Jonathan Carl

Quote - George Herbert

"The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition." George Herbert

A Christian Search Engine - www.seekfind.org

Are you ever concerned about what will pop up when you do a search on a computer search engine? Have you ever wanted to limit your search to trustworthy Christian resources? Check out http://www.seekfind.org/

Here is a little about it from its own website:

"The mission of SeekFind.org is to provide God-honoring, biblically-based, and theologically-sound Christian search engine results in a highly accurate and well-organized format."

"SeekFind.org is a unique “Christian-content-only” search engine. The major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves often produce quality results for searches related to Christian terms. However, mixed in with these search results will be results from pages attacking the Christian faith and/or presenting unbiblical views. For example, a search for “Jesus Christ” at Google will result in page 1 listings from the Mormon church, a genealogical service, and a secular history of views about Jesus.

There are several Christian Search Engines on the internet as well. Good examples are ChristianStart, CrossSearch, and ChristSites. While these are good websites with some great tools – they are not as discerning as they should be in regards to what kind of content they allow in their listings. Further, most Christian Search Engines only index the front page of a website. As a result, all of the great content on inside pages of websites gets missed entirely.

SeekFind.org avoids these problems by only indexing websites that are Biblically-based, theologically-sound, and in agreement with our Statement of Faith. That way, you can have confidence that you will find content which will be God-honoring and spiritually encouraging. Further, the SeekFind.org “spider” crawls every page of the websites in our index – giving you the most complete and most accurate results possible."

Christian Quotes - The Church - Part 1

"The bible knows nothing of solitary religion." John Wesley "Church attendance is a vital to a disciple as a transfusion of rich, healthy blood to a sick man." D.L. Moody "One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always." A.W. Tozer "The true man of God is heartsick, grieved at the worldliness of the Church...grieved at the toleration of sin in the Church, grieved at the prayerlessness in the Church. He is disturbed that the corporate prayer of the Church no longer pulls down the strongholds of the devil." Leonard Ravenhill “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become unity conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The body becomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole church of God gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and a higher life." A.W. Tozer From: http://christianquotes.org

Quote - Owen Feltham

"All men will be Peters in their bragging tongue, and most men will be Peters in their base denial; but few men will be Peters in their quick repentance." Owen Feltham

Ecclesiastes 5:2

Ecclesiastes 5:2 "Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few."

Christians & Pornography - A Growing Problem

How big of a problem is pornography in America? Among Christians? The below statistics are unsettling: Some statistics from the North American Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention:

Sixty percent of Christian men have sought out some form of pornography.
At one Promise Keepers event, 50% of those in attendance said they had checked out pornographic material within the past week.
Fifty-nine percent of married Christian men regularly fantasize about sexual relations with someone other than their spouse.
Ninety-one percent of men raised in Christian homes were exposed to pornography while growing up (compared to 98% of those not raised in a Christian home).
Fifty-one percent of pastors admit that pornography is a possible temptation
Thirty-seven percent of pastors say that pornography is a struggle
A survey conducted by Christianity Today of its readership in August 2000 revealed that…33% of clergy have visited a sexually explicit Internet site at least once within the past year, of which 53% have done so “a few times.”
A survey conducted by Leadership magazine in 2000, showed that 40% of pastors have visited a pornographic Internet site, with over 33% doing so within the last 12 months. According to a study done by MSNBC…
as many as 25 million Americans spend 1-10 hours per week viewing Internet pornography
as many as 4.7 million people spend over 11 hours per week viewing Internet pornography
Sixty percent of websites visited on the Internet are sexual in nature.
Seventy percent of Internet porn traffic occurs during normal work hours (between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.).
There are more outlets for hard-core pornography in the United States than McDonald's restaurants.

Mores stats from Top 10 Reviews: Internet Filters as compiled by XXXChurch.com

Men admitting to accessing pornography at work-20%
U.S. adults who regularly visit Internet pornography websites-40 million
Christians who said pornography is a major problem in the home-47%
Internet Pornography Sales-$4.9 billion
Daily pornographic search engine requests-68 million (25% of total search engine requests)
Internet users who view porn-42.7%
89% of porn is created in the U.S.
$2.84 billion in revenue was generated from U.S. porn sites in 2006
Over $3k a second is spent on porn worldwide
72% of porn viewers are men.
260 new porn sites go online daily

Here are some helpful articles for parents:

10 Signs Your Child Is Breaking the Rules Online

Internet Monitoring Family Game Plan

Uplugging Pornography: Helping Your Teen Break the Trap by Jeffrey Dean, author of The Fight of Your Life: Why Your Teen is at Risk and What You Can Do About It

Marc Driscoll the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington is sometimes criticized for his pointedness and mature level of issues dealt with within his sermons and church meetings. At the same time, he deals with and confronts many of the issues and sins of the day that the majority of churches and pastors choose to leave alone. In his on-line, FREE, short & easy-to read book, Porn-Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on Pornography & Masturbation, Marc Driscoll biblically confronts sins that regularly impact over 50% of the male population each week.

