effort and good intensions of those who create sites and items like GodTube or MyChurch.org, the Christian answer to MySpace.com, the end results are not profound and artistic. Where are the spices to jazz up the bland fare we get? Where are the Christian scholars, especially in the Protestant evangelical church here?

It may be too early to come to final negative critique of GodTube since it is young and hopefully evolving. For those who feel like me, lets hope it evolves into something as beautiful and innovative as pre-Renaissance and Renaissance Christian art. I own some Greek icons which I purchased when I visited the Greek island of Rhodes in 2003, so lets hope they can arrive at the level of primitive beauty and creativity of an icon at least.

Where are the artists and Christian intellectuals in America? We truly need them.

Here is GodTube's answer to Desperate Housewives called Desperate Housewives of The Bible. I did find it quite funny, but in the end still rather bland fare.

I Haven't Abandoned This Blog

I would say, it has been a combination of laziness and unease on my part why I have not been writing here regularly. A Christian blog may be one of the most difficult to have because from the beginning for some such a blog is controversial. Doing one was a little contentious even for me because I did not know how well I could pull such a blog off. I did not want a Christian blog that was business as usual the way such blogs can be. I wanted to do something unique and with broad Christian and religious subject matter, but I also wanted what I wrote to be inspiring and accurate. Doctrine is a dirty word for some, but correct Christian doctrine is essential. I know I can have a Christian blog and do it well. There is actually a lot to be written about and shared in my walk as a Christian, and there is also much in the news concerning Christians. There are myriad lessons to be learned and people to be enlightened.

I have another blog which is secular in nature. It has a theme, but I write about a broad range of subjects there, and my secular blog is easier to write without me having the nagging thought, "I hope I don't make mistakes here." In the weeks to come, I hope I can get my enthusiasm up and wrote more about what God is putting on my heart especially about the church in America which is losing more and more members and which has in some cases strayed into apostasy with teachings such as the Gospel of Prosperity which is not the Gospel according to Jesus. I hope to get this blog up and rolling again consistently:)

Searching Islam

I am an avid reader. There have been few times when I have started a book and in boredom or perplexity put it aside. I did not do it when I first read The Bible even though the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy can sometimes be a bit tortuous being two books of laws, procedures, and a census penned by Moses. I did place The Quran aside, however, after I had gotten a quarter of the way through it. It was a mistake to do so since I began it last year, and if I had been more tenacious and focused in my reading I would have completed it by now. But just reading the first 25% of The Quran revealed something to me. The book is disjointed and disorganized. There is no logic in its' set up mainly because the book was compiled quickly and without thought by Prophet Muhammad followers after his death. His writings had been just strewn around on camel skins or anything he had happened to come across as writing material.

The Bible is a totally different case of centuries of careful work by scribes and scholars. Even though the 66 books of The Bible were written over a 1500 year period, the entire narrative is organized and flows to a logical conclusion. One theme runs throughout The Bible. God is waiting for His people to turn to Him as their protector and provider and He promises that He will ultimately send His Son to save humankind from itself. Throughout The Bible God silently begs, "Just love Me and depend on me and I will rain down blessings and protection." From the beginnng when Adam and Eve were tricked into sin, God gave the promise of salvation to ALL of humankind. Even today on the final day of 2007, He is still pleading and is holding a promise to a world that is lost and dying. I believe there is going to a castastrophic war between Christianity and Islam in the very near future. All the indiciations are there. Even if a Democrat is elected president of the United States next year, the dangers are still here and eventually horrible things are going to happen.

What is so frighting about Islam is that few, even Muslims, do not know where their religion stands. Some are even smooth westerized outright liars with a hidden agenda, but I believe the majority of Muslims are as baffled by the bloodshed as non Muslims are. Some have the moral stamina to not constantly make up conspiracy theories like comments I saw on a blog the other day saying after the murder of Benazir Bhutto that "I also do not believe Al-Qaeda to be responsible, in fact I do not even think Al-Qaeda even exists." The response by the blog writer was this, " As for Al-Qeada, it's the code word for a covert operation of cover up proportions, utilizing some 'bad' Muslims to give Islam a bad name, and further the 'divide and conquer' philosophy of some known and unknown evil forces who are constantly at war with the good and plenty." If this is the mindset of some "GOOD Muslims or those who don't practice any religion at all anymore" I think there is real cause for concern.

