Emissary - Evangelism Training, Apologetics and Research

Unrest Continues at Cedarville

2008-08-30T23:50:00.003-04:00

In a post that I wrote in April, I noted that I had not received any communication from my old instructors at Cedarville who were a part of the Coalition of the Concerned. That has changed.

Unfortunately, the news is not good. Because I have not secured the faculty member's permission to reveal their identity, I will not divulge all of the details of our dialogue.

More of the conservative faculty have been pushed out of Cedarville and a lawsuit against President Brown has been filed in Dayton's courts. The Coalition members were placed under a gag order. Members of the Bible department were effectively shunned and were not included in university or departmental meetings.

The Cedarville administration appears to have used strong-arm tactics to squelch dissent in the name of preserving "academic freedom."

The Coalition has published an incipient website at http://cedarvillecoalition.com/home.

Cedarville Rising from the Ashes?

2008-04-24T21:49:00.003-04:00

I dare not imagine how difficult the situation at Cedarville must be for the faculty, staff and administration. They have all faced some withering scrutiny and some hard, but necessary questions.

President Brown has taken some tremendous steps to stabilizing Cedarville's reputation. At the website http://cedarville.edu/academics/avp/truth/, Brown has posted the university's responses to a number of the allegations that have surfaced.

There appear to be some deep divisions within Cedarville's faculty. It would be good to know that these rifts are beginning to heal. In particular, it would be strongly affirming to hear a member of the Coalition of the Concerned come forward to address the observations that they previously made concerning the university.

I've attempted to contact a number of my former instructors, but to date, none have responded.

Cedarville Damage Control

2008-04-11T20:18:00.002-04:00

Cedarville is trying to repair its damaged reputation. Alumni members recently received an e-mail from President Bill Brown with the strong assertion that Cedarville is unwavering in its committment to its theological history.

Brown will be speaking on the topic on April 14th during the regularly scheduled Cedarville chapel service.

http://cedarville.edu/academics/avp/truth/
http://www.thepath.fm/chapel/

I'm hoping that Brown will directly answer the allegations set forth by the Coalition of the Concerned.

http://cedarvillesituation.com/coalition.pdf

Trouble at Cedarville University

2008-04-07T21:48:00.005-04:00

Source Websites

Raymond Bartholomew explains his view of happenings at Cedarville - http://cedarvillesituation.com/
Coalition of the Concerned - Cedarville University faculty express their view of recent doings at Cedarville - http://cedarvillesituation.com/coalition.pdf

Statements from the Coalition of the Concerned, papers by David Mills, articles at http://cedarvillesituation.com as well as the now removed content from Hoffeditz's website (of which copies still circle the internet) paint an ugly picture of events at Cedarville whether taken as separate incidents or as a unified whole.

Word has been received that Cedarville University President Brown has seized documents pertaining to the firings in direct violation of rules created to maintain order and belay the fear of reprisal. Brown's seizure of the grievance committee's notes and testimonies breaks trust.

An administrator by the name of Milliman was secretly recorded by a student and has admitted that the firings were done to minimize their impact on the accreditation process. Milliman's direct comments show that there was a political bent to retaining Hoffeditz and Mappes until the accreditation process was complete. If they were worthy of termination, then it makes me even more embarrassed that the Cedarville administration did not take timely action.

Even more troubling is an extract from a letter from Charles Dolph asserting "This message is to notify all parties that the GIP (Grievance Investigation Panel) is no longer able to enforce its own rules or control the record of the hearing." Is this a doctored e-mail? By the way, despite Hoffeditz's apparent good will by removing the content per the university's instruction, portions of that content have been spread far and wide over the internet.

A Coalition of the Concerned has been formed from the ranks of Cedarville's past and present faculty. For faculty members like James Bjornstad, Richard Blumenstock or Jack Riggs to sign their names to a document (The Coalition of the Concerned) that states "There is fear that other theologically conservative faculty members within the Department and the general faculty may be terminated" demonstrates that matters are grave.

The issue of certainty and assurance does appear to be a problem at Cedarville. It does not seem far fetched to imagine (as has been supported by the claims of the faculty) that it is a true bone of contention within the Bible department.

The center of the controversy is David Mills who has embraced at least a portion of the ideas espoused by the notorious Emergent Brian McLaren. Mills' public document pertaining to Staley lectures given by D.A. Carson seems to largely ignore that Brian McLaren's starting point in uncertainty has led to his renunciation of a literal hell, a proposed moratorium on speaking on the homosexuality issue (to see if the culture will change its mind) and an assertion that one may be a good Buddhist Christian. Since McLaren believes that his spiritual dialogue is still unfolding, where do we imagine he will end up? Once one begins to unravel the string of infallibility, it is impossible to stop the ball of yarn from unrolling. David Mills is playing with that string.

How are we supposed to interpret the words of Amy Hope Guisleman?

I was teaching on this issue (certainty) this morning in class when one of my students expressed the fact that he was blown away by a course he took here at Cedarville in which students were asked if they knew that the Bible is true. Most responded 'yes' and the professor proceeded to demonstrate to them that they did not in fact know it. They were left with the instruction that though we cannot know that the Bible is true, we must accept its truth on faith.

One may glibly say that everyone agrees with the doctrinal statement at Cedarville, but what if there is a hole in the doctrinal statement that is being exploited? Do we merely call that exploitation "academic freedom"? As I was taught by my Cedarville instructors, a doctrinal statement should not be assessed by what it says as much as what it does not say.

This whole mess is either one of the worst bunglings to ever be perpetrated by a university administration or it is as it appears to be...

The Dignity of Man

2008-03-12T21:10:00.007-04:00

I have been reminded recently of how we use words to dehumanize people. I recently read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Schirer. It chronicles the heinous crimes committed by Hitler and how he held an entire nation in his sway. It always amazes me how he used the power of words to form people's perceptions.

In the business world, there is much talk about "creating efficiencies within FTEs" (Full Time Equivalents). In the common parlance, this simply means that a company will be firing people.
In the world of abortion, a decapitated baby is known as a fetus. In the world of war, a slaughtered and broken human being is known as collateral damage. In the world of politics, the mentally ill are known as liberals. In the world of project management, a bright young person is reduced to being called a mere resource (an expendable item).

While some of these terms may not seem insidious at first, all of these words represent a movement away from recognizing the personhood of an indvidual. It is much easier to reduce FTE, than to throw Bob on the street with no way to provide for his family. It is much easier to perform dilation and curettage, than to murder a small, helpless child.

All of these words are the words of the furnace. The words that paved the road to Auschwitz and Treblinka. They slowly steal our humanity and allow human beings to act with rapacious cruelty. Once the dignity of man is lost, anything is possible.

This is why the Christian worldview most adequately preserves the proper notion of humanity. Man is created in the image of God and therefore has immense dignity and profound purpose. On the other hand, mankind is also fallen and prone to despicable acts. The dignity of mankind insures that I treat every human being with respect and honor, but the fallen nature in everyone curbs unfounded trust.

Fairness Doctrine - Socialist Doubletalk

2008-03-12T20:46:00.007-04:00

One of the most preposterous pieces of legislation to be birthed out of a socialist mindset is the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine endeavors to force radio broadcasters to provide equal time for different points of view. Since the federal government owns the airwaves, the proponents of this argument believe that the government has the right to strong arm broadcasters into avoiding "viewpoint discrimination".

First, one must ask who determines what viewpoints to broadcast? Who should determine when a different vantage point is needed? The government somehow believes that a group of individuals will be able to fairly arbitrate this matter. No doubt that conservative and Christian voices will have to be juxtaposed with other points of view. How about National Public Radio (NPR)? I'm sure that the newly appointed thought police will deign that NPR already presents a balanced slate of viewpoints.

How many viewpoints are enough viewpoints? No one can say for certain. On any given topic, there must be millions of possible positions. We could waste a century of air time just discussing whether or not one should use paper or plastic at the grocery store.

There is little doubt that the Fairness Doctrine will destroy talk radio as we currently know it. Broadcasting is fueled by marketing dollars. When people can no longer listen to the voices that they resonate with, they will no doubt find a different medium. Marketing dollars will dry up and the liberals will have their day of triumph over Rush Limbaugh and Shawn Hannity.

Who truly owns the airwaves? Is it not the American people? Don't we already vote our values by making conservative and Christian radio profitable? It may have never occurred to the Fairness Doctrine ilk, but maybe there is a reason why liberal radio cannot get any legs under it.

I can't help to think that the liberals also want to silence Christian broadcasting such as James Dobson and the legion of radio pastors who bring God's word to America's airwaves.

When proponents of free speech will champion pornography and the likes of Howard Stern, but try to silence conservatives and Christians, I think we have truly forgotten which hand is our right hand and which is our left. By the way, both Clinton and Obama have lent their support to the Fairness Doctrine.

To watch a video series on the silencing Christians in America, go to http://silencingchristians.com/.

To read an article concerning the Fairness Doctrine, visit statesman.com.

The Existence of Evil

2008-03-08T21:11:00.000-05:00

A Void Filled by Reading

2008-03-01T11:03:00.003-05:00

Between business trips to Manhattan and Jersey City, family illness and acclimating to a new job, I had not blogged much the last few weeks. I've been busy reading. Here is my current incomplete tally:

The Trilogy of Francis Schaeffer's works
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Schirer
Portrait of Obedience - Biography of Robert Ketcham
The Life of John Wesley
The Life of Johann Kepler
The Life God Blesses by Jim Cymbala
Genesis, Exodus, Matthew
Teaching to Change Lives by Howard Hendrix
Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single-Income Family by Steven Maxwell
Volume 1 - Spurgeon Sermons by C.H. Spurgeon
The Future of Justification by John Piper

Creation Stories

2008-02-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

Hinduism - Brahma (God) had a dream and from that dream came everything that appears to exist. Brahma has no characteristics, no feelings, no essence. It is indescribably nothing. Everything in the world is actually maya or illusion. It does not really exist. Man will eventually be dissolved back into Brahma and all of the things that make him unique will disappear back into Brahma.

Islam - Allah was in the beginning totally separate from man. He is utterly transcendent and unknowable. The greatest sin in Islam is to claim any similarity with Allah. This is known as shirk. Jesus is revered as a prophet, but to call him the Son of God is blasphemous. There is no idea of a compassionate God to be found within the Koran.

Atheism - There is no god. God is a creation of the strong to hold the weak in their thrall. God is a concept used to control people. Evolution was an invention by atheists to create a world were a creator was not needed. If pushed to its logic conclusions, atheism concludes that man is nothing more than a cosmic accident. Why not termites as Lords of the universe? Man won the cosmic evolutionary lottery. As a result, atheism ultimately devalues human life. Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin and Hitler were men who took atheism to its ultimate conclusions. Man simply happened and will disappear once again. He came from no where and is going no where.

Buddhism - They can be either atheists (miniyana) or theists (mahayana). God is either not definable or doesn't exist.

These are creation stories... The myriad creation accounts all stem from the original, unembellished account of Biblical creation.

Literal Genesis

2008-02-05T20:48:00.000-05:00

Why should I trust Genesis 1 as a literal account?

· Counters racism.
· Provides meaning for man’s existence.
· Provides a basis for man’s community.
· Provides an understanding of the way things should be and lays the framework of why I even ask the question, ‘How should things be?’.... People who believe the world is an accident or that everything is an illusion have no real reason to call one thing good or another bad.
· If we discount the creation story as mythical or allegorical, where do we stop? There are no indications in the Genesis story that it is meant to be taken as allegorical or mythical. If I can’t trust the story of creation, why should I trust the story of the resurrection?

God’s creation story in the Bible makes the death, burial and resurrection make sense. Otherwise, there is no need!

God's Wrath

2008-02-05T20:31:00.000-05:00

Is God right in killing a generation of Egyptians? How could God kill children? This question often comes up in a similar form concerning the conquest of Palestine and other judgments by God.

It is a matter of timing. God could judge them then and there, or He could wait to do it in the next life. God will invariably end the world in the book of Revelation when there are still children upon the earth.

The Egyptians were a bloody people. They had slaughtered Israelite children.

The Egyptians had enslaved Israel.

God had blessed Egypt because of Israel. Joseph stored up grain that fed the nations. During the famine, people sold Pharoah all of their property and their very lives. As a result, Pharoah and Egypt became extraordinarily wealthy. Pharoah owned all of what had once been private property.

Notice that God had given them an opportunity to give in to His demands. The Egyptians consistently rejected God's offer. As a result the plagues escalated.

The biggest issue would seem to be that Egypt stood between God and the Abrahamic promises. God was going to fulfill what He had promised Abraham.

For us today, the Egyptians stood between us and God. They were messing with the advent of the Messiah!

What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory-- even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? (Romans 9:22-25).

Atheist, Why Does Christianity Matter?

2008-01-26T23:30:00.000-05:00

I visited Ray Comfort's blog and came upon his article entitled "Atheists Evolved from Chickens". At the time that I visited there were 74 comments. Most of the comments were from angered atheists who are militantly trying to stomp out Christianity.

Atheist, why does my belief in Christ matter to you? In a universe without an objective center, why does it matter if I and the rest of the American Christians are suffering under our God-delusion? Why not leave us alone to welter in our irrationality?

After all, our delusion must be just as good as your delusion. In your delusion, there is no absolute truth, no reason to cultivate a moral compass, no reason to believe in human significance in such a vast universe, no reason to expect more than a meaningless death at the hands of merciless nature. While Christians deify a Creator God, you deify forces of nature, chance, matter, science and your own intelligence. In your epic, there is no hero. The universe ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

In a world without a center, who is to say that my delusion is more evil than your construct called evolution? The pages of the evolutionary text book need reprinted daily and are obsolete the moment they come off the press. You prize facts and scientific truth, but these "truths" that you hold most dear are ever evolving (and in some cases, pass into extinction). Your journey never ends, your quest is never satiated.

Why does our Christian delusion matter? It matters because God does exist. It matters because you claim to be fighting a shadow, a mistruth, a figment -- but you are actually fighting God Himself. You are a fallen creature, fighting the battle started by your fore bearers when they too tried to win their emancipation.

Modern Creationist Scientists

2008-01-21T09:43:00.000-05:00

Having grown weary of hearing that there are no serious scientists that believe in creationism (although I could name Henry Morris, Robert Gentry, John Silvius, David Bowman, etc. off the top of my head), I have decided to post a partial list which may be found more fully at Answers In Genesis:

Dr. Paul Ackerman, Psychologist
Dr. E. Theo Agard, Medical Physics
Dr. James Allan, Geneticist
Dr. Steve Austin, Geologist
Dr. S.E. Aw, Biochemist
Dr. Thomas Barnes, Physicist
Dr. Geoff Barnard, Immunologist
Dr. Don Batten, Plant physiologist, tropical fruit expert
Dr. John Baumgardner, Electrical Engineering, Space Physicist, Geophysicist, expert in supercomputer modeling of plate tectonics
Dr. Jerry Bergman, Psychologist
Dr. Kimberly Berrine, Microbiology & Immunology
Prof. Vladimir Betina, Microbiology, Biochemistry & Biology
Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin, Biologist
Dr. Andrew Bosanquet, Biology, Microbiology
Edward A. Boudreaux, Theoretical Chemistry
Dr. David R. Boylan, Chemical Engineer
Prof. Linn E. Carothers, Associate Professor of Statistics
Dr. David Catchpoole, Plant Physiologist (read his testimony)
Prof. Sung-Do Cha, Physics
Dr. Eugene F. Chaffin, Professor of Physics
Dr. Choong-Kuk Chang, Genetic Engineering
Prof. Jeun-Sik Chang, Aeronautical Engineering
Dr. Donald Chittick, Physical Chemist (interview)
Prof. Chung-Il Cho, Biology Education
Dr. John M. Cimbala, Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Harold Coffin, Palaeontologist
Dr. Bob Compton, DVM
Dr. Ken Cumming, Biologist
Dr. Jack W. Cuozzo, Dentist
Dr. William M. Curtis III, Th.D., Th.M., M.S., Aeronautics & Nuclear Physics
Dr. Malcolm Cutchins, Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Lionel Dahmer, Analytical Chemist
Dr. Raymond V. Damadian, M.D., Pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging
Dr. Chris Darnbrough, Biochemist
Dr. Nancy M. Darrall, Botany
Dr. Bryan Dawson, Mathematics
Dr. Douglas Dean, Biological Chemistry
Prof. Stephen W. Deckard, Assistant Professor of Education
Dr. David A. DeWitt, Biology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience
Dr. Don DeYoung, Astronomy, atmospheric physics, M.Div
Dr. David Down, Field Archaeologist
Dr. Geoff Downes, Creationist Plant Physiologist
Dr. Ted Driggers, Operations research
Robert H. Eckel, Medical Research
Dr. André Eggen, Geneticist
Dr. Dudley Eirich, Molecular Biologist
Prof. Dennis L. Englin, Professor of Geophysics
Prof. Danny Faulkner, Astronomy
Prof. Carl B. Fliermans, Professor of Biology
Prof. Dwain L. Ford, Organic Chemistry
Prof. Robert H. Franks, Associate Professor of Biology
Dr. Alan Galbraith, Watershed Science
Dr. Paul Giem, Medical Research
Dr. Maciej Giertych, Geneticist
Dr. Duane Gish, Biochemist
Dr. Werner Gitt, Information Scientist
Dr. Warwick Glover, General Surgeon
Dr. D.B. Gower, Biochemistry
Dr. Robin Greer, Chemist, History
Dr. Dianne Grocott, Psychiatrist
Dr. Stephen Grocott, Industrial Chemist
Dr. Donald Hamann, Food Scientist
Dr. Barry Harker, Philosopher
Dr. Charles W. Harrison, Applied Physicist, Electromagnetics
Dr. John Hartnett, Physicist and Cosmologist
Dr. Mark Harwood, Satellite Communications
ad nausuem...

Religion as Child Abuse

2008-01-21T09:28:00.000-05:00

There is a very disturbing trend growing within atheist apologetics. In the new paradigm, atheists desire to remove all religious influences from the upbringing of children. More and more atheist voices assert that Christians are the worst of child abusers; forcing their irrational religious dogma on young minds of mush. Destroying all potential for scientific inquiry, Christians are the worst of the lot.

How quickly do the atheists forget the forefathers of science. The forefathers of science were the strongest of Christians. Among them, you may find Johannes Keppler, Isaac Newton, the Wright brothers, George Washington Carver, Samuel F.B. Morse and a host of others.

Science was once enlivened by men and women who searched an ordered universe for the handiwork of God. The reason why they even searched to begin with was because they began with the premise that there was order to be found since an intelligent Designer had made all things. Science was the discovery of the wonders of God and was an act of worship.

