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There is only ONE God and His Name is Jehovah and Jesus Christ is His Only Begotten Son!
Having got that premise firmly in view I wanted to demonstrate something that has been rather obvious to me and I would hope to many others in these turbulent times. The term “Fundamentalist” has of late, been more attached to Islamic militants than anyone else, but if they are truly fundamentalist in their views, then we once again have an extremely obvious view that Islam and Allah are totally remote to Christianity and the One True God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Jehovah stated in scripture that He never changes and yet Islam presents a god who is totally different and tries to persuade the world they are one and the same – NOT!!
A fundamentalist Muslim aims to take over the world for his god Allah by any 
means possibly, and most usually violent. We are truly back to the dark ages of “Convert or Die” where militant Islam is concerned and while I accept that many Muslims are not in the least desiring to take their faith to that extreme, there’s no escaping the fact that the Koran does indeed demand it of all “good” Muslims – that they take the Christians and the Jews and either offer them safety by conversion to Islam, or kill them as apostate if they won’t. Fundamentalist Islam is a bloodthirsty, uncompromising, utterly militant belief system which enables those who’re of that mindset to start with, to then use the Koran to their advantage in stating that they are fighting for god – their god (intentional lower case!) has little interest in mankind other than to gain as many numbers as possible and rule the world by whatever means possible. Fundamentalist Islam removes all choice for any individual stating that they must become a Muslim or die. Fundamentalist Islam serves a god who is against everything Jehovah stands for – love, freedom and choice.
A fundamentalist Christian on the other hand should equally wish to take the world for God, but is mandated to do so by love, not war, and to respect the will of mankind to choose freely what they wish to believe. Ours is a task of words not swords! We don’t do any converting ultimately because we recognise that we don’t have any power to do so. We can only provoke interest and provide information and the Gospel message and it is then the Word of God that strikes deep into the heart of man like a searchlight revealing the depth of sin, the need for repentance, the desire for forgiveness and the will to submit to the only One who can provide ALL that we need. Conversion is not an act of the will, but a spiritual act of Grace from an Almighty God who desires that all sinners would accept their sinful state before Him, and seek His forgiveness through the awesome and incomprehensible sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ.
Despite the fact that I consider Christmas a pagan celebration and more things wrong with it than right I’m no different to many in enjoying some of the things that go with it – I’m a sucker for lights while I won’t have a tree and love much of the music although very selective in what I’ll listen to routinely. And when looking at some of the searches being undertaken that seem to be centering around these things I figured I could maybe help some people out on places to find what they’re looking for more than on my site 
For the best of alternative Christmas music – i.e. orchestral more than sung – you can’t beat the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) renditions of many of the familiar songs – some are truly fast and furious. While I actually do quite like Classical music I’m not huge on it as some would be, but could listen to TSO (not true classical) forever – some of their music has such a strong rock beat I have to be really careful playing it in the car!! Check them out at: http://www.trans-siberian.com/multimedia/index.shtml - while they only provide a small selection of samples there, they’re full songs at least which is nice. Plus if you then head to Amazon and do a search for them you’ll be able to find some of the other songs on those albums and the absolute BEST in my view is Siberian Sleigh Ride from the Lost Christmas Eve album – great for all you rocker children out there LOL! For those of you fortunate enough to live in the US look them up on tour and go check them out as I bet they’re a ton better live than on CD!
And of course the other musical great of a similar genre is Mannheim 
Steamroller – probably more familiar to many than TSO perhaps but equally awesome. Catch them at: http://shop.mannheimsteamroller.com/ and of their many excellent songs I would have to go with their Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah – definitely a new and well vamped up twist to it. Found on their Christmas Extraordinaire album amongst others.
For solid Christian Christmas media concepts and teaching e.g. for websites or personal pages etc – try some of these:
http://www.geocities.com/heartland/fields/8616/christmas/mychristmas.html
http://www.teacherhelp.org/chris.htm
http://www.joyfulheart.com/christmas/
There’s a lot more out there than I could ever bring to your attention – so go do some judicious searching yourself and see what you can find – and if you find other similar music to my favourites here, please provide me info – open to any good and relatively wholesome music with a good beat.
And trust me there are so many it’s hard to know where to start. And not often I put out two posts in one week but some things are too important to keep sitting on for too long, and I just heard this tonight – courtesy of Sermon Audio (and Way of the Master Radio) so some of you may already have heard it:
All I can do is plead with any of you who consider Joel Osteen to be good – to remember that what the world deems good is not necessarily what GOD does! God requires His people who are called by His Name i.e. Christians, to heed His Word over and above the words of men, but also to recognise that the Gospel was paid for by a very high price – the highest possible to be paid – a Life! Joel Osteen is providing nothing more for his followers than any other good motivational speaker out there. He provides a false sense of security and is dooming his followers to at the very least – a huge judgement for their lack of discernment, at worst – eternal death because they believed a man’s words over God’s Word and Osteen gives the impression that God wants man to be happy not to have to confront their sins and repent in order to be saved! You should know that if you believe that, you are not going to get to heaven by any stretch. And telling God (if such a thing were even possible!) when He judges you that you weren’t aware of your mistake or that Osteen said all the right things and you thought he knew what he was talking about will serve you no good then. God provides everyone with ample opportunity to discover the Truth in the lifetime they’ve been given (bar those who die before an age of responsibility) and none of us will have any capacity to dare to try to defend ourselves at Judgement before a Just and Holy God the magnitude of Whom we have utterly no comprehension. We have dared to make God in our image and thus we dare to think He will deal with us as we would perhaps deal with someone here who’d made mistakes in their lives – but if you truly read scripture and especially those passages where God talks about Himself and His view of mankind you would learn otherwise.
And if you do desire to know Him better I would suggest you read His Word first, man’s words second and your own words last – in other words give God His rightful place in your life, listen to solid and truthful exposition by those who obviously do the same e.g. Paul Washer, John MacArthur, Chuck Missler etc, and learn to allow God to tailor your own views accordingly with continual prayer for discernment while doing so.
For some that statement won’t come as any surprise since many have come to recognise its Truth. But sadly, it’s more common to hear how Catholics are of late being taught the opposite and indeed worse – that Mary not only is the mother of God, but was also sinless and thus equally able to answer prayers and become a 4th person in the Godhead – sorry, but that’s exactly what they’re stating – if she was sinless and capable of forgiving sins then she is GOD and thus also gains that additional title. That’s the main reason the Pharisees were condemning Jesus – because He claimed to be able to forgive sins. However, while I could very easily spend a whole post pulling this whole concept to shreds very easily – one scripture alone amongst others shows very clearly that Mary herself knew that was never the case:-
Luke 1:46-47 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
In other words, Mary recognised that she was a sinner before God in need of a Saviour and He was providing the same. But aside from that aspect, I wanted to provoke you to think a little deeper than the usual way in which we all (esp Protestants) think of Mary in any respect in her relationship to Jesus. When Gabriel appeared to Mary and she was granted the awesome prospect of becoming a parent to the future Messiah and King of Israel and the world, she was specifically told that the Holy Spirit would undertake something amazing in her body:
