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Japan Earthquake
Of the 11 stories about U.S. relief efforts on ABC, CBS, and NBC between Friday, March 11 and Tuesday, March 15, not a single story mentioned the Christian work of faith-based groups like Samaritan’s Purse, CRASH Japan, The Salvation Army, and others mobilizing to help ease the suffering. Faith-based efforts being ignored

Discussion

Mon, 03/21/11
that so many of these organizations expect to be publicized. Whatever happened to Christians doing good without expecting anything in return?
The evangelical craving for publicity and acceptance of the world has not changed.

Mon, 03/21/11
Re:
Of the 11 stories about U.S. relief efforts on ABC, CBS, and NBC between Friday, March 11 and Tuesday, March 15, not a single story mentioned the Christian work of faith-based groups like Samaritan’s Purse, CRASH Japan, The Salvation Army, and others mobilizing to help ease the suffering.
Must of missed this one re the Samaritan’s Purse

CNN Question: “How can God let such a thing happen?”

Frankin Graham: “God does not want this to happen. It was never God’s intention”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odvOVwRfpdg

Quite a contrast with John Piper:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/taste-see-articles/tsunami-…

(on occasion of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami)
1) Satan is not ultimate, God is.

Satan had a hand in Job’s misery, but not the decisive hand. God gave Satan permission to afflict Job (Job 1:12; 2:10). But Job and the writer of this book treat God as the ultimate and decisive cause. When Satan afflicts Job with sores, Job says to his wife, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10), and the writer calls these satanic sores “the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). So Satan is real. Satan brings misery. But Satan is not ultimate or decisive. He is on a leash. He goes no farther than God decisively permits.

2) Even if Satan caused the earthquake in the Indian Ocean the day after Christmas, he is not the decisive cause of 100,000+ deaths, God is.

God claims power over tsunamis in Job 38:8 when he asks Job rhetorically, “Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb … and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” Psalm 89:8-9 says, “O Lord … you rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” And Jesus himself has the same control today as he once did over the deadly threats of waves: “He … rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm” (Luke 8:24). In other words, even if Satan caused the earthquake, God could have stopped the waves.

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Jim's Doctrinal Statement

Tue, 03/22/11
NPR had a story this evening on All Things Considered about Japanese churches helping. They played “Oh God our Help in Ages Past” in the background of the whole story. NPR… it’s so liberal and anti-God.