For those of us who have been following the unfolding saga about the arrest of the four Acts 17 Apologetics members at the 2010 Arab International Festival in Dearborn, MI, but who are not directly involved with the case, the whole issue should be practically resolved now. (Even in the courtroom, if justice retains any real meaning in the state of Michigan, the matter should be practically resolved.) Acts 17 Apologetics not only did nothing wrong, violating neither the rules of the festival not the laws of the City, but even the incident for which they were arrested and are facing trial, “the Williams incident” that they have released the video footage of, demonstrates no wrongdoing of any kind. As I had indicated to Yahya Snow, they have argued from one video release to the next that they never violated any rules or laws, from the moment they entered the Arab Festival until the moment they were arrested.

When Officer Brian Kapanowski took Negeen Mayel into custody for questioning vis-à-vis the criminal complaint, for no lawful reason the Officer In Charge Sgt. Jeff Mrowka ordered that all four should be arrested immediately for Breach of Peace. He claimed that it was “due to their behavior” and for preventing “a possible riot or some other type of violence from erupting.” For this and other reasons, Acts 17 Apologetics have released numerous videos proving that during their visit and up to their arrest they did nothing wrong and neither riot nor violence was impending (and to refute further accusations against them by others, e.g., Mayor John O’Reilly who alleged that they were blocking a key exit, that they refused to disperse on police orders, and so forth). Sgt. Mrowka took a gamble that the complaint from Williams and the eye-witness testimony of Amal Alslami were factually correct, ordering the arrest of Acts 17 Apologetics. He went ‘all in’, as they say, and his gamble lost. Alslami gave self-contradicting statements to the police and Williams’ version of the events were factually incorrect—as the video evidence shows. The Williams incident was the last card left for their critics to play and, just like every other accusation, it got trumped by the facts.

For a breakdown of the accusations contrasted against what actually happened, please watch the video for yourself. Any commentary from me would only be a repeat of what Nabeel Qureshi has already said.

“How can an all-loving God allow a girl to get raped and mutilated by a sicko? The fact that God gave this sicko free will doesn’t sit well with us because this explanation doesn’t take into consideration the violated free will of the girl.”

If God is going to give free wills to His creatures, He has to allow for the possibility of them misusing that freedom, even if this means hurting others. To be significantly free is to be morally responsible, and to be morally responsible means being morally responsible to each other. What is the freedom to love or not love unless it is the freedom to enrich or harm another? God structured things this way because the alternative would be to have a race of robots who can’t genuinely love – but that’s hardly worth creating, is it?

So why doesn’t God intervene every time someone is going to misuse his freedom and hurt another person? The answer is found in the nature of freedom itself. A freedom which was prevented from being exercised whenever it was going to be misused simply wouldn’t be freedom. If you give pocket money/an allowance to a child and then step in every time they are about to spend this money unwisely (according to your judgement), completely controlling the way they spend it, is it really their money? Did you really give them anything? Is it not rather still your money which you are indirectly spending through them?

If God really gives us freedom, it must be, at least to a large extent, irrevocable. He must have, within limits, a “hands off” attitude toward it. God creates free people who can do as they please, not determined instruments who always end up doing what He pleases.

The horrendous evil we see people inflicting on each other in this world is a necessary possibility if this is to be the kind of world where love is possible. Even God couldn’t have it any other way.

Reference
Dr. Gregory A. Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic

Disclaimer
While the above post is the work of Greg Boyd (a confessed Open Theist), the Aristophrenium in no way endorses Open Theism. This post was intended to provoke thoughts and discussion on the topic of freedom and suffering, and not to promote a misleading or heretical doctrine.

This excerpt comes from a foxnews story; an August 2008 interview with a man who left Islam and Hamas after becoming a Christian.

JONATHAN HUNT: Do you believe that Israel can ever strike a peace deal with Hamas?

MOSAB HASSAN YOUSEF: There is no chance. Is there any chance for fire to co-exist with the water? There is no chance. Hamas can play politics for 10 years, 15 years; but ask any one of Hamas’ leaders, ‘Okay, what’s going to happen after that? Are you just going to live and co-exist with Israel forever?’ The answer is going to be no … unless they want to do something against the Koran. But it’s their ideology and they can’t just say ‘We’re not going to do it.’ So there is no chance. It’s not about Israel, it’s not about Hamas: it’s about both ideologies. There is no chance.

