Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog

“Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. The Spirit of the LORD came upon him in power so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done.”
Judges 14:5-6 (New International Version)

“Samson’s great power and strength did not come from within himself, but from God. We should all remember that any ability or talent that we display in our lives is a gift from God.”
-Doug Westbrook, Artist of “Sampson Kills the Lion - A Bible Story Mural”

See Mr. Westbrook’s Bible Story Murals here.

If your church is looking for a unique way to bring the Word of God to it’s children and young people, take a look at Doug Westbrook’s Bible Story Murals. Each wall sized mural is based on the hand painted originals Mr. Westbrook painted at Central Baptist Church in Houston, Texas and represents a different well known Bible story.
They are available on durable vinyl wallpaper for easy installation.

The liberal nut cases in California are once again trying to eliminate marriage.

A proposal that already has earned the support of state senators in California would make marriage a museum piece, effectively relegating the biblically-mandated institution to the same category of usefulness as the rotary-dial telephone, opponents say.

“If S.B. 11 becomes the law, marriage will be functionally abolished,” said Randy Thomasson, a spokesman for the Campaign for Children and Families. “Awarding marriage rights to people who shack up but refuse to get married is completely ridiculous.”

The plan that has been endorsed by the Democrat-controlled California State Senate is one promoted by a lesbian state senator, Carole Migden, of San Francisco.

It would give an unmarried man and woman who are living together the rights of marriage, Thomasson said. It was approved by the Senate 22-13, with all Democrats in support and all Republicans opposed.

The plan that gives all the rights of marriage to heterosexual “domestic partners” ages 18 and up now goes to the state Assembly, and if approved there, would go to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has not taken a position on the plan.

“Why get married if you can get all the legal rights and benefits of marriage without being committed?” Thomasson asked. “This bad bill severely weakens the institution of marriage and will motivate unwed parents to remain uncommitted. We call upon Gov. Schwarzenegger to veto this nonsensical bill that robs marriage of its uniqueness and honor.

“No one should get marriage rights unless they get married. S.B. 11 makes a mockery of this sacred institution,” he said.

Thomasson noted that not one Republican senator spoke against the bill during the floor session.

“Once again, pro-family Californians are angry at the Democrat politicians for attacking marriage and deeply frustrated with the Republican legislators for not speaking up to defend the sacred institution of marriage,” he said.

“This is yet another wake-up call to why people who are financially blessed need to support the VoteYesMarriage.com amendment to protect marriage rights for marriage,” said former Assemblyman Larry Bowler. “If VoteYesMarriage.com raises $2.5 million to qualify for the ballot, crazy bills like S.B. 11 will be defeated and marriage will be fully and permanently protected for one man and one woman.”

The move is seen as another step towards creating full-blown same-sex “marriage” licenses for homosexuals. That plan already has been proposed in A.B. 43 in the state Assembly.

That group later voted 42-34 to pass A.B. 43, flouting the will of California voters by choosing to reject the 2000 initiative that defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

“The arrogant majority in the California legislature have decided that they know better than the people by voting to force A.B. 43 on California,” declared Karen England, Executive Director of Capitol Resource Institute. “The people of California clearly decided this issue when they passed Proposition 22. It is outrageous for legislators to waste time and money debating an issue that Californians have decided.”

Original Link.

Yet another group who is willing to call the Amnesty Bill what it is.

(CNSNews.com) - A group of former Border Patrol agents opposed to comprehensive immigration reform on Monday called the proposal currently under consideration in the U.S. Senate a “travesty,” a “sellout” and a “complete betrayal of the nation.”

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Agents (NAFBPA), a group of several hundred retired Border Patrol agents and immigration officials, released its analysis of the Senate’s compromise bill, which has President Bush’s support but has been widely criticized by conservatives as being too lenient on illegal immigrants.

Hugh Brien, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol from 1986 to 1989, called the bill a “slap in the face to the millions of legal immigrants.” Brien, who legally emigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1953, helped unveil the group’s alternative to the Senate bill.