As a Christian I am in a sticky situation facing a Muslim or former Muslim who is lost and searching. All I can do is try to live up to the standards which Jesus Christ set and lived by when He was here on earth. His life was exemplary and unblemished. He died a horrifying and painful death, but He rose and again and lives on. The Bible says He will come again to this earth to reign, and all the signs are falling into place to show that perhaps the time is drawing near when He will appear. Jesus said these words to His followers when they asked about the signs of His return. As you read here, notice that not once does Jesus tell His followers to fight back. He only wants them to face the truth of what is going to happen, and not hide their head in the sand or place a nebula of falsehoods over reality.

Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
"Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. (Matthew 24:4-14)

The best people to get Muslims to see the light are apostates from the faith. In my new Links on Islam I have included three sites by apostates who warn the world and other Muslims of the true meaning of their faith which they think can be summed up as a cult of bondage and death. They are Faith Freedom International, Apostates of Islam, and Islam Watch. They can be clicked here or on the links.

Resolutions and holiday slogans can get a little trivial and over used at times, but I wish for a peaceful New Year and that the hearts of many will see a need for peace change on a personal before it moves to a global level.

In The Weeks To Come

Before listening to Wafa Sultan's video above, read what I have written below. Mrs. Sultan was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2006.

In the weeks to come, whenever I write here I have decided to discuss what I know and what I am learning about Islam. I have lived in the country of Turkey which is about 98% Muslim, a nation which for close to 2000 years had been inhabited by first Christian Armenians and Assyrians and later Byzantine Greeks. Like most places in that part of world, the Islamic sword came and descended on the necks and lives of the people and they converted or were driven out or killed.

Writing about what I know and is learning is going to be both a catharsis and highly painful because it is rarely a week that passes when I did not hear from someone in Turkey who is either a friend or former student. The man I will probably never see again and whom I love said recently to me that "I am your husband and want you to come back here," is a nominal Muslim Turk. I may never return to Turkey because the climate there is tense, there is no future there just as some of my students has expressed to me. Christian I should never have forgotten these Scriptures from II Corinthians 6:14-17:

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.

Do how think this scripture means to persecute or kill those who are not Christians. I believe when it seems that unbelievers are trying to get you to come over to their way and there is not genuine respect, it is our duty to wave good-bye to them. Some people cannot accept you as you are, but insist on dragging you over to their bad ways. This happens unless you can find a special person who is not a Christian and who has an open mind. I have over the years, but it has not been often. I have Muslim friends, gay friends, and atheist friends. It has worked between us because I nor they try to tell each other what to do or how to live. I was even told by a person I met online that I was creating the "wrong image" by having a Christian blog. I am? Well, I am not into the image business. I am a Christian, and a Romantic as my other blog shows. I write to not grab or seek attention, I do it because writing is like breathing and eating to me. If there is not out right hostility to what one stands for, there is always subtlety when Christians deal with some unbelievers.

Christians are to follow the example of our Lord who loved people, was a giver, but who told a lot of hard truths. Large amounts of what Jesus expressed was not meek and mild in context and nature. Jesus warned His followers that some things He would have to tell them would be painfully hard to stomach. As Christians we cannot straddle the fence; and it is not showing genuine love to not tell the full truth in order to not upset people in the areas where they like to be comforted. We cannot be over here one day and back over in another place the next day. We have to take a stand, whether it costs us friends, family, or our lives.

Over the past few months I have observed myriad behaviors from a lot of people who are Muslims or are what I call "kinda sorta Muslims." Islam looks less and less like a religion of peace when we look at what is happening sometimes daily, but certainly weekly. In less than a month there has been the issue of the teddy bear named Muhammad, week before last Christians in Egypt were attacked, then just Thursday opposition leader and former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Still, in the era of political correctness (I once worshipped at this false altar) few want to be seen as bigots. Christians have to ask themselves were the prophets of the Old Testament bigots when they confronted their kings who had gone bad and joined the pagan way? No! They were telling the truth and giving tough love.

