SCARY MOVIE III

The adition of Leslie Nielson and George Carlan made this marginally better than it otherwise would have been.

1 CORINTHIANS 8-16

Chapter 8

This chapter, as well as Chapter 10, can be compared with Romans 14.

v9: It never occurs to people that the weaker brethren would have been present at the reading of this letter as well as the stronger ones for whom eating meat sacrificed to idols was not a problem. While being sensitive to the way our weaker brothers feel about certain acts, we should at the same time be trying to build them up and showing them that doing such things is not a sin.

Chapter 9

v1: In addition to all the carnal rubbish already discussed in this letter, certain of the Corinthians are apparently also saying Paul isn't an apostle because he works for a living.

v9 : Cephas, being of the tribe of Judah, would have ministered to those of that same tribe who would have understood that the Old Testament principle of the priests getting their living from the people had been carried on into the new covenant in the form of the ministers of the Gospel getting their living from it. However, the gentile believers whom Paul ministered to would not have understood this.

Chapter 10

v28: This conflict could come up pretty soon in our land because of halal meats.

Chapter 11

v4: Serious question here. If I am walking down the street in the middle of winter in Canada and I mention something about God to someone or a brother stops me and asks me to pray for him, do I have to take my touque off?

v13-15: Do all cultures around the world feel this way about hair or is this one particular example of something that was part of the culture of that day that provides a larger example of how Christians are to act in similar matters?

v16: Of course, we must take this verse into account as well.

v28: This verse shows us that communion keeps us in the faith by making us take stock of how we have been following Christ recently.

Chapter 12 

v8-10: Here Wilson shows how self-serving and vain he really seems to be. He asserts that all the gifts listed in this chapter were done away with except teaching. Thus, Wilson creates a situation in which nobody but teachers, i.e. himself, has a gift directly from the Lord. Everyone else is just the laiety. Wilson has quotes in this commentary blasting the Catholic church, but Wilson and those who believe like him have created their own little Catholic church.

v28: Helps means service.

 Chapter 13

v5: When Paul says love keeps no record of wrongs, he’s not talking about having that pedophile over for dinner. He simply means love does not grind an axe.

 I may write more about this chapter in another post.

Chapter 14 

v1: Again, Wilson shows his self-serving side. Prophecy here means foretelling the future, not teaching. If it meant teaching, Paul would have said teaching.

v26: Just because the order of service here described (each individual member contributing something to the meeting) isn’t mentioned in the later letters doesn’t mean the church matured out of it. The early church still did it this way for a long time. Though this form of meeting creates problems, everything creates problems due to the fact man isn’t perfect. Today, more and more people are leaving the institutional church and attending house fellowships because they see what a mess the supposedly more mature way of doing things has created.
v27: This verse might give credence to the doctrine of speaking a tongue in a supernatural language, that is, one not known to mankind.

Chapter 15

v30: In other words: "We apostles sure as shoot wouldn't be putting ourselves in danger from all these things we've suffered if we didn't know absolutely that there's a resurrection."

Chapter 16 

v2: This chapter doesn’t indicate the church was meeting on Sunday. Rather, the first day of the week was payday in the Roman empire.

 v3: Wilson contradicts himself by saying, in the commentary on verse 2 that the believers brought their week’s contribution every Sunday, then says they didn’t do so in the commentary to this verse because Paul tells them to store it up.

 Also, this doesn’t indicate tithing was done away with. Where too much is revealed, nothing is revealed, just like how people try to say that just because it says the believers were gathered together in Troas on the first day of the week to hear Paul speak the day of worship had been changed from Saturday to Sunday. One instance does not a changed day make, and no mention of titheing does not the abolition of titheing make. Similarly, no mention of the Chapter 14 style of worship in the later letters does not a single speaker, “more mature” style of service make. Likewise, lack of faith and/or desire to see the gifts of Chapter 12 manifested today does not secession make.

v22: Can't get much more blunt than that.

 Based on 1 Corinthians by Geoffrey B. Wilson. London: Banner of Truth, 1971.

SCARY MOVIE II

When this movie was #1 at the box office, one of my teachers in college said, "I'm worried about your generation." He was right.

Granted, just as with Eugene Levy and Roen Atkinson, David Cross makes whatever he's in that much better simply by being in it.

