Journey Stats
Comments Posted By Frank Barreca
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Was Katrina God-sent judgment?
Well, my friend. Here we are AGAIN on the verge of yet another natural disaster. As we now know, that the Atlantic Ocean has predictable and cylclical warming and cooling trends of which we have hundreds of years of historical data, which increases and decreases the frequency and intensity of the Hurricane Season, we see that we must be prudent in how we build our cities and plan for these situations.
This time it’s Houston and the surrounding areas and we have 2 months left in the “Season” this year. What cleansing and purification are we experiencing this time? Surely, we can find some documented Prophesy which has predicted this one? What lesson are we learning now?
I think that we as the Body of Christ need to understand that our salvation is not driven by these types of events. We can choose to use them as Ministry Opportunities. But we are fools to think that the end justifies the means. Or that some mysterious hand of protection has been lifted to teach us a lesson.
We must be careful that we do not subscribe to the rantings of whackos like Jack Van Impe and NUTS like the Red Heifer group. I spent several years around the Bible Belt Pentacostals and carefully listened to the Preaching and Prophecy, and it was truely scary watching roving “Prophets of God” pass thru the churches like Old Testament Prophets declaring this and professing that, and infact some would actually hit it right sometimes. But then again, no one can be wrong 100% of the time. And so it goes with the more main stream Prophets. OR should I call them PROFITIERS? If they happen to hit one right then everyone pays attention and their coffers fill up for a while and then they fall off into obscurity.
Regardless, the Pulpit Pounding will be all ablaze again after Houston gets spanked for all of us to see.
Frank
Comment Posted By Frank Barreca On 23.09.2005 @ 09:32
OK.
Comment Posted By Frank Barreca On 09.09.2005 @ 11:35
Well Dominik,
Looks like I lost you on this one. You and Rick J. should pray that you and any of your unsaved families do not live in one of those “WICKED CITIES” on the “HIT LIST” that is next.
Maybe you will get a heads up like Lot did? Maybe you can bargain with God like Abraham did to avert the next disaster.
Oh, wait a minute, there were NO rightgeous people New Orleans or Biloxi. They ALL had it coming, right? ALL 10,000 plus that are DEAD NOW. Plus the millions that are suffering and starving. The BILLIONS of dollars in damages. Based on your logic, I also suspect that all those snipers who are shooting our police officers and military were spared because they are the elect of GOD?
Sometimes I really wonder how far off base the Christian church is? We must be on another PLANET if this is how far GOD has to go to get us back on track.
WELCOME TO OLD TESTAMENT TIMES MY FRIEND! Get you some Goats and Bulls and take them to the alter! Maybe we can put a stop to this destruction! You just need to find a Levitcal Priest! Wait! THEY’RE ARE NONE!
Frank
Comment Posted By Frank Barreca On 09.09.2005 @ 10:48
Well put. BUT, I would suggest that the region was filled with Hindu, Muslim, Athiests, and scores of other faiths who are NOW DEAD! Who probably never had the chance for Salvation. Of course they may have had a TV and flipped thru some channels with Prosperity TV Preachers hawking a tithe.
Purification is done thru evangelism and the Great Commandment to Preach the Gospel. Why doesn’t God just have a meteorite slam Las Vegas. SURELY, they deserve it? Hurricanes and Catastrophes are not exactly the best evangelism tool for God to use now are they? Didn’t he already try that for thousands of years with the Isrealites? DID IT WORK?? NO! IT DID NOT! They fell away time and time again until there we only a few hundred people left standing and the Jews were on the edge of instinction. WE are the light, the Saints of God, the Salt, etc. thru which the purification is done. NOT the FLUSHING of a major City for all to see so Christians can point the finger and say, REPENT or suffer the same consequences! I have seen too much of this Old Testament thinking shoved down peoples throats. It is ingnorant of the Gospel of Christ.
Wrap the package any way you want. A turd wrapped in a pretty bow still STINKS!
