Damascus Gate

Called the Shechem Gate by the Jews, the Arabs remember this gate as the “Gate of the Column” because of the tall pillar that stood in this gate’s plaza during the Roman and Byzantine period.

Kenyon’s excavations underneath this Turkish gate found remnants of a triple-arched gateway dating to the time of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (135 A.D.).

In the book Pagan Christianity, Frank Viola and George Barna finish by talking about the dangers involved with the style of Bible study known as proof texting.  They also talk about how prevalent this practice has become, especially in the American Christian culture.  I am not going to get into too many details here and will only summarize their main suggestion in combating this trend.  Their recommendation is to seek a broader understanding of the Scriptures.

“We have been conditioned to come to the New Testament with a microscope and extract verses to find out what the early Christians did.  We need to abandon that whole mentality, step back, and take a fresh look at the Scriptures.  We must become familiar with the whole sweeping drama from beginning to end.  We need to learn to view the New Testament panoramicly, not microscopically.”

A quote from “Pagan Christianity:  Exploring the Roots of our Christian Practices” by Frank Viola and George Barna.

An even more practical remedy is to start reading the New Testament in the order in which it was written.  This will start to illuminate the “sweeping drama” that they talk about.  As per tradition at the time that the Bible as we know it today was compiled, the letters in the New Testament are arranged from longest to shortest.  The current order is:

Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I Thessalonians, II Thessalonians, I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus, Philemon

The chronological order of the New Testament letters is as follows:

Galatians, I Thessalonians, II Thessalonians, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Romans, Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, Philipians, I Timothy, Titus, and lastly II Timothy.

There are Bibles that arrange the books chronologically like this one.  After the Gospels, most of the rest of the New Testament follows the story of Acts with the letters of Paul, Peter, John etc. interspersed there they fall in the timeline.

If you have tried and failed to get a loan from one of the big banks (Bank of America, Chase, etc) don’t despair, you still may be able to get what is called a non-conforming loan from a local bank or credit union.

A non-conforming loan is a loan where the borrower does not meet the lending standards set by Fannie Mae but is still credit worthy.  Most small banks will sell their loans (if they are conforming loans) to a large bank so they don’t have to deal with loan maintenance.  The thing about non-conforming loans however is that the small bank will not be able to sell you loan since it doesn’t technically “conform” to their lending standards.  Many smaller banks are more than willing to keep you loan “in house” (not sell it) if you can prove to them that you are credit worthy.

Think of it this way, if you deal with a smaller bank or credit union your job is to prove to a person that you are credit worthy.  If you deal with a large bank, you have to convince a computer program that you are credit worthy.

Please leave a comment if you have ever dealt with non-conforming loans or have anything to add on the subject.

I keep pretty good track of my statistics for this and my other sites and I’ve noticed something really interesting, in the month of December 2009, the most popular search term that brought people to this site was:

john hagee site:damascusgate.com

For those of you that don’t know what that means, in Google, if you type in your search term and then type in site:damascusgate.com, you will only get results from damascusgate.com.  So in other words, someone has been consistently checking my site for what I’m writing about John Hagee.  That’s a little bit strange to me.  On top of that, these searches result in average visits of 12:12 which is much longer than the normal length of visit.  The regularity of the searches almost makes me think that someone within his organization is keeping tabs on my site.  Then again, I could be over analyzing this whole thing.

It’s no secret that I think John Hagee is extremely dangerous and that he doesn’t represent a healthy Christian view of the world.  That being the case, if those of you who are doing this search are coming to either watch videos about John Hagee or read about him, I thank you sincerely for coming.  For those of you, I am including a list of links to some of my posts related to John Hagee.  Please check them out.

Why I am not a Christian Zionist, Academically Speaking – By Gary Burge

Dear Members of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio

This is a tough question that  I’ve been pondering ever since I graduated from undergrad in 2000.  On the one hand, student loans give you the best interest rates by far.  My student interest rates were only 3.5% and I was pretty sure I could do better than that with other investments elsewhere so I paid the minimum.  The only reason I eventually paid off the balance of my student loan was that when I tried to refinance one of my houses and take out some equity to buy another house, my debt to income ratio was too high and I was denied for the refinance loan.  So in other words, the student loans that you have will be considered as debt and can prevent you from further borrowing from banks.  In a sense not getting that loan was good because it caused me to pursue other means of financing like land contracts.

So here’s another question.  Let’s say you’re in school and you have some other type of debt such as credit card debt.  If you take out student loans to pay off your credit cards, that’s a very good move.  Of course, if the only reason you’re paying off the credit cards is so that you can go out and buy a bunch more stuff, I wouldn’t recommend that.  However, if you’re serious about improving your financial situation, using student loans to pay off higher interest rate debt can be a great option.

Going back to the original question, if you are hoping to get a loan in the near future, it may be a good idea to pay off the student loans first to improve your debt-to-income ratio.  If you are simply methodically investing your money in the stock market, 401(k), or mutual funds and you are sure you can get a better return than the interest rate you are paying on the student loans, I would suggest not paying them off.  I waited 9 years to pay mine off simply because student loans are the best deals out there.  You can’t borrow money that cheaply anywhere else.

I came across an article by Gary Burge, a professor at Wheaton College, that cleared up a lot of things for me about dispensationalism, convenant theology, and the arguments related to Christian Zionism.  If you want to download the entire article, here is the link.

Why I am not a Christian Zionist, Academically Speaking – by Gary Burge

I had been going to a Church that held strongly to dispensationalist theology and was beginning to think that there was not really an alternative.  I personally think that the intense focus that dispensationalists put on end times can be very destructive, especially considering that in some Churches, end times teaching is more focused on than teaching about Jesus Christ.  That said, here are a few paragraphs from the article from Gary Burge.