Without these men and women, science would never have fluorished, yet today, pious atheists can speak of religious education as "child abuse". What rubbish.

Atheism Delusion

2008-01-21T09:14:00.000-05:00

Dinesh D'Souza is rapidly becoming a new voice to rival C.S. Lewis in the apologetic landscape. His debates with reputable atheists are producing new apologetic material.

One of his debate partners publishes Skeptic magazine. In one of the current issues, atheist David Sloan Wilson critiques fellow atheist Richard Dawkins.

Wilson begins, "Richard Dawkins and I share much in common. We are both biologists by training who have written widely about evolutionary theory." Moreover, "We are both atheists in our personal convictions." Then Wilson gets to his point. "When Dawkins' The God Delusion was published, I naturally assumed he was basing his critique of religion on the scientific study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. I regret to report otherwise. He has not done any original work on the subject and he has not fairly represented the work of his colleagues." Rather, Dawkins has subjected his atheist readers to "sleights of hand." He has produced a "diatribe against religion" that is "deeply misinformed." Indeed he is "just another angry atheist trading on his reputation as an evolutionst and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion."

Devastating stuff. Wilson examines Dawkins' central claim that religion is an obvious "delusion." On the contrary, Wilson writes, religion is in general more adaptive for human communities than atheism. "On average, religious believers are more prosocial than non-believers, feel better about themselves, use their time more constructively, and engage in long-term planning, rather than gratifying their impulsive desires...They report being more happy, active, sociable, involved and excited."

D'Souza's full article may be found at Townhall.com.

K.P. Yohannan on American Christianity

2008-01-01T17:55:00.000-05:00

K.P. Yohannan hits hard concerning American greed and materialism. This presentation hurts...

Part 1

Part 2

Persecution Complex

2008-01-01T17:19:00.000-05:00

For many years, Christian leaders have anticipated the advent of persecution in the United States. Gospel for Asia founder K.P. Yohannan reflected on the potential for persecution and has stated that he doubts that the coming conflict will find America prepared.

K.P. Yohannan is one of the few men that can make me cry in just a few seconds of reading his books. His committment to the the spread of the Gospel by native missionaries has involved personally casting aside the privileges of this world to pursue the passions of Christ. I trust his words.

"The great falling-away from faith could be worst here in [America] because people are absolutely not prepared to face suffering or persecution -- because we cannot imagine a gospel with the cross and the suffering in it," says Yohannan. "Yet the Bible teaches very strong about it. So as the Word of God says: He who has ears, let him hear
"These are warning signs," he exclaims. "God is telling us [that] we need to prepare our lives. And preachers going around saying that revival is coming, and everything is okay, and all these things? I think that people are [being] set up for huge disaster and denying their faith when they face problems." (OneNewsNow,
12/31/2007)."

Yohannan's group regularly trains indigenous missionaries in Asia. Their training involves the certainty of persecution and the possibility of death.

The Excess of Benny Hinn

2007-12-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

When will those who call themselves Christians stop throwing their God-given resources down the abyss known as Benny Hinn?

Joel Osteen, Stuart Smalley and The Secret

2007-12-29T20:34:00.000-05:00

I've appended a great Youtube video that shows the similarities between Joel Osteen, Oprah's religious cult known as The Secret and Saturday Night Live's Stuart Smalley.

Osteen's Salvation?

2007-12-24T15:40:00.000-05:00

The media-appointed spokesman of Christendom, Joel Osteen, has sounded off on the Mormon issue. Upon being interviewed by George Wallace of Fox News, Joel showed his utter lack of understanding for Christian truths.

... ... ...

WALLACE: And what about Mitt Romney? And I've got to ask you the question, because it is a question whether it should be or not in this campaign, is a Mormon a true Christian?

OSTEEN: Well, in my mind they are. Mitt Romney has said that he believes in Christ as his savior, and that's what I believe, so, you know, I'm not the one to judge the little details of it. So I believe they are.

And so, you know, Mitt Romney seems like a man of character and integrity to me, and I don't think he would — anything would stop me from voting for him if that's what I felt like.

WALLACE: So, for instance, when people start talking about Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, and the golden tablets in upstate New York, and God assumes the shape of a man, do you not get hung up in those theological issues?

OSTEEN: I probably don't get hung up in them because I haven't really studied them or thought about them. And you know, I just try to let God be the judge of that. I mean, I don't know. I certainly can't say that I agree with everything that I've heard about it, but from what I've heard from Mitt, when he says that Christ is his savior, to me that's a common bond.

... ... ...

The problem with Mormon theology is that it adds to the perfect work of Christ. The Mormon equation is faith in Christ's work plus human works. Unfortunately, this is diametrically opposed to Ephesians 2:9-10.

If I were to approach the owner of an original Stradivarius and suggest that I could improve the instrument if only he would let me work on it, I think he would be rightly piqued.
It is a completed masterpiece.

In the same way, Christ, having paid the full and complete penalty for my sin is the master maker of our salvation. No other work is needed. Out of gratitude for what he has already done, my good works naturally follow as a product of my salvation, not the cause (James2:14-18).

Salvation by addition equals infinite subtraction from the power of grace.

Merry Christmas - From Iran!

2007-12-20T14:43:00.001-05:00

I like to visit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blog for a different perspective on world events (The picture at left is of Ahmadinejad stoning the devil while on his Hajj in Mina). I was delighted to find the following letter from Ahmadinejad to the Christians of Iran. It highlights a Muslim's beliefs concerning Jesus -- a very different Jesus than the Lord and Savior of Christianity.

--- --- ---

Merry Christmas to everyone! 2006/12/21

In the Name of Almighty God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate

Merry Christmas to everyone!

My sincere congratulations to everyone for the Glorious and Auspicious Birthday of Divine Prophet - confirmed and authenticated by Gabriel, the angel of Divine revelation - the Obedient of Almighty God,

Jesus Christ, the Messiah (peace be upon Him)

He was a messenger of peace, devotion and love based upon monotheism and justice. He was raised in His Mother's hand - Virgin Mary (peace be upon her) - that Almighty God stood her as impeccable and exalted her above the women of the world. The Mother and the Son that in the Divine Sight are reputable and prestigious. And they are positioned by God - The All Wise- at a sublime level.

There's no doubt, after God - the Peerless Creator, the Beneficent, the Merciful - created the human beings, did not forsake them on their own. By sending and assigning the emissaries - prophets and messengers - along with the righteous individuals, and on top of that, by providing and utilizing the mankind with the gifts of intellect and human nature, they are guided in the right path - in order to achieve the complete perfection. The human generations - one after another - were not created to live in anguish, intimidation, skirmish, aggression, oppression, and misery. And without enjoying an amity and fraternity atmosphere - replete of love and justice - depart this life and leave it for the next generations.

...

Unfortunately during the history, some egoistic and tyrant individuals have existed that stood against the convocations and the sermons of the Divine Prophets. And these tyrants and oppressors were the causation of all the adversities and the originator of all wars and animosities.

...

Frankly, if Jesus Christ - the Messiah (peace be upon Him) was present today, how would He react? And whom would He stand with and against?

If Jesus Christ (peace be upon Him) was present today, he would order an encounter against those who would propagate corruption, obscenity and perversion, and try to nullify and exterminate the merits and the rights of women and diminish their position - a position that virgin Mary (peace be upon Her) - is their role model and sample.

If Jesus Christ (peace be upon Him) was present today, He would order a contention against those who try to discharge the world from morality, spirituality, intellectuality, justice, and peace. And accordingly, the true followers of the Divine Prophets would follow their steps in regard to strengthening the morality, intellectuality, spirituality, peace and justice in the world.

...

Certainly, the implementation of the Divine Prophets' commands and directions would reform and improve our lives in this world and would safeguard a satisfying afterlife conjunctionally.

We believe that the beloved Jesus Christ - the Messiah (peace be upon Him and His Mother) would also reappear for the fulfillment of the promises of all the Divine prophets. And together - accompanying the invited of the nations - would bring all the beauties and goodness for humanity of the world. And we are getting close to that date.

While commemorating the birthday of the Prophet of amity, love and devotion - Jesus Christ, the Messiah (peace be upon Him and His beloved Mother) and congratulating the new year, I beg God - the Merciful, the All-Wise - a year of bliss, and health and a year replete of blessing, abundance, success, and affection for everyone, specially the Christian of Iran and the world.

Written by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at 22:42

Mormon Meandering

2007-12-20T14:04:00.000-05:00

Foxnews.com recently published a list of questions that were posed to the Latter Day Saint authorities. I was not pleasantly surprised by the answers. Rather than directly answering the questions, the Mormon spokesperson avoided giving accurate and full-fledged responses. It was almost as if they were embarrassed.

For example, when asked "Does the Church believe that God lives on a planet named Kolob?" The response was that this was merely a reference in the ancient documents translated by Joseph Smith and that the matter has very little to do with core LDS doctrines.

Unfortunately, the idea that the God of earth once lived on a planet named Kolob is directly tied to Mormon doctrine. There is an infinite regression of gods who started as men on their own planets and who eventually worked their way to godhood. The Church of Latter Day Saints does not only promote a works-based faith, it also contends that men can become gods.

Foxnews.com also asked, "Does the Mormon Church believe its followers can become 'gods and goddesses' after death?" The LDS responder replied that it is not the goal of the Mormon faithful to equal or achieve parity with God. Mormons merely desire to "imitate and someday acquire their perfect goodness, love and other divine attributes." They sidestepped the question by using terms that almost any Christian would agree with, but if they were speaking clearly, they simply would have said 'Yes.'

The full article may be found at foxnews.com. Mormons should not feel embarrassed about their faith, however, it is getting harder and harder to find a Latter Day Saint who will proclaim that Joseph Smith was a true prophet or that their theology espouses that men can become gods. It is, after all, an election season...

Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

2007-12-20T13:58:00.000-05:00

I have just posted a YouTube video below about a little baby boy named Eliot.

Warning; prepare the kleenex before watching.

My heart was not only touched by the story itself, but moreover by the parents who know that God is unfailing. No matter what our circumstances and pain - if it can serve to glorify the magnitude of our God - then let it be. As John Piper would say, 'God is most glorified in our suffering.'

The following is an excerpt from Igniter Media Group who originally hosted this documentary.

Eliot was born with an undeveloped lung, a heart with a hole in it and DNA that placed faulty information into each and every cell of his body. However, that could not stop the living God from proclaiming Himself through this boy who never uttered a word.

In the midst of heartbreaking tragedy, the Mooney family found the presence of God strengthening, comforting, and guiding them. Their story reminds us to seek God and endure our struggles rather than blame Him for our hardships.

Emergent Hell

2007-12-16T16:58:00.000-05:00

Doug Pagitt, popular speaker, Emergent Church leader and pastor of Solomon's Porch, interacted with Todd Friel of Way of the Master Radio on October 22, 2007. Their primary topic was hell. I find Pagitt's responses to be extremely eye-opening about the deviation of the Emergent worldview from orthodox Christianity.

Pagitt is often insulting and seems entirely disconnected from the history of Christian thought. He refuses to speak of heaven and hell as literal places and is unwilling to consign unbelievers to hell.

Pagitt is one the strongest voices of the Emergent movement which is beginning to infiltrate into every major denomination. Spending some time to hear his views is well worth the effort.

Transcript of conversation
MP3 of conversation

The Price of Good Will - Islam/Christian Dialogue

2007-12-10T19:10:00.000-05:00

Muslim scholars authored a historic letter entitled A Common Word Between Us and You. In a bold move, these scholars made an overture of unity with Christians worldwide.

The Yale statement that responded to this document has been signed by many prominent evangelicals. Among them, we may find John Stott (author and theologian), Chuck Colson (Prison Fellowship), Rich Nathan (Senior Pastor, Vineyard Columbus), Brian McClaren (noted heretic, author), Leith Anderson (President, National Association of Evangelicals), etc.

Due to the supremacy of Scripture, I can easily question how such vaunted members of evangelicalism would sign such a document. The document refers to god as the "All Merciful", a clear reference in the Islamic mind to Allah. More specifically, it states "...we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world." It goes on to describe the foundation of future dialogue to be Islam's and Christianity's common understanding that God is a God of love. This syncretistic hash is expressly forbidden by Scripture.

The signers of this blighted document will no doubt state that the document iterated nothing that they did not intend -- God is a god of love -- Christians can evangelize using this common understanding of God. Unfortunately, what does it mean to the people who read the document from a perspective outside of orthodox Christianity? Have we so succumbed to post modernism that we can lend our good names to a document that will definitely be interpreted in a different light than within the pall of our evangelical tradition? I cannot believe that the evangelical signers for a moment did not understand that this document could be read in many different ways. Ways counter to the Christ-centered Gospel.

While I do not blame these leaders for reaching out to Islam, they have lent their names to a document that will give creedence to universalism and a myriad of other absurdities. Their theological and social capital will be used without their permission to spur all kinds of hopeless ecumenical gatherings that seek to unite Islam and Christianity on a spiritual plane. Christ tells us that such spiritual unity is impossible.

Franklin Graham had it right when he stated that all non-Christian religions are wicked in the eyes of God (Matt. 12:30-31; I Peter 3:4-6). Muslims are lovely people, but they have a deplorable religion.

The best that we can hope for within the Christian-Islam dialogue is a temporary detente or a temporary cessation of hostility. To expect open arms and long lasting harmony is naive at best and idolatrous at worst.

Christ calls us to love those wrapped in idolatry. He also tells us that we will be abused by these same people that we reach out to (John 15:18-25). Unreciprocated love and hopefully a smidgen of respect is all that we can expect.

We should reach out in a non-syncretistic, non-compromising fashion. The politics of ecumenicity can only disgrace the Gospel. Someone should draft a better and more well-thought-out document that does not sell Christianity's soul for an ounce of good will...

Sources:

Merry Materialism

2007-12-10T18:55:00.000-05:00

During the Christmas holidays, I think Christians have the most difficulty with materialism. American culture has a huge expectation for excess. The expectation suffuses everything that we do as Christians to the point that we often do not even recognize it.

Ostentation and self-gratification exerts enormous clout during the holidays. Good citizens are expected to exchange gifts with people who have no needs, to purchase new baubles for the themselves, to put the stores in the black for the year, to drown their children in a sea of toys, to enshrine the materialistic ethic. Meanwhile, a mere continent or so away, people are struggling to maintain even the barest essentials of life.

Americans take their excess for granted. We lavish gifts on one another and, if we give at all to the third world, we only spend a very small fraction of our total Christmas giving.

How much is enough? Is being comfortable enough? It seems that we continually redefine comfort as our financial reach grows longer. Somehow the guideline of personal comfort takes us every time to the limit of our budgets and leaves us unable to practice the barest minimum of charity for the poor and starving.

Christians battle the iconography of our country. Santa Claus, an icon now largely shaped by Coca Cola depictions and marketing, used to be an emblem of charity and compassion. In his original incarnation as Nicholas of Nicea, the fiery champion of Christianity at the Council of Nicea who slapped the heretic Arius, Saint Nicholas represented someone who poured his life out for the lost and suffering. How distant is that memory of Nicholas?

Did God promise us safety, comfort and material excess when he gave us the ultimate gift in Christ? Quite the contrary, God promised us that the world would revile us, that we be foreigners on earth and that we might be called upon to pay the ultimate cost for our faith; our very lives. In America, we are blessed that the season of persecution is not upon us.

I believe that most Christians vainly imagine that when times get tough that they will rise to the occassion and blossom spiritually by giving their time, money, family and life for the Gospel. If we cannot blossom while the days are still sweet, persecution will only spur our blight.

Here is an opportunity to pour out your life for the lost and to defy a materialistic Christmas....Gospel for Asia.

A Latter Day Saint Quick Reference

2007-12-04T20:41:00.000-05:00

God - The God that we recognize on earth is merely one of millions of gods that started on the pathway of their eternal progression in much the same way that we currently live. By merging faith with works, a faithful Mormon can someday achieve god-hood. Through producing millions of spirit children through sexual relations with one's wife (or wives), an incipient god populates their own planet. God is flesh and blood.

Jesus - Jesus is our spirit brother and also the brother of Satan. Jesus' plan of how people would become gods was chosen over Satan's plan by God the Father. This sibling rivalry sparked the rebellion of Satan and his followers who were forever denied the opportunity to take flesh and blood bodies. Jesus is more of a pathfinder than the Savior who paid for all sins and who secured all of the blessings of eternal life.

Heaven - Three levels exist and almost everyone gets into the lowest level known as the terrestrial heaven. Telestial heaven is reserved for Mormons who don't quite do all that is necessary to achieve godhood. Celestial heaven is reserved for the faithful Mormons who are given the right to see the face of God the Father and who also secure the privilege of godhood through faith and works. After death, everyone is resurrected and given a second chance to accept the Mormon Gospel.

Hell - Reserved for only a very few apostate Mormons who attack the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Salvation - There is a difference in Mormon terminology between the phrases "eternal life" and "salvation." Eternal life is achieving the ability by personal merit and faith to become a god. Salvation is generally available to everyone through the merits of Christ's salvific work.

Bible - The Bible is accurate only as far as it has been properly interpreted. Mormonism contends that the Christian faith was lost shortly after the passage of the twelve apostles. The Bible was also lost in its true form. Joseph Smith restored the Gospel through translating the Book of Mormon. Though the Bible has a secondary role in the life of the Mormon faithful, the reliable words of God may be found in the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants.

For more thorough coverage of Latter Day Saint beliefs, visit the following sites:

Utah Lighthouse Ministries - http://www.utlm.org/navtopicalindex.htm
Mormon Official Website - http://mormon.org/mormonorg/eng/
Walter Martin Site - http://www.waltermartin.org/eyewit.html

A Mormon President

2007-12-04T19:54:00.000-05:00

I'm struggling with the idea of possibly supporting Mitt Romney, a Mormon presidential candidate. Giuliani's social positions on abortion and homosexuality exempt him from my viable candidate list. Thompson and Huckabee also provide some reservations and they may not make it very far in the political process.

Huckabee is anticipated to strike early in the primaries, but may trail off as Mitt Romney gains steam. Everyone is playing a hundred possible scenarios, so it seems worthwhile to contemplate how I would vote if Romney gains the GOP nomination for the general election.

Latter Day Saints (LDS) prophecy (a somewhat anemic genre) describes a time when the Constitution will hang by a thread during a national crisis. The Mormon eldership will sweep to the fore to save the nation. Having a Mormon President in the Whitehouse seems to be a harbinger to the Mormon faithful that the prophecy will come true.

