Why Tom Cruise Never Had Kids ...

While researching celebrities that have fought child sex abuse I came across this hilarious (if very disturbing) article on how Scientologists torture children.

"[Scientology founder Ron] Hubbard also believes that it's pretty difficult to make a child grow up to be a pervert, and his description of what can lead to perversions is an example of Hubbard's amazing imagination and facility for cataloging a variety of unbelievable tortures: 'Kicking a baby's head in, running him over with a steam roller, cutting him in half with a rusty knife, boiling him in lysol, and all the while with crazy people screaming the most horrifying and unprintable things at him.'"

Yikes.

And this is what one Scientologist taught her class of 3-11 year olds:

"Then came the death lessons.{11}

Miss Hoad told twenty-five of her pupils to "close your eyes. Concentrate. Now imagine you are dying. Imagine you are dead. Now you have turned to dust and ashes. Now imagine you are putting the ashes back inside yourself." These "death lessons," as they came to be called, were given behind locked doors with a "Do Not Disturb" sign outside, and the children were told "never think about these lessons after they are over," which suggested to many that she was warning the children not to tell their parents about it.

But one nine-year-old pupil became so depressed after the lessons that her mother had to take her to a doctor and she whispered the secret to him. Another child, after ointment was rubbed on her chest for a cold said "Mummy, I am going to die. I feel funny inside." That mother, who had perhaps heard about Hubbard's attaching an E-meter into plants to see if they could feel pain, said "Let Dr. Thompson inject his cucumbers when he thinks they are in pain. But let him leave my daughter alone."

All I can say is I'm GLAD Nicole Kidman left the man and took her two adopted children with her! Auditing sounds like brainwashing and you can even use it to totally wipe out your conscience, so it would seem ...

This is evil like I've never seen — bet even satan was pretty impressed.

Pop quiz: How many demons do you think would come out of Tom Cruise if we call upon the name of Jesus to release the poor man?

What a Mighty God we serve

Ever had one of those days where the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to the amazing Earth the Lord has created with simply words?

Pure sunlight bursting through a blue broth of clouds.
The tiniest green ladybird that He even places four red dots on -- what detail.
The scent of wet trees after the rain.
The mind-cleansing caress of a sudden breeze as you stand at the MRT platform.

Little reminders of just how much He loves this world, and how marvellous eternal life and our eternal dwelling is going to be.

I'm glad I know where I'm going.

KORN GUITARIST COMES TO CHRIST!

I saw this this morning -- it's a half-a-year old news but I'm still excited by it.

The guitarist of rap-metal band Korn (yeah those guys with the dreadlocks and scary lyrics) Brian Welch was a drug addict. He hit rock bottom -- and just when he did he was invited to church by a pastor from Valley Bible Fellowship.

In March this year he was baptised in the Jordan River in Israel. He has given his life to Jesus -- talk about crucifying your flesh! Killing your old man! He no longer lives but Christ lives in him.

He says: "This is the book of life right here," he said, pulling a Bible from his back pocket. "It's not about religion, it's not about this church, it's not about me. It's about the book of life and everybody needs to be taught this. It's crazy, it's gonna do stuff like this, like change a guy in a rock band."

He has new tattoos: "JESUS" on his fist, and "Matthew 11:28" on his back.

*sniff* I love happy endings. You can read the whole story here.

MTV also has its take and you can listen to clips of Brian talking about his new life.

What can I say? PRAISE THE LORD!

Does God Love Gays?

The short answer is "DEFINITELY YES!"

We are all creatures of God. Our God longs to see us discover the Truth and come back to Him. But whether or not we are children of God is another matter altogether. Only children get to inherit the kingdom.

Can gays be children of God? Yes. So can fornicators, murderers, liars, thieves — when they accept the work of Jesus on the cross, pronounce Jesus to be the Lord of their lives, and are washed by the blood of the Lamb.

If they do this with all their hearts, they will realise that they no longer have a desire to sin. They will want to live for Christ, and to obey His commandments, and to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. That means no more sin.

And yes they will be enabled by the helper God the Father sends to them, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to live only for Christ and to die to self.

