News

Greg Koukl lists 6 things you have to believe to be a Christian

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Here is the article on the Stand to Reason web site.

Excerpt:

The six essential doctrines would be: the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, man’s fallenness and guilt, salvation by grace through faith by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief that Jesus is the Messiah. And you have a seventh doctrine that strikes me as a functional necessity, that is the ultimate authority of Scripture without which none of the other truths can be affirmed or asserted with confidence.

By the way, it’s really important that people know these doctrines because many Christians are quite kind-hearted and they end up not being very careful about drawing distinctions between truth and falsity because they don’t want to disagree. I understand that. But if you were really kind-hearted then you would be honest and straight-forward with people about the demands of the gospel on their lives. The demand of the gospel is that you believe particular things to be true. It’s not just a matter of mere belief, as if these are just some incidental details of theology that you might happen to be mistaken about. And if you just happen to be mistaken, why should you go to hell because of that?

You don’t go to hell because you just happen to mistake a doctrine. You go to hell because you have broken God’s law. It is very critical to understand that. God only judges guilty people. People get judged by God not because they mess up on their theology but because they are guilty. People who are guilty get condemned. That’s it. There is a way to get around that but you’ve to know a couple of particular things that are true before you can take advantage of the forgiveness God offers. That’s where the essential doctrines come in.

He’s writing from a Calvinist perspective, which I don’t entirely agree with. But I don’t see anything wrong in that minimal list. I get very annoyed with theologians who are not philosophically trained and good at apologetics. You can trust Greg, he has to argue about these things all the time, so he isn’t stuck in a bubble like most pastors and ministers.

By the way, I’ve met him several times, and I’ve chastised him about his Calvinism all the way through the standard rebuttals and objections, so don’t e-mail him and chastise him again, because I’ve already done it, and thoroughly.

Podcasts

Celebrate Hallowe’en with some scary old time radio shows

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Its MCSpinster!
Its MCSpinster!

Here are some of the scariest old time radio shows EVER! These are MP3 files. Be careful, they are SCARY!

The House in Cypress Canyon is the scariest, in my opinion. If you can’t download MP3s, then you can read the transcript here.

I am a big fan of old time radio from 1939-1959.

News

Left-wing Democrat groups pack Stephen Colbert / Jon Stewart rally

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Politco has the list of some of the left-wing Democrat special interest groups who attended the pro-Obama rally staged by left-wing radicals Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

Excerpt:

Abortion-rights supporters, marijuana fans, environmental activists, government watchdogs and the Democratic National Committee all will be cruising the Mall and spreading their messages in the hopes of winning hearts, minds and votes three days before Election Day.

— At least 100 MoveOn.org Political Action volunteers will serve 25,000 cups of hot chocolate that advertise a get-out-the-vote effort people can join by texting the organization.

— Public Citizen’s government watchdogs are giving out 5,000 signs featuring slogan-contest winners like “It’s a Democracy, Not an Auction,” chosen from 6,000 entries.

— Abortion rights supporters from NARAL will be trolling the Mall, metro stations and the bus parking lot at RFK Stadium, some in Lady Liberty costumes, rewarding people who sign up to volunteer with a sticker saying, “Vote Pro-Choice. Politicians Make Crappy Doctors” — also a product of a slogan contest.

— After the rally, the pro-pot activists at Students for Sensible Drug Policy are set to do eight hours of phone banking urging California voters to support Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in the state.

None of the groups quite know what kind of crowd to expect — MoveOn’s Ilyse Hogue called it a “huge mystery.” — but they figure it will probably be young, liberal and frustrated. Just the kind of folks whose untapped energy can be channeled into get-out-the-vote efforts.

Two clowns organizing a rally for the Clown-In-Chief. Yay! 10% unemployment! 3 trillion in budget deficits! Everyone laugh! It’s so funny!

The radically leftist New York Times reports that the Democratic National Committee will be heavily involved in the Colbert/Stewart rally.

Excerpt:

…the Democratic National Committee is doing everything it can to capitalize on the event.

Volunteers and staff members from the headquarters are greeting people as they get off of the buses or arrive in Washington on trains, armed with sign-up sheets for canvassing efforts in districts across the country.

And for those rally attendees who have not gotten enough of politics by the end of the rally, they can head over to the the committee’s headquarters a few blocks away, where there will be a phone bank. Committee officials said they expected to get at least 100 people there.

The rally had been a subject of concern for some Democrats, who said it would siphon the most active Democrats from around the country away from the get-out-the-vote efforts in their home states and districts.

But a spokeswoman for the Democratic committee’s Organizing for America said Saturday that the party is supportive of the Comedy Central hosts’ event.

“We think having people energized and enthusiastic in the final days before Election Day is great,” said the spokeswoman, Lynda Tran. “OFA is urging people to head from the rally to a phone bank or to pick up a canvass and go door to door to urge their friends, neighbors, and communities to head to the polls on Tuesday.”

Indeed. And the rally is supported by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Barack Obama’s old anti-American terrorist buddies, too.

Excerpt:

When comics Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announced their rallies on the national mall scheduled for this Saturday, they may not have expected—or wanted—an endorsement from Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. But Ayers told the Ford Motor Company-sponsored Green Festival in Washington, D.C. last Saturday that the event will be a needed respite from the “Alice in Wonderland” world of military domination of the planet and wars waged by the U.S. “empire.”

The October 30 Stewart/Colbert rallies, dubbed “Restore Sanity” and “Keep Fear Alive,” are “worth attending,” Ayers said.

[…]Ayers and Dohrn had staged a fundraiser for Obama when he began his political career by running for the Illinois State Senate. Ayers and Obama served on a board and appeared at functions together. During the campaign, however, Obama tried to play down his relationship with the terror couple.

All of Obama’s buddies from Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are very excited about the rally. I’m sure Reverend Jeremiah Wright would approve, as well.