"Will the Constitution be destroyed? No; it will be held inviolate by this people; and, as Joseph Smith said, 'The time will come when the destiny of the nation will hang upon a single thread. At that critical juncture, this people will step forth and save it from the threatened destruction.' It will be so." (JD 7:15, Brigham Young, 4 July 1954)

Romney is a true believer and is even purported to wear the LDS under garments that supposedly are endowed with spiritual protection. On Thursday, Romney will give a speech explaining the role of his faith in his politics. The act is being compared to John F. Kennedy's speech on his Catholicism.

As a Christian, can I in good conscience support a man whose ascendency will legitimatize the Book of Mormon? The alternative may even be scarier.

Participate in the discussion by commenting or sending me an e-mail directly via the address in my profile. Dialogue is welcomed.

Beware of Atheists Bearing Gifts

2007-12-04T19:24:00.000-05:00

As with every religious holiday, we can expect an attack on the institution of Christianity this season. During past holidays, we have had the release of the DaVinci Code, the revamping of the Gospel of Judas, the re-emergence of the Gospel of Thomas -- all spurious and all containing half-baked theories concerning the life, death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

This year the attack may be more subtle. Theaters are currently playing the movie The Golden Compass. Its author, Philip Pullman is an enemy of Christ. Pullman hates the writings of C.S. Lewis and has written his series to directly counter Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. He has left little doubt about his books' intended thrust in discussions of his works, such as noting in a 2003 interview that "My books are about killing God" and in a 2001 interview that he was "trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief."

A Los Angeles Times article on the Golden Compass controversy noted that:

Pullman's never hidden his skepticism about God or his rejection of organized religion. A quick Internet search turns up a 2004 essay he wrote deploring "theocracies" for a newspaper in his native Britain, and his own Web site states that he thinks it "perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it." His "Dark Materials" features a sympathetic character, an ex-nun, who describes Christianity as "a very powerful and convincing mistake," while "The Amber Spyglass" concludes with the two child heroes participating in the dissolution of "the Authority," a senile, pretender God who has falsely passed himself off as the creator of the universe.

The movie has been sanitized so as not to blatantly offend America's Christian audiences. However, there is no doubt that the movie will popularize the more scurrilous books. Christians should vote with their wallets and not view the movie. If The Golden Compass fares well at the box office, Hollywood will no doubt gauge this as encouragement to wage a more open war on faith.

St. George and the Blasphemy Dragon

2007-11-28T21:29:00.000-05:00

In a sermon entitled "You Must Be Born Again: Why This Series and Where Are We Going ...", John Piper makes the fascinating statement that George Barna has blasphemed.

George Barna is America's Christian pollster. He has simultaneously supported the growth of the mega church by providing polling data while also writing books extremely skeptical of evangelical practices.

The reason that John Piper levies that charge of blasphemy against George Barna is because Barna has lumped a wide variety of people into the group that may be identified as "born again." Barna's polls have consistently found that there are no differences between those that are identified as born again and the rest of the world. Barna does not create the born again polling group by allowing them to self-identify. There are a number of questions that he asks that, per his definition, dilineates born-againdom.

Piper takes umbrage because he believes that Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit makes a difference in a person's life once they accept Christ. Per Piper's perspective, a saved individual is by definition a changed individual. Saved people cannot continue to live like the rest of the world because the power of an omnipotent God is working His sanctification in them.

Piper is right. When we tell the world that true Christians are not different from anyone else, we are telling the world a lie. If a person does not act like a redeemed person, they are not a redeemed person. Jesus gave us two standards for identifying Christians; profession of the truth and lifestyle. If either of these are missing, the person is not known by Christ.

It is a form of blasphemy to say that Jesus' work is not efficacious. Since only God can know the human heart, George will probably continue to fight the blasphemy dragon since his definition does not take into account the God prescribed human evaluations of truth and lifestyle.

I'll conclude by letting John Piper speak for himself:

In other words, in this research the term "born again" refers to people who say things. They say, "I have a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It’s important to me." They say, "I believe that I will go to heaven when I die. I have confessed my sins and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior." Then the Barna Group takes them at their word, ascribes to them the infinitely important reality of the new birth, and then blasphemes that precious biblical reality by saying that regenerate hearts have no more victory over sin than unregenerate hearts.

The Unforgiveable Sin and the Blasphemy Challenge

2007-11-25T16:01:00.000-05:00

A wonderful pastor friend of mine wrote to me about the Blasphemy Challenge last week. The Blasphemy Challenge was a promotional activity sponsored by the Rational Response Squad, a new breed of militant atheists who are busy developing their perception that they are a martyr or under-privileged class.

If you have browsed through Youtube.com to look at some of the videos of those who have "renounced the Holy Spirit," your heart will no doubt be grieved. Thousands have taken the challenge and not-so-boldly, but ever-so-defiantly looked into their webcam to denounce the existence of God. Their ages vary from the pre-pubescent to the aged. Their socio-economic class ranges from the affluent atheist to the still dependent, stay-at-home computer geek. But they all feel proud of their moment to announce independence from the tyrant God.

Perhaps most tragic and laughable is that they are not accomplishing the unpardonable sin. Per most Biblical expositors that I have read, the unpardonable sin is to deny the works and person of God when he has personally manifested Himself. The specific scenario was when the Pharisees attributed a healing by Christ through the Holy Spirit to the work of Satan (Matthew 12:22-30). Confronted by the very person (Jesus) and works (the healing) of God, they refused to believe. When God was at his most persuasive through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Pharisees chose to cling to disbelief.

Those that participate in the Blasphemy Challenge have likely not had the opportunity to commit the unpardonable sin. Are they walking dangerously? Absolutely. However, I think that we will find many of these 'denouncers' with us in heaven after Christ beckons to them. Such was Paul at one time.

Note: I would welcome different perspectives on what constitutes the unpardonable sin.

A Theology of Abandonment

2007-11-25T15:34:00.000-05:00

I heard a message last Wednesday from John MacArthur which he preached in May of 2007. The message had been recommended by a friend. While the content of the message was not shocking, it was rather shocking to hear a major pastor lay it on the line.

MacArthur announced that he believed that America has been abandoned by God. He then went on and developed an extremely compelling theology of abandonment using Romans 1 as the linchpin of his argument.

He noted that among all the nations that God had abandoned in the Bible, that America has surpassed all of them in the breadth of its iniquity.

There are certain practical and personal implications for Christians in the United States if God has abandoned us. How should we rear our children? What should we expect to happen to American media in the next ten years? Of the influences that currently shape us, how will these influences begin to falter? What is our role as proclaimers of the Gospel? Should we separate? How can we escape from inclusion in God's wrath? How do we help others to escape?

In ages past, heroes of Biblical proportions were faced with hard choices in light of God's abandonment of their cultures. We live in no less momentous times if MacArthur is right. For my part, I came to the same conclusion almost ten years ago.

While America has likely been abandoned, there is always an opportunity to forestall God's wrath.

Psalm 81:13-14

"If my people would but listen to me,
how quickly would I subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes!"

Note: For a transcript of MacArthur's sermon, visit http://www.gty.org/Resources/transcripts/80-184.

Apathetic to the Apocalypse

2007-11-18T21:45:00.000-05:00

When Angel and I left the church where we had served in the assistant pastorate for several years, we began a multi-year odyssey that allowed us to survey several churches. The one common theme that seemed to unite all of these churches together was their total avoidance of eschatological themes or the doctrine of the end times.

It is the common consensus of many of the most avant garde churches that studying prophecy is too divisive of an issue. If they do venture into this area, they do so only for immediate life application and dare not foray into any conjecture about future events.

I find this to be very disheartening. These leaders are robbing their people of the anticipation of future events. They are also robbing their flocks of the ultimate culmination of history -- the events that will more fully allow mankind to understand the entire scope of history within its context.

How can you avoid a book that promises a blessing for those that read and understand it? In Revelation 1:3, "Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near." This passage intimates that we can actually understand the book of Revelation!

At times, the fear of prophetic writings is so great among churches that I actually fear for their spiritual descendents. There is a tendency among those that avoid prophecy to also allegorize Genesis 1-3. This seems to be in synch with 2 Peter 3:3-7 which ties together skepticism of the second coming with skepticism in creation and the flood (among unbelievers).

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come,
scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this
`coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has
since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long
ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and
by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and
destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for
fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

A strong understanding of God's Word can only be amplified by a complete understanding of prophecy. How can we rouse out of this apathy to the apocalypse?

Eric Harrington - Faithful Servant of the Week

2007-11-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

A gentleman who leads a Bible study that I attend told us a story from his past week. Over the last month or so, he has been hunting for a deer and found great disappointment in not being able to bag a buck. During his time in nature, God had begun to talk to him about the things that would not dissapoint; the salvation of the Lord.

Eric decided to pray on the way to work one morning that God would give him something to do that would have an eternal, non-selfish purpose. God responded in a big way. Immediately upon arriving at work, Eric's boss asked him to help remodel a friend's home for $25/hour. Upon hearing of the opportunity, Eric saw the hand of God and told his boss that he would do it for free. God impressed upon him that he was working to earn five minutes to present the Gospel .

So, Eric worked on the weekend during the biggest Ohio State football game of the year. Working feverishly, Eric reminded himself that he was working to earn the opportunity to share his faith. He told God that he would do the work, but God would have to do the speaking. At the end of the work day, Eric nervously approached his boss and the owner of the house. God gave him the perfect message at the perfect opportunity. Eric started by talking about how how a carpenter much better than himself once died for Eric's sins.

There is something absolutely wonderful about being part of God's eternal plan. There is no other feeling like it. I applaud Eric Harrington this Thanksgiving week.

God challenges us to have faith enough during this holiday week to speak the truth of the Gospel to friends and family.

*I only post this story because Eric has no idea where my blog is. He is a great man who is growing in his faith. I'll keep him humble by keeping my fandom secret.

Abortion and the Democrats

2007-11-15T22:05:00.000-05:00

I'm currently watching the entirety of the Democrat debate from Las Vegas on CNN's website.

The abortion question came up and the candidates were asked if they would support a litmus test for pro-abortion Supreme Court justices. One-by-one, the candidates waffled and stated that they would put forward Supreme Court nominees that "protected a right to privacy." They all assiduously avoided stating that they would make abortion (not privacy) their litmus test. Do words mean anything?

I am continually stunned that the ability to take a human life is shrouded in a right to privacy by politicians. The general abortion debate has long gone beyond whether or not abortion is the taking of a human life. Liberal ethicist are now coming out and supporting infanticide. Do you want to try out a child? Peter Singer of Princeton says he'd kill disabled babies if it were in the "best interests" of the family.

Several area pastors have decided that being a "single issue voter" is too divisive. They are beginning to embrace liberal politicians and unwittingly they are also beginning to embrace liberal theology. These pastors believe that world hunger, ecological issues and poverty should be the highest agenda items for the Church (Jim Wallis and his local friends).

I, for one, believe that abortion is an immense evil that will speed God's judgment. Is it a sin for the Church to ignore the hungry, imprisoned and hurting? Absolutely. But the mere existence of these injustices should not make us think that we must choose between the poor and the abortion issue.

Self-Indulgence and Profits of Sin

2007-11-12T17:05:00.001-05:00

If those who profess Christ do not clean up their own house, unbelievers will continue to drag Christ through the muck. Take for instance, the recent self-indulgences of Eddie Long, pastor of a massive church in Atlanta, Georgia.

$350,000 luxury car.
$1.4 million six-bedroom, nine-bath mansion on 20 acres.
Between 1997 and 2000, Bishop Eddie Long Ministries Inc. provided its founder with at least $3.07 million in salary, benefits and use of property.
In those same four years, the charity only made $3.1 million in other donations. It’s impossible to tell to whom those funds went as the records aren’t itemized, as required by the IRS. The four-person board responsible for overseeing the charity included both Long and his wife.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has opened a Senate investigation of various complaints levied against gross excess within mega-churches. Those being investigated include Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn and Paula White.

My Uncle Clyde recently sent out a list of the private planes owned by these mega-wealthy pastors (International Pentecostal Church of Christ E-Date):

Paula White - Hawker-Siddeley "Jet Dragon"
Jesse Duplantis, Jerry Savelle, Mark Bishop - Each have a Cessna Citation 500 ringing in at $1.25 million each.
Fred Price, Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn - Each have a Grumman Gulfstream II. With a two-man crew and 19 passengers, these cruise at 581 mph with a range of 4,275 miles. Used, they're worth about $4.5 million each.
Paul Crouch - Bombardier Challenger 604. Carrying a crew of two plus 19 passengers, she cruises at 529 mph with a range of 3,860 miles. She's valued at $16.5 million, not including Paul's "special interior remodeling."
The late Ken Hagin - Challenger 601valued at $6 million.
Joyce Meyer - Challenger 600, $4.5 million.
Kenneth Copeland - Cessna Citation 550 Bravo ($3.4 million), a Grumman Gulfstream II ($4.5 million), a Cessna Golden Eagle, and a Beech E-55, a lesser aircraft and his own airport. Copeland said that God wanted him and Gloria to each have their own Cessna Citation Ten super-jets at $20 million each.

All of these names have resurfaced again-and-again as people who have taken the widows last mite in order to live a life of self-indulgent luxury.

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping (2 Peter 2:1-3).

Citations:
Atlanta Journal
Religion News Blog

Hero Nominations

2007-11-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure last Sunday of preaching a sermon on heroes from Hebrews 11 and 12. Among the notables that I expounded on, I included Martin Luther, George Whitefield, Charles Spurgeon, D. James Kennedy and many other men of faith from the near past. Among my local heroes, I spoke about Jerry Poff and Allen McClellan, local pastors.

Who are your heroes? Leave a comment concerning your hero and I will be selecting three individuals to receive a free copy of "Revolution in World Missions" by K.P. Yohannan. The drawing will take place on November 19th.

Atheists as the New Gays

2007-11-12T16:17:00.000-05:00

Richard Dawkins and others of his ilk have proposed that atheists should create a movement similar to the civil rights movement for gays. Believing that atheists are a persecuted class, Dawkins has even proposed that atheists should adopt a new name, much like the homosexuals gravitated to the more positive name "gay" as part of their political agenda.

Dawkins proposed new name is "brights". Of course, this implies that everyone else that disagrees is a dullard. Hard to see how this will not backfire for poor Dawkins.

When have you last seen a martyr for the cause of atheism? When has an atheist been denied tenure for his beliefs? When has an atheist had a burning cross planted on his lawn? Did Nero, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao target atheists? When did you last see someone dying for nothing or for someone who wasn't there?

For an article by Dinesh D'Souza on this topic visit Town Hall.

Atheist of the Week

2007-11-12T16:08:00.000-05:00

Richard Dawkins, our Atheist of the Week (or two weeks), has been ducking a debate with Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative scholar.

Dawkin's rather inane video may be viewed at Youtube. If you would like to see Dawkins debate Dinesh, write an e-mail of encouragement to Dawkins at dineshjdsouza@aol.com. Dinesh has promised to forward these letters onward to the recalcitrant Dawkins.

Novelty and Mechanics: Building the Church

2007-11-07T22:13:00.000-05:00

There has been considerable fascination in the Christian culture with chasing fads and finding new novel concepts. Church leaders are the target of thousands of marketing campaigns, leadership models, avant garde Bible study curricula, trendy videos and vision casting techniques.

All of these mechanisms promise Church leaders growing congregations, health, vitality and a spiritual revolution.

When did God call pastors to resort to novelty? When did mechanics and methodology take over the Church of Christ? Does our current pre-occupation with revolutionary ideas and methodologies show that we trust the power of God's word or the power of human ingenuity?

Cults build big groups using mere methods. I want to know how to participate in building the Kingdom of God. Why should Saddleback, Mars Hill and Willowcreek be our models?

God did not call us to novelty, but to preaching the old, time honored, time proven message of the Gospel -- the message once for all entrusted to the saints by the apostles (Jude 1:3). God builds the house, not the ideas of men (Psalm 127:1).

Episcopalian Courage

2007-11-02T23:23:00.000-04:00

Katharine Schori, the current head of the Episcopalian church, was an early supporter of the election of the first openly homosexual bishop in New Hampshire. She is now using her clout to crush the Episcopal diocese in Pittsburgh which is moving to leave the Episcopal Church over the homosexual clergy issue. Threatening all kinds of vengeance, Schori has promised in a letter to levy a civil suit against Pittsburgh's bishop, Robert Duncan.

Her goal is simple. If they lose the Pittsburgh people over the homosexuality issue, they will keep the property through legal entanglements.

Here is Robert Duncan's response:

1st November, A.D. 2007
The Feast of All Saints

The Most Revd Katharine Jefferts Schori
Episcopal Church Center
New York, New York

Dear Katharine,

Here I stand. I can do no other. I will neither compromise the Faith once delivered to the saints, nor will I abandon the sheep who elected me to protect them.

Pax et bonum in Christ Jesus our Lord,

+Bob Pittsburgh

Praise God for this man! In his time of trial, e-mail Duncan at duncan@pgh.anglican.org to show your support. May the Episcopal union be sundered if it be for the cause of Christ.

For more on Robert Duncan, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Duncan_(bishop)
To site the letter directly, go to http://www.pgh.anglican.org/news/local/pbresponse110207
To read about Katharine Shori's gambit, visit http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_91480_ENG_HTM.htm

Way of the Master

2007-10-31T21:26:00.001-04:00

There are few ministries that have awakened such an incredible resurgence in Biblical witnessing as Way of the Master. I would strongly encourage anyone to visit Way of the Master or Way of the Master Radio.

Way of the Master Radio has a daily two hour podcast hosted by Todd Friel that emphasizes evangelism and speaking the same message as Jesus Christ. They also have clips of their television show available online at http://www.wayofthemaster.com/watchepisodes.shtml.

Willow Creek Announces Failure

2007-10-31T21:07:00.000-04:00

Willow Creek has announced that it is failing to produce spiritually mature disciples. I'm glad that they have acknowledged this issue and I hope that they can begin to turn things around. Bob Burney, a Salem Communications radio show host, has posted a good article at Town Hall.

It is sad that Willow Creek has invited the heretic Brian McClaren to speak at their upcoming youth event known as Shift. This is definitely not a move in the right direction if they desire to spur a new generation to maturity. McClaren represents the new theological liberalism threatening the Church. I doubt if it is coincidental that he is currently organizing a Deep Shift conference.

Environmental Reverence

2007-10-30T22:49:00.000-04:00

There is a new religion and Al Gore is its chief priest and prophet. The idol of the environment is our new Lawgiver. Anything uttered in the spirit of the environment is sanctified.

Last week, an article was published in the Hilliard newspaper entitled “Consider Reducing Baby Emissions.” The author was Marianne Gabel, a high powered Columbus attorney, who has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into environmental and reproductive related causes. The theme of the article was the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies thereby reducing the environmental impact. Washed in the sanctifying cry of “Environment!” was presented the case for abortion, condoms for sexually promiscuous teens and the depopulation of ‘burdensome’ third world children.