Frank
Comment Posted By Frank Barreca On 08.09.2005 @ 17:48
Thanks for your feedback. I would suggest to you that the prophetic (in which I am gifted as well by God) does operate AND more individually than corporally in the context of governing of Nations. Our president does not have an “Federal Office of Prophecy” funded by the tax payers to guide his agendas. Our country is simply a conglomeration of all types of peoples and beliefs lead by a Democracy (although foundationaly Christian). We are nothing like a Theocratic Society. To follow that idea thru in relation to things like Hurricanes, South Florida, or maybe Galveston or even the Bahamas, by all rights should be the most decadent place on Earth based on how often is is hammered by the weather. It simply does not add up. The Old Testament belief was that the more you prospered, the more you were in favor with GOD and was living rightly. AND secondly, if you fell upon hard times you MUST have done something wrong or even your parents SINNED to bring upon the blight or illness, etc. AND this was the root of the intense and methodical fixation on the avoidance of SINS, the constant attonement and cleansings and the sacrifices and payments for such.
Paul makes it very CLEAR that the SIN/SACRIFICE/PUNISHMENT pardigm is no longer valid, and that we live under GRACE and Salvaltion and mentions nothing about wholesale smiting by the Hand of GOD for not following his revelation by Christ as in Old Testament times. Probably full well KNOWING that by the infusion of the gentiles, this would eleminate the Theocratic Model because it would be impossible to justly destroy a City or a Nation without killing or hurting people who unjustly deserved his wrath.
Frank
Comment Posted By Frank Barreca On 08.09.2005 @ 16:36
ALL,
Prophecy is a wonderful thing. HOWEVER, we do not live in Old Testament times. Our world, and especially Christians no longer live under a Theocracy in which God had direct control over the Isrealites and the Prophets of God had direct access to the Kings and Leaders of the Old Testament world in which the leaders of nations in the Middle East were careful to listen to them.
These utterances, albiet with great accuracy, no longer have a functional place in a complicated and enourmous world of Politics and the functioning of massive goverments who are responsible for billions of people and their economies. NOR should they.
At best, most all of the Old Testament warnings and judgements which were delt by the hand of God, were focused at and for a very localized group of people in a very small part of the world for the purpose of micro-managing a select people and their attitudes and behaviors which did not align with the Laws established by God for them.
If nothing else, we are urged over and over to exercise our JUDGEMENT using the gift of WISDOM to make right choices and avoid catastrophe. Is it WISE to build a city 25 feet below sea level which is in a natural path of HURRICANES 4 months out of the year? IS it WISE to expect that we will always have a narrow escape from the potential wrath of Mother Nature?
I pose a question with this preamble. We know how the ecology of the planet works. We know that we will have earthquakes, hurricanes, tonadoes, and even meteorites. We can even predict their frequency based on millions of years of recorded history by man and ecological records. It is foolish to suggest that with the small “gun-turret” view of natural events that we have by modern man and the cryptic, mystical, broad “shot-gun” prophecies of Revelations that we can actually connect the dots and say that this is the end of the age of GRACE. What is happening today on the Earth, is not “OUT OF THE ORDINARY” for the normal operation and evolution of the planet. We are just dumb enough to put ourselves in the direct path of natural disasters we know will happen with a degree of probability.
DON’T build your cities at the foot of Volcanos, (HAWAII). DON’T build your cities on the Faults of Tectonic Plates (San Fransisco, Seattle). DON’T build your cities in Tornado Alley (Texarkana). AND when they are destroyed, DON’T blame it on GOD because he “LIFTED HIS HAND OF PROTECTION” to teach us a lesson. The area of New Orleans has been destroyed many time over history by hurricanes. The only difference is that TODAY there was a city there.
So, the question is this. Do we use our God given wisdom and judgement or do we do what is convienient?
GOD does not operate in the way we would like to suggest and we have his word to prove it.
Frank
Comment Posted By Frank Barreca On 08.09.2005 @ 10:26
