ELCA RIC ceremony at 2016 CWA

from: http://www.exposingtheelca.com/exposed-blog/elca-pastor-writes-may-the-love-of-the-universewrap-her-thighs-around-you

With very mixed feelings, I post this:

https://www.facebook.com/ReconcilingWorks/videos/1223924350983430/


Comments:              

Didaskalos link

8/26/2016 02:31:07 pm

Pity the ELCA, which thinks it’s breaking new religious ground with its ever-expanding list of “progressive Christian” practices.

The ELCAnites, spiritual descendants of the Canaanites, are simply reintroducing Baal worship, cloaked in contemporary liberal parlance.

Matt Barber offers a comparison of the Canaanite past with the “progressive” present:

"Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of 'mother earth.’ ”

"Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar. The worship of ‘fertility' has been replaced with worship of 'reproductive freedom' or ‘choice.' Child sacrifice via burnt offering has been updated, ever so slightly, to become child sacrifice by way of abortion. The ritualistic promotion, practice and celebration of both heterosexual and homosexual immorality and promiscuity have been carefully whitewashed – yet wholeheartedly embraced – by the cults of radical feminism, militant 'gay rights' and 'comprehensive sex education.' And, the pantheistic worship of 'mother earth' has been substituted – in name only – for radical environmentalism."

The Baalite/ELCAnite checklist:

1. Child sacrifice. Check. The ELCA funds preborn child sacrifice for any reason up to 20 weeks in its self-funded health plan. Lura Groen should be careful about what she prays for. If the God of the Bible decided to mete out retribution and "dance on the walls of injustice" and "keep all *His* babies safe," the abortion-funding ELCA could well disappear in a puff of brimstone.

2. Sexual immorality. Check. Reconciling Works and countless ELCA pastors, bishops, and professors are hard at work weaving Biblically proscribed sexual immorality into the warp and woof of the ELCA.

3. Mother Earth worship. Check. ELCA churches and conferences are rapturously enamored of goddess worship and every trendy Earth-worshiping environmental cause.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. In the shabbily derivative ELCA, the more “progressive" things change, the more they stay the pagan same.

Who will be the next Charles Martel?

The Battle of Tours (10 October 732) took place between the cities of Poitiers and Tours, in north-central France, close to the border between the Frankish kingdom and then-independent Aquitaine. It pitted Frankish and Burgundian forces under Charles Martel against a much larger army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by 'Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi.

Surprisingly, the Franks were victorious. 'Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi was killed, and Charles began to extend his authority and begin uniting a European kingdom that would withstand the challenge of Islamic military forces to the present day.

Some saw this as divine judgment in favor of Charles, nicknamed Martellus ("The Hammer"). Later , Charles Martel would be praised as the champion of Christianity, seeing the battle as the decisive turning point against the powerful Islamic empire.

The Battle of Tours came after two decades of Umayyad conquests in Europe beginning with the invasion of the Christian Kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula in 711 and seemingly unstoppable military expeditions into Gaul (the former province of the Roman Empire).  The Islamic army had reached as far northward as Aquitaine, Burgundy, and Bordeaux. Charles's victory came when Muslim rule was overrunning the old Roman and Persian Empires.

Charles surprised the Islamic forces who did not expect to find a large and well organized enemy.  For a full week they skirmished awaiting the arrival of the full Umayyad forces.  It gave Charles Martel time to organize and concentrate his forces for the battle plan.  Perhaps the most decisive maneuver was Charles raid on the Umayyad base camp threatening the bounty the army had accumulated in previous battles.  Charles so rattled the Umayyad forces that they left their tents standing and ran with whatever loot they could carry.

The army retreated over the Pyrenees.  In 735 another forey by the Islamic forces was repelled by Charles, putting an end to any of the Muslim hopes beyond the Iberian peninsula.  Charles’ grandson, Charlemagne, became the first Christian ruler of a mostly united Christian Europe.

Now here we are some thirteen centuries later, after Luther himself had wrote against the invading Muslim armies of the Turkish advance, and after terrorism has spilled over into the cities of Europe and the United States.  Here we are after a priest was murdered in his own parish church by an enemy more devious than the multinational, multilingual Ottoman empire and even more brutal.  Where are the voices of Luther in our day to rally us to organize together against our common enemy?  Where is the next Charles Martel who will face down the armies seeking to build a new caliphate more by terrorism than open conquest?  Where are those who both recognize and acknowledge that this is no mere threat to religion, though it is certainly that, but also a threat to the West as a whole and to freedom itself?

http://pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.com/2016/08/where-is-charles-martel-when-you-need.html

How America's Polygamy Ban Blocked Muslim Immigration by Daniel Greenfield

A hundred years ago, Muslims were furious over an immigration bill whose origins lay with advocacy by a headstrong and loudmouthed Republican in the White House.