“It appears that there is a move underway to saddle the nation once again with law containing the same flaws found in the 1986 act, but now on scale (sic) unimagined at that time,” NAFBPA said in an open letter introducing its proposals.

Like many of the bill’s conservative opponents, NAFBPA refers to the Senate proposal as “amnesty.”

The bill would allow illegal immigrants to obtain “Z” visas and live in the United States after returning briefly to the home country and paying a $5,000 fine. It also includes provisions for increasing border security, cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants and creating a guest worker program.

The NAFBPA has a plan of its own that opposes “amnesty” and supports tougher sanctions for employers who hire illegal immigrants because “jobs are the primary factor drawing aliens illegally to our country.”

The group supports a temporary worker program but would require that employers prove there are no Americans willing to do the job.

“[W]e find the phrase ‘work Americans won’t do’ demeaning to the American worker,” the proposal states. “Americans have done every type of work now done by illegal aliens … and Americans would do it again if they were paid a decent wage,” it said.

NAFBPA President Kent Lundgren, a 33-year veteran of border and immigration enforcement, said senators promoting the compromise legislation know that its provisions won’t work. He said the bill’s enforcement proposals, including adding thousands of border patrol agents by 2008, are impossible to achieve.

“They’re telling us something they know can’t come true,” Lundgren said, explaining his view that it would be impossible to train and deploy thousands of border agents on such short notice.

Original Link.

Junk science and people like Al Gore with his Global Warming Jihad, in conjunction with the mainstream media, have almost completely suppressed comments from scientist who do not agree with the concept that our planet is undergoing global warming caused by greenhouse gases (produced by humans).

The mainstream news media are being accused of ignoring the many scientists who share NASA administrator Michael Griffin’s skepticism of whether manmade global warming is a real threat to the planet.

The NASA chief recently drew criticism for telling National Public Radio he doubted global warming is “a problem we must wrestle with” and argued it is “arrogant” to believe we know how to control the climate and what the optimal climate would be. Robert Ferguson, executive director of the Science and Public Policy Institute, says a number of reputable climatologists, geologists, and physicists are backing Griffin’s comments — but one would never learn that from the mainstream media.

“We polled a bunch of scientists from around the world [about] what Griffin had said, and got a large number of positive comments back, very rational comments,” Ferguson notes. “We did a press release on this, and as far as I know, the mainstream press hasn’t picked it up at all. They just simply don’t care.”

That press release, distributed on June 1, documents supporting comments from scientists in Australia, Canada, and the states of Kansas, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The latter is a Harvard physicist who characterized Griffin’s comments as “sensible” and encouraged the NASA administrator not to buy-in to “cheap and soft pseudoscientific propaganda such as the ‘fight against climate change.’”

Ferguson says while there is consensus the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide concentration has risen since the Industrial Revolution and global temperatures have risen a bit since the mid-1800s, there is a wide spectrum of opinion on whether that rise in CO2 caused the rise in temperature. He laments that that fact is not being reported by media outlets, and implies they have caved to such global warming proponents as former vice president Al Gore.

“What’s happened is [that] Gore has demanded, and some of the people in the mainstream press have demanded, that to even give voice to any [so-called] ’skepticism’ — which is the essence of science; how it moves forward — is to harm the world,” says the Institute spokesman. “So when you put it in more religious terms of evil versus good … it’s sort of like they’re saying, ‘If you even listen to Satan’s voice, then this is evil.’”

Ferguson says by vilifying global warming skeptics with ad-hominem attacks and equating them with Holocaust deniers, many in the media are trying to convince Americans that such skeptics are “wackos outside of the consensus of science or bought and paid for by industry.”

Original Link.

It grows increasingly clear that the GOP, led by President George W Bush is willing to commit political suicide, if that is what it takes, in order to leave the US southern border as wide-open as possible.

What is far less clear is why. Thanks to years of pounding over an issue that actually DID address national security — the war in Iraq — President Bush’s approval rating has dropped to just thirty percent.

