The highly anticipated third part of the Hobbit Trilogy, The Battle of the Five Armies comes out this week. This is Peter Jackson’s third installment in the story of Bilbo Baggins and his journey with his dwarfish friends to take back what is rightfully theirs. Don’t worry you can keep reading there are no spoilers, in fact this is not even going to be a review. It would be unfair to take away the fantastic “ending” of this journey. However there are some great lessons we could all learn from. Lessons Learned from the Battle of the Five Armies “Thorin. You gave a promise.” – Bilbo Baggins- the innocence of Bilbo is challenged as we are when someone goes against their word. No matter how big or small, dwarf or man, a promise is a promise. “The town is lost save the gold” – the greed of money is many times held even above that of humankind. We can look in our own lives to those business owners, churches and even in our own families. Humankind many times will worry about how much they can save rather than how many. “If more of us valued home above gold, it would be a merrier world.” – In a word where the mighty dollar represents power, it also brings pain. We forsake what is right, moral and good just to make more. If we valued the things at home, like love, family and comfort the world would be a much happier place. “If this is love, I don’t want […]

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Imagine a world where you are being persecuted for your faith. A world where the government controls the messages of faith and rather than abolishing religion it seeks out to unify all religions under one common order.  In doing so the government persecutes any that go against their new world order. That means Christians, Muslims, Jews all are forced to worship openly and publicly therefore granting access to everyone, even the government. In the movie Persecuted, James Remar stars as an evangelist by the name of John Luther, a former alcoholic and drug addict that turned his life around to the Lord.  He created an evangelical ministry that had an enormous following and therefore were a threat to the governments plan if they were not on board.  Luther of course refuses to side with the Faith and Fairness Act that his Senator friend majority leader (Bruce Davidson) is promoting. Through the course of the movie, Luther is framed for the assault and murder of  a sixteen year old girl in order to remove the opposition to the legislation.  This bill promises to protect religion and yet underlying allows the government full access to all religions they suspect may be part of terrorist activities , granted this sounds harmless but i turn would destroy the fabric this country was founded on. Luther chooses to run and hide and fight for proof to clear his name.  With the help of his father (Fred Dalton Thompson) who plays  a Catholic priest, whom the secret service assassinated when he uncovers […]

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