I will be releasing my new book,  entitled "The Four Pillars of the Kingdom"  in the next few weeks.  It is, not only a response to some of the metaphysical arguments of the so-called "New Athiests", but also a call to believers to take their faith very serious in way that many of us do not. You can read a small excerpt on my website at:

bit.ly/qWrueX

I would love to hear your thoughts on the excerpt!

Thanks,

Joe Brooks

The history of the Church is replete with men and women who have lain down their lives in the name of Jesus Christ.  Many went as peaceful martyrs in the image of Christ himself, the Lamb of God.  Others went out in a blaze of “glory,” often more concerned with their own image to world than with presenting an accurate image of God to mankind. But, God doesn’t call us to be martyrs.  Sure, it has happened and will continue to happen that speaking the Word of God will result in the deaths of many of His children, especially as the world becomes increasingly more violent and filled with the spirit of the anti-Christ.  But we aren’t asked to seek our own demise. It’s quite the opposite, actually. 

 Read the rest at the Immaculate Conservative

 A rational mind tends to seek consistency. That is at the very heart of mathematics and much of science; the goal of creating formulae, principles, that take the apparent randomness of the world and dredges out the relative mundane predictability of it all. Granted, faith may be beyond the limited parameters of our finite, rationality, but there is an argument to be made for the logical, consistent application of the principles of our faith. However, the contemporary Church seems quite comfortable with inconsistency.

I have a theory about a key aspect of the dogma of atheists and liberal Christians that link the two groups in their relationship with God.  These two groups, in my opinion, approach the question of God in reverse.

Nonbelievers and liberal or “progressive” Christians tend to base their entire belief system around an issue, or a feeling, about something that they actual value more than they value the existence of God and/or His nature. So often these two types of people and their attitude towards God overlap with some variant of the following declaration: I can’t believe in a God who won’t let me (or someone I know) do X! With “x” being a preconceived judgment of right and wrong based on beliefs that the individual brings to the table before they even take up the issue of God.

To read more, check out The Immaculate Conservative at joebrooks.webs.com/apps/blog/show/480528...

Sometimes I don’t want to sing! I can’t help it. Maybe I’m just too moody, but there are times when I’m in church, sandwiched in between my beautiful wife and my rambunctious kids during the praise and worship part of the service and I’m just not feeling it. I don’t know what it is, perhaps I wake up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed, but even that can’t be the case because I have no problem relating to other people. I’m in a fine mood, generally speaking. It’s just that I don’t feel like singing.

I feel distant from God…in His house, surrounded by His Church, I feel alone. Separate.

To read more, check out the Matters of Faith section at The Immaculate Conservative website.  www.joebrooks.webs.com

Would you allow yourself to die in order to perpetuate a lie? Would you suffer torture, imprisonment, and a horrible death for no other reason but to continue a grand deception long after you no longer walked the earth? This is the question we have to ask about the original disciples of Jesus Christ. These men, walked with Jesus, heard his teachings and accepted him as the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God. And, believing this to be true, they dedicated their lives, unto death, to preaching His gospel, even after seeing Christ's arrest, trial, torture, and execution. If the historical Jesus was but a man who, after being taken down from the cross, was laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea to slowly decompose just like any other living thing, why would the disciples bother carrying on with the lie? There was no money to be gained? No popularity, as their message made them hated, outcasts among their own people. Upon seeing their Christ’s lifeless body, entombed, why did they continue to tell the world that Jesus was the Son of God, even at great risk to their own lives? Were they all lunatics? Were they simply obstinate to the end? Or did they really see their risen savior and that gave them the strength to spend the rest of their lives travelling the known world, in and out of prison, ostracized from their own people, and finally facing death in order that others may live in Him?

To read more, check out the Matters of Faith section on The Immaculate Conservative website.  www.joebrooks.webs.com

The heart wants what the heart wants. A phrase commonly attributed to Emily Dickinson to mean that one’s desires or, to elevate it to the more idealized, one’s heart isn’t logical. “Other things are not of consequence,” Ms. Dickinson continues, because the heart, like a spoiled child, wants what it wants, with neither rhyme nor reason. The question is: should you give the heart what it wants? Should you, as dime store poets and street corner philosophizers have been telling us for years, let your heart be your guide? Or, to put it more plainly, if it feels good, should you just do it?

To read more, check out the Matters of Faith section at The Immaculate Conservative website.  www.joebrooks.webs.com

Most Christians are comfortable with the notion that God exists outside of the space-time domain, that is to say that God isn’t confined either physically or temporally; He sees all of eternity as one moment with no past, present or future. There are no constraints on the deity! As He sees the now, He also sees the past and the future as one singular moment. That is something that I try to keep in mind as I take communion. It adds weight to the act to realize that, as I partake of the symbols of Christ’s body and blood, that God also sees his Son doing the same thing in the upper room. For me that takes it out of the realm of simple symbolism. But, the idea of my acts, in a sense, “overlapping’ those of Christ can also be quite humbling, for example, the prayer in Gethsemane.

One of the more dramatic moments in the life of Jesus are the prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. Following the Last Supper, Christ took a few of his disciple with him to the garden to keep watch as he prayed. No less than three times Jesus, with dread in his heart about what lay ahead of him, asked the Father to “take the cup” from him. If it is possible, if there be any other way, he prayed, that the redemption of man could be accomplished without the cross, take this burden from me. But, ultimately, he acquiesced to God’s will. There would be no other way but the blood of the lamb...

To read more, check out the Matters of Faith section The Immaculate Conservative website.  www.joebrooks.webs.com