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

Biblically-Anemic Preaching: The Devastating Consequences of a Watered-Down Message

by John MacArthur

Those who are familiar with my ministry know that I am committed to expository preaching. It is my unshakable conviction that the proclamation of God’s Word should always be the heart and the focus of the church’s ministry (2 Timothy 4:2). And proper biblical preaching should be systematic, expositional, theological, and God-centered.

Such preaching is in short supply these days. There are plenty of gifted communicators in the modern evangelical movement, but today’s sermons tend to be short, shallow, topical homilies that massage people’s egos and focus on fairly insipid subjects like human relationships, "successful" living, emotional issues, and other practical but worldly—and not definitively biblical—themes. These messages are lightweight and without substance, cheap and synthetic, leaving little more than an ephemeral impression on the minds of the hearers.

Some time ago I hosted a discussion at the Expositors’ Institute, an annual small-group colloquium on preaching held at our church. In preparation for that seminar, I took a yellow legal pad and a pen and began listing the negative effects of the superficial brand of preaching that is so rife in modern evangelicalism.

I initially thought I might be able to identify about ten, but in the end I had jotted down a list of sixty-one devastating consequences. I’ve distilled them to fifteen by combining and eliminating all but the most crucial ones. I offer them as a warning against superficial, marginally biblical preaching—both to those who stand behind the pulpit and to those who sit in the pew.

1. It usurps the authority of God over the soul. Whether a preacher boldly proclaims the Word of God or not is ultimately a question of authority. Who has the right to speak to the church? The preacher or God? Whenever anything is substituted for the preaching of the Word, God’s authority is usurped. What a prideful thing to do! In fact, it is hard to conceive of anything more insolent that could be done by a man who is called by God to preach.

2. It removes the lordship of Christ from His church. Who is the Head of the church? Is Christ really the dominant teaching authority in the church? If so, then why are there so many churches where His Word is not being faithfully proclaimed? When we look at contemporary ministry, we see programs and methods that are the fruit of human invention, the offspring of opinion polls and neighborhood surveys, and other pragmatic artifices. Church-growth experts have in essence wrested control of the church’s agenda from her true Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Puritan forefathers resisted the imposition of government-imposed liturgies for precisely this reason: They saw it as a direct attack on the headship of Christ over His own church. Modern preachers who neglect the Word of God have yielded the ground those men fought and sometimes died for. When Jesus Christ is exalted among His people, His power is manifest in the church. When the church is commandeered by compromisers who want to appease the culture, the gospel is minimized, true power is lost, artificial energy must be manufactured, and superficiality takes the place of truth.

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

It's no surprise that to cripple the new president and thwart the will of the people the Democrats have been dragging their feet on presidential appointments. Foremost among them is moral narcissist Bernie Sanders who was brutally crushed with underhanded skulduggery by his opponent in the presidential election primaries. Nonplussed, Bernie Sanders imposes a religious litmus test on Christians who seek office in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

During an appointment hearing Mr. Sanders took opposition to a blog entry written by Russell Vought who was nominated by President Trump to be deputy director for Office of Management and Budget. Sanders. The blog entry in questions discussed John 3:18 and Muslims. The Attorney General has been asked to investigate the actions of Mr. Sanders. One thing you can say about Mrs. Clinton, she saved us from this man being in the White House - God does indeed move in mysterious ways.

Personally I'm not surprised at Mr. Sanders obvious persecution of a Christian, in this country there has been 76 percent increase in religious freedom violations and a 114 percent surge in documented hostility toward Christian views on marriage and sexuality in the last three years

Kill The Bereans – The Murder of Discernment in Modern Christianity

Vatican police break up a drug fueled gay orgy in an apartment owned by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that processes and evaluates all cases of priests accused of raping or molesting minors.

Spurgeon Thursday - Defending a Lion

Angels With Different Gospels

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! (Galatians 1:8)

A couple of years ago we heard a lot about angels, of course it was a fad that we often see tear through the flock and drag away sheep with a lack of discernment. There were (and are) abundant images and talk about angels that promote these wonderful creations above what they truly are. An angel is a messenger, an envoy, a messenger from God, so if an angel preaches to you a gospel that is different from that which the Holy Spirit put forth in the pages of the scriptures, is it truly an angel? Have angels ever preached a gospel contrary to what is set in scripture?

Let's look at some angels and see what they taught;

We have all  heard the angelic doctrine "Every time a bell rights and angel gets  his wings" This of course was penned by the great theologian Frank Capra in his biblical commentary "It's A Wonderful Life". People tell us that when angels get their wings they tend to shed a few feathers. On page 78 of his book Miracles, Signs, and Wonders, Jim Murr tells tells of finding a feather on the floor of the Sunday school room and God told him it was an angel feather, and he was going to show it to his congregation but God made it disappear during the service saying "You will not merchandise my glory!" Believe me, the story gets better, full of suspense and spiritual warfare and demons and the sinners prayer. What it doesn't have is an explanation of why this particular angel had feathers. Feathered angels are a man made construct and not biblical at all.

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) loves angels. Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding thought he had angels nesting in the air conditioning ducts as feathers and gold dust fluttered down on his goats congregation. Todd Bentley has a pet angel named Emma which he got from NAR superstar Bob Jones. But it was William Branham who as a youth in 1946 had an angel appear to him in a cave and revealed all kinds of interesting things. The angel promised William the gift of "divine healing to all the nations of the earth" and that "God would use him to start a movement that would “bring on the second coming of Christ”" That movement was called the Latter Rain and it became the NAR.