The 2012 Great Lakes Pastors’ Conference

More information can be found here.

DATE:           Saturday, January 21, 2012, 1 pm

LOCATION:  Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1215 E. Apple, Muskegon

Muskegon County Right to Life’s annual “March & Memorial for Life” will be on Saturday, January 21, 2012.  The peaceful March will begin at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1215 E. Apple Avenue at 1:00 p.m.  We’ll walk down to the abortion clinic, Women’s Medical Services, say a prayer, and return to the church for warm refreshments.  The prayerful Memorial for Life will follow at 2 p.m. in Our Redeemer Lutheran Church and will include a memorial for the lives lost to abortion and prayers for all those hurt by abortion.  For more details call 231 733-6300.

Come and be blessed!

The early settlers of America, who braved the privations of those incredibly difficult years, were a fabulous lot, indeed. We can hardly imagine the burdens they endured to make a new life for themselves in a new land. Their turning point began one Friday in the middle of March, 1621.

Samoset

An Indian, wearing nothing but a leather loincloth, strode up their main street to the common house, and to their startled faces boomed in flawless English, Welcome.

His name was Samoset, a sagamore (or chief) of the Algonquins. He had been visiting the area for the previous eight months, having learned his English from various fishing captains who had put in to the Maine shore over the years.

He returned the following Thursday with another Indian who also spoke English, and who was to prove a special instrument of God for their good, beyond their expectation. His story was to prove no less extraordinary than the saga of Joseph being sold into slavery to Egypt. His name was Tisquantum, also called Squanto.

Squanto

His story began in 1605 when Squanto and four other Indians were taken captive, sent to England, and taught English to provide intelligence background on the most favorable places to establish colonies. After nine years in England, Squanto was able to return to Plymouth on Captain John Smiths voyage in 1614.

Lured and captured by the notorious Captain Thomas Hunt, he and 27 others were taken to Mlaga, Spain, a major slave-trading port. Squanto, with a few others, were bought and rescued by local friars and introduced to the Christian faith. Thus, it appears that God was preparing him for the role he would ultimately play at Plymouth.

He was able to attach himself to an Englishman bound for London, then he joined the family of a wealthy merchant, and ultimately embarked for New England in 1619. He stepped ashore six months before the Pilgrims landed in 1620.¹

When he stepped ashore he received the most tragic blow of his life. Not one man, woman, or child of his own tribe was left alive! During the previous four years, a mysterious plague had broken out among them, killing every last one.² So complete was the devastation that the neighboring tribes had shunned the area ever since. The Pilgrims had settled in a cleared area that belonged to no one. Their nearest neighbors, the Wampanoags, were about 50 miles to the southwest.

Stripped of his identity and his reason for living, Squanto wandered aimlessly until he joined the Wampanoags, having nowhere else to go. But God had other plans.

Gods Provision

Massasoit, the sachem (or chief) of the Wampanoags, entered into a peace treaty of mutual aid with the Plymouth colony that was to last as a model for forty years. When Massasoit and his entourage left, Squanto stayed. He had found his reason for living: these English were helpless in the ways of the wilderness. Squanto taught them how to catch eels, stalk deer, plant pumpkins, refine maple syrup, discern both edible herbs and those good for medicine, etc.

Perhaps the most important thing he taught them was the Indian way to plant corn. They hoed six-foot squares in toward the center, putting down four or five kernels, and then fertilizing the corn with fish: three fish in each square, point-ing to the center, spoke-like. Guarding the field against the wolves (who would try to steal the fish), by summer they had 20 full acres of corn that would save every one of their lives.

Squanto also taught them to exploit the pelts of the beaver, which was in plentiful supply and in great demand throughout Europe. He even guided the trading to insure they got full prices for top-quality pelts. The corn was their physical deliverance; the beaver pelts would be their economic deliverance.

The First Thanksgiving

The Pilgrims were a grateful people”grateful to God, grateful to the Wampanoags, and grateful also to Squanto. Governor Bradford declared a day of public Thanksgiving, to be held in October.

Massasoit was invited and unexpectedly arrived a day early”with an additional ninety Indians! To feed such a crowd would cut deeply into their stores for the winter, but they had learned through all their travails that God could be trusted implicitly.

And it turned out that the Indians did not come empty handed: they brought five dressed deer and more than a dozen fat wild turkeys. They helped with the preparations, teaching the Pilgrim women how to make hoecakes and a tasty pudding out of cornmeal and maple syrup. In fact, they also showed them how to make one of their Indian favorites: white, fluffy popcorn! (Each time you go to a movie theatre, you should remember the source of this popular treat!)

The Pilgrims, in turn, provided many vegetables from their gardens: carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, cucumbers, radishes, beets, and cabbages. Also, using some of their precious flour with some of the summer fruits which the Indians had dried, the Pilgrims introduced them to blueberry, apple, and cherry pie. Along with sweet wine made from wild grapes, it was, indeed, a joyous occasion for all concerned.