I am a pacifist, so imagine how I felt when my country entered two wars. I was sceptical (still is, but not on the same issues) because I saw these wars as once again people of color getting beaten down by arrogant white men. Still as a former Bible college attendee (I quit because the work was too easy) and someone who has read about and observed Islam since 1979 during the Iranian hostage crisis, I knew some things that the average American did not, and I want to and intend to learn more. Knowledge is power and light.

In the last 7 years I have been turned off by the behavior of some Christian evangelicals and a lot of Republicans. I know now that when they did get it right, they were right especially when they said that America has to win these wars now that we are in them. The Christian world was complacent and divided when the Islamic threat began after the 8th century. Latin Christians saw Eastern Christians as strange, effete, heretics. Eastern Christians saw the Latins as uncultured, nasty, stinking, greedy, hypocritical brutes. What I have long known and refused to admit to myself is that the Quran teaches that a Muslim is not required to tell someone who is not a Muslim the truth. There are Muslims who will however, but I have known some whose stories, word, and position will change like the wind. Dealing with them makes one think you have memory loss or is losing your mind, 'But you said?' I would think. Also there are some who say that they practice no religion, but who are like the devout 9/11 hijackers who went to a strip club the night before they took and flew those planes. I have met Muslims who eat pork. It seems to be a chameleon religion which changes like the wind.

I want to emphasize here again, I am not writing this to inspire hate or fear. My situation has been very unique because each time I went to work in Turkey, there were plenty of people who were afraid for me and saw all Muslims as blood thirsty killers, but I went anyway to teach English only, never to convert because that was not my mission. To have experienced what I have has been a great gift because God has put me in a position to educate people and share what I know. Americans are new kids on the block in dealing with this religion. Europe is not, having for centuries dealt with the Ottoman Turks who were, until the advent of the Turkish republic, the defenders of the Islamic faith. When I first visited Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, we were shown a room where one of the prophet Muhammad's swords were kept on display.

I feel such sadness for my friends who are Muslims and may not know the truth or cannot reveal it about their religion. I doubt that many have ever read the Quran like I have read all of the Bible. I have read a great deal of the Quran, and over the next year I hope to find time to continue examining it. Most Muslims have never read the Hadith which are stories by followers of the prophet Muhammad concerning him. Many Muslims are sweet, decent people who would give you the shirt off their back, but do not know. They just do not know. But there is a monsterous and a smooth deceptive element in Islam too. The smooth deceptive ones are more dangerous than the openly violent ones, because it becomes impossible to understand where they really stand.

I want to say that the first thing is to compare and contrast the lives of Jesus and Muhammad. There is very much contrast, but very little to compare. Jesus was the Prince of Peace and was always on the move during his ministry to aide the sick, poor, and the physically and spiritually dying. He never lifted a sword. He is not a dead prophet, but continues to live. To be a Christian you must believe He lives, and not try and use scientific and intellectual arguments to figure out if He does. Do so, and you set yourself up for failure. Also if Islam is a peaceful religion, why is it that every week there is some outrage? The inhabitants of Islamic countries know not to make too many waves, they know prison, the bullet, or the bomb quickly awaits them if they speak out. It is so sad and tragic.

I am not encouraging hate and fear here, just knowledge and vigilance. Americans are far from perfect and like so many including myself, the government and others wanted to trust some of these people. But a bad element has long terrorized Islamic nations. There are probably millions of Muslims who want to speak out and breathe, but they are in a a position like those Germans under the thumb of the Nazis or whites who lived in the US south during segregation. They know like these people what happens to traitors.

We have short memories in this age, but just recall Salman Rushdie. His plight should be a clue to what is lurking for those who break ranks in Islam.

The Babylonian and Assyrian Christians

Anyone who has gone to church, read The Bible, or watched some TV ministers who preach the Bible and not pseudopsychology, have heard about the Babylonians especially and also of the Assyrians.

