First Baptist Church in Fernwood, NY » Uncategorized

Obamacare

Pastor Scott Griese — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 22:17:56 +0000

A retired Constitutional lawyer has read the entire proposed healthcare bill.
The Truth About the Health Care Bills – Michael Connelly, Ret. Constitutional Attorney

Well, I have done it! I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200:

The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular

emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law. I was frankly concerned

that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional.

What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.

To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in

fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying. The law does

provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other

classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion
services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical

profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and

put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care

will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care
professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of

necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.

However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have

concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health

care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of

power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been
contemplated If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution

of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the

Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. The Congress

will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas

over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.

The irony is that the Congress doesn’t have any authority to legislate in most of those

areas to begin with! I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any

authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration,

of all of your personal healthcare direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th
Amendment to the Constitution information, your personal financial information, and the

information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a protecting against

unreasonable searches and seizures. You can also forget about the right to privacy.

That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th
Amendments may provide.

If you decide not to have healthcare insurance, or if you have private insurance that is not

deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will

be a tax imposed on you. It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to
avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn’t

work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the

imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the due process

of law.

So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much, out the

original ten in the Bill of Rights, that are effectively nullified by this law It doesn’t stop

there though.

The 9th Amendment that provides: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,

shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;

The 10th Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the

Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively,

or to the people. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither
the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas

that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea.

This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights…

Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress

to “be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.” If I was a
member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like

it, without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation. If I voted for it anyway,

I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult the source,

the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about

to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton, Texas

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/connelly.asp

Climate Change

Pastor Scott Griese — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:17:40 +0000

THE CLIMATE CHANGE MAFIA EXPOSED

(Friday Church News Notes, December 4, 2009, www.wayoflife.org; fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) –

The following is excerpted from “Climate Change: The Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation,” by Christopher Booker, The Telegraph, Nov. 28, 2009: “A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term ‘Climategate’ to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times.

… The reason why even the Guardian’s George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports.

… his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely–not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it. Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.

… The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC’s scientific elite … There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious … is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

… The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction–to lower past temperatures and to ‘adjust’ recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming.

… The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods–not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics’ work.”

The Sphere of Humiliation

Pastor Scott Griese — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:36:57 +0000

“If Thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.” Mark 9:22

After every time of exaltation we are brought down with a sudden rush into things as they are where it is neither beautiful nor poetic nor thrilling. The height of the mountain top is measured by the drab drudgery of the valley; but it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God. We see His glory on the mount, but we never live for His glory there. It is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to God, that is where our faithfulness is revealed. Most of us can do things if we are always at the heroic pitch because of the natural selfishness of our hearts, but God wants us at the drab commonplace pitch, where we live in the valley according to our personal relationship to Him. Peter thought it would be a fine thing for them to remain on the mount, but Jesus Christ took the disciples down from the mount into the valley, the place where the meaning of the vision is explained.

“If Thou canst do any thing . . .” It takes the valley of humiliation to root the scepticism out of us. Look back at your own experience, and you will find that until you learned Who Jesus was, you were a cunning sceptic about His power. When you were on the mount, you could believe anything, but what about the time when you were up against facts in the valley? You may be able to give a testimony to sanctification, but what about the thing that is a humiliation to you just now? The last time you were on the mount with God, you saw that all power in heaven and in earth belonged to Jesus – will you be sceptical now in the valley of humiliation? — Oswald Chambers

Scales of Justice

Pastor Scott Griese — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:25:01 +0000

For most of my life I pictured living it as a scale: I did just enough good things to outweigh the bad. The problem is that my idea of “good” and God’s idea of good are two different things. God woke me up to the fact that it does not matter how many “good” things I do that will gain me entrance into Heaven, it is whether or not I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour and repented of my sin.

Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: (9) Not of works, lest any man should boast. (10) For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Even after I was born again, my good deeds are worthless if they were not done in obedience to God.

Romans 4:1-5 What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? (2) For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. (3) For what saith the Scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (4) Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. (5) But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

The wonderful message in Romans 4:4 is that God justifies the ungodly! That should excite everybody! Abraham was not saved because of the things he did, but because of his faith toward God. The things he did were the result of his salvation. Please do not rely on working your way to Heaven.

This cartoon is found at:

biblebelievers.com

Isaiah 9:6

Pastor Scott Griese — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:30:14 +0000

http://biblebelievers.com/pace_album/index.htm

Pres. Obama on TV

Pastor Scott Griese — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:49:11 +0000

This is a good column by Howard Fineman. I do not know anything about Mr. Fineman, but I think he is right on the money with this column.