Pastors have also picked up the mantra of the new religion. A battle wages beneath the surface of the National Association of Evangelicals over whether abortion or the environment should be paramount. The issue truly boils down to ‘Who is my enemy and who is my friend?’ Do we side with Al Gore and his cronies or do we champion the weak who have no voice?

Make no bones about it, the liberals will not allow religious conservatives to try to side with both sides of the issue. There is too much at stake in their minds concerning the absolute and dire need to achieve zero population growth.

The environment is the new god of this age because we have entrusted it with our peace and security. Loyalty to the environment is unquestionable and, in the new ideology, the only morality. The sacral creed of the environment is uber-morality, superceding any misguided, Biblical morality.

If you believe that the linkage of the environment to a new religion is a little overblown, consider these quotes by Al Gore taken from his first book “Earth in the Balance; Ecology and the Human Spirit”:

"A modern prayer of the Onondaga tribe in upstate New York offers another beautiful expression of our essential connection to the earth: `O Great Spirit, whose breath gives life to the world and whose voice is heard in the soft breeze make us wise so that we may understand what you have taught us'" (p. 259).
"The richness and diversity of our religious tradition throughout history is a spiritual resource long ignored by people of faith, who are often afraid to open their minds to teachings first offered outside their own system of belief.
"This panreligious perspective may prove especially important where our global civilization's responsibility for the earth is concerned" (p. 258-259).
"A growing number of anthropologists and archeo-mythologists argue that the prevailing ideology of belief in prehistoric Europe and much of the world was based on the worship of a single earth goddess, who was assumed to be the fount of all life and who radiated harmony among all living things.

We have a new god in mother earth. Abolished are the 10 commandments. In their place, the dictum of peace and safety. Peace and safety at the expense of godless tyranny.

Rob Bell, Emergent Error

2007-10-30T20:50:00.000-04:00

Much has been written about the Emergent church movement and its strong ties to postmodern thinking. One of the chief proponents of the movement was a target of Mark Driscoll's speech at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in September. Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill and creator of the popular Nooma videos, has begun to draw significant attention for the postmodern underpinnings of his beliefs.

Rob Bell's Beliefs

1. Rabbinical Authority - Rob Bell believes that listening to the early rabbis is key to unlocking the message of Scripture. As Mark Driscoll points out, however, it is highly questionable whether men who do not love, adore, revere, respect and cling to Jesus would possess God's hermeneutic principles. If their method of interpreting the Scripture did not open their eyes and hearts to Christ, then who would want to follow in their footsteps?

2. Brian McClaren's Influence - McClaren is the leading spokesman for all things Emergent. He denies eternal hell, posits that one can be a good and justified Buddhist who reveres Jesus, enjoys the works of heretics like John Dominic Crossan (Jesus Seminar) and Tillich, and he has sanctioned a five year moratorium on discussing whether homosexuality is sinful. McClaren has often filled Rob Bell's pulpit at Mars Hill.

3. Trajectory Hermeneutics - Rob Bell believes that Scripture contains the kernel of ideas that evolve into their full form over time. This type of trajectory hermeneutics has been used to defend homosexuality (not yet by Rob). Homosexual apologists believe that the principles of love and equality in the Bible lead to the trajectory of total acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. This type of methodology will produce a multitude of errors and can be used to rationalize and defend almost any sinful behavior.

4. Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell's groundbreaking postmodern work argues that certain doctrines like the virgin birth are discardable. While Rob personally believes in the virgin birth, he questions what Christians really gain from the doctrine of Mary's Holy Spirit inspired pregnancy. Bell asks where we would be if DNA evidence concluded that Jesus had not been born of a virgin. In the paraphrased words of Mark Driscoll, 'How can we believe the extravagant claims of a son of a lying whore?' Without the virgin birth, the entire story changes. Rob further goes on to state that theology is flexible like a trampoline and that it can easily be molded to fit the times. Unfortunately, Rob forgets that even trampolines have to have a solid foundation.

While Rob Bell has not moved to full blown heresy, his ideas will inevitably lead others there. History has taught us that successive generations attempt to live more in tune with the ideas that have been passed to them. There are tremendous dangers in having the wrong perspective of the world, much less God's word.

Fading Beauty and Cultural Decay

2007-10-25T21:48:00.000-04:00

Artistic Absence of Beauty

There are few indicators of cultural decline as significant as the disappearance of beautiful art. When one considers the works of early Americans, the ancient Greeks, their works are truly beautiful and inspiring. Upon viewing their craft, one is left with reverence that God has created such beautiful images for the artist to capture on canvas or within chiseled stone.

However, recent American and European art has departed from the beautiful and plunged into the imagination of man. As man has searched for meaning outside of God's word and world, signifying man's repudiation of God Himself, he has delved into his own mind and found the brokenness revealed in Genesis 3. Consider these highly lauded examples of modern American art:

Is there anything beautiful in them? The Scream (the first painting) betokens a silent menace at the end of the bridge. The other two paintings are decompositions of reality. Is there anything redeeming within them? Yet the world has devolved so much from a true appreciation of beauty that empty-headed critics heap praise on these modern debacles.

The message of the paintings is that reality is malleable, chaotic and threatening. While I consider these paintings intellectually intriguing, my four year old has created such masterpieces without nearly the artistic training.

Literature and music follow the same path as the visual arts. There are very few, if any, great literary masterpieces being written. Music has been conquered by drug saturated, blond no-talents who believe that baring all is part of their musical repertoire. The messages of their songs are self-indulgent and decadent.

In the words of a famous deviant, "I care not who makes a nation's laws, so long as I can write its songs." Musicians are the laymen philosophers of every age. Within music, there is real power to influence and shape a nation. Is it any wonder that our children commit atrocities as they gyrate to the music of their lawgivers?

American culture is in decline because it has abandoned God. As a post-Christian nation, America still has vestiges of its former glory. It is up to Christians to redeem the arts and to salvage the ruins of mankind's artistry. When a Christian creates beauty, he does so to the pleasure of his Creator.

A Gospel for Asia Christmas

2007-10-24T19:14:00.000-04:00

If you are trying to break out of the rut of a materialistic Christmas, I would like to commend to you Gospel for Asia.

Gospel for Asia (or GFA) is a ministry that builds support for indigenous Asian missionaries. Native missionaries are extraordinarily effective since they have already mastered the languages and nuances of their cultures. Today, over 85 percent of Asian countries do not allow western missionaries to come and freely preach the Gospel and plant churches. These brothers and sisters in Christ live purposefully at the level of their neighbors, often in severe poverty, all for the sake of the Gospel. GFA passes on 100% of your donations directly to the missionaries or the cause that you designate.

For an eye opening experience, take a peek through the GFA Christmas catalogue at http://gfa.org/gift. Here you can find water purifiers, water buffaloes, wells and a spring of life overflowing.

This Christmas, please bust traditional self-gratification and buy an Asian a chicken! Such a small gift will be an incredible blessing.

Note: The picture at left is of K.P. Yohannan, the founder of GFA and an incredible saint in Christ.

Preach the Gospel. If Necessary Use Words?

2007-10-23T19:38:00.000-04:00

There is an oft quoted saying "Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words." This has long been heralded by Christians as a profoundly wise saying. Over the years, I have come to find the sentiments of the quote to be appalling.

First, the quote is often attributed to Francis of Assisi. Unfortunately, a survey of his actual writings will not yield the quote. The Franciscans themselves cannot find those words among Francis' works or legacy.

Second, the statement contradicts the Scriptures. Romans 10:14-15 states it well:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

Christians favor the quote since they think it obviates them from opening their mouths. The common belief is that a Christian's lifestyle will miraculously lead people to Christ. However, Buddhists live righteous lifestyles (in the eyes of men). Taoists, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, mystics, Moonies, and cultists all live lifestyles that are often commendable and disciplined.

Unless Christians open their months, Jesus Christ never gets the credit for their conduct. Arguing whether we should have both a verbal and a lifestyle witness is like arguing whether the left or right wing of an airplane is important.

Ray Comfort tells a wonderful story that illustrates my point nicely.

One hundred and fifty thousand children had been on the brink of starving to death, but thanks to the kind gift of a very generous billionaire, every child now had enough food to keep him alive. That gift had arrived in the form of one big check. The horror was now over. It was finished. It was just a matter of distributing the food using the few relief workers we had. Without them to get the food to the children, there would have been many more deaths.

Some days later, a frantic worker burst into the camp and cried, "Some of the relief workers have stopped distributing food. Masses of children are dying!"

Why would the workers stop when there was plenty of food? It didn't make sense. The distraught man said, "It's because one of them held up a sign that said, 'Feed the starving children. Where necessary, use food.' That has caused some of the workers to simply befriend the starving children without giving them food. It's insane!"

Christian, who are you to withhold the bread of life?

Sweden Crushes Religious Education

2007-10-22T14:27:00.000-04:00

Per an article published in the United Kingdom's Guardian, Sweden will be crushing any faith based teaching even in private schools. The writer of the article argues that this should be par for the course in Britain as well. Sweden is struggling with how to curb fanatical Islam. The full article is at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_brown/2007/10/gods_honest_truth.html.

Our religious liberties are a brittle thing. How long before the anti-religious plague striking Sweden crosses the Atlantic?

In a video created by Richard Dawkins, famous scientist and atheist, Dawkins decries the passage of religious beliefs from adults to children as a form of child abuse (The Root of All Evil - The God Delusion). Dawkins encourages government to remove parental rights in the education of their own children. This spirit was recently injected into the American debate when John Edwards announced that he would not "impose" his own morality even on his second grader.

In response to a question of whether he would be comfortable having a fairy tale read to his second-grader that ends with two men kissing and living happily ever after, Edwards had this to say: "… I don't want to make that decision on behalf of my children. I want my children to be able to make that decision on behalf of themselves, and I want them to be exposed to all the information, even in (chuckling), what did you say, second grade? Well, second grade might be a little tough, but even in second grade, to be exposed to all those possibilities. Because I don't want to impose my view – nobody made me God – I don't get to decide on behalf of my family and my children. … I don't get to impose on them what it is that I believe is right."

Prepare to defend your right to transmit your beliefs to your children. Edwards and Dawkins cometh!

Angel's First Half Marathon - From Start to Finish

2007-10-22T12:36:00.001-04:00

The sun is just rising . Half the crowd is wearing trash bags for warmth.

Angel and her training group prepare for a day of running.

Everybody crossed the finish line in flying colors!

The Boys!

2007-10-21T19:44:00.001-04:00

Bubby Art Work

2007-10-21T19:38:00.000-04:00

Apparently, this is supposed to be me... My son's first sculpture. Breathtaking isn't it? By juxtaposing my image over a map of the United States, I assume that he is making a statement that I'm a man of the world.

In all honesty, this is a lot better than many of the things that pass for modern art.

From Evolution to Racism

2007-10-19T19:24:00.000-04:00

Dr. James Watson, the famous secular humanist and discoverer of DNA, has recently made statements that black people are less intelligent than white people. The Nobel prize winner has since apologized, but his earlier remarks obviously reflect his beliefs. Stating that black employees are more difficult to manage than their white colleagues, Watson noted that he could not find any qualified black people to serve among his research teams.

Within the evolutionary framework, there is a natural inclination to racism. Theorizing that whites and blacks took divergent evolutionary paths, evolutionists of past ages even shot, killed and stuffed aborigines for museums. I cannot really blame Watson since he is merely stating the logical outcomes of his belief system.

Scripture on the other hand, teaches that there is no such thing as race, just different shades of mellanin. There is nothing more hypocritical than for a Christian to espouse racism. We are all brothers and sisters in Adam and share one blood.

Unlikely Bedfellows

2007-10-19T19:17:00.000-04:00

Somewhat to my shock, my favorite living theologian, Wayne Grudem, has announced his support for Mitt Romney. As one of the leading evangelical thinkers of his time, Grudem makes a simple, but intriguing case. To read his article, visit Townhall. To be honest, Grudem's case has me seriously rethinking the 2008 election.

Joel Osteen on 60 Minutes

2007-10-17T19:24:00.000-04:00

Joel Osteen was interviewed on 60 Minutes and was portrayed as "America's Pastor". During a subsequent radio show that was discussing the interview, a caller stated that Joel was not preaching heresy because you had to preach doctrine to be a heretic. He believed that Joel did not teach any doctrine whatsoever.

I heartily disagree with the caller. Heresy can be an act of omission as much as inclusion. If a preacher should choose to exclude the life saving message that we have all sinned against God and that Jesus had to suffer for those sins, then he commits heresy. How dare a man of God withhold the single message by which mankind might be saved.

For those that adore Joel Osteen, I want to pose some hard questions. Where does a theology of the life of Paul fit into Joel Osteen's overly positive, prosperity message?

I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? (II Corinthians 11:23-29)

Where does a theology of Jonah fit? Are our brothers and sisters in China "Living Your Best Life Now" as they are driven into prisons and summarily executed?

The truth is that Joel Osteen's message (or lack thereof) does not fit the reality of God's world. It is incapable of bringing comfort to a newly orphaned child. It is incapable of answering the question of why there is pain in the journey.

Watching The Polls

2007-10-17T19:20:00.000-04:00

A friend recently sent me an article which detailed a recent Barna Group poll that indicated that the youth of today were increasingly disenamored with the Church. As I scanned through the article, I began to meditate on what I should learn from the poll.

Should churches seek to find a better model? Should they restructure everything that they do and say in order to bring up the favorability rating? Or could it be true that our nation is beginning to enter a state of hardening not seen since Biblical times?

My fear is growing that each new generation is growing more sinful and blinded to the word of God. We may soon reach a point where we will be like the Old Testament prophets who preached their unswerving message to a hard hearted, obstinate and (most importantly) unhearing people.

May God continue to give us a tender heart for the lost, and may He also keep us from negotiating the non-negotiables.

Go - Poetry by D. R. Daniels

2007-10-15T21:05:00.000-04:00

Go

Go with His great commission. Go.
Christ said “go” and then said … “Lo
I am with thee always.”
Go in prayer; go to share
Him who is beyond compare;
Go highways and byways.

Go. What is thy constraint?
Warriors were not meant to faint.
Gospel feet go quickly.
Why tarry long beside the road?
Jesus bears they heavy load,
And He it is who lifts thee.

Go. Just like the Saviour said.
He who raised those humble dead.
Now reigns in thee to raise man.
Go ye all into the world,
There where Satan’s darts are hurled.
Christ is greater. Trust Him.

Somewhere good soil awaits the Word.
Seekers must not be deferred.
Christ rewards our toil.
For God will send the latter rains
To soften up the loam again
To grow new wheat from thirsty soil.

Go. March up to the gates of Hell
That open wide its hordes to swell,
And shout “Thy slaves surrender!”
Angels high applaud the show
When saints turn out to face the foe.
What earthly power can hinder?

The Holy Spirit craves the Word
From Genesis to Revelation be heard,
So why tarry we here longer?
Since God brings all His truth to pass
Let fear of man be dead at last;
Our awesome God is stronger.

D. R. Daniels
10/15/1998

Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Apocalypse

2007-10-13T18:26:00.000-04:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, awaits the coming of the Mahdi, the legendary twelfth Imam who disappeared down a well in 941 AD. Muslims believe that the Mahdi has been hidden, like the sun is hidden by a cloud, until such time that he will be revealed to conquer the world for Islam. Ahmadinejad full heartedly believes that the Mahdi’s return is imminent within the next four years.

The Mahdi is an apocalyptic and messianic figure who symbolizes the return of Islam’s glory years. Many westerners forget that Islam once almost conquered the world if it were not for Charles Martel. The Muslim world has never forgotten though and they covet the day when their religion will be justified in the eyes of the world.

The Koran itself teaches in Surah 4:89 that good Muslims should, “Seize them (infidels) and slay them wherever you may find them.” Surah 9:29 states, “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day.” Most Muslims are peaceful, but those that interpret these passages as being unabrogated and literal need little more encouragement to fight for pan-Islamic fascism.

As one of the Mahdi’s faithful, Ahmadinejad hopes to usher in this new world of Islamic domination and to lay vast power at the Mahdi’s disposal; namely a nuclear weapon. In the words of Khomeini who said in 1981, "I say let Iran go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world."

Religious liberals do not begin to understand people who are true believers of any faith. They think that since their own religion is something they may check at the door, that all they really need to do is to discuss issues in rational dialogue. For a true believer, the art of persuasion does not exist. They are on a juggernaut trail to complete their mission for god.

Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to New York is likely only a game of smoke and mirrors as he tries to buy precious time for the development of his nuclear ambitions. A nuclear Iran is a horrible thing to contemplate. Will people continue to choose to ignore his previous words?

· "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury."

· "Remove Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations."

· "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

· "If the West does not support Israel, this regime will be toppled. As it has lost its raison d' tre, Israel will be annihilated."

· "Israel is a tyrannical regime that will one day will be destroyed."

· "Israel is a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated in one storm."

· "Israel is destined for destruction and will soon disappear"

· Israel is "a contradiction to nature, we foresee its rapid disappearance and destruction."

· “Imam [Khomeini] said: ‘This regime that is occupying Quds [i.e. Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.’ This sentence is very wise. The issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise… Very soon this stain of disgrace [i.e. Israel] will be purged from the centre of the Islamic world – and this is attainable… This will be a short period, and if we pass through it successfully, the process of the elimination of the Zionist regime will be smooth and simple.”

Do we really want this man to have the bomb?

Heritage of Abortion

2007-10-12T07:01:00.000-04:00

Within the Old Testament, God condemned the Israelite nation for not defending the weak and powerless. How far away are we from their fate? How long will God endure?

In 2003, the latest year for which full figures are available, 42 million abortions were carried out around the world

For every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 in 2003, 29 had an abortion, down from 35 in 1997, it said.

Abortion rates were lowest in Western Europe (12 pregnancy terminations per 1,000 women) but highest in Eastern Europe, where the rate was 44 abortions per 1,000 women. In the United States and Europe, it was 21 per 1,000, while in Asia and Africa, the rate was 29 per 1,000.

On the basis of the 2003 data, on average 90 percent of women worldwide will have had an abortion before the age of 45, the study calculates.

I pity many of the mothers who abort their children. The grief and knowledge of what they have done often comes late and unrelenting. May they find forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ.

Bill Maher Crashes Creation Museum

2007-10-09T22:08:00.000-04:00

I must have missed this one when it first came out. Bill Maher sent a crew to the Answers in Genesis Museum - http://www.thepath.fm/cyberradio/media/.

Bill hates Christ, but who thought he would switch to Allah?

