Sam Childers arriving to the Book Signing Event of his book “Another Man’s War,” Beverly Hills, CA on May 5, 2009 - Photo by Glenn Francis of www.PacificProDigital.com Source: Wikimedia Commons

Hollywood action superstar Gerard Butler, whose recent high-octane roles include King Leonidas in “300” (2006) and Clyde Shelton in “Law Abiding Citizen” (2009), will soon be playing the role of real-life AK-47-toting Pastor Sam Childers in 2012’s “Machine Gun Preacher,” according to the Internet Movie Database.

A former bike gang member and drug dealer, Childers underwent a massive spiritual transformation in 1992, during a revival at an Assembly of God church and his pastor prophesied that Sam would one day travel to Africa.

Six years later, near the close of 1998, Childers boarded a plane for the Sudan.

It would be the first of several trips he would make to the war-torn region where the Ugandan sectarian militant group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Koney, had abducted and tortured an estimated 30,000 children and displaced 1.6 million people since the start of the rebellion in 1986.

The LRA claims they act under the principles and morals found in the Christian Bible and the Ten Commandments.

Childers made it his life’s mission to defend and protect the innocent children of the Sudan region by any means necessary.

For the past 12 years, the so-called “unconventional American pastor” has lived and operated in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda. His Angels of East African Children’s village has become a safe haven for rescued children.

“Machine Gun Preacher” is currently in its preproduction phase and will begin shooting in Pennsylvania in early July, according to Variety Magazine.

Under the directorship of Golden Globe nominee Marc Foster, whose 2008 “Quantum of Solace” follow-up to the 2006 James Bond remake “Casino Royale” cemented him as a Hollywood action-film giant, “Machine Gun Preacher” will co-star Michelle Monoghan of “Mission Impossible 3” (2006) and “Eagle Eye” (2008) fame as Childers’ wife Lyn.

The Christian Post recently interviewed Childers about his use of heavy firearms.

“I don’t condone violence at all,” he responded. “I don’t believe in violence but at the same time I don’t believe that children should be raped, murdered or cut up.”

Gerard Butler at the 2010 Golden Globe Awards. Photo © gerardjamesbutler.co.uk Fan Site.

He also added, “I look at it as self-defense and I look at it as I’m helping God’s children. I’m not a person out to murder. It’s not that I like hurting anybody. But at the same time these people [the LRA] need to be stopped.”

Childers’ book Another Man’s War: the True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan and his official web site http://machinegunpreacher.org/ recall “the gruesome scenes after LRA raids that included the smelling of burning flesh and saving a woman drenched in her own blood from a breast that was half cut off by a machete,” according to The Christian Post.

Childers also recounted the LRA’s forcing of their victim’s to engage in cannibalism and children to murder their own mothers.

The biopic film’s release dates have undergone several changes and reschedulings since entering preproduction and is now slated for release sometime in 2012 with Lionsgate Entertainment and in association with 1984 Films.

You can find out more about Childers and his Angels of East Africa organization at his website www.machinegunpreacher.org.

What makes everyone think artist Leonardo Da Vinci uncovered some big Christian secret?

Writers and religious skeptics have always come up with alternative narratives about Jesus’ life and ministry. But author Dan Brown brought it to center stage in a spectacular way, with his blockbuster 2003 fiction, The Da Vinci Code, followed by the movie and all its sequels and franchises.

Brown provoked speculation in both secular and theological circles—all the way to the Vatican:

Did Leonardo Da Vinci write an encrypted code on his famous Vitruvian Man? Was Mary Magdalene married to Jesus? Is there really a Holy Grail?

Seven years later, even Christian magazines are still asking questions like, “Why weren’t there women in Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting?” (Light & Life Magazine, March, April 2010, pp. 10-11).

I’d like some answers from you, Mr. Da Vinci…may I call you Leo?

How is it that you lived from 1452 to 1519—over 14 centuries after Jesus—yet you have all the secrets of his ministry that not even his contemporaries revealed, or the prophets were inspired by God to write?

Surely, a Renaissance man like yourself, jack of many trades, was able to construct a Time Machine. Is that how you went back and did the portrait of Jesus at the Last Supper, and hid at least one woman in the background, as some say?

What about those who claim you purposefully left women out of the picture?

Grid reproduction of Da Vinci's "The Last Supper"

Let’s spend some time on this unfounded “women missing from The Last Supper” claim. Before we ask why Da Vinci left them out of his painting, we could ask why they were left out of the Last Supper accounts, when we see women mentioned in many other New Testament scriptures.

