Discuss Theology

“In the last days, God declares, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my manservants and my maidservants will I pour out of my Spirit in those days”-Acts 2 The apostle Peter interpreted this passage as the predeictor of the Pentecostal-tongues event of the first century. Nowhere in the New Testament do we read that this phenomenon is gone or to be withdrawn by God. God said he would pour out His spirit, what group can stop Him? None!

From volume 15, we read, “THE DOGMA OF THE TRINITY: The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion-the truth that in the unity of the godhead there are Three persons, the Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three persons being truly distinct from one another.”

“When Joanne Whitcomb first took over as pastor of the United Methodist church of Esthampton, Massachusetts, she sensed that the main resistance to her authority came from the lay women.” [from Women in the Pulpit, Priscilla and William Proctor, p.75] I suppose we could deduce several conclusions from this, for me, the primary one is a desire for women to be non-accountable for their actions. Evangelicalism likes to teach that women have a covering and thus their “covering” is ultimately responsible to God for decision making. Nice but not true. We are all equally responsible to God for our decisions.

I received an interesting phone call this afternoon. A lady opened our conversation by stating that “most pastors in our town don’t support women in the ministry”. I chuckled and replied, “So, how about that, what else is new?” I suppose Amy Carmichael or Mother Teresa would have received the same kind of chilly response from our local pastors.

The Lycos 50 Daily Report with Dean

Poker is 2005’s #1 Online Fad…Again
December 5, 2005

One of the coolest aspects of The Lycos 50 is the ability to have a window into the pop culture fads that pulse in and out of our lives. For the second year in a row, Poker takes the number one spot as the most popular fad of 2005. Last year poker fever swept the nation and opened the doors of commercialization, profiting from sales of poker chips, books and gaggle of celebrity championships TV shows. However, this fad may be reaching overload with the upcoming poker-themed movie Lucky You, staring Drew Barrymore. Sorry, we’re gonna have to fold.

Happily this year we say goodbye to the diet fads of Atkins and South Beach. They are replaced by more practical fads like free credit reports and freecycle.org. The renewed interest in free credit reports is due to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act, which entitles every person in America to a free credit report each year. The credit report is one of your best weapons against identity theft. The reason the report is so important is because it is one of the only ways to learn if your identity has been stolen. If you lose your wallet or someone steals it, you may see the counterfeit charges appear on your monthly credit card statement, but you will never know if this crook has stolen your identity by applying for new charge accounts in your name. That’s because the thief will have the statements mailed to a different address or even PO Box. You might not find out until you apply for a mortgage or loan and get turned down for a bad credit rating. There is only one site where you can get a free credit report: AnnualCreditReport.com

The searches for RateYourProfessor.com have moved to the head of the class. The site is supposed to be a resource for students to visit and rate their instructors. All categories are based on a 5-point rating system, with 5 being the top. The categories include Helpfulness, Clarity, Easiness and a just-for-fun category “Hot or Not.”

The latest music causing a sweaty revolution in the dance clubs and burning up iPods is called Reggaeton. If you’ve been to a hip-grinding dance club lately, you must have heard the sounds of reggaeton. Reggaeton has its origins in the tough streets of 1980’s Panama, and flourished in the dance clubs of Puerto Rico during the 90s. And if Lycos searches are any indication, these sexy, ethnic, rap, dance music grooves are about to explode here in America.

Reggaeton believers feel this is more of a movement than a style of music. The beats, raps and drums speak of urban life for many in the Latin community. But what makes Reggaeton cross cultural barriers is its mix of reggae, salsa, meringue, hip-hop and rap. While the Hispanic population continues to grow three times as fast as the U.S. population on a whole, this unique sound is becoming the anthem for pan-Latin, pan-American youth.

The old adage, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, is evident at Freecycle.org. Searches for this progressive network, which promotes recycling, shot up 184 percent this week. What, you haven’t heard about Freecycle? Put your favorite ‘tree-hugging’ hat on and check out how these folks are making a difference in the world.

Flash back to early 2003, when Deron Beal, a recycling junkie, returned to the U.S. after living eight years in recycling-forward Germany. Beal was so overwhelmed by the amount of perfectly good items being thrown away, that he set up a nonprofit web organization called Freecycle, in order to connect people with items that would have otherwise been thrown away. This simple idea of ‘changing the world one gift at a time’ has evolved into a movement. Freecycle, which has more than 1.3 million members worldwide, is now talking about creating a worldwide gift economy. Imagine eBay without the exchange of money.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to get all touchy-feely here, but his approach of giving away something you’d likely otherwise throw away has made a difference. Each day, these folks keep 55 tons of solid waste out of land fills.

The only rule on Freecycle is that you can’t offer or request stuff that might alarm the community like guns, porn or fireworks. Some of the more interesting requests, however, vary from time machine parts, to half-used paint cans. If you have something that still works but you have no need for, check out Freecycle.org.

Speaking of things that have outlived their usefulness…fads that were hot in 2004 but not in 2005: Reality Shows, Atkins and South Beach Diets.

Here are the Top 15 fads for 2005:

1. Poker
2. iPod
3. RuneScape
4. Blackjack
5. Free Credit Report
6. Yoga
7. Rate Your Professor
8. Texas Hold ‘Em
9. Freecycle
10. Crochet
11. Scrapbooking
12. Kingdom Hearts II
13. Roulette
14. Reggaeton
15. Baccarat

As to where I stand: I think the fear of charismatic infiltration is legitimate and that the problem is real, but I still think the policies are wrong. I think the new policies need to be removed. I also think that we, as a Convention, are going to have to stand up and say “it’s enough.” Perhaps now would be a good time to do that. But all this talk about civil war and thirsting for power is too much, I think. Then again, I don’t know what Wade Burleson does.–As we have written before at Discusstheology.com “God bless the Baptists!’

Harvard Ph.D.,Gleason Archer cites eight Old Testament passages that relate to the trinity:Genesis 1:26; Psalm 33:6; psalm 45:6; Isaiah 48:16; Genesis 22:11; Genesis 31:11-13; Exodus 3:2 and Judges 13:20 Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, p. 359-361.

Helen Barrett Montgomery wrote, “In the history of the united States there are hundreds of pages devoted to the Pilgrim Fathers to one devoted to the Pilgrim Mothers…Yet their contributions are many and varied.” Guardians of the Great Commission, Ruth Tucker, p. 10

Missions historian, Patricia Hill wrote, “as so frequently happens in the writing of history, the women have simply disappeared.”Guardians of the Great Commission, Ruth Tucker, p.10 I find it amazing that complementarian teachers who so loudly applaud missions[even write books about missions] are as short sighted about this element of missions history as they can be.

A wonderful lady missionary spoke with me about being dishonored and simply not spoken to by men at the airport in Bangladesh and India simply because she was a woman. She described asking a question and having a man simply walk away from her without responding. Over and over, she said that men looked down onher simply because of her gender. Unfortunately, this reminds one of the way women are treated when they are told that they can not minister or lead simply because of gender.