The Queensland false Messiah - AJ as Jesus

Our news has recently been awash with reports on the new reincarnation of Jesus in the person of Alan John Miller 47 in Kingaroy Queensland.
Not only does Alan Miller claim to be a reincarnation of Jesus the Christ, but also his "wife" Mary Suzanne Luck is a reincarnation of Mary Magdalen. So just as Luck would have it, they meet in a town in Queensland, Australia out of the 6 billion people on this planet. Coincidence? Well highly improbable but it's not on those grounds we dismiss him as a cult leader and deceived.

My daughter, just 13 years old observed, well that's easy to show as false - all you need to do is look for the holes in his hands and feet and in his side. But as I explained to her, although she is going down the right track, it would be dismissed by Alan and Mary because they are claiming to be reincarnations of Jesus and Mary.
Yet we as Christians can on at least two grounds dismiss this claim.
First it contradicts the Bible directly, and the Bible is the Word of God which Jesus himself gave full authority to. After all, his answer to the temptations from satan were "It is Written". In Hebrews 9:27 it says man is destined to live once, and after that face the judgment. This life is all one has. Reincarnation is a false teaching.
But secondly, Jesus with holes in his hands and side and feet as seen by the disciples after his death and resurrection, ascended to the right hand of God where he awaits the time the Father has determined to return in the second coming. He did not die to be reincarnated as someone else. He is at the right hand of the father - living! He with his resurrected body which reveal the scars of the cross will return in that same resurrected body at His glorious appearing.
So on two grounds this fellow Alan is mightily deceived and leading others astray in demonic deception.

We do well to know why this is deception and a cult, and be able to answer enquiries from unbelievers. And then to pray for these people to be convicted by God's Holy Spirit and find Christ, and in him eternal life, and life to the full.

In Christ,
Gary

Being on time - An African addresses this issue for us - will we listen?

I have observed that in our Australian culture it is becoming more evident that Christians don't worry at all about being late for anything.
And when it comes to Church, well it seems we ought to be grateful that they at least turned up!
Leaving aside the doctrine of Church, I recently had a discussion, very short mind you, with a friend about African time. And how many Africans they know are never on time for anything and their comments were that it was "a cultural thing". I observed that perhaps as Christians this was something that needed to be changed, and now it seems that we in Australia are also in need of that change.
I came across this blog by Pastor Conrad Mbewe where he addresses 'Africa time'. Have a read and see if you are not challenged by what he has to say.

your sometimes late, brother in Christ,
Gary

Osama Bin Laden a Narcissist

So much care needs to be taken when surfing the blogosphere. It is so easy to read a quote about something someone else has written out of context isn't it?
Take this quote for example,

Most of us, thank God, will never approach the wickedness he unleashed on the world. But all of us will wrestle with the same root pathology. That’s because, left to ourselves, we all share the same religion as Osama Bin Laden. It isn’t Islam; it’s self-worship.

When one reads that by itself, you might be tempted to say, hey yeh sure, but we cannot ignore that there was more to Bin Laden than self-worship. He was we must admit deceived, there was demonic deception involved in his adherence to Islam.

Yet in his intriguing blog on 'Osama bin Laden and the Terror of Narcissism' Russell D Moore astutely draws our attention to one pathology we all share with Osama. Indeed it is self-worship.
In a time when it's easy to delight in the death of a wicked man, that earthly justice has been carried out, we are aptly reminded of our own sinfulness out of which we have been redeemed and that the Gospel is there for each and every person, like Osama, like me, like you, to hear, if we will but proclaim it.

In Christ,
Gary