All four disciples who wrote the gospels found it important enough to mention that women were the first to see Jesus’ empty tomb (Matthew 28:8-10; Mark 16:9-10; Luke 24:8-11; John 20:10-18). John speaks of the Samaritan woman at the well to whom Jesus offers “living water” (John 4:7-42), and the woman whom Jesus saved from punishment for adultery (John 8:3-11).

Matthew 14:21 specifically mentions women as being present, yet outside of the 5,000-man count at the five loaves and fish miracle. Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, are mentioned in Luke 10:38-41 and John 11:1-40.

Throughout the book of Acts and his later writings, the apostle Paul mentions by name many women who participated in spreading the gospel. In 2 Timothy 1:5, he gives credit to Timothy’s mother and grandmother for how they raised the young disciple.

So why, then, would women be left out of the Last Supper accounts? And why would Da Vinci leave them out of his painting?

Simple answers to these questions:
A Boston Museum of Science website devoted to Da Vinci’s works quotes the artist:
The most praiseworthy form of painting is the one that most resembles what it imitates.

I doubt Da Vinci, having said this, would have put brush to canvas for The Last Supper without first reading the Biblical accounts of its occurrence. Therefore, he imitated what he saw in scripture.

He didn’t read anything between the lines like people love to do with the Bible today in order to discredit the Book itself and its sources. He didn’t add women for one simple reason…they weren’t there.

And, I’m sure Da Vinci would say Jesus wasn’t married either.

But the most important answer comes from a Christian’s own faith: What’s in the Bible was divinely inspired by God through the hands of man, and God knew what books would be canonized.

The New Testament’s writers had a hunch their stories would seem unbelievable and questionable. That’s why Luke 1:1-2 states:
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been  fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses.

And 2 Peter 1:16 says:
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

Why should Christians stick with what the Bible says?

As Christians, we must learn to trust the Lord with all our heart rather than leaning on our own human understanding (Proverbs 3:5). Our faith grows through hearing and reading the Word of God (Romans 10:17).

In other words, the greatest faith in knowing that Jesus was who He said He was, and that things went down exactly as they appear in the Bible, comes from believing the book itself…not through the speculations of man.

The people who write these modern-day things can’t prove what they’re saying; neither have they yet proven the Bible is false.

Scriptures quoted in italics within this commentary are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

A truck driver who killed a pro lifer and one other man in a Michigan shooting spree was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday.

Credit:sxc.hu/shadgross

In a court hearing, Harlan Drake, 34, was charged with first-degree murder for the deaths of pro life activist James Pouillon, 63, and businessman Mike Fuoss, 61.

Shiawassee County Circuit Judge Gerald Lostracco handed Drake a life term, the automatic penalty under Michigan law.

Drake had also planned that day to kill one other man on the morning of the shootings last September 11, but didn’t know where to find him.

The murders, he said, were vengeance acts on behalf of his mother, Kim Staples.

Staples did not like the fact that Pouillon would hold a picture of an aborted fetus outside Owosso High School, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit.  Drake shot him four times.

Fuoss, the other victim, was a boss of Staples with whom the latter had disputes.  While shooting Fuoss 17 times Drake told him, “You should be nicer to your employees.”  The third target, whom Drake could not find, was a former boss of his mother.

Before the sentencing Drake apologized for the pain he caused to the families of his victims. But minutes later he seemed bored and told the judge to “get on with this” and called him a racist and a hypocrite.

Drake’s lawyers argued that he was mentally ill at the time and didn’t understand what he was doing.  They said Drake has been treated for depression since his semitrailer slammed into a car in Ottumwa, Iowa, killing two teens in 2004. He was not cited.  Drake also attempted suicide in jail after killing Pouillon and Fuoss.

However, the jury rejected an insanity defense.  Lostracco said, “This case was not about abortion.  It was about your intention to be a hit man (to settle grudges).”

Drake replied,  “Coming from a hypocrite and a racist, I really appreciate that, judge.”

Madison Pouillon, 16, said her grandfather drove her to school moments before he was shot with his pro life sign across the street.  She said she began praying for him when officials, citing safety, would not let her leave the building.

The teen cried and couldn’t finish reading her statement. Her mother, Holly Pouillon, 38, picked up the paper, turned to Drake, expressed her daughter’s forgiveness and added, “May God be with you.”

Jim Fuoss, 58, said his family had endured much misfortune in the past seven months. His slain brother’s wife, Barb, died of brain cancer on April 10.

Sources:

http://www.wwltv.com/news/national/91820879.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100422/ap_on_re_us/us_activist_killed_mich;_ylt=AqEASxBxcayzQ1uopFRghxjuOrgF;_ylu=X3oDMTE3cDB1M252BHBvcwMxNgRzZWMDTXdfVml0YWxpdHkEc2xrA21hbndob2tpbGxlZA–