BELOW

I liked this movie fine. It was a good popcorn picture with a solid plot.

THIS FRIDAY EVENING @ CAFE SANS SOUCI

Hi all,
This Friday evening ‘Bring it on Home’ – live music @ Cafe Sans Souci in  Belleville from 7:30 to 10 pm....
Don't miss this! Excellent music, and – in addition to Cafe Sans Souci's  superb dinner menu – there will be a special 'light menu' for the evening crowd:  including samosas, salads, soup, bruschetta, and poutine along with steamed  mussels, coconut shrimp, and... (wait for it) escargot. It's going to be a good  night!
Look forward to see you there.
James

1 CORINTHIANS 1-7

Chapter 1

v12: Today in the church it is 43 thousand times worse, for Christians aren’t just saying, “I like this person better” or “I like that person better”: those who like one person have built denominational walls to keep out the believers who like another person.

 V26: Today in the institutional church it is all about knowledge. Christians love the scholarly pastor who has as many degrees as a thermometer.

 It is also all about influence. There are thousands of pastors gunning to be the next Billy Graham, Rick Warren or John Piper. They use their small town church pulpits as stepping stones to bigger and bigger congregations till they make the right connections to get them national and international attention.

 It is all about rank, too. Whether the “Fathers” of the Catholic church or the Reverends, Pastors, Senior Pastors, Pastors For Preaching, etc. of the other denominations, it’s all the same: people having a fancy title by which they expect to be addressed.

Chapter 2

 Worldly wisdom is particularly evident in the mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterian, Anglican and United churches. Rather than preaching Christ and Him crucified, these church’s oftentimes take things from the world that sound good and preach those things instead.

 The majority of the preaching emanating from these denominations centres on man pulling himself up by his own bootstraps, that is, making himself pleasing to God on his own strength. They teach “Jesus was a wise teacher who taught some very prudent principles. Follow these principles and you will be saved.”

 Others teach Jesus was a good example. They say, “Jesus’ life provided us with a model for how to live, so learn to act according to that model and you will be saved.”

 Still others teach, “Jesus was a perfect human being and by living by his principles and living our lives after the way he acted we can become perfect, too.”

 However, it is by no means the majority of mainline Protestant ministers who are guilty of replacing the cross with worldly wisdom. In evangelical circles, we’ve seen things such as Dr. Laura on “Focus on the Family” and conservative talk shows elevated to the same level as Christian teaching. The thinking in these cases goes that if man can be made more moral by returning to good old-fashioned values, that will make him more acceptable to God.

 Similarly, while I’m all for apologetics, including information on things such as creation and how Biblical prophecy is being fulfilled in current events, an identical attitude persists in these areas as it does in the area of morality. If we can just get people to see that God created the world or that the events described in Revelation are about to be fulfilled before the world’s very eyes, the thinking goes, that will make people get saved. Such head knowledge won’t get people saved unless it is accompanied by the preaching of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for man’s sin or unless the unbeliever has already heard about the events surrounding the cross at some time in their lives.

Chapter 3

 v15: If a minister of the Gospel who is genuinely saved preaches doctrines which are not heretical but are nevertheless incorrect, his preaching won’t be counted to him as good works on Judgment Day and he will not get rewarded, though he will still get into Heaven.

 V16: However, if a minister of the Gospel brings a teaching the nature of which will destroy the church, that is, God’s people, he will be sent to Hell.

 In the Catholic church it is all about things being holy, such as water, amulets, statues, and so forth. In the other institutional churches, it is quite similar. Things such as manmade organizations, positions and titles are made holy and the focus on the people themselves becoming holy before God is lost.

 V21-23: Contrary to what the prosperity preachers say, the reason God blesses us with all these things is because we are in Christ. We are in Christ because He did the will of the Father by going to the cross which also put us in God.

Chapter 4

 v4: Paul didn’t condemn himself, beating himself up for everything he did wrong, simply because he couldn’t see the end yet. Christians need to adopt a similar attitude. While plenty of Christians seem to think they’re already perfect, other Christians are constantly down on themselves for every little thing, real or perceived, they’ve done recently that didn’t or might not have been pleasing to God. If you feel this way, think of how you were before you got saved, think of how you were at various points in the early part of your walk with the Lord, then think about where you are now. Remember, just like Paul, you can’t see the end yet. Just know that you, as a blood-bought saint, are going on toward that perfection in Christ Jesus.