Air America Launches Nationwide Atheism Program

2007-10-09T22:03:00.001-04:00

CNSNews.com reports that the liberal talk radio network Air America announced this week it will launch a nationwide show focusing on atheism. The first national show will feature Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." The Freethought Radio Program, hosted by the co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has been airing on Air America's Madison, Wis., affiliate since April 2006.

On Saturday, Oct. 6, the show will begin airing on 14 other affiliates from Palm Springs, Fla., to Eugene, Ore., and on XM Satellite radio. "You can turn on the radio or TV 24/7 to be preached at," Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the FFRF, said in a statement. "This is one hour a week of the public airwaves that offers an alternative." Gaylor said the program "offers irreverent views, news, music and interviews," including a regular news feature called "Theocracy Alert."

Smiling atheist Dan Barker who hosts Freethought Radio

Strange Fire on Defiled Altars

2007-10-08T21:22:00.000-04:00

By John Lee Grady
Many who claim to be voices for God today are on dangerous ground.

We don’t talk much today about Nadab and Abihu. They were obscure Bible characters who failed miserably. Certainly their tragic story doesn’t work well as an illustration in the typical seeker-friendly sermon about wealth or success. So we tend to ignore these guys, even though they are mentioned in the Old Testament nine times.

Both sons of Aaron the priest, Nadab and Abihu were suddenly struck dead in the tabernacle because they offered “strange fire” (Lev. 10:1 NASB). We aren’t told exactly what they did wrong—that is left to our imagination. All we know is that they did not follow God’s specific instructions when offering incense. They were careless with His glory. Their mistake proved to be fatal.

“I wonder why the ground has not opened up and swallowed some of the careless spiritual clowns who are masquerading as bishops, apostles and prophets.”

What I deduce from their story is that God’s altar is a holy place. When God struck them, He told their father: “‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all the people I will be honored’” (v. 3). God made it clear that He isn’t playing games. He sent fire from His presence to slay Nadab and Abihu so we would understand that we can’t mess around with His laws, His name or His presence. We can’t rewrite His instructions or be slipshod or slapdash about worship.

That’s why I fear for many of the men and women who claim to be God’s mouthpieces today, particularly in the charismatic/Pentecostal movement that I serve. When I read Leviticus 10, I wonder why the ground has not opened up and swallowed some of the careless spiritual clowns who are masquerading as bishops, apostles and prophets.

A case in point: Bishop Thomas Wesley Weeks III, who is now facing charges of assaulting his wife, recently stood in his pulpit in Atlanta during a marriage conference and proceeded to teach married couples how to use profanity during sex.

Yes, the man who allegedly kicked and punched Juanita Bynum in a hotel parking lot last month told attendees at a “Teach Me How to Love You” event that they should get over their hang-ups about cussing. The bedroom, he said, is the place to get down and dirty.

“Don’t bring your salvation into the bedroom,” he said in a sermon segment that has been posted on YouTube. “All those special words that you can’t say no more because you’re saved … save that for the bedroom!”

It is bad enough that Weeks told his followers that it’s OK to use filthy language with your wife during lovemaking. It’s worse that he said these things as a minister speaking from a pulpit during a church service. Thankfully he didn’t bring a bed on stage and give a demonstration—but now that he has taken pulpit crudity to a new level, someone else is sure to introduce Pentecostal porn to an audience somewhere.

Weeks’ comments didn’t surprise me. There are so many crazy things happening in pulpits in this country that I’ve become numb to their impact. It seems that in many segments of the church today, false prophets and backslidden preachers can introduce the most bizarre doctrines imaginable and still get shouts from the crowd and plenty of donations in the offering plate.

Meanwhile, a growing number of television preachers are resorting to the most inane tactics to raise money. A popular trend this year is the “Day of Atonement Offering”—in which Old Testament scriptures are strained to the breaking point to make a case for buying special blessings from God. Thanks to this “revelation,” you can click on a Web site icon and give your Day of Atonement Offering to win divine favor. (And of course every dime of that money goes to an evangelist who uses it to purchase houses, cars, plastic surgeries and more airtime so they can spread this nonsense to more naïve people.)

I have no personal vendetta against these spiritual hoodlums, but lately I find myself praying: “Lord, when will You clean up Your church? When will you send Your holy fire into the sanctuary? When will You turn over the tables of the moneychangers and drive the charlatans out of Your house?”

I have a sense that the answer is coming soon enough. The question is: How close to the modern Nadabs and Abihus will you be when the fire of heaven comes to purge them from the sanctuary? If you are anywhere near a defiled altar, my advice is simple: Run for the nearest exit.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma.

Heretic

2007-10-07T11:33:00.000-04:00

Over time, words rot. One word that has grown increasingly rotten is the word “evangelical.” In recent time, an evangelical can believe that God is still growing (Open Theism), that there is no hell (either annihilationism or universalism), that Paul did not have a concrete theology of justification (New Perspectivism or New Paulinism), that abortion is permissible (plain paganism), that homosexuality is laudable (hedonism) and that God’s love trumps his hatred for sin (idolatry).

I believe it is time to resurrect an old term – heretic. It has not been used nearly enough in our century. In an age of syncretistic pluralism, we are loathe to label Tony Campolo (who supports homosexuality and does not believe in an eternal hell), Joel Olsteen (who espouses a prosperity gospel gilded with Norman Vincent Peale positive thinking), Brian McClaren (who also does not believe in hell and who believes that you can be a fully justified Buddhist who loves Christ as if He were religious garnish), Benny Hinn (not a lot to be said) or Kenneth Copeland (even less to be said) heretics.

There is something missing in the current American expression of Christianity. The division between acceptable teachers and those that distort truth has become blurred. I guess that no one wants to be known for only those things (or people) that they stand against. In the paraphrased words of Ravi Zacharias, ‘He who slings mud loses lots of ground.’

I still find it somewhat tragic that there are no guides to help Christians discern between wolves and sheep. The greatest gift that my Baptist liberal arts education gave me was to help me pick the good writers out from among the sea of bad writers.

The word “heretic” is still powerful and has yet to lose its sting. I hope for its resurrection.

The Fall

2007-08-05T17:55:00.000-04:00

There are many theories that vie to explain why man is sinful. Millard Erickson lists a few of these in his book, Christian Theology (600-613). Some believe that man is still animalistic and merely cannot help his low evolutionary development. Others believe that mankind’s finitude and ability to aspire to greatness compels humanity to overstep its bounds. Still others define sin within the liberation theology context of the oppression of the poor. The opinions are endless.

If one desires to truly understand sin, then one must return to the Fall. The Fall is in drastic need of recapture in the 21st century. Man’s ruin, like the ruins of the Roman empire, speak of unbelievable grandeur and beauty. Nonetheless, the decay of what was once mighty is clearly evident. It is within this century that the stagnation of man’s flower has come to full wither. The rise of sexual perversion, secularized European governments, post-Christian America, casual dalliances with promiscuity, eradication of ‘undesirable’ beings and the love of violence have been sanitized, institutionalized and placed on pedestals as virtues.

The nature of sin can only be explained through its historical origin. Genesis 3 must be taken literally if any portion of the Bible is to be taken literally. None of the elements that would signify that it is entirely symbolic or allegorical are present in this retelling. Though there is the presence of symbolism, it is presented in a literal framework. By references by Paul to this moment, one may garner that he believed it was an historical event (Romans 5:14, I Corinthians 15: 22, 45). The author Luke built Christ’s lineage on this fact of history in Luke 3:38. Like a domino in long line of dominos, to discount a literal Fall featuring the original, specially created human pair, one must also discount the rest of Biblical history which bears the same fingerprints of the supernatural, the same literary elements and the same attestation by Jewish and Christian historians.

Oddly enough the most vitriolic attacks upon a literal Genesis come from those that cite the empirical evidence of science. It is entirely ironic that the body of science has changed its mind countless times and rewritten the texts more times than may be counted. Yet the Bible has remained unchanged as promised (I Peter 1:25). When will the world realize that in all our scientific greatness, we are still children playing with the pebbles of the universe? This blindness is part of the nature of sin.

The historical Fall is the only religious diagnosis that makes sense of the human predicament. Philosophers of various religions have tried to tie all of humanity together as something profoundly good in its current state. The Bible clearly indicates that while Creation was originally good (Genesis 1:31), that now it has fallen into a state of disarray. It is only Scripture that illuminates why humanity is not good as some religions blindly insist.

How did we become bad? Two commonly accepted theories of transmitting sin from Adam to the human race are the “Natural headship of Adam” and the “Representative headship of Adam”. Natural headship posits that all humanity was biologically and spiritually within Adam when he rebelled. Therefore, all mankind was plunged into sin by this one act of rebellion (Romans 5:18, 19). Representative headship contends that Adam, as one who held dominion by God’s command (Genesis 1:28), acted on behalf of the entire human race (Arrington 140).

Adam and Eve, as mankind’s spiritual and physical fore bearers, represented mankind in a legal and perhaps seminal sense before God. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve appear to have been in a state of untested innocence or righteousness. Sin did not begin with an act, but with a thought or mindset that established itself apart from God (Genesis 3:1-6).

It is important to one’s thinking to understand that the foundation of sin is not merely the enactment of evil, but the thoughts and nature of mankind. Romans 5:12 envelops all of humanity in the original sin of Adam;

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned - for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.

Paul pointedly argues that the sin he is talking of does not involve the breaking of a law. Sin is not just an act.

In Genesis 3, Satan tempts Adam and Eve on multiple levels. One of the areas that he attacks is their sense of justice. He implies that God has misled them. Rising from this sense of injustice, Adam and Eve began to rationalize their behavior. Satan’s lie freed them to obey their more prurient desires. They felt that they could legitimatize their willful disobedience. Sin appears to follow a pattern of human expression that was first set in the Garden of Eden.

Satan also inspires a sense of independence. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Man began to move from his created order in existence to plotting his own destiny. In the words of William Earnest Henley in his poem “Invictus,”

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul…

It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul (qtd. in Erickson 492)

Man’s decision to leave God may not be blamed by entrapment, Satan’s wiles, or his cunning. If Adam and Eve did not have these desires rage within them, they never would have fallen. Man is solely responsible for his fate.

Nor is God responsible for allowing this moment to come to fruition. Adam was created as a masterpiece and the center of Gods creation. To have stripped Adam of the ability to respond to God in a free fashion would have marred the Creator’s creativity and the perfection of His work. The offer of sin when man was not fallen implies that Adam and Eve had free will prior to the Fall. James in James 1:13 absolves God of any wrongdoing by reflecting on His nature. “God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.”

Other religions, such as the Latter Day Saints leave God solely responsible for evil. Once, upon dialoguing with Mormon missionaries, we broached the subject of the Mormon interpretation of Genesis. In their view, God gave man two conflicting covenants which made it necessary for man to break one of them in order to please God. In Mormon theology, man had to either multiply the earth and subdue it, or he must not eat of the Tree of Good and Evil. If the first man had not eaten of the Tree, he would have sinned since he could not produce children to multiple until sin entered the world (a peculiar doctrine of Mormonism). If he ate of the Tree, which he did, he would also sin. God forced man to sin. Evangelical and Mormon may at least agree on this point, that sin brought death and destruction into the world. Mormon’s, however, must make God fully accountable for death, rape, incest, murder, stealing, lying and genocide. It is only in Christianity that God is fully absolved of the charge of bringing both physical and moral evil into the world. The brunt or responsibility in Christian theology falls fully on man.

The nature of sin is such that man stands at the epicenter of its heinous intrusion into God’s perfect creation. In Genesis 1:31, God saw His creation and called it very good. Man is responsible for the inception of incest, murder, rape, thievery, and lying. It is interesting to note that the Serpent’s and Eve’s curses were specifically upon their offspring or future generations (3:14-16). Since Satan has no physical offspring and demons are not known to procreate, we should probably see this statement in the light of Christ’s words in John 8:44 where he identifies Satan’s spiritual offspring. This is one of the impacts of sin upon humanity; that there is a struggle between the righteous offspring of Eve and the evil offspring of Satan. Ultimately, this battle would culminate in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ per the message of the Protoevangelium (3:15).

Woman’s curse includes brokenness in her two greatest domains; the life of her children and her relationship with her husband (3:16). Childbearing is characterized by pain. One might expand this to also encompass mother-children relationships after birth since these are often painful, but this would likely be an unfounded stretch.

A woman’s longing for her husband will be intense. Any conflict in the relationship will be magnified due to God’s curse. Harsh, dictatorial husbands will partially define the curse upon women as roles between husband and wife will be murky and in turmoil.

The curse specifically spoken to Adam is tied to the created order. Genesis 3:17-19 is a curse of futility. Once, man’s labor would be fulfilling and productive. Evermore it was to be filled with failure and ultimately swallowed by the despair of death that erases all toil, deeds, and memory. Man is a desperate creature whose stress and anxiety erupt in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. It is here that his alienation from God boils over into despair.

God’s greatest and most wounding curse is upon man’s relationship with God. Without instruction, without guidance, and without feelings of eternal worth, unsaved humanity now stands as an island. Haunted by divinely given capacities to understand eternity and by loneliness in the vastness of God’s creation, humanity throws itself into fulfilling its insatiable needs. Isaiah recognized that sin separates. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).

Mankind is not only alienated from God, but men and women are alienated from one another. This bore itself all too quickly in the Genesis account as Cain murdered Abel and Lamech boasted of killing a man for a slight offense (Genesis 4). The common brotherhood of man, if it ever existed, was quickly extinguished after the Fall. Human interaction is marked by strife and communication failures. Even husbands and wives find unity to be a challenge, as was mentioned previously concerning the curse on Eve.

Humanity’s mire in sin is chronicled in Romans 1 through 3. Romans 1:20-21 tells us that man is thoroughly aware of God’s general revelation concerning Him. Verse 28 states that mankind discards the truth. The last regression is that people know the truth and willingly embrace error (vs. 32).

Underlining that sin seeks substitutes to fill the God-given desires, Romans 1 is a profound statement on the nature of fallen mankind. While God has provided natural means for satiating human desires, man, in alienation from God, endeavors to meet those desires with things that never satisfy. Human sexuality was intended to be satisfied in marriage. God Himself intended to fulfill human spirituality and intellectual curiosity. It is the nature of sinful man to find counterfeits or substitutes for God’s good things.

Sin’s impact on humanity is immeasurable. Businesses attempt to cure its effects, feed its longings and address its consequences. Mankind lives as if this were normal. But in bitter times, the sense of oughtness that permeates dire situations awakens men’s consciences to the way things should be. If death, destruction and moral depravity are normal, why do they cause such a tumult in the human soul? If God used these as his agencies of creation or if there is no God, then why are they not embraced and accepted?

Language has grappled to explain the nature of sin and its impact. The Greeks were not satisfied with just a few words for it as they tried to capture several of its nuances. An exploration of the pertinent terms is useful.

· adikia – The opposite of righteousness. To commit injustice, deal unjustly, a wrong. The concept of adikia is tied to legal considerations. It may reference particular crimes. This word captures the concept that sin is not an individual domain, but that it actually impacts the community as well. In the Old Testament, the community was seen as the preserver of justice, so a sin against justice was also against the community as a whole (Brown 573-576).
· hamartia – To sin, to transgress. In classical literature, it means to miss the mark, to lose, to not share in something or to be mistaken. It was used in this period to describe anything that was not part of the accepted social order. In the Old Testament, the word was used to describe a conscious deviation from the right direction. Here sin is thought of as a breach of the covenants. The New Testament uses this word to describe man’s sins that are against God (577-583).
· parabasis – To go aside, to turn aside, transgress. By its use in Homer and onwards in history, its meaning was centered on a deviation from the original and true direction. It was sometimes used in the sense of an obligation or debt that was not kept. This word was not common in the Septuagint, but it meant to neglect God, to transgress the covenant or to become lax in the maintenance of one’s relationship with God. In the New Testament, it is used of Judas who abandoned his discipleship. In the Pauline writings, it is used to speak of transgressing the law in the context of the Jewish theology of the law (583-585).
· paraptoma – To fall beside, go astray, err, trespass, to step falsely. In classical literature it referred to an excusable error. In the Septuagint, it was used to translate six different Hebrew words that encompass the idea of conscious transgression, not merely accidents. It is only used in the verb form in the New Testament in Hebrews 6:6 where the meaning seems to be that of ‘falling away’. This is the deliberate rejection of the Christian faith. The noun is used in Matthew to speak of actions that result in man falling from the position God gave him (585-586).
· asebeia – Ungodliness. This word means that one is unlike God (Arrington 126).

The range of meaning for all of the words used for sin demonstrates both its individual and corporate effect. Sin can result in the personal loss of position and relationship with God. It may also speak of the community’s deviation from God. In general, sin misses God’s intended purpose in an individual’s life. The true deviation begins when a person fails to maintain their proper relationship with God. This was true of Adam and Eve and is true of all sinning humanity today.

An important question is whether man is a sinner because he personally sins or if he is a sinner through some sort of imputed or adopted inner nature. The Bible appears to clearly indicate that man is a sinner by nature, not labor. The ancient heretic Pelagius believed that every individual that enters the world is innocent by nature (Lewis 184). David, in the Psalms, states that a human’s entrance to the world already bears the taint of sinfulness (58:3). Evil men are evil even from the womb. As to his own entrance into the world, David writes in the Psalm 51:5 that he bore some of this taint from the moment of conception. Some have unwisely tried to interpret this passage to mean that David was saying that the actual act of conception was sinful, but this is unfounded by the text.

Various groups have battled over whether man has a sin nature or how that nature impacts mankind. The Socinians of the sixteenth-century denied original sin, any inheritance of depravity and even that sin was punishable by death. Roman Catholics adhere to the idea in A New Catechism that the Fall was not a historic event and that mankind did not become “depraved and guilty as a result of Adam’s sin.” Individuals are not condemned for Adam’s transgressions, but ratify his transgressions by their own personal acts of sin. Arminians either believe in a general preventing grace that covers Adam’s transgression so that people are only responsible for their own personal sins, or that the inheritance of a sin nature only encompasses a predisposition to sin, not actual sin or condemnation. (Lewis 184-188).

Counter to these ideas are the thoughts of John Calvin. Calvin defined original sin as “a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which Scripture calls ‘works of the flesh’ ” (George 214). While denying the idea that the sin nature is biologically inherited from Adam, Calvin believed that God had ordained that all men should possess a sin nature (215). Viewing sin as all pervasive, Calvin saw inner awareness of sin as a necessary step in salvation. “No one is permitted to receive God’s blessing unless he is consumed with the awareness of his poverty” (216).