Now, he appears willing to sever ties with his few remaining supporters by refusing to modify his position on immigration ‘reform.’

I’ve understood — and even applauded Bush’s stubborn ’stick-to-it-ness” over the war in Iraq. The opposition he’s faced on that issue is purely political.

In terms of national security, Iraq is a no-brainer.

After all, the performance of the Department of Homeland Security has not exactly been stellar since September 11.

Immediately after the attacks on the homeland nearly six years ago, citizens were enlisted in the war on terror by being urged by Homeland Security to “be vigilant” and to report suspicious activity to the nearest law enforcement authorities.

Remember the case of the “Flying Imams”? Six Muslim imams were removed from US Airways Flight 300, from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Phoenix, Arizona, at 6:30 PM on November 20, 2006.

The removal of the imams was initiated when several passengers, as well as crew, became alarmed by what they ‘felt’ was ’suspicious behavior.’

You tell me:

1. Before boarding the aircraft, the imams made a point of conducting long, loud Islamic prayer rituals obviously calculated to frighten passengers.

2. The imams refused to sit in their assigned sears. Instead, they fanned out in the cabin, sitting in pairs close to the front, middle and rear exit rows.

3. Three of them requested seat belt extenders. Seat belt extenders are straps with large metal buckles normally used by obese passengers to lengthen their seatbelts.

None of them were obese. None of them attached the extenders. Instead, they placed them on the floor in front of their seats. (Seat belt extenders would make formidable weapons in the confined space of an aircraft.)

4. Three of them were traveling with no checked baggage and one-way tickets.

5. Two of the imams were overheard by an Arabic-speaking passenger condemning America for ‘killing Saddam’ and praising Osama bin Laden.

The passengers did EXACTLY what the Department of Homeland Security told them to do. They alerted the crew, who, on board an aircraft, are the ‘nearest law enforcement authority.’

The crew did EXACTLY what the DHS recommendations and FAA regulations require. They put the safety of the aircraft and its passengers first, and had the six removed from the aircraft by police.

What happened? They got sued by the imams.

What did the Department of Homeland Security do? Faced with charges of ‘racial profiling’ and lawsuits from the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) they backed down and officially blamed the passengers, claiming that they ‘behaved hysterically’.

This was neither the first nor the last time that the DHS ducked for cover and threw the concerned citizens to CAIR’s legal wolfpack.

Nor is it the most egregious example of the DHS’s incredible incompetence. Does anybody remember Hurricane Katrina?

But, despite DHS’s dismal record, there have been no successful major attacks against the US homeland since 9/11. Why? Because the enemy has his attention focused on Iraq.

That is why I said at the outset that Bush’s approval rating plunge over the Iraq war was political, and why the justification for the Iraq war was a ‘no brainer’. Chalk one up for Bush and the GOP for supporting him.

But nobody in their right mind could support him on the ‘immigration reform’ package he is so determined to foist on America.

Bush went on the offensive against his own supporters this week, telling the McClatchy newspaper group; “People shouldn’t fear our capacity to uphold our motto, E Pluribus Unum.”

(”E Pluribus Unum” is Latin for “Out of Many, One”)

The implication is that America is a land of immigrants, and therefore, it should accept all immigrants. But those who have entered the country illegally are not “immigrants”. They are illegal aliens.

“I feel passionate about the issue. It’s something I have felt strongly about ever since I was the governor of Texas,” Bush said.

The problem is, President Bush isn’t the president of Texas. He is the president of the whole United States. Personally, I like Texas. (I am Texas at this very moment.)

Bush is framing the immigration issue as being one of race. It isn’t an issue of race. Race doesn’t even enter into the equation. Race is being used to sweep the real issues under the rug.

The first issue is the legal one. Illegal immigration is, well, illegal. Not liking a law is hardly grounds for ignoring it.

The second, and more important issue, is national security. As it stands, nobody knows who is coming into America, from where, for what reason, or where they are at this moment.

