Two and a Half Men star calls his show "filth"
While I occasionally enjoy writing about pop culture, I decided long ago not give undue attention to cultural angles in attempting to communicate the Gospel. The vision of The Forerunner is to exalt the Lordship of Jesus Christ and apply a biblical worldview to all areas of life.
Every so often, however, a cultural phenomenon grabs my attention by demanding that it be seen and heard.
The star of Two and a Half Men, Angus Jones, who plays the “half-man” Jake, is the subject of a YouTube video gone viral in which he pleads with his fans not to watch the show any longer.
“Please stop watching it. I’m on the show and I don’t want to be on it,” Jones says. “Please stop filling your head with filth.”
Nineteen-year-old Jones has been on the show since he was 10, but says he doesn’t want to be on it anymore. In the two part-video, he talks about his conversion to Christ and rants on about the “filth” of Two and a Half Men. The sitcom, which used to feature bad-boy actor Charlie Sheen until he was fired two years ago, remains heavy with sexual innuendo.
I discovered this video once I saw that my traffic had spiked in the last few days. Forerunner.com customarily gets between 1000 to 3000 visitors per day (depending on which statistics log I look at). In the past two days, our traffic has more than quadrupled. The reason is that people have been confusing forerunnerchronicles.com with our website as they have searched for the video. We also have a popular YouTube channel that recently passed the 3 million view mark.
Since The Forerunner newspaper was first published in 1981, numerous other publications and media ministries have arisen with that name. I was fortunate enough to have obtained the URL in 1996 just prior to the explosion in web site publishing.
Now I have begun to get frequent messages assuming that The Forerunner is the ministry that produced Angus Jones’ video. The main difference between our two groups is that I am not a Seventh Day Adventist and have some serious misgivings about the theology of the Adventist Church. But that is no matter. I wish Angus Jones well and I commend him for standing up for his Christian faith.
I have to admit I have never watched Two and a Half Men, although I have seen two of producer Chuck Lorre’s other hit programs, Dharma and Greg and The Big Bang Theory. I find the latter to be interesting in that no other sitcom uses such intellectual concepts as the Anthropic Principle as the preface for comedy. Yet Lorre is also compelled to include some of the crudest, most tasteless remarks on television to ruin what it otherwise some smart humor.
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Freedom: The Model of Christian Liberty (DVD)
“Give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry’s famous declaration not only helped launch the War for Independence, it also perfectly summarized the mindset that gave birth to, and sustained, the unprecedented experiment in Christian liberty that was America.
The freedom our Founders envisioned was not freedom from suffering, want, or hard work. Nor was it freedom to indulge every appetite or whim without restraint—that would merely be servitude to a different master. No, the Founders’ passion was to live free before God, unfettered by the chains of autocracy, shackles that slowly but inexorably bind men when the governments they fashion fail to recognize and uphold freedom’s singular, foundational truth: that all men are created in the image of God, and are thereby co-equally endowed with the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
This presentation is a similar call, not to one but many. By reintroducing the principles of freedom that gave birth to America, it is our prayer that Jesus, the true and only ruler over the nations, will once again be our acknowledged Sovereign, that we may again know and exult in the great truth that “where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).
Welcome to the Second American Revolution!
This DVD features “Liberty: The Model of Christian Liberty” along with “Dawn’s Early Light: A Brief History of America’s Christian Foundations.” Bonus features include a humorous but instructive collection of campaign ads and Eric Holmberg’s controversial YouTube challenge concerning Mitt Romney’s campaign for president.
$14.95 — ORDER NOW!
(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.)Click here for more information
The Silent Scream (DVD) Eight Languages
“When the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing.” – President Ronald Reagan to National Religious Broadcasters Convention, January 1981
Ronald Reagan became convinced of this as a result of watching The Silent Scream – a movie he considered so powerful and convicting that he screened it at the White House. More recently, it was by catching just a glimpse of what this film reveals that Planned Parenthood director and abortion advocate Abby Johnson turned and became a strong advocate for the pre-born.
The modern technology of real-time ultrasound now reveals the actual responses of a 12-week old fetus to being aborted. As the unborn child attempts to escape the abortionist’s suction curette, her motions can be seen to become desperately agitated and her heart rate doubles. Her mouth opens – as if to scream – but no sound can come out. Her scream doesn’t have to remain silent, however … not if you will become her voice. This newly re-mastered version features eight language tracks and two bonus videos.
“…a high technology “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” arousing public opinion just as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 antislavery novel ignited the abolitionist movement.” – Sen. Gordon Humphrey, Time Magazine
Languages: English, Spanish, French, South Korean, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese
Running Time: 28 minutes
$17.95 — ORDER NOW!
(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.)Click here for more information
Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism (DVD)
Download the Free Study Guide!
Just what is Calvinism?
Does this teaching make man a deterministic robot and God the author of sin? What about free will? If the church accepts Calvinism, won’t evangelism be stifled, perhaps even extinguished? How can we balance God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? What are the differences between historic Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism? Why did men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Whitefield, Edwards and a host of renowned Protestant evangelists embrace the teaching of predestination and election and deny free will theology?
This is the first video documentary that answers these and other related questions. Hosted by Eric Holmberg, this fascinating three-part, four-hour presentation is detailed enough so as to not gloss over the controversy. At the same time, it is broken up into ten “Sunday-school-sized” sections to make the rich content manageable and accessible for the average viewer.
Running Time: 257 minutes
$19.95 — ORDER NOW!
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Dr. Francis Schaeffer - A Christian Manifesto (DVD)
That Swiss Hermit Strikes Again!
Dr. Schaeffer, who was one of the most influential Christian thinkers in the twentieth century, shows that secular humanism has displaced the Judeo-Christian consensus that once defined our nation’s moral boundaries. Law, education, and medicine have all been reshaped for the worse as a consequence. America’s dominant worldview changed, Schaeffer charges, when Christians weren’t looking.
Schaeffer lists two reasons for evangelical indifference: a false concept of spirituality and fear. He calls on believers to stand against the tyranny and moral chaos that come when humanism reigns-and warns that believers may, at some point, be forced to make the hard choice between obeying God or Caesar. A Christian Manifesto is a thought-provoking and bracing Christian analysis of American culture and the obligation Christians have to engage the culture with the claims of Christ.
$19.95 — ORDER NOW!
(We accept all major credit cards and PayPal.)Click here for more information
Go Stand Speak (DVD)
With “preaching to the lost” being such a basic foundation of Christianity, why do many in the church seem to be apathetic on this issue of preaching in highways and byways of towns and cities?
Is it biblical to stand in the public places of the world and proclaim the gospel, regardless if people want to hear it or not?
Does the Bible really call church pastors, leaders and evangelists to proclaim the gospel in the public square as part of obedience to the Great Commission, or is public preaching something that is outdated and not applicable for our day and age?
These any many other questions are answered in this documentary.
$19.95 — ORDER NOW!
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