The anti-immigration bill offended the Ottoman Empire, the rotting Caliphate of Islam soon to be defeated at the hands of America and the West, by banning the entry of “all polygamists, or persons who admit their belief in the practice of polygamy.”

This, as was pointed out at the time, would prohibit the entry of the “entire Mohammedan world” into the United States.

And indeed it would.

The battle had begun earlier when President Theodore Roosevelt had declared in his State of the Union address back in 1906 that Congress needed to have the power to “deal radically and efficiently with polygamy.” The Immigration Act of 1907, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt, had banned “polygamists, or persons who admit their belief in the practice of polygamy.”

It was the last part that was most significant because it made clear what had only been implied.

The Immigration Act of 1891 had merely banned polygamists. The newest law banned anyone who believed in the practice of polygamy. That group included every faithful believing Muslim.

The Ottoman Empire’s representatives argued that their immigrants believed in the practice of polygamy, but wouldn’t actually take more than one wife. This argument echoes the current contention that Muslim immigrants may believe in a Jihad against non-Muslims without actually engaging in terrorism. That type of argument proved far less convincing to Americans than it does today.

These amazing facts, uncovered by @rushetteny reveal part of the long controversial history of battles over Islamic migration into America.

Muslim immigration was still slight at the time and bans on polygamy had not been created to deliberately target them, but the Muslim practice of an act repulsive to most Americans even back then pitted their cries of discrimination and victimhood against the values of the nation. The Immigration Act of 1907 had been meant to select only those immigrants who would make good Americans.

And Muslims would not.

In his 1905 State of the Union address, President Theodore Roosevelt had spoken of the need “to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens.”

Unlike modern presidents, Roosevelt did not view Islam as a force for good. Instead he had described Muslims as “enemies of civilization”, writing that, “The civilization of Europe, America and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization", praising Charles Martel and John Sobieski for throwing back the "Moslem conquerors" whose depredations had caused Christianity to have "practically vanished from the two continents."

While today even mentioning “Radical Islam” occasions hysterical protests from the media, Theodore Roosevelt spoke and wrote casually of “the murderous outbreak of Moslem brutality” and, with a great deal of foresight offered a description of reform movements in Egypt that could have been just as well applied to the Arab Spring, describing the "mass of practically unchained bigoted Moslems to whom the movement meant driving out the foreigner, plundering and slaying the local Christian."

In sharp contrast to Obama’s infamous Cairo speech, Roosevelt’s own speech in Cairo had denounced the murder of a Coptic Christian political leader by a Muslim and warned against such violent bigotry.

Muslims had protested outside his hotel, but Teddy hadn’t cared.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-americas-polygamy-ban-blocked.html

US Navy Fires at Iranian Boat

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Navy ship fired three warning shots in the direction of an Iranian boat that was approaching another American ship head-on in the North Arabian Gulf on Wednesday, U.S. officials said, in an escalation of encounters in the region this week.

According to U.S. Navy Cmdr. Bill Urban, the Iranian boat came within 200 yards of the USS Tempest and ignored several bridge-to-bridge radio calls and warning flares. It finally turned away after the USS Squall, which was with the USS Tempest, fired three warning shots from its .50-caliber gun, said Urban, a spokesman for the Navy's 5th Fleet.

"This situation presented a drastically increased risk of collision, and the Iranian vessel refused to safely maneuver in accordance with internationally recognized maritime rules of the road," said Urban.

The incident was one of three encounters that U.S. ships had with Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats in the Gulf on Wednesday. And they came a day after four small Iranian boats approached the USS Nitze at high speed in the Strait of Hormuz. The boats veered off after the U.S. fired flares.

The same Iranian boat that harassed the USS Tempest also crossed in front of the USS Stout three times at a high rate of speed on Wednesday in the same region. Urban called it an "unsafe intercept" and said the USS Stout, a guided missile destroyer, had to maneuver to avoid a collision.

In the third incident, three Iranian boats crossed in front of the USS Tempest at high speed, coming within 600 yards of the ship. The Tempest and the Squall are patrol ships.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/08/26/us-warship-fires-warning-shots-iranian-boats/89389038/

The Power of the Sling

Clinton Pay to Play

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.