Chapter 5 

v5: It doesn’t really appear Paul was saying the man having sex with his young stepmother wasn’t a Christian. It seems from reading the text he wanted the Corinthians to put him out of their assembly so that he might come before the Lord and deal with his sin.

v11: In Chapter 5 Paul is essentially saying as follows:

 “Meanwhile, while you’re spending all this time over whether Appolos is a better speaker or whether so and so seems wiser as far as worldly wisdom is concerned, there is a guy in the body of believers there who is having sex with his stepmother. Additionally,” as I think we can infer from Paul’s list of sins here, “there are people doing other horrible things. Why don’t you concentrate on removing the fornicators, railers, drunkards, extortioners, etc. from your midst rather than on who’s the more appealing speaker.

Chapter 6 

v1-2: As Christians, we should not be suing each other in the first place, and Christians should not be getting into disputes about many of the things they dispute over. God gave us His laws for restitution in Exodus.

 Chapter 6 can be summed up as follows:

 “Not only do you argue over who the better speaker is while ignoring the fornicators and other such sinners among you, you are caught up in taking your (probably mostly petty) disputes before the pagan courts and suing each other. You’re supposed to be the blood-bought saints of God who will one day judge angels, yet your minds are only on your petty sleights. If it’s a petty matter where no one really was injured, just let yourselves be “defrauded. If it’s a serious matter, God gave us laws for dealing with it. As I’ve just spent the first few pages of this letter going into in great detail, God’s wisdom is superior to man’s wisdom. Therefore, why are you going before the unbelievers and letting man’s wisdom settle your disputes for you? You are supposed to be the righteous i.e. those who live right i.e. those who live according to God’s way He designed for man. Yet, in this matter, you are not living the way God designed for man. People who don’t live rightly won’t get into Heaven. You’ve been washed, sanctified and justified, so live like it.

 “Meanwhile, while you’re busy suing each other over mostly petty things, people in Corinth who call themselves Christians are using prostitutes. They reason (much like I’ve heard from some quarters of the world today) that since food benefits the body and we all need food to survive, then we should all seek out sex because that benefits the body as well. Your freedom in Christ isn’t freedom to do whatever you like. Your body is a temple where the Holy Spirit dwells.”

v16: Here we have God’s law concerning prostitution; anyone who sleeps with a prostitute has to marry her. That would decimate the sex trade pretty darn quick.

v12-20: A lot of Christians in the purity culture take this passage and passages like it far further than they need to be taken.

 Of course this passage also applies to spiritual fornication.

Chapter 7 

Man, has this chapter and many of the verses in it ever been taken out of context! I will have to write a whole post devoted to this chapter by itself.

 Based on 1 Corinthians by Geoffrey B. Wilson. London: Banner of Truth, 1971.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

This movie starts out with a tone which makes you think it is a fairly serious film about a young man dealing with the consequences of being raised in a fallout shelter. Then, at the point where he goes up to the surface, it turns into some screwball summertime comedy. I hate when movies do that.

There are probably lots of good serious films out there that deal with the theme of adjusting to the real world, such as films about coming out of prison after years of serving a sentence for a crime of which one was not guilty, or films about people coming out of cults. Perhaps maybe "Room" does justice to this theme.

WEATHER

So glad it's been so warm lately; the spring we didn't have.

REPLY AWL

As far as the item about making the harvesting of rhinoceros horns legal from the September 21 issue of Maclean's, it continues to amaze me how people will care so much about animals but not about the millions of babies who have been aborted.

As far as Emma Teitel's column in the September 28 issue of Maclean's: It's not a matter of portraying different races, as Tietel and other liberals think. If something's interesting, no matter what the ethnicity of the characters, people will watch it.


The October issue of Chatalaine was sure hypocritical, telling women they can have it all when they clearly can't have it all. You can't be the world's best mother, a CEO, the perfect homemaker, and wife of the year all at the same time. It's the same for men. Life involves trade offs and people need to learn to prioritize what's really important and live balanced lives.