While the President insults his diminishing support base by calling them racists, Hugo Chavez is importing terrorists into Venezuela via the Tehran-Damascus-Caracas air corridor. Terrorists can fly from Tehran or Damascus to the Western Hemisphere without worrying about excessive scrutiny.

Once in Caracas, Chavez issues them Venezuelan documents and passports.

Armed with these documents, they can make their way north to the border (a number of Middle Easterners have already been intercepted along the US southern border in possession of such documents), and join the mass exodus of Latinos sneaking across the border hoping for a better life.

Except they are not seeking a better life for themselves. They are seeking to take yours away from you.

Not wanting to be a victim of a terrorist attack isn’t racist. Anymore than the passengers and crew of Flight 300 not wanting to risk becoming part of a missile were Islamphobic.

President Bush should be able to understand the problem. It isn’t like he doesn’t have advisors. He has millions of them. They are called voters. And they don’t like it one bit.

About 72 percent of voters of all political persuasions, according to a new Rassussen poll, say it’s “very important” for “the government to improve its enforcement of the borders and reduce illegal immigration.”

More significantly, among Republicans, that number jumps to 89%. The RNC just laid off its entire staff of phone solicitors. The reason? Republicans have stopped donating to the RNC. Why? Border security.

“Every donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue,” a fired phone-bank employee told the Washington Times.

A WND report last week quoted one fired phone bank employee, who said, “We have not heard anyone in our donor calls who supported the president on immigration. . . We write these comments up from each call, and give them to a supervisor who passes them on to the finance director or the national chairman,” he said. “But when I talked with the White House, the people there told me they got nothing but positive comments on the president’s immigration stand.”

Really? From whom? The 11% of Republicans who DON’T oppose the bill?

Why would Bush push forward with a plan that threatens to tank his own party in the next election? What is so vital about NOT securing America’s borders?

I listened to Michael Medved the other night on TV, completely wigging out over the Security and Prosperity Plan that envisions a North American Union between the US, Canada and Mexico.

(It suddenly occurs to me that such a union could be scuttled, should the US suddenly tighten its borders.)

Meved was practically sputtering, calling those who believe that the SPP plan is an end-run around US sovereignty “losers” and “paranoid alarmists and sicko fear-peddlers”.

Maybe I’m just another loser and paranoid alarmist and sicko-fear peddler. But my first thought was a quote from Shakespeare; “methinks he doth protest too much.”

The next thought to come to mind were two passages of Scripture: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25) and; “The wicked flee when no man pursueth. . . (Proverbs 28:1)

Food for thought.

Original Link.

I did not get a chance to blog about this yesterday, but June 5th marked the 40th anniversary of what is called the “Six-Day War” between Israel and her neighboring countries.

The Six-Day War (Arabic: حرب الأيام الستة, ħarb al‑ayyam as‑sitta ; Hebrew: מלחמת ששת הימים, Milhemet Sheshet Ha‑Yamim), also known as the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Third Arab-Israeli War, Six Days’ War, an‑Naksah (The Setback), or the June War, was fought between Israel and its Arab neighbours Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Algeria also contributed troops and arms to the Arab forces. In the months before June 1967, Egypt expelled the United Nations Emergency Force from the Sinai Peninsula, increased its military activity near the border, blockaded the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships, and called for unified Arab action against Israel. In June 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt’s airforce fearing an imminent invasion by Egypt.[1] Jordan then attacked western Jerusalem and Netanya.[2][3] At the war’s end, Israel had gained control of eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. The results of the war affect the geopolitics of the region to this day.

Original Link.