JONATHAN HUNT: Aren’t you terrified that somebody is going to try to kill you for saying these things — which would be approved of according to parts of the Koran?

MOSAB HASSAN YOUSEF: They got to kill my ideas first, (and) that’s it, they’re already out. So how are they going to kill my idea? How are they going to kill the opinions that I have? … They can kill my body, but they can’t kill my soul.

Throughout the interview Mosab tells how he began to realise that the consequences to the ideas of his former faith were very different to the consequences of Christianity – and this was a separate observation he made from the truth claims of Islam and Christianity themselves. As a Christian, I found the entire interview with Mosab quite edifying. But certainly on the subject of ideaologies, I think he nails it. Ideas have consequences.

__________________________________________________

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28)

I have a better idea for your consideration, Rick Warren:

I challenge any church in America to match the spiritual maturity, godliness and commitment of Jesus Christ.

And when you realize you don’t, repent daily.

~*~

(Rick Warren subsequently deleted this tweet. But since he did so without any comment, it is impossible to know his reason for doing so. We might pray that it was because he was convicted by the Spirit and repented. Nevertheless, it is illustrative as an object lesson.)

The Plumb Line Collective – Repent For the Glory of God

Are you right with the God who’s righteous
‘Cause the dangerous duty of delight is
Binding ‘cause his beauty’s the brightest
If you search the Scripts you’ll find this
He’s holy and beautiful! See the Throne!
Wholly inscrutable, ‘cause he alone
Is solely immutable! It’s irrefutable
Indisputable: delight is dutiful
So in response to the King’s royalty
It’s suitable to give supreme loyalty
Adoringly; lay low at his say-so
Elohim’s authority!
You’ll perish with inferior pleasure
‘Cause you don’t cherish the superior Treasure

The gates of Heaven I would never make it in
With a holy God who is forever hating sin
Used to love always committing the same sins
Then I got saved and I ain’t been the same since
Yeah I’m joyous that I’m saved but I’m still grieved
‘Cause I got friends and family that don’t believe
But I wanna cry for them, wishing I could die for them
Praying 2 Timothy 2:25 for them
Praying one day you’ll hate your sin
Read 2 Corinthians 7:8-10
God is sovereign, but it’s a choice you make
So please don’t wait until it’s too late
I don’t wanna leave you with the wrong conclusion
‘Cause God might send you strong delusion
Don’t think he won’t do it—man, that’s erroneous
For the record, just check it in 2 Thessalonians

Bow to the Way! Love to hate sin!
Now is the day of salvation
Don’t follow Satan; he’s the Great Deceiver
You don’t wanna repent; he don’t want you to either
Repentance is the the main thing you need to ask for
Heed what Peter was pleading in Acts 4
Stay up all night praying ‘til you pass out
‘Cause all who come to him he’ll never cast out
Revelation 3:19—tell us what he meant
He loves with rebukes; be zealous and repent
Is there anything we gotta tell more
‘Cause there ain’t nothing on Earth that’s worth going to hell for
Gotta chance to repent so you better take it
You wanna wait another day, but you might not make it
Please consider these 16 lines
Don’t be those in Revelation 16:9

• POLICE REPORT: “Acts 17 was harassing people, screaming at Muslims, and starting a riot!”
• MAYOR: “Acts 17 just wants to make Muslims look bad!”
• JUDGE: “Give them their cameras back.”
• DAVID AND NABEEL: “Here’s the footage, everyone. We told you they were lying.”
• MUSLIM: “Acts 17 is harassing Muslims? Let’s kill those guys.”
• CITY OF DEARBORN: “Here is David’s home address.”

Thanks, Dearborn. You just keep adding to your lawful conduct. It seems David Wood has discovered that the City of Dearborn has been releasing copies of the arrest reports with personal identifying information removed for everyone—except David Wood.