At least 85 of 154 people from private interests who met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton while she led the State Department donated to her family charity or pledged commitments to its international programs, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. At least 40 donated more than $100,000 each, and 20 gave more than $1 million.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/many-donors-clinton-foundation-met-her-state-183315225--election.html

The Bridge: Hammocks at 325 Feet

Grand Trunk Double Parachute Nylon Hammock Review by SoulSurvivorX2

Freedom?

http://moonbattery.com/?p=75161

How Global Elites Forsake Their Countrymen (Noonan)

Those in power see people at the bottom as aliens whose bizarre emotions they must try to manage.

This is about distance, and detachment, and a kind of historic decoupling between the top and the bottom in the West that did not, in more moderate recent times, exist.

Recently I spoke with an acquaintance of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and the conversation quickly turned, as conversations about Ms. Merkel now always do, to her decisions on immigration. Last summer when Europe was engulfed with increasing waves of migrants and refugees from Muslim countries, Ms. Merkel, moving unilaterally, announced that Germany would take in an astounding 800,000. Naturally this was taken as an invitation, and more than a million came. The result has been widespread public furor over crime, cultural dissimilation and fears of terrorism. From such a sturdy, grounded character as Ms. Merkel the decision was puzzling—uncharacteristically romantic about people, how they live their lives, and history itself, which is more charnel house than settlement house.

Ms. Merkel’s acquaintance sighed and agreed. It’s one thing to be overwhelmed by an unexpected force, quite another to invite your invaders in! But, the acquaintance said, he believed the chancellor was operating in pursuit of ideals. As the daughter of a Lutheran minister, someone who grew up in East Germany, Ms. Merkel would have natural sympathy for those who feel marginalized and displaced. Moreover she is attempting to provide a kind of counter-statement, in the 21st century, to Germany’s great sin of the 20th. The historical stain of Nazism, the murder and abuse of the minority, will be followed by the moral triumph of open arms toward the dispossessed. That’s what’s driving it, said the acquaintance.

It was as good an explanation as I’d heard. But there was a fundamental problem with the decision that you can see rippling now throughout the West. Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.

Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.

The powerful show no particular sign of worrying about any of this. When the working and middle class pushed back in shocked indignation, the people on top called them “xenophobic,” “narrow-minded,” “racist.” The detached, who made the decisions and bore none of the costs, got to be called “humanist,” “compassionate,” and “hero of human rights.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-global-elites-forsake-their-countrymen-1470959258

Jihadis threaten California Church

As Father Josiah Trenham prepared to read the Gospel, several parishioners discreetly scooped up their babies, retreated up the aisles of St. Andrew Orthodox Church and out into the spring air, so as not to allow the crying of little ones to disturb the divine liturgy.

The time-honored tradition was shattered when a car passed by the Riverside, Calif., church, slowing down as the front passenger leaned out of his window and bellowed menacingly through a bullhorn, according to witnesses.

“Allahu Akbar!” the unidentified man repeated several times as the unnerved parents drew their infants close and exchanged worried glances.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/09/churches-take-new-security-measures-in-face-terror-threats.html

American teenager Thrasher wins first gold of Olympic Games

By Mary Milliken

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Unflappable American teenager Virginia Thrasher won the first gold medal of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Saturday, holding her nerve against two Chinese Olympic champions to clinch the women's 10m air rifle event.

The 19-year-old U.S. college champion edged out China's Du Li, gold in Athens in 2004, with an Olympic-record score of 208 in the sport's new finals format. Defending Olympic champion Yi Siling, also of China, took the bronze medal.

Competing in her first Olympics, Thrasher, as the first champion of the 2016 Games, was awarded her medal by International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach and said the achievement was beyond her wildest dreams.

The youngest of the eight finalists by several years, Thrasher established an early lead after battling with the Russian shooter Daria Vdovina, who stumbled midway through the competition and finished fifth.

"About halfway through when I took the lead it kind of became clear to me that I was in contention for a medal, but I quickly pushed that thought away and focused on breathing and taking one shot at a time," Thrasher said.

Thrasher learned to love shooting while hunting deer with her grandfather when she was in eighth grade.

"I got my first deer and I liked the adrenaline of pulling the trigger," she said.

She then joined her high school air rifle team and was recruited by West Virginia University, where she became a national collegiate champion as a freshman this year.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/shooting-american-thrasher-wins-first-gold-games-140536631--oly.html