This book is written explicitly for adults and is immersed with Scriptural texts that rebuke and confront a sin that is all-too often tolerated and justified today. If you are a man who has struggled with these sins, or know men who have, you NEED to read this book. Especially helpful are some direct self-evaluation questions on page 21, some Q&A throughout, and an interview transcript between James Dobson and Ted Bundy. If you are a man, you need to read this book and share it with others. If you are a married woman, it may be helpful to you as well if this is something your husband struggles with.

Job 31:1 "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl."

Romans 6:15-23 "15What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Quote - Augustine

"God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination." Augustine

Anyone Suprised? America is Growing More Secular

It made national news today...some seemed surprised, but for many, the statistics simply confirmed what is so clearly evidenced in many aspects of American society today: America is becoming more secular by the day. Some concerning statistics from the American Religious Identification Survey of 2008:

"the percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent"
"Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population"
"Mormons have increased in numbers enough to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 percent of the population"
"The Muslim proportion of the population continues to grow, from .3 percent in 1990 to .5 percent in 2001 to .6 percent in 2008"
"Only1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God)"
"The number of outright atheists has nearly doubled since 2001, from 900 thousand to 1.6 million"
"Twenty-seven percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death"
"Adherents of New Religious movements, including Wiccans and self-described pagans, have grown faster this decade than in the 1990s"

What these statistics don't show could even be more concerning. How many of those claiming to be "Christian" in this survey are only classified as such because they were raised that way? Or because it is more culturally acceptable?

It is a clear reminder that we have plenty of people around us who are in dire need of hearing the Gospel message and accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Isaiah 1:2-4 "2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: 'Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.3The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib,but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.' 4Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged."

1 John 2:19 "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. "

Quote - Blaise Pascal

"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." Blaise Pascal

Quote - Mary Booth

"How we have prayed for a Revival - we did not care whether it was old-fashioned or not - what we asked for was that it should be such that would cleanse and revive His children and set them on fire to win others." Mary Booth

Quote - Jonathan Edwards

"The devil can counterfeit all the saving operations and graces of the Spirit of God." Jonathan Edwards

Quote - Matthew Henry

"Some people do not like to hear much of repentance; but I think it is so necessary that if I should die in the pulpit, I would desire to die preaching repentance, and if out of the pulpit I would desire to die practicing it." Matthew Henry

BiblePlaces.com

Although I am partial to all of the Israel photos and videos I will share in the weeks ahead (I took them), the best catalog of photos and resources that I have found is BiblePlaces.com. It has specific descriptions for all of the sites along with amazing photography. They sell their photos as well through several packages, to include labeled photos to assist in using them for teaching purposes. They also have a great blog that keeps up to date with some of the latest biblical archaeology discoveries. They also have an additional site, http://www.lifeintheholyland.com/ that focuses more on photographs from the 19th and the 20th centuries.

About the photographer:

"Todd Bolen is currently on study leave from his position as Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the Israel Bible Extension campus of The Master’s College. Since 1996, he has lived in Israel and taught college and seminary students about the biblical sites and history. His passion for teaching and photography led him to develop the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. Todd’sphotographs have been published in hundreds of books and magazines and featured on CNN and NationalGeographic.com."

K9 Web Protection - FREE Internet Control and Filter Software

K9 Web Protection is a highly recommended and effective Internet control and filter software...best of all it is FREE!!! HERE is a review of the software. They share some helpful links for parents HERE. Here are some of the scary statistics they share HERE:

"Pornography is a $57 billion a year industry. In comparison, the combined revenues of all teams in the NBA, NHL, MLB, and NFL is $12 billion, and the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC is a mere $6.2 billion."
"1 in 4 youth have unwanted exposure to inappropriate pictures each year"
"Nine of 10 kids aged 8-16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, often in the process of doing homework."

If for some reason K9 Web Protection does not work for you, check out two previous blogs posts:

Thanks to Jim D. for sharing this resource with me!

Parents and Teenagers - How to Monitor Car Speed and Location - GPS Tracking

Ever wonder if your teenager is going where they said they are? Ever want to know if they drive the speed limit? Want an emergency way to find your vehicle if it is stolen?