This date commemorates two large and history changing battles of World War II.
Between June 4th and June 7th in 1942, the Japanese fleet was posed to finish the job they had started with their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the complete destruction of the U.S. Pacific fleet.
Had this event actually occurred, it would have left the entire Pacific Ocean in the hands of the Japanese. Australia would most likely have fallen and our own West Coast would have come under attack. All of our island possessions would have been lost, including Hawaii. It also could have forced the United States to sue for peace.
Thankfully, that was not the outcome. Although the loss of life on both sides of the battle was great, the American fleet soundly defeated the Japanese fleet. The Japanese never recovered from this defeat. The Battle of Midway signaled the “high water mark” of the Japanese Empire and was the turning point for the war in the Pacific.
Over on the other side of the world, on June 6th, 1944, Allied troops invaded mainland Europe at Normandy, France. Although the loss of life was horrific, the Allies were able to gain a foothold and continue pushing inland. Due in part to clever deceptions, by using a “fake” army in England actually commanded by General George Patton, the Germans moved several large groups of tanks and men away from Normandy. It was almost a complete day after the invasion started before the German commanders were convinced that Normandy was the site of the actual invasion and not just a ruse or probe.
As the number of our World War II vets dwindles, take a moment to remember all of our vets. Thank them for their service to our country and the sacrifice each one made.

The battle of Midway Island.
The Invasion of Normandy, France.

The Arab nations have discovered that they can come right out and tell the world what they intend to do, concerning their plans for the destruction of Israel, and the West will sit on it’s hands and do nothing.
What a sad statement that is.

A member of the Syrian parliament, Muhammad Habash, confirmed on Tuesday that his country was actively preparing for war with Israel, expected to break out in the summer, Israel Radio reported.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Habash said it was no secret that the Syrian military was arming itself for the upcoming confrontation with the IDF.

He also claimed that the Israeli government was the one that wanted the war so that it could survive politically.

Original Link.

As a further reminder of the atrocities committed against the Jews, by the Nazis, another mass grave, containing the remains of thousands of Jews, has been located in the Ukraine.

KIEV, Ukraine — A mass grave holding the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine near the site of what was once a concentration camp, a Jewish community representative said Tuesday.

The grave was found by chance last month when workers were preparing to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.

The Nazis established two ghettos during World War II near the village and brought Jews there from what is now Moldova as well as Ukrainian regions, Shvartsman said. In November 1941, they set up a concentration camp and killed about 5,000 Jews, he said.

“Several thousand Jews executed by the Nazis lie there,” Shvartsman told The Associated Press.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the finding was no surprise: “It underscores the enormous scope of the plans of annihilation of the Nazis and their collaborators in eastern Europe.”

“The scope is enormous, the number of places where murders were carried out is very large and that is why even now at this point, so late after the events, graves are still being discovered,” he added.

Yitzhak Arad, a Holocaust scholar and a former director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, said his research indicated some 28,000 Jews were gathered in the area from surrounding towns. He said 10,000 of those died at a rate of around 500 people a day.

Shvartsman said that Jewish community knew about the mass killing but did not know where the bodies were located.

Anatoly Podolsky, director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, said there are believed to be some 250-350 mass grave sites from the Nazi occupation, during which some 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews are believed to have been killed — including those massacred near their homes and those deported to camps elsewhere. He said most of the site have been discovered, many of them since the Soviet collapse of 1991, but others have not.

“Ukraine was an enormous killing field, hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered and the entire region is literally filled with hundreds of mass graves,” Zuroff said.

Ilia Levitas, the head of Ukraine’s Jewish Council, put the number of mass Jewish graves in the country at over 700 and said more than 100 are without monuments to the victims.

According to Shvartsman, the names of 93 Jews killed at the Gvozsdavka-1 site have been established. He said Jewish community members plan to conduct studies at the site to identify more victims.

“We must figure out their names. It is our debt before victims and survivors,” he said.

Odessa’s chief rabbi, Shlomo Baksht, hopes to fence the site off and erect a monument to the victims by the end of the year.

Ukraine’s Jewish population was devastated during the Holocaust. Babi Yar, a ravine outside the capital Kiev where the Nazis slaughtered some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941, is a powerful symbol of the tragedy.

About 240,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis in the Odessa region, according to Shvartsman. He said a mass grave with remains of about 3,500 Jews was found in the region last year.

Original Link.