The ancient Babylonian and Assyrian empires were two superpowers of the Near East in the areas that are today parts of Turkey and Iraq. The Babylonians were situated mainly in what is now Iraq, while the Assyrian Empire was located in both areas. The Assyrians conquered the Israelite kingdom of Samaria in 721 BC. Nearly a century later the Assyrians were conquered by the Babylonians. The Babylonians went on to destroy what was left of the Israelite kingdom founded by David and Solomon. The kingdom of Judah was destroyed in 587 BC by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar who had the entire population along with its' rulers deported and enslaved in Babylon.

The Babylonian and Assyrian empires were the two most feared empires of their day. Both were noted for their brutality. Both kingdoms were also notorious for their paganism. The prophet Jonah had such distaste for the Assyrians that when God sent him in a last ditched effort to get them to relinquish their idolatry and other gross practices, he flat refused to at first. The Assyrians of the time repented from their evil ways which held off their destruction for awhile from the Babylonians.

King Nebuchadnezzar was not only a great military leader of the Babylonians, he also had the vision of an architect. He was the builder of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. He intensely desired that the city of Babylon be made into the greatest city in the world. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about the glory that was Babylon with its canals, waterways, magnificent buildings, and parks. The late President of Iraq Saddam Hussein admired the Babylonians so much that he had Babylon reconstructed and rebuilt the city's ruins.

Hundreds of years later, the Babylonians and Assyrians were some of first gentiles in the region to convert to Christianity. Today the Chaldean (or Babylonian), Assyrian, and Syriac Christians of Iraq are the descendants of the people who populated those ancient empires that are written about in the Old Testament. I also want to mention here that the Assyrians and the Syriacs are not related to the Syrian people. Neither group are Arabs. As I wrote about in my post on Friday, the communities of these Christians in Iraq are in danger of going extinct. The war has changed their situation for the worse. Riverbend who writes the blog Baghdad Burning and is exile with her family in Syria mentions briefly in this post a Christian family that lives in their apartment building. Many Christians have fled Iraq in the last few years.

Over time the ways and fortunes of people can change. In the centuries when the Babylonians and Assyrians did not or refused to know the one true God, who but God would have known that generations later, their children would be followers of Christ.

Today I found the video above which gives a brief history of the people and the culture of both groups.

The Christians of Iraq

The above video is about the Christians of Iraq. Since the war in Iraq, which has in essense been ongoing since 1991 through sanctions and systematic bombings even during the Clinton administration, the American public has not been exposed to much about the existence of the Christian community in Iraq, a community which is close to 2000 years old. American Christian media and ministries have shown little concern or talked about the plight of these people. I have known about them early on beginning when the war became its' most destructive in 2003. I knew that under Saddam Hussein, who was a secularist, that Iraqi Christians did not face persecution the way they now do in Iraq. The Christians of Iraq never tried to undermine Saddam's government. They lived quietly in their communities, even on rare occasions intermarrying with Muslims. As long as people swore allegiance to Saddam and his dictates, religion was a private matter and not seen as a threat.

The Christian community is disappearing in Iraq through killings but mainly through thousands who have gone into exile because of fear that eventually they will be swept away by the tide of Islamic extremism that is boiling in the region. These articles which were written not long after 2003 explains the plight and the history of the Iraqi Christians and are still very relevant:

Life After Saddam

Christians in Iraq

Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians get more more press in America than any other Christian group. Their narrow worldview often borders on the nationalistic and materialistic. The only big issues on the radar with these Christians are basically gay marriage and abortion. They do not have a global sense of Christianity the way the Catholic Church does. They do not see many of the Christians of the world as their brothers and sisters due to variations on doctrine and church practices. I do not see the church in this limited way. I believe I have written in an earlier post that I would describe myself as a "primitive" Christian. I want to see the church, especially in America get back to its' basic roots. I want to see the church start showing more concern for the brethren worldwide. One aspect of God is that He is love, and today there is not enough love and understanding in the American branch of Christianity

Christians in America live an easy life with very little real persecution. When life is easy, one can easily forget about those who suffer and live in fear unless one is a very special and unique individual. I have been very concerned about the Christians of Iraq for some time now. I have waited to no avail to hear preachers and televangelists really tell their listeners about these Christians. There is a general ignorance of the subject, which is a shame considering that Christianity originated in the Middle East, a fact which some Christians in America seem to forget. The ancestors of many Middle and Near Eastern Christians actually came into contact with and were converted by some of the Apostles.