I know this is true. I was addicted to a great many sins. The night I was baptised in the Holy Spirit, the anointing broke so many yokes and bondages that I literally overnight lost my wicked desires. I couldn't believe it. But suddenly I didn't have any urge to do any of the stuff I did before. It was like I was possessed (actually I WAS! The Holy Spirit had come to live and all the demons had to go, sorry, party's over). In fact when I walked in to my house after that I felt spirits in my house for the first time in seven years. Of course -- they didn't like the "stranger" I'd brought home! They were quickly cast out.

But I digress. I guess my point is this: if you are truly a Christian and you are fully given to the Lord (ie you have surrendered every bit of yourself to God, that is there is 0% of you and 100% of Him) I can GUARANTEE you, you will not have a gay lifestyle any more. It will be totally incongruous with your sold-out-to-Jesus self.

A homosexual lifestyle is a sin. So is blasphemy (which I think in fact is worse since it appears much earlier in God's list of don'ts), covetousness, murder, theft, lying, disrespecting your parents, and the mother of all sins: not putting God first in your life (aka having idols before Him. Idols can range from actual idols to things like money, your job, your husband etc).

So I refuse to get embroiled in the whole "attacking gays" thing. I don't approve of it.

I know the gay-Christian debate is a long and heated one. I probably know it better than most because Focus On The Family actually asked me to help them to put together a fight against then-PM Goh Chok Tong's embrace of all things gay (propelled no doubt by the pink tourist dollar).

I turned them down. I was neither ready nor did I agree with their full-on attack of gays. You don't win anyone to Christ by abusing them or making them feel like freaks. You show them that there is nothing the love of Jesus cannot overcome.

But YES, fundamentally, a homosexual lifestyle IS a sin.
- It goes against what God created Man and Woman to be (Gen
- God calls it an abomination (Leviticus
- He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrhoa which was a town given to homosexual promiscuity

There are many instances in the Bible that this is definitely not on God's "can do" list.

But let's at NO point forget that God also said no to idol worship and a long list of evils in the Pentateuch. A sin is a sin. If you are Christian, and you're doing something -- anything -- that keeps you away from God, LOSE IT.

It is that simple.

Why is the gay lifestyle so hard to break? Why do people who call themselves homosexuals not believe that they can be anything else?

Because we have been lied to and we have believed the lies:
- homosexuals are born not made
- once gay always gay
- be true to yourself
- you're too cool to be straight
- straight people are boring
- gay sex is hotter than straight sex (not true, all sex can be hot or it can be pathetic)
- forbidden fruit tastes sweeter
- every man hs the propensity to be gay
- nobody can love a woman the way a woman wants to be loved except another woman
- lesbian sex is gentle and loving unlike heterosexual sex
etc etc etc

Some people think it is or they want to make it a thing about hets vs gays. It is not about that at all, so get over it. Whether you are straight or gay, if you are a blasphemer and an idol worshipper, you are in the same boat. The gay person isn't "more wrong" than the straight. Because in God's eyes, a sin is a sin and what is Holy cannot be together with what is unholy.

The answer to every problem is Jesus. While we are placed in this world to be a light in the world, we truly are only pilgrims. This is only our temporary residence — and as Christians we all want to live in the mansion Christ has gone to prepare for us. So it really doesn't matter if you are gay (as in, you have had sex with someone of the same sex and tend to prefer having relationships with someone of the same sex). What is important is this:
- do you love Jesus?
- if you love Jesus you will obey Him
- if you obey Him you will not sin wilfully, ie you know a gay lifestyle is a sin (probably along with the lies, etc) then you will give that up willingly to follow him
- if you don't want to give that up then you are not dying to self. Keep praying and keep working out your salvation.

In order to come into the holy presence of the Lord we must be holy. We must be pure and our hearts must be 100% set on Him or we cannot enter into that sweet presence. If we have sexual impurity whether gay or straight, we cannot please God.

These are my thoughts on the matter, Part One. Another day I will share about my best gay friend and why I still cry when I think about him.

Festival Of Praise! Don't miss it!

If you're reading this and are free tonight (Sat 6 Aug or Sun 7 Aug), head down to Indoor Stadium by 6pm, and attend the Festival of Praise!

