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Friendship Evangelism

Initially, we do need to scratch them where it itches before giving them the eternal-life-giving-food. If that means sugar-coating your bitter-pill (truth), by all means do it! But let’s not use a hosepipe to drive the amrutham down someone’s throat. Friendship Evangelism is evident in Jesus’ own ministry (Jn6:26-27). In 2Tim4:3-4, Paul is speaking of those who exchange the truth for a lie altogether; not merely in the coating.

This is not salvation-by-works as is often misunderstood. A coating is a coating. We should not go overboard in an attempt to please. Nor should we come across as a fake in our love for others. But any humanitarian aid should only serve as a sugarcoat to the eternal-life-giving-food. Use available resources for maximizing results both in quantity and quality. A point to remember here is that God does not usually call the Qualified, but qualifies the Called. But also remember that there are matthews, whom He calls, who are from the beginning, God’s works-in-progress.

In short: Give the beggar the eternal-life-giving-food. Sugarcoat if you must. If not this life, he will have the more enduring eternal-life.

Friendship here, is anesthesia before the tortuous incision by truth on the diseased hearts of men.

But in all this, let us never forget the example that Christ set for us in His costly caring for us. How we’ve been befriended! “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

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Many Ways or One Way?

Rosemarie Buxton of Episcopal Divinity School wrote in response to Professor Stephen Prothero’s book (God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter) and his article (Separate Truths) in the Boston Globe on April 25, 2010:

According to Karen Armstrong, the difficulties arise when one religion sets itself apart as the one religion and chooses to do anything to defend itself, a sin that many religions have been guilty of throughout history.

Coming from the pen of a Christian Divinity school graduate, i am very disappointed at the above statement.

Mankind is but one-kind. And so is creation-kind. Can an offspring say that he has two fathers or two mothers? That is not only vulgar but also foolish. That there is but one God, the creator of heaven and earth transcends any sort of debate.

Now, there are a lot of injustices that are going unpunished by the government(s). The socio, economic, political, environmental crisis we are seeing today is testimony of that fact. Justice is not being meted out to all. That is why the Bible stresses on the Day of Judgment, when the Lord of lords and the King of kings will be seated on the throne and render justice to the nations.

Now for this justice to be rendered with equity, there needs to be one law that is self-evident and transcends all other laws. This Law is the Law of Agape Love that Jesus kept and “exceeded the righteousness of the Pharisees” of His time and went and sat at the right hand side of God to judge the world.

“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for His friends” ~ Lord Jesus Christ (John 15:13). How much more “self-evident” and transcendent can you get.

To say that there are other ways or back-doors to God is an affront to the living God who is Jehovah Jireh–the One who provided this Way–an excruciating death for His son the Lord Jesus Christ only in order to fulfill the transcendent AND self-evident truth in John 15:13 as stated above. If there were indeed other ways then God was a stupid fool to take His son through this excruciating death. So excruciating that the Lord’s sweat turned into blood well before He was going to be crucified because He knew what kind of pain He will have to suffer.

So, i believe, after the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bhagavad Gita’s reference namely:

“As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!”

and

“Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.”

apply to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself–all streams have to end up with Him. In other words, at the Judgment Seat of Christ!

For more on these lines, please read this article especially tailored for an Agnostic or one who is secular: http://truthunleashed.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20

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China’s methods of subverting USA and INDIA

China made Toy GunThere is an insidious attack by the Chinese–it appears–to subvert India and other non-communist states. A case in point is how the Chinese toy industry is used to sabotage Gun-Control that states like India enjoy today.

I was shocked when i saw this gun in my son’s possession. He bought it by himself in a nearby shop for INR 30 (USD 0.75). It turned out to be a toy gun. I had to explain to him at length how when someone sees this in his possession, they might act in self defense and hurt him. My blood brother Sudeep Motupalli Rao from San Francisco was also with us on a conference to tell him that it is a slippery slope to the real thing. Very soon he would want to use the real guns to get back at someone he does not like. He told him how guns are designed to not merely hurt a person but to kill a life which has survived fifty, seventy years through the world system.

In the United States, it is mandated now to make Toy Guns with a color to reveal that they are toys.  But China, he said, has other ways that are also “insidious.” For instance, jewelery used to contain Lead but when the government banned import of Lead based Jewelery, China is exporting Jewelery that contains Cadmium, which is more dangerous than Lead. Sudeep holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering with a PhD in Environmental Engineering.

Coupled with this insidious attack through the toy industry, China through the Olympic committee  gave India the only Gold medal. Now every kid should imitate Bindra–the sole model for them.

Whether China is deliberately doing this sort of thing is everyone’s guess. China could very well be a puppet in the hands of a much greater force, namely the MNCs. What remains however, is that we are battling against principalities in the heavenly realms to safeguard our neighborhoods.

The first world where most of the MNCs have their headquarters know very well that it is the Standard of Living that determines free flow of human capital back to its roots. They saw the devaluation of the American Dream in the World Trade Center attack. They now want to rub off the same thing on other countries as well especially on vulnerable countries like India where the person who has a voice at all, wears merely handloom clothing, which in their eyes lacks sophistication and therefore an easy target. Khadi served to make India self-reliant during freedom struggle. But in the global economy which is dominated by services, India has to show its clout. I recommend Sherwanis for the Indian political figures and IFS officers rather than the demoted handloom dress code.

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Calvinism Debunked!

“Proponents who deny that salvation can never be lost, reason on the subject in a marvelous way. They tell us …..

That no virgin’s lamp can go out; (Matt. 25:8)
That no promising harvest be chocked with thorns; (Matt. 13:22)
That no branch in Christ can ever be cut off from fruitfulness; (John 15:6)
That no name can be blotted out of God’s book! (Rev. 3:5)
That no salt can ever lose its savor; (Mat 5:13)
That nobody can ever “receive the grace of God in vain”; (2 Cor. 6:1)
That no one can “look back” after putting his hand to the plow. (Luke 9:62)
That Nobody can “grieve the Spirit” (Eph 4:30) till He is “quenched,” (1 Thess. 5:19) nor
That Nobody, or body of believers, can ever get so lukewarm that Jesus will spew them out of His mouth. Rev 3:16
They use reams of paper to argue that …
If one ever got lost he was never found;
That if one falls, he never stood.
If one was ever cast forth, he was never in
If one ever withered, (John 15:6) he was never green.
If one draws back, (Heb 10:38) he never had anything to draw back from.
That if one ever falls into spiritual darkness, he was never enlightened;
That if you again get entangled in the pollutions of the world, (2 Pet. 2:20-22) it shows that you never escaped.
That if you put salvation away, you never had it to put away,
That if you make shipwreck of your faith, (1 Tim. 1:19-20) there was no ship of faith there.
In short they say:
If you get it, you can’t lose it: and if you lose it you never had it. May God save us from accepting a doctrine, that must be defended by such fallacious reasoning. (John Wesley)