I know one dirty secret of why these Christians are ignored. It is because often their brand of Christianity is very similar to Catholicism. With the majority of Americans being Protestants, there is an uneasiness about anything that looks too Catholic. I am Protestant, but I do not feel that way.

In the end, I think the American church is going to be judged harshly for its' indifference, igorance, and silent bigotry against the eastern Christians oppressed under Muslim rule whether in Iraq or elsewhere.

My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you... (Hosea 4:6)

The Apostle's Creed

A statement was created sometime between the 1st and 5th centuries which summarized the beliefs of the Christian faith. It was the Apostle's Creed. The Apostle's Creed states what every Christian whether Protestant, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox essentially believes. It was possibly copied from the Nicene Creed which was a statement of faith created to combat the heresy of Gnosticism. Legend also has it that the apostles wrote the creed 10 days after Jesus ascended back into heaven.

In the creed you will notice the term 'Catholic.' Catholic here does not refer specifically to the Roman Catholic church. Catholic here means 'universal' or the entire church as a body of believers. The word's Latin origin is 'catholicus' which means 'general.' The Greek is 'katholikós' which means 'the whole.'

I think it would be very useful if every Christian learned the creed by heart. It is an excellent statement of the explanation of the what and why of the Christian religion.

The Apostle's Creed:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day He arose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.

My Christian Journey

I used to think of people who called themselves "born again Christians" as being pretentious impostors. Being a Christian in my opinion was only being moral and believing in God. I did not understand that a person could actually have a life changing relationship with God even though he seemed to be so invisible and faraway until I actually was born again in January 2001.

For almost an entire decade I had suffered from varying degrees of depression. I was first misdiagnosed as have schizoaffective disorder a mild form of schizophrenia. Unlike some schizophrenics I was very high functioning, never heard any voices or hallucinated. I was very much aware of reality. I knew my doctor had to be wrong. Later I was diagnosed as being bipolar. To me, that seemed more like my dilemma I experienced emotional highs and lows frequently. But still I did not have the knowledge to realize that most of what I was having were spiritual problems. I had tried to fight life's battles on my own.

My parents, especially my dad, raised me in a sheltered way. He himself could not deal very well or logically with life's conflicts. He grew up in a highly dysfunctional family. Dad never really accepted his mother's death until he was well into his 50s. She died when he was 18 in 1961. He could not comprehend his mother and father in-law who lived and not just talked the Christian life. His parents had been very different from this. My maternal grandparents were not rich people by any means, but they were always opening up their home to others less fortunate. Some children who had neglectful parents would have gone hungry if not for my grandparent's generosity. People knew that if they came by their house they would automatically experience my grandparent's hospitality. My dad was influenced by psychology and human thought. He believed a person, if he or she were good, should just sail through life. Everything should be easy, not confrontation or conflict. If a bad incident happened to him, he would either flew into a rage or become depressed, often trying to heal himself through overeating. I witnessed my father's behavior and my grandparent's. I was influenced by both for good and ill.

By 2000 I knew I must find a solution to my life. I had not worked in years because the doctors told me I would never be able to stand the stress of a job. However, I was an ambitious person with a masters degree. From a little girl I had had big dreams. To just sit and let my life atrophy was an intolerable thought to me. I felt I was nothing without work. Off and on for years I had experienced thoughts of suicide. In the nick of time, I learned about a small store front church from one of the pastors at my aunt's church, I went there and found my answer. One evening not long after I started visiting this church, I was asked by the pastor had I been born again. I asked her what was that. I had heard the term, but what it entailed was never clear to me. She told me the meaning, and that night, I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. If I had not, I would probably not be here typing this.

From that evening forward, my battle with depression lessen. I went back to work taking jobs both here in the US and in Turkey. In April of this year I was evaluated so a decision could be made as to whether I was eligible to continue to receive Worker's Compensation. The doctor who did the evalution told me that I was cured and that he saw no reason why I should not able to rebuild my life and my career. The years of medication and counseling had not done it. The only thing that had cured me was my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my saviour.

Read this article: The Born Again Experience and it will explain more of what being born again means.