I went tonight and it was packed to the rafters -- and AWESOME!

Apart from an extraordinary heat from the lighting, the stadium was filled with the awesome presence of God. Anyone who remotely would like a refreshing touch of the Lord, don't miss this.

The 2 bands playing are Hillsong (which everyone knows) and Delirious? a UK band that has hit the Brit Top 20 before. They RAWK! I know their songs, like History Maker, Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble, and the ever popular I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever, but I don't own a Delirious CD. Well! I will now! Rocking for God is quite a new experience for me -- Hillsong's joyful sounds are more the stuff on my iPod but if you like U2 you will like Delirious. They kick bigtime demon butt.

The guest speaker who preaches on Apostolic Faith (as in bold, not-shy, incredible, dai-dum sort of faith) is Rev Colin Dye of Kensington Temple of London, poss the largest and fastest growing church in the UK with 12,000 in its congregation.

My son had fun jumping to One Way (Jesus)! It was great to share a concert with my kids (although they ended up going home early when the preaching started).

Awesome. Indoor Stadium. Get there by 6 -- doors open 6.30. Concert starts 7.30, ends 10.30. You won't regret it. The altar call was mighty amazing -- streams of people responding to the touch of Jesus and asking Him to be their personal saviour and friend.

In moments like these, I cry tears of joy.

Heaven Is So Real!

I have just finished an incredible book, Heaven Is So Real! by Choo Thomas.

I admit when I first passed it by I picked it up, looked at the "aunty" at the back plus the blurb which was filled with exclamation marks, that I laughed and put it back.

A friend mentioned it to me and I figured, If I have the time after all my Smith Wigglesworth books ...

I passed it by again last weekend at the Life! bookstore at Parkway Parade. I decided to get it. I read it in 2 days.

The language is not fantastic, because Choo Thomas is a Korean lady, not very well educated, who married an American. She is just a really humble little obedient servant girl of the Lord and that's that!

From 1996 over a 7-year period, Jesus Christ appeared to Choo Thomas, and brought her to heaven. In this book she shares all these incredible things she has seen in heaven: the mansions that Jesus promised his children in John 14:2; the pit of hell where she saw her own mother; she even goes fishing with Jesus.

Jesus did this so that He could prepare Choo Thomas to write this book, this end-time work that would encourage the faithful who love Jesus and are following his commandments, and to warn all lukewarm Christians and unbelievers to get right with Jesus because He is coming soon!

Admittedly some parts of the book shocked me, like her description of where lukewarm Christians go: she saw them walking dejectedly near the pit of Hell, vs the rich, beautiful, intense Heaven that we all want to go to. This I'm sure will be criticised and pooh-poohed by bible scholars but you know what, many of the details of her visions are identical to what I've seen in visions given to me, so I tend to believe that she's speaking the truth. As Rev David Yonggi Cho says in the foreword, this is not a doctrinal book, but a personal account of one woman's experience with the Lord Jesus.

I do recommend it highly -- it's not the most well-written book but it is very passionate and I'm sure you will be blessed and maybe even feel a deep longing for a similarly deep experience of Christ.

This is meant to be an End-Time book that will convince non-believers and lukewarm Christians to get right with God and FAST. The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night -- and there will be no more bargaining then. It's Heaven or Hell.

I admit it disturbed me, the thing about lukewarm Christians. Jesus said that He will spit them out (Rev 3:16). And there will be those who go think they're doing all the right things but have never known Jesus or don't obey His Word (Luke 13:26-27) to them Jesus will say He never knew them either. The road is very very narrow indeed. Our salvation is not secure till the last day, guys. We are to work it out, with fear and trembling. I DO fear and tremble -- good grief, I'd never want to lose this! But if we let the devil get a foothold, the foothold can become a milehold, and we can be lost.

I pray for all who read this blog that we might go from strength to strength in our walk with Jesus. That has amazing rewards in itself -- just see what Choo Thomas received when she simply chose to be obedient. I pray all of you to experience and to walk in the perfect will of our God, which is always good!

Heaven Is So Real! is available at most Christian bookstores for S$16.90.