If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not. Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He’s a man with an endless, worthy to-do list—health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked “done.” This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he’s not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

Read the rest here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216210?GT1=43002

Rob Bell: The Drops Like Stars Tour

Pastor Scott Griese — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 01:19:21 +0000

Rob Bell, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church is going on tour. The name of the tour is: The Drop Like Stars Tour. The promotion reads:

We plot, we plan, we assume things are going to go
A certain way and then they don’t and we find ourselves
In a new place, a place we haven’t been before, a place
We never would have imagined on our own,

And so it was difficult and unexpected and maybe even
Tragic and yet it opened us up and freed us to see
Things in a whole new way

Suffering does that—
It hurts,
But it also creates.

How many of the most significant moments in your
Life came not because it all went right, but because
It all fell apart?

It’s strange how there can be art in the agony…

The Drops Like Stars tour is a two
Hour exploration of the endlessly complex
Relationship between suffering and creativity—
And I’d love to see you there.

Rob Bell

Tickets: $20

Is Rob Bell going to speak at all about Jesus Christ, God, the Bible, or salvation? I see no indication that he is from the promo. His website gives no indication that he will be speaking about Jesus Christ. His Facebook page gives no indication that he will be speaking about Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, went “on tour” three times and never stopped talking about Jesus Christ. Paul said: Act 26:20-23 But showed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance. (21) For these causes the Jews caught me in the temple, and went about to kill me. (22) Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: (23) That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.
Tickets are $20 at the location Rob Bell spoke at in Boston. While that is cheaper than going to concert, it still seems odd to charge admission. The Apostle Paul wrote: 2Thessalonians 3:7-9 For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; (8) Neither did we eat any man’s bread for naught; but wrought with labor and travail night and day, that we might not be chargable to any of you: (9) Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an example unto you to follow us. The Apostle Paul went to great extents to make sure that he did not present a poor Christian testimony. He worked alongside everyone at Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus, etc. He built tents and he did not expect anyone to wait upon him.
Rob Bell plans to explore the connection between suffering and creativity. There may be a connection, however, God should be central to this conversation. Romans 8:16-18 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: (17) And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. (18) For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
The name of the church Rob Bell founded is Mars Hill Bible Church. With a name like that, you would think he would include at least a Bible reference in his promotional materials.
Keep watching, this what the “church” is evolving into…

Well Fed

Pastor Scott Griese — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:26:13 +0000

There was an article in a church paper entitled, “32,850 Sermons Later.” It started off with a letter printed in the British Weekly from one of their English readers. The British letter went like this:
“Dear Sir,
‘It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending a church quite regularly for the past 30 years, and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my consternation, I discovered that I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitably spent on something else?
“Sincerely….”
For weeks a real storm of editorial responses ensued. The uproar finally was ended by this letter:
“Dear Sir:
“I have been married for 30 years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals-mostly of my wife’s cooking. Suddenly, I have discovered that I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet, I have received nourishment from every single one of them. I have the distinct impression that without them. I would have starved to death long ago.
“Sincerely….”

Psalm 101

Pastor Scott Griese — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:30:28 +0000

Psalm 101:1-8 A Psalm of David.

I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O LORD, will I sing. (2) I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. (3) I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.

(4) A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person. (5) Whoso privily slandereth his neighbor, him will I cut off: him that hath a high look and a proud heart will not I suffer.

(6) Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me: he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. (7) He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. (8) I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the LORD.

God’s Love part 1

Pastor Scott Griese — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:57:54 +0000

Titus 3:1-7 Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, (2) To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men. (3) For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. (4) But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, (5) Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; (6) Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; (7) That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

The last two weeks we have looked at worshipping God and how it is to be done. God is the only one worthy of worship because who He is: God is the Creator of all things. This week we are going to try and look at the love of God. This is a difficult task because who do I even try to explain God’s love? God’s love is immense and immeasurable. And we are so very unworthy of His love, yet He willingly and abundantly gives it to His children. There is absolutely nothing that we have done to merit His love and truly, before salvation, we did not really desire His love. We may have said with our lips, “I love God”, but our bodies and our thoughts showed otherwise. Even now after salvation we push Him aside so we can follow our own wants and desires. We partition God into a segment of our life, sort of like keep Him in a closet and pull Him out when we feel like it or need Him. If I took my children or my wife and put them in a closet and for about ten or fifteen minutes of the day I take them out and talk to them and then decide that I have met my obligation so I return them back to the closet, does that make sense? Of course not, but why do we do it with God? We are to interact with Him all day and night long! You walk into a fancy cathedral church: it has the stained glass windows, gold trim, candles, paintings, intricate woodwork and it seems like a fantasy, because when you walk back outside reality hits you square on in the face. Our worship of God should be based on reality not fantasy, because He is REAL! Is He real to you? He should be. He LOVES you and we should return that love back to Him. He gave us our next breath, we should return that breath to Him in worship because of His Love for us.