“Not long ago, someone forwarded me the report being released by the Dearborn Police Department. Nabeel’s address, Negeen’s address, and Paul’s address had all been taken out. My full name and home address, however, were prominently displayed on page six of the report!” Just when you think the City of Dearborn could not make themselves look any worse. They are piling up their legal miscarriages. Click here to read more from David Wood at the Acts 17 Apologetics blog.

Please keep David Wood and his family in your prayers. And remember that the God we serve is almighty and sovereign.

John 19:8-11,

When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

Now that… is interesting:

Former Time correspondent, David Aikman, interviewed the retiring head of state in Communist China in 2002, Jiang Zemin, and asked what he wished for in regard to China’s future. His response shocked Aikman and much of the world when he replied:

I would like for my country to become a Christian nation.

When asked why, Zemin’s response was an amazing revelation. He explained how a panel of Chinese scholars had spent twenty years studying why China continually lagged behind the West in science, industry, and culture. After considering every possible explanation, they concluded that it was the religious heritage of the West that had allowed it to reach such heights. [...] [As] Jiang Zemin understood, it is not just economic freedom that enabled America and the West to rise to such heights—it was its biblical worldview. There was purpose behind the prosperity. However, in the greatest economy ever developed, this most basic connect is being lost now in the United States. To the expressed shock of the leaders of the two most powerful former communist states—Russia and China—America, the forerunner and premier founder of the most powerful economic force in history, is now abandoning its biblical worldview as the former communist countries are embracing it.

Click here to read the full article.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
(James 2:14-26, ESV)

For many of those who reject the historic Protestant doctrine of Justification through faith alone (such as Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Churches of Christ, and Mormons, among others), James 2:14-26 is generally brought out the most commonly cited passage against Sola Fide in favour of a doctrine of Justification that includes meritorious works in addition to faith. Now, this verse (or at least the works-based interpretation of it) would appear to contradict other parts of scripture, such as Romans 3:28, which states that “a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” This has even led some to conclude that James was actually trying to contradict Paul (ignoring the fact that James and Paul were addressing two different audiences with two very different problems at hand). Thus, the apparent contradiction between James 2 with other passages such as Romans 3:28 should be resolved by careful exegesis and looking at the entirety of scripture in its proper context. Perhaps this would be a good time to take a look at James 2 and how this relates to justification.

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UPDATED: 10 August 2010, 5:07 AM (Pacific)

Jason Smathers, from the Witness Unto Me blog, has been continuing his research into the arrest of Acts 17 Apologetics and the charges against them. For just over a week he has been digging into “the Williams incident”—that is, the circumstances from which came the criminal complaint and for which Acts 17 Apologetics were arrested.

“The Williams incident,” of course, refers to festival volunteer Roger Williams, whose complaint to the Dearborn police serving at the Arab International Festival resulted in the arrest of the Acts 17 Apologetics team—Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, Paul Rezkalla, and Negeen Mayel—on charges of disturbing the peace. What we know for sure is that there are two versions of the events surrounding the complaint: there is the version that Williams reported to the police, and the version that Acts 17 Apologetics says the video camera recorded. The question of interest to all those following this story, and to Judge Mark Somers and the 19th District Court, is which version corresponds with the truth? Perhaps another way to put it: Did Roger Williams and Amal Alslami report to the police what actually happened?

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Arthur Vanick, Wayne Cowdery and Howard Davis, co-authors of the book “Who really wrote the Book of Mormon”, have come to the conclusion after years of research, that the Book of Mormon is the early 19^th century creation of a retired Congregationalist minister named Solomon Spalding instead of a historical record.

So, does the Book of Mormon hold up under scrutiny?

According to Vanick, Cowdery and Davis, the Book of Mormon contains some eye-witness testimony from people who claim to have witnessed Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon from golden tablets given to him from the divine realm. But extensive interviews of those eye-witnesses after the event revealed that they only witnessed the translation and the golden tablets with the “eye of faith”, and were not actual eyewitnesses physically present during the translation event or even witnesses of the golden tablets themselves. For example, they report of one particular instance where a pair of gentlemen who were with Joseph Smith at a pub/roadhouse, asked if they could see the tablets. His reply was no. Later, in his absence, when they had the opportunity to look under the sheet covering the tablets, all they saw were bricks. When confronted about this, Smith claimed that God knew they would look and transformed the tablets into bricks to confound them.

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