Scripture affirms that mankind has a sin nature that has been inherited from Adam. Many have taken umbrage to this since they believe that it implies that people do not bear personal responsibility for their sins if the inheritance of it is beyond their control. R.C. Sproul writes, “In protest we want to say, ‘No damnation without representation’” (Sproul 149). Karl Barth believed that the story of the Fall was a saga that recounts the fall that every human being individually makes at some point. He objected to the idea that sin was passed like a disease from person to person. Brunner concluded that the universality of sin was due to humanity’s finite limitations. He refused to recognize sin as a state, but only as an act (Lewis 189).

What one applies to the Fall, they should also apply to redemption. To take offense with the position that all sinned in Adam and have inherited his sin and guilt, one should also take offense that Christ died and lived a righteous life so that all men might live. If representation is a bad thing in one instance, it should be a bad thing in other instances.

The fact of the matter is that to be human means to be fallen. Mankind can no more break from Adam than to declare that they are no longer part of the human kind. If humanity inherited Adam’s physical nature, the joy of living, the fullness of creativity, the bounty of his intellectual capacities, and the full range of his emotions, one should not feel tricked by also inheriting his baser characteristics. Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology states that, “This inherited tendency to sin does not mean that human beings are all as bad as they could be. The constrains of civil law, the expectations of family…all provide restraining influences on the sinful tendencies of our hearts” (Grudem 496).

In their original state, Adam and Eve could respond to God. They walked with him in the Garden and freely conversed with Him. At the moment of their sinfulness, however, this interaction was marred and broken. God had to search for Adam and Eve to initiate communication. After the Fall, Adam and Eve did not even want to respond to God. The result of their experimentation with sin culminated in their banishment from His presence in the Garden (Genesis 3).

Can a man or woman freely respond to God today under his or her own willpower? That question is fraught with difficulty. Humanity certainly does not move in this direction easily. Christ said to the people of Jerusalem, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). Even with the most persuasive representation of God’s mercy, people were not moved.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke, the rich man entreated Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers in the hope that they would avoid his fate. Abraham responded that if one was not persuaded by the testimony of Moses and the prophets, that they would not even respond to one raised from the dead (16:31). The redemption of man is not an easy thing.

The question really encircles how bad mankind really is. Did sin merely wound a man’s ability to communicate with God or has he been rendered utterly without illumination? Timothy George reflects on Martin Luther’s opinion of this matter in his book, Theology of the Reformers. In his words:

One of Luther’s complaints against the “pig theologians” was their thesis that the human will of its own volition could actually love God above all things, or, that by doing one’s best even apart from grace one could earn a certain standing before God. To this optimistic appraisal of human potential Luther opposed a stark contrast between nature and grace. “Grace puts God in the place of everything else it sees, and prefers him to itself, but nature puts itself in the place of everything, and even in the place of God, and seeks only its own and not what is God’s.” By “nature” Luther did not mean simply the created realm, but rather the fallen, created realm, and particularly the fallen human will which is “curved in on itself” (incurvatus in se), “enslaved,” and tainted with evil in all of its actions. At the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518, Luther defended the thesis: “Free will after the Fall exists only in name, and as long as one ‘does what in one lies,’ one is committing mortal sin” (George 75)

Luther viewed mankind as damaged beyond human repair in relating to God. Per George, however, Luther never denied that free will retained its power in matters outside of salvation (75).

There are many verses that speak of men responding to God. Peter exhorts the people in Acts 3:19 to “turn to God”. Paul tells the Ephesian elders of his ministry that directed Jews and Gentiles to “turn to God in repentance”. In the quote of the Old Testament in Romans 4:1, Paul writes that Abraham “believed” God. Mark 9:24 is a synergistic passage where the demon possessed boy’s father affirms his belief and asks Jesus to aid his remaining unbelief.

It is worth noting that mankind must respond to God in belief, but how does mankind arrive at that wonderful moment? Even at the great confession of Peter regarding who Christ was, Christ replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 16:17). In John 6:44, Christ states that no one comes to him without first being called by the Father. John 3: 7 and 8 would seem to indicate that the Holy Spirit brings the new birth according to His own will. In the words of Romans 8:29,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

God’s foreknowledge and calling predate a person’s response in our space-time reality.

There are also many verses that speak to the question of man’s bondage. Paul refers to sin as a prison in Romans 7:23. The bondage is so great that the whole world is a prisoner of sin (Galatians 3:22). Slavery is probably the best description of man’s relationship with sin (John 8:34, Romans 7:14). A person cannot consistently choose to do anything that is right. There is always some hidden taint even in the best products of a human being’s intentions. Often when reading the words of Paul in Romans 7:24, one may feel the anguish of his words and feel the desperation. “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Ephesians 4:18 addresses the inner darkness of unredeemed man’s soul. He is cut off from understanding. His mind has been shut off to the revelation of God’s mercy. The writer of 2 Corinthians 4:4 proclaims that men’s minds are purposefully clouded by the evil one. There is an evil power that desires to keep mankind veiled in shadow. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus states that the devil steals the word from people’s hearts so that they cannot believe (Luke 8:12). Satan’s intent is to obscure the very face of God and to redirect lost mankind to other diversions. This alone would make a free response by fallen man to God difficult.

Not only is mankind troubled by demons without, but also by the rebellious nature within. Isaiah certainly realized this when he was ushered into the presence of the Lord and cried woe upon himself (Isaiah 6:5). Paul journalizes in Romans 7 his own personal fight with sin. Struggling with desires to do both good and evil is a plight that even redeemed men must face. In particular, Romans 7:8 states “But sin taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.” Picturing sin as a restless entity, Paul writes that sin actually produced inner evil desires. Here sin is not seen as an act, but as a driving inner force of evil. Verse 23 strengthens the idea that there is an active sin nature.

Unregenerate man’s ability to understand God’s revelation has also been severely damaged. Paul writes that men are “dead” in their sins (Ephesians 2:1). We should be cautious not to construe death as total destruction, but as separation from God (Geisler 540). Unredeemed man is capable of understanding God’s revelation, but he disdains it (Romans 1:28). In the paraphrased words of I Corinthians 2:14, the word of God is “spiritually discerned” by someone who has the Holy Spirit in their hearts. To the un-spirited man, the word of God is foolish.

In our sinful state, God cannot accept us. Every part of our being has been effected by the blight of sin. Nothing good dwells in man (Romans 7:18). Human hearts are full of deceit (Jeremiah 17:9). Habbakuk wrote that “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (1:13). Our decrepit nature bars us from entering into God’s presence.

Has man any power to turn to God in faith and repentance on his own? Even as a redeemed man, Paul apparently felt the gravity of the struggle with the sin nature. The answer that Paul supplies for his own query is a fantastic one. “Jesus Christ our Lord” is utterly capable of meeting our needs in struggle.

However, for the unsaved man who faces a spiritual foe, who has his own mind darkened, who is fettered by sin and who has inherited a natural disposition to sin, what may be said of his power to come to God? Paul’s Romans 9 sheds light on the human condition before God. In this context, Paul is discussing the apostasy of the Jewish people from the Lord. Paul is heartbroken over his people and earnestly desires their salvation. In order to make his point, Paul directs his reader’s attention to the story of Jacob and Esau. Even before he was born, Jacob was considered “elect” in the eyes of God. ‘What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” ‘ (vs. 14-15).

The sin nature has a grip on the heart of humanity that God sovereignly breaks so that His people might spend eternity with Him. It does not appear that man has the power to freely turn to God in faith and repentance on his own power. Man has tremendous freedom in expressing his sinful nature while in the unregenerate state, but his choices for God are severely curtailed. Like Adam and Eve in their untested righteousness, Christians have been freed to exercise faith and repentance.

Understanding that every human being has a sin nature should have an impact on how Christians understand their world. First, Christians should never place ultimate trust in another human being. Only God has proved trustworthy. This should not drive the Christian into skepticism about all relationships, but it should blanket them from blindly following others or from entrusting too much confidence in their leadership. Second, Christians should be not be amazed when sin happens even in the lives of those who are well respected. Sin is the common denominator of our broken world. Third, forgiveness should be given swiftly and without reticence. Fourth, evangelism should be undertaken with the understanding that our obstacles are great, but our God is greater.

Sin literally cracked the world, breaking asunder the earth, relationships, the beauty of God’s original creation, and the nature of man. To be human means to be sinful. To be alive in the earthly realm means that we navigate a broken world. Sin is a horrible blight, but as bad as it is, it has not snuffed out the awesome beauty of God’s craftsmanship. Mankind is the marvel of all that God created. Even after the Fall, the psalmist is still able to express the wonder of being human.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth (Romans 8:1-9)!

The nature of sin is unavoidable and it effects are dire, but these were not left without a remedy. In the reworked words of William Earnest Hensley,

Out of the morning that bathes me
Bright as the sun from pole to pole
I thank the God of calvary
For my unconquerable soul

It matters now how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
He is the master of my fate
He is the captain of my soul!

Congratulations to the Daniels Family

2007-08-05T17:35:00.000-04:00

My wife and I recently attended a party to celebrate the 85th and 90th birthdays of my grandmother and grandfather (respectively). It was a beautiful occasion to see all of the generations of the family present to honor them. Due to my grandparents' committment to Christ, many of their progeny are heaven bound.

Evolutionary Musings

2007-04-01T22:53:00.000-04:00

Paradigms shift all of the time. Hundreds of years ago, it was the common consensus that the solar system revolved around the earth. The science textbooks changed and a new paradigm entered the scene. The beliefs of science are in constant flux. If the world lasts, a thousand years from now, our progeny will scorn our shallow understanding of the world. Compared to eternity future, we are but still at the beginning, playing with the dust and pebbles of the universe while thinking we are doing something grand.

Evolution is a paradigm that is in grievous trouble.

Fred Hoyle of the British Academy of Science and mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe decided to calculate the probability of life coming into existence anywhere in the universe. Their results? Utterly impossible. They gave it all the time in the universe, but time plus chance produces nothing!

Francis Crick, Noble Prize winner for his discovery of DNA, also attempted to calculate the probability that life sprang into existence spontaneously. His results? Utter impossible. Instead of jumping into the arms of God, Crick decided to propagate the theory of genetic panspermia. In sum, his theory propounded that life on earth was seeded by benevolent and mighty aliens. Their work made life possible through the path of evolution. The problem? Crick merely delayed the impossible, casting it back on a continuous regression of aliens.

Stephen J. Gould, one of the greatest defenders of evolution, was also troubled by issues that he saw within evolution. As a result, he came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium. He postulated that there were sudden leaps in evolution that left no transitional forms. If only he had made one massive leap, he would have ended up where theists are today.

Are these the actions of men that believe that the evolutionary paradigm is secure?

While the defenders of evolution are resorting to new and stunning conjecture to cover the nakedness of evolution, intelligent design has been seeking to topple the entire infrastructure.

The simple design of a mousetrap is irreducibly complex, no one part of the mousetrap makes sense without all of the other pieces. The evolution of a species or a single organ is also irreducibly complex. Take for example the eye. The eye is composed of mechanisms that are entirely reliant upon one another for the eye to function at all. If evolution is true, each part of the eye evolved over time and accrued in aggregate form. Unfortunately, the individual parts of the eye do not promote the survivability of the animal. They may actually impede its survivability. Over millions of years, the evolutionist would have us believe that the portions of the eye accrued until we had a complete and functional organ.

Another stake in the heart of evolution is the absence of transitional forms. Darwin predicted that this would be the downfall of his theory. Nothing has been found. Frauds have been created such as Piltdown man, Java man and a host of other oddities found to be made out of bits of extinct pigs, apes, etc., but nothing definitive has been offered to support the claims of evolution. If nothing else, our excavations should lead us to conclude that life was more complex and varied in the past than it is at present. This concurs with the concept of entropy.

The third law of thermodynamics is at odds with evolution. Time and chance lead to a loss of genetic information, the accretion of deleterious and deadly mutations. Per the evolutionary model, the very environment that may have produced the earliest protein chain is the same environment that would wipe it out in the next second. Life and entropy teach us that life is fragile.

The fossil record has yielded no evidence for evolution. Fossil beds contain a mixture of species and life forms from supposedly different evolutionary eras all at the same level of excavation. The geological column, which is purported to have taken millions of years to form, is riddled with issues. Dozens of museums have fish and other creatures that are tipped on end in the column. These fossils, know as polystratigraphic fossils, pass through millions of years of evolutionary deposition and sedimentation. How could a fish stand on end over millions of years while it was covered by sedminent? Evolutionists recognize these as “mysteries”.

I’m not attempting to be exhaustive with this list of problems, but the list goes on forever!

If evolution is true, there is no meaning or purpose to the world. We are merely spinning out our days on a not-so-extraordinary speck in the universe. Everything is chemically driven and determined. My love for my spouse has nothing noble within it. I’m merely driven by my biological urges to secure a mate that will perpetuate the species. Emotions over the death of my father are merely a chemically induced warning to avoid those things that limit my survivability. The only drive is sexual, the only moral is survival and there is no answer for anything.

"Nature is red in tooth and claw" is the summation of the evolutionary virtue. By bloodshed the fittest survive, but to what end? Morals are irrelevant. To push an old lady into oncoming traffic or to help her across the street are of equal value; both are meaningless. One might even argue that pushing the old lady into the street opens an ecological niche for a contributing member of the species. As one geneticist one argued with me, adultery and fornication are evolutionary values. They create genetic diversity.

Several scientists have recognized the problem in not having a center upon which to build society, ethics and morals. They have embraced the creation of what they call a “Noble Lie”; the creation of a belief system akin to Christianity. Let us create something to believe in that will allow us to continue our meaningless, mediocre existence. In the end, is it not still a lie?

In a world that is merely a cosmic accident, does even science have any meaning? Is it not merely a search without purpose and a quest without answers? Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Retrospective - The 2006 Congressional Elections

2006-11-12T00:08:00.000-05:00

Some have recently heralded the Republican loss of the House and Senate as a day of gloom and doom. I'm actually fairly upbeat about the whole matter.

The Republicans, who did not live or govern by their campaign promises to protect life, lower taxes, preserve religious liberty, and to create an administration above scandal, have been swept from office. In their place, we have a much more honest bunch. At least the new group tells us up front that they support homosexual marriage, sex education for pre-schoolers, abortion on demand and a litany of other issues. Down with the apathetic Republicans!

As a life long conservative, I long for a stable and righeous government led by men and women of integrity. In the absence of Christ, who alone will provide this government, I must be solaced by being governed by short-sighted, prone to failure, fallible men and women. Cleaning out Congress was exactly what was needed. When the short-sighted, prone to failure and fallible men and women prove their inability to keep their promises, I should not have to convince myself to vote for them every election season.

Perhaps this will provide the much needed wake up call for the Republicans to heed their conservative base. If not, the Republicans are guaranteed to continue to lose elections.

Whatever may happen, the Bible tells us that we deserve the Democrats...

"Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities. For there is no authority but of God; the authorities that exist are ordained by God" (Romans 13:1).

The Man from George Street

2006-11-12T00:05:00.000-05:00

Author - An Evangelist whose name is not so important as the true story...

This all started a number of years ago in a Baptist church in Crystal Palace in South London, England. The Sunday morning service was closing and a man stood up at the back and raised his hand and said: "Excuse me pastor can I share a short testimony?" The pastor looked at his watch and said, "You have three minutes". The man proceeded with his story: "I've just moved into this area. I used to live in Sydney, Australia. Just a few months back I was visiting some relatives and I was walking down George Street. You know where George Street is in Sydney going from the Business Area out to the Rock the colonial area. A strange little white haired man stepped out from a shop doorway, put a pamphlet in my hand and said: "Excuse me sir, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?" "I was astounded by these words. No one had ever asked me that. I thanked him courteously and all the way home to London this puzzled me. I called a friend and thank God he was a Christian and he led me to Christ." The Baptists love testimonies like that. Everyone applauded and welcomed him into their fellowship.

The Baptist pastor flew to Adelaide, Australia the next week and 10 days later in the middle of a three day series in a Baptist church in Adelaide, a woman came up to him for some counselling. He wanted to establish where she stood with Christ. He said "I used to live in Sydney and just a couple of months back I was visiting some friends in Sydney doing some last minute shopping down George Street. A strange little white haired man stepped out of a shop doorway and offered me a pamphlet and said "Excuse me madam, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?" "I was disturbed by those words. When I got home to Adelaide, I knew this Baptist church was on the next block form me. I sought out the pastor and he led me to Christ. So I am telling you that I am a Christian."

The London pastor was now very puzzled. Twice in two weeks he had heard the same testimony. He then flew to preach in the Mount Pleasant Church in Perth. When his teaching series was over the senior elder of that Church took him out for a meal and he asked the elder how he got saved. "I grew up in this church from the age of 15. I never made a commitment to Jesus, just hopped on the bandwagon like everyone else. Because of my business ability grew up to a place of influence. I was on a business trip to Sydney just three years ago. An obnoxious spiteful little man stepped out of a shop doorway, offered me a religious pamphlet cheap junk and accosted me with a question: "Excuse me sir, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?" I tried to tell him I was a Baptist elder. He wouldn't listen to me. I was seething with anger all the way home from Sydney to Perth. I told my pastor, thinking that he would sympathize, but he agreed. He had been disturbed for years knowing that I didn't have a relationship with Jesus, and he was right. My pastor led me to Jesus just three years ago."

The London preacher flew home and was soon speaking at the Keswick conventions in the Lake District and he threw in these three testimonies. At the close of this teaching series, fours elderly pastors came up and explained that they too had been saved between 25 and 30 years earlier through that same little man on George Street, offering them a pamphlet and asking that same question. The following week he flew to a similar Keswick convention in the Caribbean to missionaries. He shared the same testimonies. At the close of his teaching three missionaries came forward and said that they had also had been saved between 15 and 25 years earlier by that same little man's testimony and asked us the same question on George Street in Sydney. Next he stopped in Atlanta, Georgia to speak at a Naval Chaplain convention. Here for three days he spoke to over 1000 Naval Chaplains. Afterwards the Chaplain General took him out for a meal and he asked the Chaplain how he became a Christian. "It was miraculous. I was a rating on a Naval battleship and I lived a reprobate life. We were doing exercises in the South Pacific and we docked at Sydney harbour for replenishments. We hit Kings Cross with a vengeance. I was blind drunk, got on the wrong bus and got off in George Street. As I got off the bus, I though I saw a ghost as this man jumped out in front of me, pushed a pamphlet in my hand and said "Sailor, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?" The fear of God hit me immediately. I was shocked sober, ran back to the ship and sought out the Chaplain. He led me to Christ. I soon began to prepare for the ministry under his guidance. I am now in charge of 1000 chaplains who are bent on soul winning today."