On the difference between dispensationalism and reformed theology …

[John] Hagee is a “Dispensationalist.” I am a Reformed Theologian. He takes his cues from recent (as in 100 year old) writers such as Darby, Schofield, and Ryrie. I take my cues from older writers such as 16th century John Calvin, the Anglican and Presbyterian worlds, and theologians who belong to the “Reformed Tradition.” Believe it or not, both of us could be called
“evangelicals.”

On dispensational theology support for Israel …

But here is another test. Dispensationalism decided in the 20th century that the catalyst of the end of time was the reestablishment of the State of Israel – which thrilled them in 1948 when Israel announced its nationhood. Israel’s various military victories in 1967 and 1973 were confirmations of a divine hand on Israel’s future. Many dispensationalists have been caught up in a zeal to see this age end and the next begin. If prophesies are being fulfilled, if history is at its terminus, then Christians are obligated to join in what God is doing. And this expression of faith is no where clearer that when one raises the question of Israel. Such religious zealots today are known as Christian Zionists.

On John Hagee of Cornerstone Church …

But this is where Hagee frightens more than he inspires. Not only has his theological commitments given him Biblically defended views on Israel, but now his eschatology has led him to call for America to strike out militarily against Iran. Using the language of the Book of Revelation, Hagee looked to Iran as the incarnation of evil. “The head of the beast of radical Islam in the Middle East is Iran and its fanatical president Ahmadinejad. Ladies and gentlemen, we are reliving history. It is 1938 all over again. Iran is Germany. Ahmadinejad is Hitler. And Ahmadinejad, just like Hitler, is talking about killing the Jews.”

Again, I would highly recommend reading this whole article.  It’s only about 3600 words and it very clearly states the danger we are facing as a result of extreme dispensationalism and Christian Zionism.  The link once again is …

Why I am not a Christian Zionist, Academically Speaking – by Gary Burge

I recently had a letter to the editor published in the Michigan Daily.  Here is the letter…

Does Israel have the right to defend itself?

In their viewpoint, Danielle DePriest and Naomi Scheinerman assert Israel’s right to defend itself according to international law (The blame game and Israel, 10/11/09). The mantra of self-defense is useful for Israel and the Zionist movement for two reasons: it is simple to state and hard to deny. Who in their right mind could possibly say that Israel — or any other nation — does not have the right to self-defense?

Israel’s constant refrain of its “right to self-defense” is analogous to our own nation’s use of the phrase “global war on terror.” Under the guise of fighting against terrorism, the Bush administration and the neo-conservative movement led our country in the wrong direction. This phrase justified two major wars, illegal detentions, renditions of U.S. citizens, domestic spying programs, and the biggest power grab by the executive branch in our nation’s history.

Likewise, Israel has consistently used their right of self-defense to justify preemptive military incursions into Gaza, targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders, the building of a 24-foot high concrete wall around the West Bank, confiscation of Palestinian lands, the building of “Israeli only” roads that Palestinians are forbidden to use, the establishment of over 600 checkpoints surrounding and within the West Bank, the uprooting of Palestinian olive groves, the use of white phosphorus against civilian populations and the systematic dismantling of the Palestinian economy — not to mention illegal detention and torture.

I would assert that using the justification of “self-defense” to justify this type of oppression and apartheid is just as nonsensical as the United States using the justification of “fighting terrorism” to condone the blatant disregard not only for human rights but for the rights of U.S. citizens that has become all too common since the inception of our global war on terrorism.

I would call on those who defend Israel’s right to self-defense to be more specific as to what that actually means. In this way, the dialogue can progress past blanket statements that everyone can agree on, like “Israel has a right to defend itself,” to more pertinent questions dealing with which actions by Israel are legitimate self-defense and which are not.

One of the often forgotten benefits of investing in real estate is that it’s fairly easy to borrow money for the investment.  No bank will lend you money to buy stocks or gold but banks will lend you money to buy real estate.   Why?  Because real estate is a tangible asset that is generally considered a very safe investment.  Also, if you can’t pay back the loan, the bank can reclaim the house which is not possible for most other assets.

The benefit of getting a loan to buy a house is that as the value of your real estate increases, you realize gains on the entire amount even though you only have a small percentage of your own cash invested.  For instance, if you put a 20,000 dollar down payment on a 100,000 dollar house and it goes up 5% in a year, your actual gain is 25% since you only have 20,000 dollars in the house.  Of course, there are other expenses and the numbers are rarely as neat and clean as that but the principle is the same.  The practice of borrowing money and investing it is called leverage.

The byproduct of this is that buying real estate using a loan is a great way to beat inflation.  If you get a 30 year loan, the bank loans you money today (before inflation makes those dollars worth less) and you have to pay the loan back with dollars that are less valuable.  Historically home values have appreciated at a little more than inflation rates (and often times quite a bit more) so that buying houses is an excellent way to beat inflation.

Edit:

As of December 4th, I think that it’s more important that ever to reinvest your savings in a way that will not be eroded by inflation.  The Federal Reserve has printed unbelievably large amounts of money to get us out of this recession and the obvious result is that in the next year there will be high levels of inflation.

My wife and I recently closed on our second house since we became students at the University of Michigan.  With the prices of housing dropping so much recently, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to buy.  That said, not having a job made getting loans a little bit trickier although not impossible.  I’m going to use the next few posts to talk about how we ended up buying these houses, the process we went through, where we did our research, and who helped up along the way.