Comments we received in regard to "Three Kings and Some Land": Hi Pastor Reagan, I have been studying in the book of Jeremiah and read the chapter you are quoting yesterday. My KJV Bible spells the kings name "Nebuchadrezzer" I checked my wifes KJV and it says the same thing. However you are spelling it "Nebuchadnezzar" I checked my concordance and it says these are the same. I was wondering if you had any insight as to why the different spellings. I don't think there are two different kings of Babylon. Just wondering??
Today's Wall Street Journal has an editorial on how the IRS is reviewing the content of sermons to see if it deems any of them to be political in nature. Under the ungodly and probably unconstitutional 1954 Revenue Act, churches risk losing their tax exemptions if they "participate in, or intervene is... any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for political office." For years this was interpreted very conservatively and very few problems arose. But now, at the instigation of groups like Americans United for the Separation of church and State (an anti-god and anti-Christian organization), the IRS is stepping into the churches.
Joshua Thomas (1719-1797) served as the pastor of the Baptist church at Leominster in Wales for almost 45 years. His history of the Baptists in Wales was published in the Welsh language in 1778. He published an English edition of his history in 1795. His history was considered a well-researched edition of Baptist history. Acccording to Hywel M. Davies in "Transatlantic Brethren" (p.142), Joshua Thomas insisted that the Welsh Baptists "were the direct inheritors of the legacy of pure, primitive British Christianity--the spiritual and ethnic descendants of the pre-Augustinian Celtic Christians, historically free from the taints of popery." This would take this strain of Christianity back to the time when the Roman Empire ruled Britannia; back before Augustine of Canterbury brought Catholicism to the Germanic Anglo-Saxon tribes that conquered England after the Romans had retreated. There was always a remnant of true believers even throughout the darkest of the Dark Ages. Some of those believers were in Wales.
A debate is heating up within the Southern Baptist Convention over the issue of Tongues. The Chicago Tribune reported today that the convention is struggling with whether or not speaking in tongues is an expression of religious devotion.
An editorial in today's Wall Street Journal reports on the growth of Anti-Semitism (hatred toward the Jewish people) in the Western world. It should come as no surprise that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leader of Iran, calls for the "destruction of Israel." But such hatred is getting much closer to home. The Nowegian writer Jostein Gaarder declared in Aftenpost, Norway's leading newspaper, "There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel... The time of trouble shall soon be over... The state of Israel does not exist."