Below are some options for GPS tracking devices on phones and in cars.

Things to consider:

It may be better to tell your teenager and use it as a deterrent and teaching aid. Their knowledge of it also might help them resist peer pressure to speed or go where they shouldn't.
If you do not tell your teenage and hide it there might be the potential for less helpful and more divisive confrontations should they violate your driving expectations. They may also intentionally plan on going in other teenager's cars.
Check into the possibility of car insurance discounts.
Be sure to understand any contract requirements. Check businesses through the Better Business Bureau (http://www.bbb.org/)
Does it tracks real time data, historical data, or both?
Is the data accessed remotely or do you need to extra something from the car in order to see data?
Do not forget about installation costs.
RESEARCH and COMPARE before buying...if you have a recommendation or a better suggestion for me to add to the below, please let me know!

CELL PHONE OPTIONS
Sprint Family Locator - location info via cell
Verizon Wireless Chaperone - location info via cell
Guardian Angel Technology - prepaid cell phone coupled with tracking info that tells location and speed of travel

VEHICLE BASED
GetiSight - "installs permanently, discreetly: offers a secure, easy-to-use website at GetiSight.com : Uses GPS technology to pinpoint your vehicle’s immediate location and speed online : provides a complete 30-day vehicle history : alerts you via email and/or text message if your vehicle exceeds a user defined speed limit or leaves specified areas defined by you
$225 + $17/month"

Mobile Teen GPS
"Provides instant vehicle feedback for: Speed, Current Vehicle Location, Unapproved Locations, Vehicle is Moved or Stolen, Find Vehicle Now
Four ways to monitor TEEN driving: Cellphone text message or Email, Email alerts sent to your Computer, Toll-free number from any Telephone, Login to our web site to track your vehicle on a Map"
Unit = $300. Monitoring = $300 per year or $30/month monitoring. No contract required. Includes self-installation instructions.

Down to Earth GPS Solutions
"SafetyTraks™ provides real time driving information from GPS to your home computer tracking the location, and speed of your teen’s vehicle. This information generates numerous reports & maps. Initial cost of $299, $20/month monitoring"

GPS Technologies
"SafeTrak Teen Driver Tracking let's you be with your teens wherever they go. SafeTrak provides web based maps that show vehicle location, reports that show where your vehicle went, how fast it drove and how long it stopped. Alerts let you know when a vehicle arrives at or leaves a location (school, friend's house), exceeds a preset speed limit, or is being used when it shouldn't be, i.e.; during school hours."

Brickhouse Child Security
"The leading provider of GPS Tracking Solutions Trusted by Government, Law Enforcement, Corporate and Small Business to recommend the best GPS Tracking solution meeting the most demanding requirements. Premiere clients include: FBI, US Navy, Raytheon, Army, Police, and countless others. Let BrickHouse Security help you find the GPS Tracking system that will fit your needs."

Travel Eyes - a passive device from which you get historical data
Alltrack USA - A variety of plans and options to include real-time, passive, or quality of driving.

Quote - Martin Luther

"The first thing I ask is that people should not make use of my name, and should not call themselves Lutherans but Christians. What is Luther? The teaching is not mine. Nor was I crucified for anyone...How did I, poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?" Martin Luther

1 John - What a book!

Have you read 1 John lately? If not, invest a few minutes and read it. It is such a clear picture of the difference between believers and non-believers. So powerful and clear!

1 John 2:1 (ESV) " My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. "

1 John 2:15 (ESV) "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

1 John 2:19 (ESV) "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us."

The Archaelogical Study Bible

When I traveled across Israel I intentionally selected a Bible that would compliment my studies. I selected the Archaelogical Study Bible (and later found out that one of its editors was a professor leading my group, Dr. Duane Garrett; another Hebrew scholar, Dr. Russell Fuller was another group leader). I especially appreciated the Archaeological Study Bible becuase it had short articles and pictures about every site that we visited. I would read the short articles on the way to the site and they greatly prepared me for what I was about to see. The pictures and descriptions were helpful in understanding both the history and the culture.

Features:

Bottom of page study notes highlight and add further explanation to passages that speak on archaeological or cultural facts included in the Scripture
520 Articles (520) covering Archaeological Sites, Cultural and Historical Notes, Ancient Peoples and Lands, the Reliability of the Bible, Ancient Texts and Artifacts
Approximately 500 4-color photographs interspersed throughout
Detailed book introductions that provide basic, at-a-glance information
In-text color maps that assist the reader in placing the action

Quote - Charles Spurgeon

"We may be certain that whatever God has made prominent in His Word, He intended to be conspicuous in our lives." Charles Spurgeon