The Reasons For This Blog

This is my third blog. The previous two were deleted a couple of weeks ago when my emotions were really running high. I deleted them both at the spur of the moment and also after some pondering over some feelings of slight dissatisfaction with them. I was basically writing what most people blog about, their personal feelings, experiences, and commentary on current events. For sometime I have had recurring thoughts of starting a blog oriented towards Christian subjects and a Christian perspective about current events. Therefore, after I deleted my secular blogs, I started making plans for here. Presenting my new blog: The Ichthys.

If you live in America, you may occasionally see an Ichthys on automobiles. It is the silver fish decal seen on the tail end of some cars. The standard ichthys placed on a vehicle is a symbol that the owner is a Christian. Previous to the use of the cross as the symbol for Christianity, the early Christian church used the ichthys or fish as their secret symbol so members would know where to congregate for meetings and services. The early years of the church, particularly the first three centuries of its' existence, were racked by persecution from the Roman Empire. Therefore, the church was in some areas basically mobile moving from one secret site to another. Ichthys is actually a Greek acronym which if translated into English is roughly "Jesus Christ God's Son is Saviour."

The ichthys or fish as the symbol for primative Christians perhaps was adopted because references to fish are often made in the New Testament, the second half of the Bible. Four of Jesus' 12 disciples or followers were fishermen. Fish was one of the main food staples of Biblical times. Jesus himself personally on at least one occasion as told in the Bible cooked a meal of fish for his disciples. He also increased a small amount of fish on two occasions to feed a few thousand listeners and followers who came out to hear one of His sermons. Jesus also told his followers to become "fishers of men" meaning that He expected His followers, who were later to be called Christians, to spread His message of salvation (saving) from the darkness of evil and sin, along with hope, peace, and love for God. His followers were to fish for humanity the way a fishermen throw out their nets. The net is Christ's message. This net is a benevolent net, however. It brings one in from the darkness and hopelessness of sin. The net or message affects the heart and mind of the listener who wants a change for the better in his or her existence.

You might if you happen to come across this blog think, "uh oh, not another bigoted Christian fundamentalist, evangelical sitting on a holier than thou mountain waiting to condemn everyone to eternal hellfire, mixing politics with the spiritual to get brownie points with a certain sector of the society." Or you might think, "Uh oh, not another slick prosperity advocate teaching that God is a genie whom a person only has to say a few magic words to and all kinds of nice blessings will come raining down." No, I am neither one of these. I think of myself as a "primative" Christian. By primative here I do not mean the usual dictionary definition of someone or something that is crude or undeveloped, I mean that I am "primative" because I believe that the church must go back to its' roots, the way it was in its' first 300 years before corruption set in and before the church became so riddled by a type of spiritual gangene that it was no different from any other political/secular institution.

Today in America, church is big business. Here we seem to have with the big and megachurches something very similar to what Martin Luther fought against in the Roman Catholic Church back in the 1500s leading to what was the Reformation and the beginning of the Protestant Church. Reformation comes from the root "reform." What the church in America needs is reform. Since there is no really strong persecution of the church here since America is considered a Christian country, people have become soft in their following of Christ's teachings. We Christians have become anemic spiritually as a group, not very different from people who are agnostic or atheistic. We are Biblical illiterate and listen more to what our favorite preacher has to say without examining what the Bible says about the purpose of life and living. We arrogantly feel deep down inside that we don't need God or His spiritual guidance. We can go it alone. We want God on our terms, not His.

Religion is a controversial topic nowadays. Too many people hold extreme but unbalanced views of the relevancy of faith and God in this era. I decided to start this blog because I wanted to explain the Christian faith from a Biblical prospective. I wanted to show that the message of the Bible and Jesus Christ is timeless and that by reading or hearing it it can inspire hope to person who decides to believe it. It want to show from my own experience who Christianity can change lives for the better if it is practiced sincerely. With this blog I want to apply a Biblical perspective to some current events. I plan to present here a picture of the early church and its' history. I will be presenting advise from a Biblical viewpoint and also creating online prayers for nations and various groups in distress. In other words, the concern here will be Christianity in varying forms and in its' original state. I very much welcome comments, suggestions, and questions.

Peace Be With You...