Six months later that London pastor flew to a conference for 5,000 Indian missionaries in a remote part of NE India. At the end the head missionary took him to his humble little home for a simple meal. He asked how he as a Hindu came to Christ. "I grew up in a very privileged position, I worked the Indian Diplomatic Mission and I travelled the world. I am so glad for the forgiveness of Christ and blood covering my sin. I would be very embarrassed if people found out what I got into. One period of diplomatic service took me to Sydney. I was doing some last minute shopping, laden with toys and clothes for my children. I was walking down George Street when a courteous white haired little man stepped out in front of me and offered me a pamphlet and said "Excuse me sir, are you saved, if you die tonight are you going to heaven?" I thanked him very much but this disturbed me. I got back to my town, sought out our Hindu priest. He couldn't help me, but he advised me that to satisfy my curious mind, I should go and talk to the missionary in the mission home at the end of road. That was good advice because that day the missionary led me to Christ. I quit Hinduism immediately and began to prepare for ministry. I left the Diplomatic Service and here I am today, by God's grace in charge of all these missionaries who have together led 100,000 people to Christ.

Eight months later that London Pastor was preaching in Sydney. He asked the local Baptist Minister if he knew of a little elderly white haired man who handed out tracts on George Street. He replied "Yes is do, his name is Mr. Genor, although I don't think he does it any more because he is so frail and elderly." Two nights later they went to meet him in his little apartment. They knocked on the door and this tiny frail old man greeted them. He sat them down and made them tea. He was so frail that he was slopping the tea into the saucer as his hands shook. The London preacher sat there and told him of all these accounts from the previous three years. This little man sat with tears running down his cheeks. He told them his story. "I was a rating on an Australian warship. I was living a reprobate life. In a crisis I really hit the wall. One of my colleagues, to whom I gave literal hell, was there to help me. He led me to Jesus and the change in my life was night to day in 24 hours. I was so grateful to God; I promised God that I would share Jesus in a simple witness with at least 10 people a day. As God me strength I did that. Sometimes I was ill and couldn't do it, but I made up for the days I missed it at other times. I wasn't paranoid about it. I have done this for over 40 years. In my retirement years, the best place was on St. George Street where I saw hundreds of people a day. I got lots of rejections, but a lot of people courteously took the tract. In 40 years of doing this, I have never heard of one single person coming to Jesus until today."

You know, I would say that he has to be commitment. To show gratitude and love for Jesus to do that for 40 years and not hear of any results. That simple little non-charismatic Baptist man witnessed to perhaps 147,000 people. I think that God was showing that Baptist pastor from London was the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Goodness knows how many more had been arrested for Christ. Doing huge jobs out in the mission fields. Mr. Genor died two weeks later. Can you imagine the reward he went home to in Heaven?

I doubt his face would ever have appeared on Charisma Magazine. I doubt there would ever have been a photograph and a write up in Billy Graham's Decision magazine. No one except a little group of Baptists in Sydney knew about Mr. Genor, but I tell you his name was famous in Heaven. Heaven knew Mr. Genor and you can imagine the welcome and Red Carpet and the fanfare that he received when he went home to Glory.

A Long Hiatus

2006-11-02T20:25:00.000-05:00

I've been absent from the blog world for some time. This is partly due to being weary of the world though joyful in my family after the passing of my father. An additional reason lies in my new position as Assistant Registrar of Wright State University. Neither reason should suffice for leaving a love. I've longed to write...

Secular Enslavement

2006-11-02T20:11:00.000-05:00

One of my dear friends recently wrote me an e-mail concerning his life. Having recently graduated from a major Christian university as a preseminary major, he is seeking to find his place in the world.

He wrote of the grip of God compelling him to lose his life for Christ. Society is pulling him to get a good secular job, marry quickly and to settle down in secular serfdom. These two forces are causing him great confusion.

We who read the Scriptures know the truth once the cloud lifts; it is right to risk for Christ. He who wants to keep his fiancee, his wife, his children, his prosperity and his dignity will lose all of them.

There is a grand delusion that besets us. It is the delusion of personal peace and safety. It is our loving duty as brothers and sisters in Christ to strip away this facade of safet and expose the world as it really is. None know their momento mori. None know what awaits them at the end of the next car trip, in the early waking hours, in the moments of the daily grind. Man should not cling to the myth of safety. It does not exist.

What does exist is the grandeur and glory of God both now and forever. It is our purpose in life to make sure that God's glory is greater due to our short passage of time on earth. Bringing glory to God by being willing even to lose my life (never out of violence) shows that I seek and understand what is beyond this poor replica of God's true kingdom.

New Evangelism Opportunity

2006-08-29T22:19:00.000-04:00

Over the last few weeks, Rob and I have had the wonderful opportunity to participate in street evangelism in the Short North and near the OSU Student Union. We have had fantastic conversations and been emboldened to speak to the eclectic people of Columbus' night life.

Here is another opportunity to more fully understand the grace of Christ:

Sunday, September 17, 2006
12:30 - 6:00
Downtown Gahanna Flea Market Day
Contact me at emissary@wowway.com for more details

Funeral Arrangements for Donald Daniels

2006-08-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

Viewing
Faith Assembly of God Worship Center
2600 US Highway 40 NE (near juncture of 40 and 42)
London, Ohio 43140
http://www.mapquest.com

First viewing - Monday, August 21, 2006, 2:00-4:00
Second viewing - Monday, August 21, 2006, 6:00-8:00

Funeral
Faith Assembly of God Worship Center
2600 US Highway 40 NE (near juncture of 40 and 42)
London, Ohio 43140
http://www.mapquest.com

Service time - Tuesday, August 22, 2006, 11:00 am

Departure of Donald Daniels

2006-08-18T05:42:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, August 17th, 2006, my father met his Savior. Details concerning his burial will be forthcoming.

My father was a righteous man. I loved him for his unswerving convictions, his passionate servant-love for me and for his unshakeable confidence in Jesus Christ. He taught me how to be a man and he set an example that I can only aspire to emulate. My deepest regret is that my sons will not have the blessing of his wisdom or witness the strength of his passion.

For the best of fathers, I praise God. To have the intellectual fire, the warmth of his embrace and his presence was a tremendous blessing. His immortal soul is now with Christ where his true talents and service before God may begin.

Invitation for Street Evangelism

2006-08-09T18:42:00.000-04:00

A number of years ago, a story came out of England about a woman who was walking next to a river with her young daughter. The child got too close to the edge and slid into the water. The mother who could not swim watched in dread as her daughter drowned right before her very eyes. During the subsequent investigation, it was found that the water was only two feet deep. We are like that woman! The fear of man keeps us from wading into the will of God. The waters are not treacherous! God has encouraged us to plunge in.

II Corinthians 5:18-21 states

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

With some fear, but taking to heart the message of reconciliation, Emissary has taken to the streets of Columbus. During a recent outing, we started at the topiary gardens behind the Columbus Metropolitan Library, moved to the area around Franklin University and concluded our time in the Bottoms. We encountered blue collar, white collar, black power, rainbow power and a myriad of other people groups.

While at the Donatos Pizza next to Franklin University, Rob talked to an extremely handsome, British man. He listened to Rob until he came to the issue of lust. When Rob asked, “Have you ever lusted in your heart after someone of the opposite sex?” the gentlemen replied that he looked at the “other tree.” Predictably, he did not believe that his lifestyle was sinful. He was merely pursuing his natural instincts. Rob addressed the nature of sin and encouraged the man to consider the sacrifice of Christ. We parted amicably, and upon watching the man leave, we noted the advertisement on the side of his truck; English Elegaynce Landscaping, German Village.

It is a great tragedy if someone misses an eternity with Christ because we never witnessed. But the tragedy grows far deeper for you if you do not witness. Philemon 6 states this, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” Do you know that if you are not sharing your faith, you are missing a “full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ?” This knowledge cannot be found in the next life since we cannot witness in heaven.

Here are a few opportunities to reach a fuller understanding of God through evangelism:

Short North, August 11, 2006 from 9:00 pm to 12:00 pm

The Bottoms, August 19, 2006 (Time TBA)

If you are interested in either opportunity, please contact me via emissary@wowway.com for additional details.

Review of Rob Bell and his work "Velvet Elvis"

2006-07-25T18:34:00.000-04:00

Rob Bell is the founder of Mars Hill church in Michigan. His wildly popular church of 10,000 (composed almost entirely of card shifters) and his writings have garnered him wide attention.

He is attempting to re-envision the church. Unfortunately, most heresy is grounded in trying to add a guest wing to God's Church.

As a postmodern and Emergent Church member, Rob Bell is repaving the errors of America's theological liberalism. It is quite amusing that so many people think he is creative and pioneering. Take a peek at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelical's review at Reformation 21. I think it says it all.

Emergent Error

2006-06-11T21:24:00.000-04:00

We are at another watershed in the American religious experience. A new movement known as the Emergent Church advances ideas that are reshaping the evangelical landscape. The Emergent Church embraces post-modernism and the “best” practices and traditions of all facets of Christianity; emphasizing authentic experience, social justice, and unification of the Church.

For the sake of this blog entry, I will be focusing on the issues that I see as negative (though there are a few positive facets to the movement). The movement is not monolithic or fully blossomed, but some defining elements appear to be emerging.

Central to the belief of the Emergent movement is the idea that the current incarnation of Christianity has been heavily influenced by scientific reductionism and modernism. Searching for the true meaning of Biblical texts has led to a schism between liberals and fundamentalists. This schism is viewed as hurtful and Emergent practitioners desire to heal the rift by not focusing on the underlying meaning of sacred texts. By focusing too intently on the meaning of scriptural texts, we practice the horrible heritage of our modern, western ideals.

The Emergent church desires to deconstruct theology. Per an article in the Wikipedia, “The Postmodern church resolves this issue (the issue of establishing an identity and worldview) by encouraging followers to deconstruct each element of their faith experience and reassemble the pieces according to his or her own unique journey of deconstruction” (For an uncritical review, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerging_Church). In other words, faith becomes even more intensely personal and non-universal. An Emergent’s experience is their own and no one elses.

Many have been drawn to the Emergent Church due to its focus on the mystical rather than the rational. Post modern Emergent members believe that the intellect has taken too much preeminence in the Church. They seek to end the opposition between science and faith by simply not addressing the issues of science. Instead, mystery will be embraced. We will simply leave the larger issues of creation, the Fall, and a global flood to those who have always had our best interests at heart; the evolutionists.

Emergent church-goers love symbols. Through the use of symbols, Emergents believe that they unite members of the Church Universal by evoking their lineage. Though the symbols had specific meaning in their historical context, an Emergent uses them to create a new cohesive center and meaning for post modern believers. In doing so, they destroy the historical nature of the symbols.

The movement also challenges long-standing doctrine. Recently, I heard one of the leading spokespersons of the movement, Brian McLaren, speak about his view on hell. In his words, those who believe in a literal hell are sinning. They ascribe to God the creation of something that God would never create in His goodness.

In McLaren’s own words:

Because if the cross is in line with Jesus’ teaching then—I won’t say, the only, and I certainly won’t say even the primary—but a primary meaning of the cross is that the kingdom of God doesn’t come like the kingdoms of the this world, by inflicting violence and coercing people. But that the kingdom of God comes through suffering and willing, voluntary sacrifice. But in an ironic way, the doctrine of hell basically says, no, that that’s not really true. That in the end, God gets His way through coercion and violence and intimidation and domination, just like every other kingdom does. The cross isn’t the center then. The cross is almost a distraction and false advertising for God (http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/brianmclaren.htm).

McLaren denies not only hell, but also our ability to have a hermeneutic (interpretational principle) for studying the Bible. In an Emergent’s world, the text does not have one central meaning. It has a variety of valid interpretations feasibly as numerous as the individuals who encounter the text. Generally, Emergents do not believe that a text of scripture has the meaning intended by the author (author-centered meaning or, in this case, God centered meaning). As an individual on a religious journey, the pilgrim brings unique meaning to the text.

Emergents are also consumed with pragmatism. If something appears to work it should be modeled by everyone. If throwing away the rational mind, systematic theology, doctrine, ecclesiology, science and author-centered meaning draws thousands to our churches, that is viewed as a good thing. After all, anything that draws large numbers can’t be wrong. Can it?

How these individuals refer to themselves as Evangelicals is beyond me. Words rot. Over time, the term Evangelical has become so packed with meaning that it has become meaningless. Perhaps the time has drawn nigh to coin a new term to refer to believers who assert the primacy of the Bible, absolute truth and author-centered meaning. Might I suggest “Douloi” meaning "servants" (Philippians 1:1)? It might sound strange at first, but so did "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" many years ago.

The lines have blurred once again just as they did during the birth of liberalism. Emergents will think they are ploughing new ground, but it is merely the same harrows created by the liberals. The liberal/fundamentalist split occurred slowly; mainly because the liberals were still developing their theology and the conservatives were always trying to catch up to the latest heresy. It took time to get it wrong so badly. Hopefully our day and age will not have to wait forever for this new movement to define itself. The longer it takes, the more ingrained the Emergent ideas will become in everyday thinking. Perhaps they should be pushed to develop faster…

We might need to revive adherence to creeds and perhaps the appellative “heretic”.

Evangelism Training at Grove City Church of God

2006-05-13T22:59:00.000-04:00

Rob and I will be appearing at the Grove City Church of God the next three Thursdays. Pastor Barr has invited us to speak on the topic of evangelism and we are greatly excited to be among his people. Look for us on May 18th and 25th and on June 1st. Services begin at 7:00. For directions, please visit http://www.gccog.org/cog/welcome.

Judas' Resurrection

2006-04-10T22:39:00.000-04:00

Yet another assault on Biblical Christianity has been unleashed. This time it is the Gnostic Gospel of Judas. Within this writing, Judas is the stellar friend of Jesus who understands Christ like no other. He alone can be trusted with betraying Jesus! Jesus must be betrayed so that his divine spirit will be set free from his all too human body.

Isn't it amazing the things we can’t find a trace of in the sixty six books of the Bible? If only we had found the Gospel of Judas earlier. Thousands of people could have spared themselves from martyrdom, stopped wasting time praying and finally figured out that life really is meaningless!

Liberal scholars and the National Geographic Society are embracing the Gospel of Judas and proclaiming that it carries equal weight with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Brandishing the Gospel of a traitor, they desire to rewrite our understanding of Biblical history.

The Gospel of Judas is certainly not a recent discovery. Ireneaus, the bishop of Lyons, had this to say about the Gospel of Judas circa 180 A.D:

They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.

The Gospel of Judas is obviously a late and highly embellished rendering of fiction. The copy now being paraded on the news and on National Geographic is written in Coptic and was translated from an earlier Greek version. It bears the marks of a fully developed Gnosticism which only came into existence well after the time of eyewitnesses to Christ's earthly activities.

Here is an excerpt from one of the more interesting passages (please forgive the translators conjectural emendations):

The multitude of those immortals is called the cosmos— that is, perdition—by the Father and the seventy-two luminaries who are with the Self-Generated and his seventytwo aeons. In him the first human appeared with his incorruptible powers. And the aeon that appeared with his generation, the aeon in whom are the cloud of knowledge and the angel, is called [51] El. […] aeon […] after that […] said, ‘Let twelve angels come into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld].’ And look, from the cloud there appeared an [angel] whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means ‘rebel’; others call him Yaldabaoth. Another angel, Saklas, also came from the cloud. So Nebro created six angels—as well as Saklas—to be assistants, and these produced twelve angels in the heavens, with each one receiving a portion in the heavens.

Gnosticism sought secret knowledge to open the doorway of immortality. Within Gnostic belief, the spirit of man partakes of the divine essence, but his physical body shackles him to drudgery. Gnostics view the corpus as evil and abuse it either by throwing it into extreme pleasure or extreme impoverishment. The ultimate ideal of Gnosticism is separation of the spirit from the body.

Gnostics were some of the early perverters of the unembellished story of Christ’s death and resurrection. Dissatisfied by the story of God’s loving sacrifice on their behalf, they denied Christ came in the flesh. In fact, Christ was in a worse condition than being in hell when he was in physical form. An incipient form of Gnosticism probably inspired John to write “And you can know which ones come from God. His Spirit says that Jesus Christ had a truly human body” (CEV, I John 4:2).

This early heresy would later become highly embellished, highly symbolic and totally separated from reality. I guess it is the perfect topic for our “modern scholars” at National Geographic. I never cease to be amazed that hacks can dredge up old heresies and recast them as scholarship.

To take a peek at the Gospel of Judas and Gnosticism, visit the following sites:

Wikipedia on Gnosticism
National Geographic Web on Gospel of Judas
National Geographic Video on Judas
(highly recommended, but you had better have a decent internet connection – 4Mbs)
Christianity Today on Gospel of Judas
Comprehensive Articles on Gospel of Judas
(Great site that contains a translation of the Gospel of Judas in English!)

Sexual Plague

2006-03-26T22:38:00.000-05:00

While watching MSNB’s Dateline, I was reminded of the sexual disaster of America. Utilizing a non-profit group known as Perverted Justice, MSNBC trolled for men who were willing to engage in sex with a thirteen year old girl or boy. Decoys would engage these men in chat rooms or via the phone and would invite them to meet them in a quiet residential neighborhood.

MSNBC trolled for a mere three days. I would have expected half a dozen men to greet the MSNBC cameras. Shockingly, over fifty men were arrested subsequent to their surprise interviews. With nary a blush, the men would spin the most outrageous lies. “I did not know how old she was.” “I just came to teach her a lesson about online predators.” Then the MSNBC reporter would unveil their lewd and offensive chat room dialogues that left all of the lies naked. Seldom did any of the men show shame.

From a short four years in ministry, I met many men who struggled with sexual issues. Dozens were addicted to pornography. Some may have been emerging predators. How many men have sexual sin at some point in their life? 100%! In the words of a New Zealand evangelist, “There are only two kinds of men in this world. Perverts and forgiven perverts.”

America is in the throes of a great plague. Predators are being created daily by our over-saturation with sexual content. MTV and HBO know no limitations to their exploitation of man’s desire for sexual gratification. Recent Victoria’s Secret advertisements aired at all hours have only one purpose; arousal.

If the Church does not mobilize to address the silent plague, our young men will be rapists, our young women will be victims and our parents will be complicit. God has made us fully aware of the scope of our degradation.

To read the full MSNBC story, go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11152602/. Please be aware that the content is graphic. This is the third time that MSNBC has pursued sexual predators.

Afghanistan's Freedom in Islam

2006-03-20T21:39:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: This story was reported by ABC News at http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1746943&page=1. It details the plight of a man who embraced Christ in a country that utterly rejects Him. Death is often the end of those who leave Islam for Christ. Pray for this man.

ABC NEWS

By GRETCHEN PETERS and LARA SETRAKIAN, with reporting by BILAL SARWARY

KABUL, Afghanistan, March 20, 2006 — Despite the overthrow of the fundamentalist Taliban government and the presence of 22,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a man who converted to Christianity is being prosecuted in Kabul, and a judge said Sunday that if convicted, he faces the death penalty.