The Pilgrims and Indians happily competed in shooting contests, foot races, and wrestling. Things went so well (and Massasoit showed no inclination to leave) that this first Thanksgiving was extended for three days. The moment that stood out the most in the Pilgrims memories was William Brewsters prayer as they began the festival. They had so much for which to thank God: His providing all their needs”and His provision of Squanto, their teacher, guide, and friend that was to see them through those critical early winters.

A National Institution

By the end of the 19th century, Thanksgiving Day had become an institution throughout New England. It was officially proclaimed as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Traditionally celebrated on the last Thursday in November, it was changed by an act of Congress in 1941 to the fourth Thursday of that month.³

Originally observed to acknowledge the provision of God, let us also make this national holiday a very special time to thank Him for our own provision”our families, our sustenance and, above all, our redemption in His Son!

Lets also pray that He might restore the religious freedom that those early Pilgrims cherished so dearly”and that the current enforced paganism that has invaded our land be curtailed. This country is now becoming what the Pilgrims had risked their very lives to flee from.

* * *

Much of this article was excerpted from The Light and the Glory, Peter Marshall and David Manuel, Fleming H. Revell Co., Old Tappan, NJ, 1977.

The Newsroom at LDS.org posted this in response to the current controversy:

Recent political events have once again brought the “Mormons aren’t Christians,” “Mormons are a cult” epithets into the national spotlight. In his“On Faith” commentary this week, Church Public Affairs managing director Michael Otterson suggests why people make such claims and shares his own experience of being labeled not Christian.

Otterson says one problem is that half the U.S. population knows very little about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, he says, this may be changing.

“Research shows that people have a far better view of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they know a member personally,” Otterson says. “There is a point when those people who have seen Mormons caricatured in their Sunday School classes realize that the second-hand prejudices they have learned don’t fit with their first-hand experiences with faithful Latter-day Saints.”

Otterson’s commentary explains further:

If you try to track the number of references to Jesus Christ in the service, you may lose count. So just observe the families, listen to the prayers, leaf through the hymn book to see if any of the hymns seem familiar, and make up your own mind as to how Christian our people are. Jesus taught us: “By their fruits, ye shall know them.”

I think a great deal of confusion is happening because people aren’t defining their terms. The word “Christian” actually means something. It doesn’t simply refer to a person who follows the ethical teachings in the New Testament, nor does it refer to everyone who uses the name “Jesus.” Christianity entails an entire worldview—a particular view of God, man, salvation, purpose, heaven and hell, etc.

Christianity is a religion with one self-existent, eternal, Trinitarian God. In Mormonism, they worship a Father God (but many other gods exist for other worlds), who has a physical body and most likely has not always been a god, but was born into another world and advanced to perfection by following his Father’s plan of salvation. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are also gods.

Christianity teaches that men and women were created by a God who will forever be infinitely greater than His creatures. Mormonism teaches that we are of the same species as God (begotten in the pre-existence by Heavenly Father and Mother, as Jesus was), and if we follow the right path and fulfill all the requirements, we can become gods of our own worlds.

The same kinds of distinctions could be made in all the other areas I mentioned. These are not unimportant distinctions, they’re radically different understandings of core concepts. So it’s not an epithet to say that Christianity and Mormonism are very different—different enough to require different names. This conclusion is not a matter of emotion, fear, or hatred.

But I think perhaps when we say that Mormons aren’t Christian, we ought to take a moment to explain what we mean. We’re not saying they’re weird, scary people, or that they’re being brainwashed or controlled by a cult leader, or that they’re immoral. We’re merely saying that the word “Christian” actually means something, and it has meant that thing for centuries. To claim that their theology fits into that word is to misunderstand what is meant by “Christian.”

Mormons may believe that they are more truly following Christ and His plan of salvation than we are (since they have the restored priesthood, the temples, the covenants and ordinances, and more scripture) and so, are more deserving of the name Christian, but even if they were correct about this, to appropriate the name Christian now is to imply that they’re just another denomination, and that is just confusing and misleading. And to demand that we call them Christian is to ask us to say that the nature of God, man, and salvation—the very heart of Christianity—is unimportant, or at least, less important than mere moral behavior. It’s not fair or reasonable to ask this of us.

I think many Mormons aren’t familiar with Christian doctrine, and so they may not understand why we think our two religions are different enough to consider them separate religions. And to make matters more confusing, we use some of the same theological words but assume different meanings for those words. So if this issue comes up, take some time to define each term and explore the differences so they know you’re not saying they aren’t Christian out of prejudice or ignorance, it’s just a matter of recognizing the fundamental differences in our theology.

MUSKEGON — As Muskegon’s manufacturing sector is recovering from the Great Recession, L-3 Combat Propulsion Systems has had a difficult year but times could be getting better.

While a recovering economy has bolstered some surviving Muskegon-area manufacturers, L-3 as a defense contractor has had to face federal budget cuts as Washington deals with the national deficit and the winding down of two wars in the Middle East.

However, this week L-3 announced a major, multi-year contract with the Israel Ministry of Defense for the production and remanufacture of diesel engines for tank and armed personnel carriers. Company officials describe the contract as “significant.”