Worth a Thousand Words

This picture needs little explanation. Our oldest got caught in the cat’s food and water. Notice that the water runs all the way to the back wall. The joys of parenthood!

Religious Leader Says He is Jesus & the Reincarnation of Paul

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, founder of Growing in Grace International Ministry, says that in a 1973 vision, Jesus Himself “integrated” with him. I will let you be the judge, but I personally miss the days when such heretics were treated as such.

Heretic? Is that just being judgmental? I’ll let you be the judge:

When the crowd spots him, it goes wild. People chant, “Lord! Lord! Lord!” It quickly becomes clear that they’re referring to him. “It’s Jesus Christ himself!” a preacher onstage announces . . .

. . . In 1998, de Jesus avowed that he was the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul. Two years ago at Growing in Grace’s world convention in Venezuela, he declared himself Christ. And just last week, he called himself the Antichrist and revealed a “666″ tattooed on his forearm. His explanation: that, as the second coming of Christ, he rejects the continued worship of Jesus of Nazareth.

Yes, heresy.

Give "When You Cry" a Listen

For those of you who have not heard Vertical Horizon’s “When You Cry,” click on the above link and give it a listen. Turn up your speakers and listen to one of the best album openers I have ever heard. It is on their MySpace page. The verse is unlike anything you’ll hear elsewhere. The off-beat syncopated rhythm is not like the interminable ear candy on the radio, neither is it just creative studio trickery. I’ve seen them twice live here in Louisville, and that song is tight live. It just hits you like a wall of sound; of course when you are banging on the stage 10 feet from the guitar amps on the front row because you got there three hours early, you hear everything. That guitar has fat tone. It’s thick. Listen to this reviewer:

[The band's] key ingredients – solid writing, a vast dynamic range, thundering rhythms, and vocal harmonies soaring over wave after wave of muscular guitar – kick into action during the opening seconds of “When You Cry” . . .

While you are there, listen to “I’m Still Here” and pay close attention to the bridge. Man, that’s great rock music. Even my two year old loves it. My wife loves it. My friends love it. My college students love this band, and it confuses them that their nerdy professor knows every line, every lyric, and every riff to every song, and likes it loud. “Yes, that thundering is coming from Dr. Joslin’s office.”

Again, Matt Scannell, where are you?

Matt Scannell, Where Are You?

For those who do not know who the headless guitar player is in the picture at the top of the page, it is the guitarist and lead singer for my favorite band, Vertical Horizon. I became a fan of theirs living in Dallas in the late 90’s, when someone gave me their live album, Live Stages. I was hooked. Playing live is the true test for a band, and Matt Scannell and Keith Kane were brilliant live. It is a great album and one of my all-time favs.

That led to buying everything with their name on it, going back to their early acoustic album There and Back Again (“Willingly” and “On the Sea” are worth the cost). I was thrilled (at the time) with the major label backing for Everything You Want, and was at the CD release party/concert in Dallas in the summer of ‘99 at the Gypsy Tea Room. I was glad to hear of their success, and eagerly waited for the next album, Go.

. . . and Go did not disappoint, musically-speaking, that is. RCA dropped the proverbial ball on this one, since most music fans have never heard “When You Cry” or any of a number of great songs on this album. Due to some glitch in the matrix, Go was never given the wings it needed, and that is a shame. Consequently, it seems that VH fans are left to play what CDs we have of this great band. If anyone has news of the whereabouts of Matt, Keith, Sean, and Ed (who it looks like has left the band), please post a comment.

This blog post is more of a lament than anything. These guys put out great music, yet their best album (in my humble opinion), Go, has gone largely unheard (except for the 1.1 million plays on their MySpace page).

Matt Scannell, Keith Kane, and Sean Hurley, where are you?

Unintended Consequences on a National Scale

BP has an article similar to my previous post.

Gender Selection in China – The Sins of the Fathers Borne by Their Sons

This is perhaps what the prophets meant when they said “I the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” (Deut 5:9-10). The sins of the Chinese fathers is bringing calamity on their sons.

A recent AP article (click on the link above) demonstrates what many anti-abortionists have been saying for years: population control in China will lead to a shortage of women to marry their men. Here’s an excerpt:

China will have 30 million more men of marriageable age than women in less than 15 years as a gender imbalance resulting from the country’s tough one-child policy becomes more pronounced, state media reported Friday.

This is due to the fact that in a culture such as China where boys are valued far more than girls, the girls are aborted, put up for adoption, or worse. China is unfortunately reaping what they have sown, or to put it more specifically, the sins of the fathers are being paid for by their sons.

In an effort to control population,

. . . one side effect has been a jump in gender selection of babies. Traditional preferences for a son mean some women abort their baby if an early term sonogram shows it is a girl . . . Sex selective abortion is prohibited but the government says the practice remains widespread, especially in rural areas . . . (But) The problem is not just a rural issue, with the newborn gender imbalance also widening in cities.

The answer to this is not to wave the feminist flag and speak of women’s rights (as the article does). We can speak of “women’s rights,” to be sure, but only insofar as the “right” of which we speak is the right to be born, as a creation of the Lord in His image. What we are seeing in China is the inevitable result of a nation’s contempt for the Creator (Deut 5:9), and a generation of Chinese boys are reaping the tragic effects.