Sunday, May 20, 2007

The Crucifixion in Prophecy


One of the clearest prophecies of the crucifixion of Messiah is found in Psalm 22:16

"For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet."
(NKJV)

Written centuries before the coming of Christ, this prophecy is not only amazing because of the time-span between the writing and the fulfillment; the unlikelihood of a Jewish person to be killed by crucifixion was, at the time the prophecy was written, very unlikely to say the least. That method of execution would not be invented until centuries later.

Also, Jewish people would usually apply capital punishment by stoning in cases of blasphemy (which was the charge brought against Jesus by the Sanhedrin); what are the odds they would kill him any other way?

In the Book of Zechariah there are more scriptures that speak of the piercing of his hands:

"If someone asks him, 'What are these wounds on your body?' he will answer, 'The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.'"
(
Zachariah 13:6)

And then again:

"And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son." (Zechariah 12:10)

The context makes it clear that Messiah is in view.

The Bible, in spite of its critics, proves time and again that it is the Word of God. The exactness of its prophecies are one more evidence that it was really God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16).

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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Planned Parenthood vs a baby's smile

April 18, 2007 - Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Supreme Court has reversed a decision it handed down in 2000 and upheld a Congressional ban on the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure. The ruling indicated that the federal ban on the abortion procedure did not violate the so-called right to abortion established under Roe v. Wade.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court and indicated that the abortion advocates who sued to overturn the ban "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases."
President Bush signed the national partial-birth abortion ban into law in 2003 and abortion advocates took it to court in three separate lawsuits and federal courts in each case relied on the Supreme Court's decision in 2000 and declared the ban unconstitutional.

Calling the decision a "dark day," for the fight to keep abortion legal, Planned Parenthood president Cecille Richards sent out a fundraising email to the abortion business' supporters just hours after the decision.

"Your immediate help is essential as Planned Parenthood responds to the disastrous U.S. Supreme Court decision," Richards wrote in the financial plea.

She claimed the high court "turned its back on more than 30 years of Supreme Court decisions" promoting abortion, despite numerous decisions uphold pro-life laws since the Roe ruling in 1973.

"There is no way we will let this stand," Richards warned, adding that "Planned Parenthood lawyers and medical experts are carefully studying the justices' opinions, searching out ways to ensure" that it can continue doing hundreds of thousands of abortions despite "this reckless ruling."

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Hmmm. Let's see what the babies in peril of being killed with the partial birth abortion procedure think:




Sorry, "Planned Parenthood," I'll side with the babies on this one.

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