About

Per Fidem Intrepidus means "Fearless Through Faith". My courage isn't my own, it comes from the Holy Spirit, it's my faith in God and my personal savior Christ Jesus that calms my fears and allows me to move forward in this fallen world. Personally I'm afraid of a lot of stuff, but having the faith that Jesus adopted me as his little, sin filled, brother keeps me going.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

More Bad News For My Morning Commute

As I mentioned before, my morning commute is long and I use the time to learn the word of God via the radio, however when I discovered that the teachings of Ronald L. Dart were horrifically unbiblical I had to find a new source for listening. 

So I switched back to a local Calvary Church station, however at 5:00 AM their teacher is Levi Lusko. To be honest Levi grates on me, his constant, nonstop pop-culture references and unending attempts to be funny and 'relevant' (for me at least) diminish God's word. I understand that he's trying to reach out to younger Christians, but survey after survey after survey shows that churches pretending to be "relevant" is one of the main things that are driving kids away from the church. Our kids are smart, they know they're being pandered to and "relevance" is merely a ploy to keep the hipster goats in the pews, our kids want the real thing, the pure Gospel, two testaments, both barrels.  

My attempts to ignore the non-stop one liners and Lusko's attempts to move the Book of Ester from bronze age Persia to New Age America was slightly successful, but the laugh-track yuks Lusko was eliciting from the congregation really got annoying 10 minutes into the sermons. Rather than feeling fulfilled, educated, and closer to God because I learned from His word I felt unclean and empty because I felt that His word was being taken away from me. And then, as if to remind me that He gifted me with a modicum of discernment, the Holy Spirit tossed me a grenade. 


The first blow was yesterday's sermon (Of course it could have been recorded a couple of years ago, it's hard to tell on early morning radio) when Lusko openly and unashamedly quoted from Eugene Peterson's The Message satire of the Bible. As I've written before, The Message is not a Bible translation, it is one man's opinion of how the Bible should read. The Message is not a Christian message; picture a sheep opening its mouth and howling at the moon, you really should get the hint that it's not a sheep's message.

Next blow came in todays sermon when an ad for Lusko's ministries announced that Lusko will be working with Rick Warren at Resurgence 2. Now, Rick Warren may be a very nice person, I don't know him but I do know Matthew 7:16, and Warren's fruit is a heretical mess.

And lastly, when I looked up Lusko's church in Kalispell MT, it's called Skull Church. Maybe it's just me, but I was immediately creeped out. Lusko claims that it was named for "The Place of the Skull" where Jesus was brutally executed. I can see a semi-whitty link between Skull Church and Calvary Church, as Calvary is an anglicized version of the word Golgotha which means Place of the Skull. However whitty as this word game may be, words mean things

When I consider the use of the skull image for anything to do with the church it just feels wrong. Maybe it's me, but maybe it's the Holy Spirit. The skull is universally considered a symbol of death. Jesus isn't about death, Jesus is about LIFE. There's already skull imagery associated with a church:
This is the Priest's Crucifix, note the skull and crossbones. It's said to symbolize life over death, but how do you symbolize life over death when your symbol of life is showing Jesus being tortured to death? I may be wrong but I'd much rather be safe than sorry and I try to stay far away from anything I'll be sorry about later, and these revelations coming 1-2-3 on top of each other means the Holy Spirit is telling me to steer clear of this radio program and church. 

Maybe Levi Lusko is ok for you, I don't know, it's a possibility. In my case I believe the Holy Spirit is pushing me away from him which means I'm looking again for some proper Gospel for my morning drive to work. Oh well, if some of the farther out stations have nothing for my oh-dark-hundred commute I still have the Grace To You iPhone app to listen to... but what am I going to do for the ride home?!?

13 comments:

  1. I would suggest investing in an iPod and downloading podcasts and sermons. Sermonaudio has a lot of great sermons and talks. The only expense is the iPod itself. Nearly every podcast and files from sermonaudio is free.

    I work on the road and listen to podcasts, lectures, debates, etc. for 9 hours a day. It's worth it.

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  2. My wife just came across Lusko a couple of days ago because she heard the story about his daughter and sadly passed away.
    My wife of course was emotionally drawn to his blog and then his podcast.
    But as soon as I saw his videos and heard everything you're talking about - the non-stop humor, one liners, trying too hard to wrench more laughter out of the same joke again...and again..and again..., I quickly realized he's just trying to be culturally relevant.

    The funny thing is, back in '08, Levi met John MacArthur and basically gushed over him in a blog post. He also quoted MacArthur on basically telling young pastors to stop trying to make the bible culturally relevant because it already is...they just need to preach it.

    I saw that blog and had some hope, but as I continue to listen, it's theologically a mile wide and an inch deep.

    Where have all the good Pastors gone????

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    1. We know this is going to happen, as we are told in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 and 2 Peter 2:1-3, all we can do is be sure of scripture, identify the false and self centered teachers, and keep our brothers and sisters from falling under their spell. I now listen to John MacArthur sermons on podcast until the later in the day when the local Calvary Chapel radio station reverts to more Godly pastors in their programming line-up

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    4. Sorry Mr. Humans are disgusting, but you are not allowed to come on my blog and insult people. Try again sith a civil tongue. You have been moderated.

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  3. Just came across this and thought I should correct some misinformation. The church name is FreshLife. Skull church is the name of events focused on outreach to young people. I attend FreshLife and I love the church. The gospel is preached, some may not like the delivery but truth is truth. If the Word is the source feel free to hit me over the head with one liners all you want. FreshLife may not be your grandmas church, but she is welcome there anyway.

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    1. When two or more gather in His name, we are under scrutiny by unbelievers, and when we make worshiping His name a laugh fest the unbelievers only see it as mockery. This is what Levi Lusko has done to the perfect word of God:

      http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danthropology/2015/03/skull-church-a-market-for-sadism/

      Where did Lusko get the perverse idea that God murdered his son? Christ's sacrifice, not murder, is the #2 most important part of our faith and Lusko gets that horribly, disgustingly wrong. (His resurrection is our #1 statement of fact)

      As for the rock n' roll yuk it up giggle fest of his sermons, What part of Hebrews 12:28 Hebrews 5:7 1 Peter 3:15 Ephesians 5:21 Leviticus 19:32 1 Peter 2:17 Revelation 19:5 is he not getting?

      Oh, and yes, I'm sure my grandmother would be more than welcome there. Both of them. One died not long after my father was born, the other died before my mother was out of elementary school. Both of my parents grew up without a mother. Their corpses would fit in with the irreverent, hip, comedy oriented death culture laugh fest for which Mr. Lusko is worshiped

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  4. Good and incisive observations Doug Evans. I have listened to a few Lusko "sermons." They were all sans gospel. No truthiness to be found, G. Gallawa.

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  5. Alistair Begg is excellent and I've heard David Pratt (?) is good also...

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  6. https://youtu.be/Ya5UZEnzFs8
    This sounds like spreading the gospel to me.

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  7. yeah I started listening to Levi Lusko because Ive heard him on Klove the radio station so i liked what i've heard. but then i look him up and what a disapoiment he is a false teacher. If people that called themselves a christian a follower of Jesus Christ and they don't see anything wrong with his teachings then they need to be born again. seriously the skull church. what a joke. teaching that marking your body with tatoos is ok and telling that if you kill yourself you don't go to hell what a joke. doesn't anybody read the bible any more. stay away from him and his teachings that is what i recomend people.

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