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So who’s looking forward to Obama’s inauguration on Wednesday? It could be a historic speech that’s remembered for decades to come.

SBS has a one hour special on at 12.30pm Weds.

Sure to be a historic day.

ABC TV has it live 3.25 - 5am on Wednesday morning.
Channel 10 has ‘The inauguration of Barack Obama’ (plus goodness knows what else) on 1.30 - 6am on Wednesday morning.

I’ll be taping the ABC broadcast.

Oh fantastic, I didn’t realise ABC was covering it live, will set the recorder!

Here’s the full free-to-air list:

ABC 1 - 3.25am   - The Inauguration
        - 5.00am   - “Made in Chicago: The Making of Barack Obama”

CH 7   -  3.00am   - The Inauguration
CH 9   - 10.55pm - The Inauguration
CH 10   - 1.30am   - The Inauguration

( SBS     -  2.40am Weatherwatch followed by Japanese News at 5.20am !!!  )

WEDNESDAY : Both ABC 1 and SBS have one hour specials at 12.30pm.
  SBS have also listed a 2 hour “Obama Inaugural Celebration” to follow at 1.30pm. It is listed as a “repeat” - so I wonder if it is from the free open air Concert from yesterday.

What do you think about the prayer to the “god of our own understandings”? Isn’t that the essence of Idolatry !

Check out http://stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/2009/01/to-god-of-our-many-understandings-gay.html

Followed by John Piper - http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1595_How_Barack_Obama_Will_Make_Christ_a_Minister_of_Condemnation/

Adam Olive - 20 January 2009 06:34 PM

What do you think about the prayer to the “god of our own understandings”? Isn’t that the essence of Idolatry !

It certainly seems to fly in the face of :

Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

But then, for a guy who has rejected God’s condemnation in the Bible of his own lifestyle, what would one expect ? But the Episcopal church (ECUSA) , who condone and encourage him and others in their non-Biblical lifestyles,  will have to answer for their apostasy one day. Anyway, it’s not THEIR church that they’ve surrendered to Satan’s influence - it is Christ’s church. And the owner of the church will be demanding tough answers from them.

And still I wonder why so-called evangelical dioceses are still in so-called “fellowship” with those who have so obviously left the Biblical faith. Will somebody stop trying to be oh so “PC nice” and make a stand !

Kevin Goddard - 20 January 2009 07:00 PM

And the owner of the church will be demanding tough answers from them.

sobering

Well that was one impressive speech by Barack Obama. How he does it without seeming to have any notes or prompts is absolutely astounding.

Obama’s first speech as US President :
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24941894-5001021,00.html

I woke up about 2am and was glued to the set as history happened before my eyes. Did anyone else watch it live ? That music ensemble before the swearing-in took me by surprise - and I wasn’t expecting that poem after Obama’s speech either - but the closing prayer was a classic.

I didn’t watch it live, but it certainly was an amazing moment.

Not to ruin the magic or anything Kevin, but he does use teleprompters - they’re the two things that look like clipboards on long arms to his left and right, and when he looks to the left and right, he’s looking to the respective teleprompter. It’s all designed, of course, for the magic of television :)

I used my TV watching time wisely.  I’ve been enjoying the Australian Open.

I saw a man being interviewed who said he went to see Obama installed, rather than to the birth of his own baby, because he wanted to see history in the making.

Little did he realise ...

Rick Warren did a great job with his prayer. It was a hard call, but he acknowledged dependence on God and made his prayer a specifically Christian prayer.

Well the Obama Inauguration has now been assigned to history but I still found this blog of the event well worth reading. While we don’t have significant issues with racism in Australia, I wonder if we still need to reflect on how we view minorities in our own communities.

While we don’t have significant issues with racism in Australia, I wonder if we still need to reflect on how we view minorities in our own communities.

Tosh in both cases.  Obama got ahead based on his links to the then-fashionable inteligentsia.  As such, he’s fairly similar to the likes of Barry Jones or Dr H.V. Evatt (although not quite attaining the distinction or paranoia of the latter.)

David McKay - 21 January 2009 11:34 PM

Rick Warren did a great job with his prayer. It was a hard call, but he acknowledged dependence on God and made his prayer a specifically Christian prayer.

I was disapointed he didn’t mention the Trinity, rather important part of Christanity I would have thought.

By explicitly referring to Jesus, he did, surely.

By explicitly referring to Jesus, he did, surely.

Sorry David that doesn’t make sense.  The trinity is made up of three persons, what happened to the Holy Spirit?

If Rick Warren felt confident enough to quote the Lord’s prayer what would be wrong with quoting part of Matt 28:19 and saying: “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” at the opening of his prayer?  I suspect he dodged it deliberately and thereby missed a golden opportunity to proclaim the distinctive trinitarian nature of God.

I think this is unfair, Luke. Warren gets a lot of flak, and a lot of it is undeserved.

I’m not particularly a fan of his church growth ideas, but I praise God for a man who deliberately prayed an explicitly Christian prayer.

I am sure he wasn’t leaving out the Holy Spirit for any sinister reason.

When we acknowledge the deity of Jesus, we acknowledge the trinitarian nature of God.

There is more to be said, but there is a limit to what can be said in one prayer.

David I mean no disrespect to you or Rick Warren, I’m just disappointed he sidelined the Trinity.  Regardless of how much flak he received, it comes with the territory of being a public figure, he should have taken this important moment to assert the trinitarian nature of our God.  It’s certainly not a prayer given off the cuff, Warren had time to consider what to say and what not to say. 

Neither am I sure this qualifies as asserting the divinity of Jesus: “I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life, Yeshua, Isa, Jesus, Jesus (hay-SOOS), who taught us to pray,” It’s a strange list of names for Jesus, why did he pick those languages and not others?  Also why not give some of the various titles of Jesus instead? Son of God and Man, Messiah or LORD.