Abdul Rahman, who is in his 40s, says he converted to Christianity 16 years ago while working as an aid worker helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.

Human rights workers have described the case as an unsettling reminder that the country's post-Taliban judiciary remains deeply conservative, and they have called on President Hamid Karzai to intervene. During Taliban times, men were forced to kneel in prayer five times a day, and couples faced the death penalty for sex outside marriage, for example. Reform efforts have been slow, say experts, since there are so few judges and lawyers with experience.

The U.S. State Department is watching the case closely and considers it a barometer of how well democracy is developing in Afghanistan.

"Our view … is that tolerance, freedom of worship is an important element of any democracy," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "And these are issues as Afghan democracy matures that they are going to have to deal with increasingly."

A number of Christian nonprofit groups do humanitarian work in Afghanistan. Dominic Nutt of Christian Aid calls the Rahman case a step backward for the country, especially if Rahman is executed.

Nutt, who has spent time in Afghanistan, tells ABC News "few practitioners are used to the concept of democracy and toleration … [many] are educated only in Islamic law."

Presiding judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah tells ABC News a medical team was checking the defendant, since the team suspects insanity caused Rahman to reject Islam.

"We want to know that the doctors have given him a green light on his mental state, because he is not normal when he talks," says the judge.

The post-Taliban constitution recognizes Islam as Afghanistan's religion, and decrees that Islam's Sharia law applies when a case is not covered by specific legislation. The prosecutor says under Sharia law, Abdul Rahman must die.

The judge, however, holds hopes for a solution.

"We will ask him if he has changed his mind about being a Christian," Mawlazezadah says. "If he has, we will forgive him, because Islam is a religion of tolerance."

Article continued at http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1746943&page=1

Islam's Forgotten History

2006-03-14T21:10:00.000-05:00

If it were not for the intervention of God, we would be speaking Arabic, praying five times daily to Mecca and participating in the hegira. Few remember their history. It was a fateful day in 732 A.D. that Charles “The Hammer” Martel brought the Cordoban Muslim emirate to its knees. By stopping the Islamic hordes at Tours, Charles stopped Islam from conquering all of Europe.

Even fewer people realize that modern day Spain was controlled by Islam until 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella finally reclaimed the Iberian Peninsula for Roman Catholicism (Map – Dark brown denotes Muslim dominion in 750 A.D.).

It is a grand history of hundreds of years of domination, glorious conquest and fabled wealth that still inspires many of those who practice jihad or holy war.

A world ruled by those who take the Koran literally is too dreary to contemplate. Consider the following quotes:

· On February 23, 1998, five Islamic caliphates signed a fatwa declaring war against the U.S. · “The ruling to kill Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…”
· Surah 2:191 states, “And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out, for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter.”
· Surah 4:89 states, “Seize them and slay them wherever you may find them…”
· Surah 9:29 states, “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day.”

When you contemplate your role in evangelism, keep in mind that Christians are beginning to fall behind in the race for souls.

Globalization and Christ

2006-02-21T14:59:00.000-05:00

A number of recent books and articles have driven me to believe that God's hand may be shifting to Asia. In particular, I'm re-reading "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. This secular book chronicles the rise of software and outsourcing superpowers such as Bangalore, India and Xianjian, China. The world's wealth and influence are shifting to these two nations in particular as the economic playing field is being leveled by technology.

While we were sleeping last night, executives in America sent their requests for presentations and research overseas to India. India, with its vast intellectual capital, turns these jobs over to men and women with doctorates who will work for a fraction of the wages earned in the U.S. When the U.S. executives arrive at work the next morning, the research and an accompanying PowerPoint presentations will be on their desktop computers. India and China work while America sleeps; the beauty of outsourcing.

If you call to reserve an airline, to order a Dell computer or to resolve a technical computer problem, it is likely an enthusiastic, English speaking West Indian who will fulfill your needs. I recently ordered a Dell laptop and received some of the best service imaginable. When I asked where the customer service representative was located, she sweetly replied "Bangalore, India".

India and China are earning the right to America's repetetive, but skilled IT jobs. In Thomas Friedman's estimation, the only jobs that may remain in America are those that require people skills. If a job has any component that may be done overseas it will be done there in the future; such jobs include taxes, call centers, the reading of CAT scans and x-rays, routine legal work, programming, hotel and airline reservations, project management, data analysis, architectural work, etc. Americans beware! God is beginning to shift world influence to a new world long deprieved of our lifestyle.

World markets and cultures are opening to embrace the surge of American outsourcing. India and China are welcoming American companies, their business practices and ideals unreservedly into their nations. The shift has massive potential for fulfilling the passion of Jesus Christ. The gospel is exploding in India and China. Per a recent article at http://www.religionnewsblog.com/13711/Evangelical-Christianity-shifting-outside-West:

In 1960, there were an estimated 50 million evangelical Christians in the West, and 25 million in the rest of the world; today, there are an estimated 75 million in the West, and 325 million in the rest of the world (representing about 20 percent of the two billion Christians worldwide).

Other experts differ on the number of evangelicals (estimates range from 250 million to nearly one billion) but agree that the number is growing rapidly.

"As the vibrancy of evangelicalism seems to have waned somewhat in the West, many in the non-West are ready to pick up the banner and move forward," said Kilgore, a former missionary who is now associate provost at Philadelphia Biblical University. "Most Americans have no idea how big the shift has been."

Todd M. Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, writes that "Africans, Asians and Latin Americans are more typical representatives of evangelicalism than Americans or Europeans."

The new evangelicals are more exuberant in their worship services; put more faith in spiritual healing, prophecy and visions; and read the Bible more literally than many of their Western cousins.

In a world of globalization and evangelicalization (a coined word), mission agencies relying on indigenous missionaries are enormously effective, while mission bodies dependent upon expensive American missionaries are blunted. Consider these excerpts from K.P Yohanan, founder of Gospel for Asia (http://www.gfa.org/gfa/whynativemissions):

Although native missionaries do face many difficult obstacles as they take the message from village to village, they still have an enormous advantage over their coworkers from North America and other non-Asian lands.
Today, over 85 percent of Asian countries do not allow western missionaries to come and freely preach the Gospel and plant churches.
In the eyes of the people, native missionaries do not represent a foreign country or a strange religion. They already know the language or can easily learn a local dialect.
A native missionary can be sent out at a fraction of the cost of a Western missionary. In fact, the average cost is only $1,100 to $1,800 per year compared to over $75,000 per year for a foreign missionary.
The possibility of reaching Asia's multitudes through native missionaries in our generation is very real as thousands are being trained to plant churches across Asia!
To date 54 Bible colleges have been established in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and at the Bhutan border. Currently, nearly 8,000 young men and women are currently receiving training.
The quality of GFA students is incredible. Over 98 percent of our graduates minister in places where the Gospel has never before been preached. Frequently, our graduates will establish a new fellowship within their first year on the field.
On average, our missionaries establish nearly 15 fellowships every day in Asia among unreached villages and people groups.
The churches planted in each culture are truly indigenous in character, self-governing,self-propagating and, as soon as possible, self-supporting.

I believe we are at a watershed in history. While Asia is rising to new prominence, America's influence in globalization, evangelicalization and mission activity is waning. The next decade of world history will see massive changes in monetary, intellectual, political and Christian capital. Are we ready? What can we anticipate? How can we best support what God is already doing?

2006-02-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

Rob and I had a fantastic time at the Grove City Church of God on Sunday (1-29-06). People were very responsive to our Islam presentation and many shared concerning their witnessing encounters with Muslims. I was genuinely surprised at the number of people that came into contact with Islam on a daily basis.

Pastor Barr is truly a pastor’s pastor. We greatly appreciate his invitation to speak before his lovely congregation.

--Owen

First Salvo – The DaVinci Code

2006-01-19T22:08:00.000-05:00

The following is a series of questions answered by Dan Brown of the DaVinci Code followed by my preliminary responses. I just finished the DaVinci Code and found it be a page turner and a temper boiler! Many will be taking this book seriously since Brown passes the work off as scholarly fiction. We are already beginning to see a new skepticism arise that is built off of Brown’s fallacious scholarship. Great fiction, poor truth!

HOW DID YOU GET ALL THE INSIDE INFORMATION FOR THIS BOOK? Most of the information is not as "inside" as it seems. The secret described in the novel has been chronicled for centuries, so there are thousands of sources to draw from. In addition, I was surprised how eager historians were to share their expertise with me. One academic told me her enthusiasm for The Da Vinci Code was based in part on her hope that "this ancient mystery would be unveiled to a wider audience."

Response – Dan had to dig deep for this stuff. He should be commended for writing an entertaining story, but the presentation of this material as scholarly is laughable. In particular, Dan misses on his biggest point. He writes that Constantine attempted to meld paganism and Christianity together by deifying Jesus. This goal was seen necessary to unify his factious nation. Brown writes that the Council of Nicea in 325 was a watershed event where Constantine destroyed earlier stories of Jesus’ mere humanity and established by a vote the deity of Christ. Per Dan, before this time, Jesus’ followers only thought of him as a great man.

The real issue at Nicea was not whether Jesus was divine, but whether he was partially divine or wholly divine. The battle was between Arianism which posited that Christ was God by a matter of degree and orthodox Christianity that said that Jesus has always been God. In Arius’ words, “There once was a time when Jesus was not” and “There once was a time when God was not a Father.” Arius still proclaimed Christ’s divinity, but he believed that Jesus was a created being and inferior to God the Father. Orthodox Christianity held forth that Jesus was of the same substance as the Father and had eternally existed as a member of the godhead.

Nicea did not decide whether Jesus was divine. The early church fathers had held this from the beginning. Ignatius of Antioch (died 110 A.D), Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr (circa 140 A.D), Polycarp of Smyrna, Irenaeus, Theophilus (115-181 A.D.), Melito of Sardis (177 A.D.) and a horde of other early church fathers all proclaimed Christ’s deity well before Constantine came onto the scene.

Brown likes to discount the Bible, but the book of John is absolutely rife with statements of Christ’s deity. Here is a small example:

The descriptive “I Am” passages - Jesus himself claimed his deity within these passages.
· The bread of life (6:35, 48). Jesus is the sustenance of existence and eternal life.
· The light of the world (8:12). Jesus is the clearest distinction between good and evil. He provides clarity in discerning evil.
· The door (10:7, 9). This is claim to divine exclusivity. All other means of accessing God are illegitimate.
· The good shepherd (10:11, 14). Jesus is the compassionate God.
· The resurrection and the life (11:25). Jesus claims that the hope of resurrection is vested in his person and that he is the giver of eternal life.
· The way and the truth and the life (14:6). Again, there is the claim of exclusivity. Jesus is the only venue to knowing God and living eternally.
· The true vine (15:1, 5). Without Jesus as the source of life, man cannot live or be productive.

The exclusive “I Am” passages. These statements by Christ clearly demonstrate Christ’s claim to deity. They directly identify Christ with the Old Testament statement in Exodus 3:14.
· The power encounters (4:25, 26; 8:24, 25, 28; 13:19). Jesus reveals himself as the “I am” during several climactic moments.

The Nicene Creed is a beautiful expression of the belief of the Council.

The Nicene Creed

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

It is unfortunate that Brown’s only defense is that ‘history has been rewritten’ and that non-existent documents support his position. That is a whole lot of history to rewrite and control and a whole lot of missing documents!

HOW MUCH OF THIS NOVEL IS TRUE? The Da Vinci Code is a novel and therefore a work of fiction. While the book's characters and their actions are obviously not real, the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist (for example, Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings, the Gnostic Gospels, Hieros Gamos, etc.). These real elements are interpreted and debated by fictional characters. While it is my belief that some of the theories discussed by these characters may have merit, each individual reader must explore these characters' viewpoints and come to his or her own interpretations. My hope in writing this novel was that the story would serve as a catalyst and a springboard for people to discuss the important topics of faith, religion, and history.

Response – While some of the elements in this work of fiction may exist, this does not mean that they were ever woven in reality into such a complex conspiracy. Dan Brown ultimately is concerned with stoking the hugely powerful fire under his work. Almost every point in the book is intensely debatable; from the symbolism behind DaVinci’s Last Supper where Brown depicts Peter as “threatening” Mary Magdalene to the rather odd notion that early Jewish worship embodied goddess worship and shrine prostitution at the temple.

SOME OF THE HISTORY IN THIS NOVEL CONTRADICTS WHAT I LEARNED IN SCHOOL. WHAT SHOULD I BELIEVE? Since the beginning of recorded time, history has been written by the "winners" (those societies and belief systems that conquered and survived). Despite an obvious bias in this accounting method, we still measure the "historical accuracy" of a given concept by examining how well it concurs with our existing historical record. Many historians now believe (as do I) that in gauging the historical accuracy of a given concept, we should first ask ourselves a far deeper question: How historically accurate is history itself?

Response – Tripe. Dan Brown is obviously part of the revisionist movement that is attempting to overthrow any form of objective truth. As Brown noted in the previous section, “each individual reader must explore these characters' viewpoints and come to his or her own interpretations.” Whether those interpretations are true is totally outside of Brown’s concern. He is a postmodernist of the first order.

ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN? Yes. Interestingly, if you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as absolute historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell. Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious--that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

Response – There is no center to Brown’s existence. Abandoning author-centered meaning, Brown is always in transition, but never arriving at conclusions. Brown paradoxically calls himself a Christian and then denies the very substance of Christianity; the person and works of Jesus Christ. I think we can safely conclude that Dan Brown is a wolf of Biblical proportions.

THIS NOVEL IS VERY EMPOWERING TO WOMEN. CAN YOU COMMENT? Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power. The novel touches on questions of how and why this shift occurred…and on what lessons we might learn from it regarding our future.

Response – This is Dan’s central premise that goddess worship was repressed by Christianity and destroyed by a conspiracy of the Roman emperor Constantine. Since only the masculine side of the sacred is being expressed in world religions, the earth is horribly out of balance. Langdon’s mission in the book is to unwittingly restore the feminine sacred. In doing so, the earth will once again blossom into peace and love. The world of goddess worship contains orgiastic sex worship and shrine prostitution. This form of worship is seen as a beautiful expression of achieving the fusion of the masculine and feminine sacred.

Upcoming Event

2006-01-18T21:21:00.000-05:00

On January 29th, Robert and I will be at the Grove City Church of God for the Sunday morning service. Pastor Randy Barr has graciously invited us to present on the topic of Islamic evangelism. Morning worship begins at 10:30. For driving directions, visit http://www.gccog.org/cog/welcome.

When Heresy Goes Unchecked

2006-01-18T20:41:00.000-05:00

EmissaryX editor note: No one likes being a "heresy hunter". However, when God's people do not take care of their own, destructive influences destroy the witness of Christ. This posting is from the October 21st, 2005 "Fire in My Bones" column by J. Lee Grady of Charisma Online.

When Heresy Goes Unchecked
In the case of Carlton Pearson’s Universalist doctrines, we can’t soft-pedal. We must confront.

The apostle Paul wrote the Bible’s most eloquent words about Christian love. But when it came to the subject of heresy, he went into verbal-attack mode. He labeled those who were spreading false doctrines “dogs” (Phil. 3:2) and “liars” (1 Tim. 4:2), and he not only labeled heretics publicly but “handed them over to Satan” in his prayers (see 1 Tim. 1:20). Doesn’t sound much like the sloppy agape love we often model today.

Paul believed that if heresy goes unchecked it gnaws at the larger body of Christ and contaminates everyone. He warned his disciple Timothy that false teaching spreads “like gangrene” (2 Tim. 2:17). The King James Version says the words of false teachers “will eat as doth a canker.” The word “gangrene” can also be translated cancer.

Modern translation: False doctrine is malignant. Get the tumor out before it kills people.

What is troubling me these days is that many American church leaders (and I am talking about my fellow charismatics and Pentecostals) are not displaying the necessary backbone to label a heretic a heretic. We have become masters at soft-pedaling and inaction when the Lord requires us to confront.

Case in point: Bishop Carlton Pearson, who was raised in the nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination (the Church of God in Christ) and who once served as an evangelist with the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, began teaching what he calls “the gospel of inclusion” a few years ago. He has become a Universalist, claiming that people do not need Christian conversion in order to be saved by Christ.

Pearson’s deception has been widely reported.

In Charisma magazine we followed Pearson’s demise and announced that one body, the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops’ Congress, labeled him a heretic in March 2004. Since that time, Pearson convened a national conference about Universalist doctrine that featured Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, who does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and has promoted his ideas in books such as Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

You would think that every charismatic leader in the United States would sever all ties to Pearson until he renounces his apostasy. But that is not the case.

Popular gospel singer John P. Kee, who pastors New Life Fellowship Center in Charlotte, N.C., appeared on the program at Pearson’s Inclusion 2005 conference, which was held in Pearson’s Higher Dimensions Family church in Tulsa, Okla., in June. Having Kee’s face on the program certainly gave the conference added credibility in the eyes of some Pentecostals.
Pearson was the featured speaker at a prominent charismatic church in Atlanta on Pentecost Sunday in May of this year. The church’s pastor, Bishop Earl Paulk Jr., put Pearson back in the same pulpit two weeks ago.
The church network that Paulk founded, the International Communion of Charismatic Churches (ICCC), still lists Pearson as a member in good standing. When I asked an ICCC leader last week why they did not remove him, he said the organization does not currently have any mechanism to remove members based on doctrinal or character issues.
Huh? Therein lies the root problem. In the loosey-goosey world of charismatic independence, we find it almost impossible to police our own. Everything is about “fellowship,” but we lack the teeth in our policies to ensure that we can properly discipline preachers who veer off into doctrinal error.

When I bring up the issue of Pearson’s apostasy I usually get a lot of glazed looks from people who don’t want to believe that a brother has fallen into deception. “Don’t be so hard on the guy,” is a typical response. “Maybe we don’t understand what he is teaching.”

I don’t need any more explanation. Pearson has a banner on his Web site that announces: “God Is Not A Christian.” And his church is hosting a combined service on Nov. 17 with a local Unitarian congregation in Tulsa.

We Christians are so nice we don’t know how to handle it when the Bible requires tough love. Let’s remember that when it comes to heresy, God does not require us to be nice. It’s time for all of our congregations, denominations and church networks to raise the bar and defend the faith from those who pervert it.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma and an award-winning journalist. He writes a column for Charisma Online twice a week.

A Beginning

2006-01-14T19:40:00.000-05:00

This blog is dedicated to the glory of God and revealing that God's presence in the human heart makes man fully alive.

Emissary ministries exists to equip bodies of believers to share their faith boldly within the strategic sphere that God has placed them.