Taizé Is Worshiped Here

Driving up Colorado Boulevard, a few blocks north of Colfax Avenue, I passed by the Messiah "We take the Bible seriously, not literally" Community Church. (Yes, that is actually part of their statement of faith) 

I enjoy reading their sign out front because it's a great indicator of which direction the Emergent Church is stumbling each week. The Messiah Community Church is a member of the ELCA and is "tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming" which makes them a bellweather of heretical teaching. The sign out front of their building will espouse everything from the worship of Evolution to the sanctity of feminism. I fully expected their church sign to congratulate Bill Nye on his Emmy Nomination for the Gender Spectrum Horror Show, but it simply said "Taizé Style Worship" This,of course, sent me in to a spiral of research to find out what Taizé style worship is and unfortunately, I found out. 

The Taizé Community was founded by a Roman Catholic monk named Brother Roger. Roger was born and raised a protestant but fell ill with tuberculosis in 1940. During his convalescence he began to feel drawn to a monastic way of life and he disliked formal preaching. He grew to love the frippery and idolatry of the catholic church;

I have found my own identity as a Christian by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without breaking fellowship with anyone - Brother Roger, 1980

In 1940 he founded a ecumenical monastic community in Taizé, a village in Burgundy, France, where Roger devoted himself to reconciling the different Christian churches. He did this by targeting Christian youth. He encouraged in them a spiritual quest as a common endeavor  "... to go on searching through silence and prayer, to get in touch with our inner life."

Spurgeon Thursday - Christ and the Pope

Christ Did Not Die for Pope To Be Glorified: 

Christ did not redeem His Church with His blood that the Pope might come in and steal away the glory! He never came from Heaven to earth and poured out His very heart that He might purchase His people so that a poor sinner, a mere man, should be set upon high to be admired by all the nations and to call himself God’s representative on earth!

The Lord Jesus Christ has always been the Head of His Church

It is not possible for any to be Head in the Church of Christ, but Jesus! Has God exalted Him and made Him to be the Head over all things—and it is usurping the prerogative of Christ for any to suppose they can be Head of the Church of Christ, for Jesus Christ is the Head and He, alone, holds power over ecclesiastical organizations! Over the sacred mystical, blood-bought, redeemed, regenerated Church of Christ there never can, by any possibility, be any other Head but Jesus Christ, the Lord Himself! 

Now mark, God has exalted the Lord Jesus Christ in the government of His Church All authority, all authoritative rules in Zion come through Jesus Christ. All true teaching in Zion comes from His lips. We call no man, master, upon earth, for One is our Master, and that One is Christ. No man is Rabbi in the Church, but He is our Rabboni, our Teacher, and all other teachers are thieves and robbers if they teach on their own authority. They only are accepted as the Lord’s shepherds, who speak Christ’s Truth in Christ’s name—and in the power of His own Spirit. God has made Christ to rule supremely throughout the Church, and in this He has glorified Him!

Christ Did Not Die for Pope To Be Glorified by C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892); an excerpt from Christ Glorified: Sermon No. 3436 delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, on Thursday Evening, February 4, 1869.

WWUTT Wednesday: Fame, Fortune, and Depression

Depression is an equal opportunity affliction, it affects the rich, the poor, the sickly, the healthy, the godless, the spiritual, the Christian. Spurgeon dealt with crippling depression, many pastors deal with depression, and not always successfully. I myself had been dealing with this a tiny bit, there's a lot of uncertainty in my little corner of the world and I'm dealing with physical pain that at times can be debilitating (and try loosing weight when it's hard to get up and move) But I'll be OK, I got my rock, my foundation:

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus' blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest fame,

But wholly lean on Jesus' name.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand.

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that I did change one word in this stanza, and I believe that the change makes sense, because I don't think that humans were built for unbridled praise and adulation. Jealousy is an attribute of God and He doesn't want to share the spotlight, and nor should He have to. Being mere mortals I don't think we were wired to receive what is due God.

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

Why do we "watch bloggers" spend so much time and energy on exposing frauds, schemes, and false teachers? Because it is what Christians are called to do.  Our job is to resist those schemes by exposing them, doing everything we can to stand firm by opposing lies with truth. War has been declared on us and our equipment is defensive in nature; the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, from the top of our head (the helmet of salvation) to the tips of our toes (the preparation of the gospel of peace) we are set for the defense, our only weapon is the the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And keep in mind that the sword is used to block thrusts as much as the shield is. We are at war, and everyone is part of the conflict whether they can see it or not.

Afterword: the sad, disturbing case of Eugene Peterson

Why does Ken Ham bother to waste his time with this person?

Ken Ham's Ark Encounter STOLE! the rainbow from the gays

Rev. Dr. William Barber of the NAACP claims that praying for the president is a form of theological malpractice that borders on heresy

It's coming! Don't say you weren't warned, Satan is on the march.

California proposes jail time for using the wrong pronoun for self mutilated transgenders

It is officially illegal to be a person of faith in  Our job is to resist those schemes by exposing them, doing everything we can to stand firm by opposing lies with truthChina's communist party.

Is IHOP hiding millions of dollars of assets?

The end-game of Progressive "Christianity"

Jerry Coyne, a professor in the department of ecology and human evolution at the University of Chicago teaches that infanticide is morally acceptable 

Minnesota city approves a satanic monument in a veterans park

Now, I'm not going to say that this is true, but I did see it on the internet

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

It's been quite a week here, which explains why my Friday post ended up on a Monday. After giving birth to a beautiful baby boy our daughter succumbed to a mysterious illness (there really is such a thing, they're still trying to figure it out) so a few hours after coming home from the maternity ward, she entered the ICU while Grandma and I watched over her new born and the 2 year old Wonder Imp now known as Big Sister.

We truly love the children and the chance to spoil them non-stop for a few days was delightful, but it's been a quarter of a century since we had to endure the feeding schedule of a new born baby. I'm called The Baby Whisperer and can pacify even the most ravenous of infants but at 11:00 PM, 1:00 AM, 3:00 AM, 5:00 AM... not so much.

To those that have earned the title Later in Life (lets say those that know what the 70's were truly like) and think you can hear a biological clock ticking - that's not a biological clock, that's a time bomb. Unless you're in top physical form and routinely finish full marathons in under 4:00:00, please think again. Pounding out 23 miles through downtown Boston is a cakewalk compared to keeping up with a sugared up 2 year old with a basket full of crayons. The Lord is truly good and we thank Him for the chance to spend days with the babies, and praise Him for bringing our daughter and her husband home, we love Him for the help, support, and prayers from our little family of Bereans, and now we thank and praise Him for the invention of sleep, and the chance to catch up on it.

The "Church" of England has voted to celebrate a person's "gender transition" with a church service and has asked the House of Bishops to " consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person’s gender transition.” I suggest starting with Romans 1:22

Not Clickbait! - Here are five "Fake News" stories that people actually believe about early Christianity and love to spread