More Moore Means Much More Less

On the same day I published my post on Beth Moore, Pulpit and Pen published their post on Beth Moore. Beth Moore is the living embodiment of Spurgeon's great definition of the word 'discernment';

“Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.”

It's that almost part that can get you. That D-Con mouse and rat poison you may set out for unwelcomed rodents is 99.9975% harmless, and 0.0025% deadly, yet that 0.0025% does it's deadly job. I suppose one could draw a parallel between leaven in dough meant for unleaven bread that Paul uses when talking about sin in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 and introducing exegetical errors and extra-biblical revelations into what is supposed to be biblical teaching. 

Here is a story of a pastors wife who sat down and reviewed what Beth Moore had to say and realized she had to part ways with God's Blond Bullhorn

A Pastor’s Wife Breaks Free of Beth Moore: 

A Testimony

BY SETH DUNN · PUBLISHED MAY 31, 2017 · UPDATED NOVEMBER 21, 2018

The following testimony was submitted to Pulpit & Pen for publication:

My name is Lauran.  I am a Southern Baptist from Tennessee.  I walked the aisle to accept Jesus at age 5 but I believe I was truly saved 12 years ago at the age of 21.  I am currently the women’s Bible study leader at our church as well as the pastor’s wife.  I have broken free of Beth Moore.

I grew up attending Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was and is one of the most vibrant churches in the convention; its former (Adrian Rogers) and current (Steve Gaines) pastors have been the President of the Southern Baptist Convention and both served on the Baptist Faith and Message Committee.  At this faithful church, the Bible was proclaimed as God’s inerrant word.  Growing up in a church like that, I was often involved in Bible study.  One of my favorite Bible study authors was Beth Moore.  I was heavily involved in her studies for years.  I have seen her speak live multiple times, done countless numbers of her studies and own tons of her books.  I’ll never forget the day five years ago when my husband informed me that Beth Moore may not be a sound teacher.

What if Mormon missionaries told the truth about their religion?

What if Mormon missionaries told the truth about their religion?
by Matt Slick

If Mormon missionaries came to your door and told the absolute truth about their religion, how many people would really believe that? What if the Mormon missionaries had a dialogue that went something like this...

Knock Knock.

The door opens.

"Hello, we are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we want to tell you about the restored gospel. You see, after the apostles died, the church fell into apostasy. But God in his loving mercy restored the true gospel to Joseph Smith in the early 1800s. We bear our testimony to you that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true, restored church. All other churches are false.  Furthermore, we testify to you that, through heavenly Father's restored church, you have the ability, with the restored priesthood, by keeping commandments, and tithing, to reach godhood.  We want you to know Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that God was once a man on another world and by keeping the laws and ordinances of His God, he was able to reach the status of God himself. He, and his wife, now live in the heavenly realm and we are all their literal offspring born in the pre-existence before we came to this world. Our goal is to honor God by keeping his commandments, by going to the temple and receiving the tokens, and baptizing people for the dead, so that on the day of judgment we might become gods ourselves."

The man of the house stares back at the two young missionaries.  "Become gods?"

"Yes, you can become a God if you join our church, pay a full 10% tithe of your income to the church, and keep celestial law.  You can then call your wife forth and she will assist you as a goddess in populating your own planet."

The man's eyebrows can't rise any further, though he seemed to try.  "Goddess wife?"

"Yes sir, as you would be a God, she would be your wife and you and your family could stay together forever in heaven."

The man stares at the young men...for a while....not sure how to respond to all of that.

"Would you like a Book of Mormon?"

"What is this Book of Mormon?"

"The Book of Mormon is another Testament of Jesus Christ.  It was revealed to Joseph Smith who restored the true church when he was given golden plates by the Angel Moroni. Joseph translated the golden plates by the authority of God when he put a seer stone in a hat, he put his face in the hat, and then God gave him the translation of the reformed hieroglyphics that were on those gold plates."

After a few more seconds of staring, the man lowers his eyebrows and asks, "Hieroglyphics?  You mean Egyptian hieroglyphics?

Mancow: Speaking my truth to Harvest Bible Chapel's Pastor James

Harvest Bible Chapel Pastor James MacDonald, 

left, and Mancow Muller at a men's retreat in 

Michigan.courtesy of Mancow Muller

I've listened to conservative pundit Mancow Muller on and off for years, he's funny, entertaining and always dead on point. Besides an awesome Van Dyke beard Mancow and I have something else in common; our past contains a pastor who in public preached a very good gospel. However behind closed doors our pastors were very different animals. 

The lawsuit Mancow mentions in this op-ed is a defamation lawsuit James MacDonald filed against Julie Roys, a reporter for the bi-weekly Christian World magazine,  who investigated Harvest and the blog  “The Elephant’s Debt,” begun by former church members Ryan Mahoney and Scott Bryant, who questioned the financial stability of the church and accused MacDonald of putting Harvest Bible $44 million in debt. Mancow is now considering a class action lawsuit against Harvest and MacDonald

Mancow: Speaking my truth to Harvest Bible Chapel's Pastor James By Mancow Muller

"Do you worship Jesus Christ or James MacDonald?" I asked someone yelling at me over the phone this past Sunday after I dared go to Harvest church again.

Dumbstruck to silence. Nothing. "Exactly," I said, "you can't answer me." The phone went dead. 

Last time I checked, the Bible says Jesus is the "author and finisher of our faith" and that should be our focus -- not Pastor James MacDonald.

"For it is time for Judgment to begin with God's household ..." 1 Peter 4:17

MacDonald's books line my shelves. His CDs are scattered about my car. I have only one Bible, but so much James MacDonald.

Two of my recent vacations have been with him, including one halcyon day where he baptized me in the Jordan River in the Holy Land of Israel.

At Harvest Bible Chapel, with its network of seven Chicago-area campuses run by MacDonald, I was but one of the many thousands seeking Christ. I wanted my twin daughters and my formerly Catholic wife to have a real, living and current relationship with Jesus Christ just as I have.

Dressed in a weathered black leather jacket covering his hulking frame, snow-white Van Dyke beard and gleaming bald dome, MacDonald makes for a striking figure at the pulpit. His Bible-based sermons are some of the most entertaining you'll hear. You leave one of his services on a Sunday jazzed and revved up for the week ahead.

His preaching is good for the soul and good for the community.

Big questions are asked and answered at Harvest. Is there a God? Do I matter? What happens after we die? Everyone says the same thing when they witness his command of the altar. "What a gift he has!" But gifts are easy to abuse, easy to take for granted.

Column: Why I call Joel Osteen a false teacher

This column appeared at Fredricksburg.com

Why I call Joel Osteen a false teacher

By Adan Blosser
Oct 9, 2018

Joel Osteen recently spoke at an event in our area. I knew about the event ahead of time and took the time to listen to it on Facebook Live as it was taking place. I then read the article that was published on the front page of the Oct. 5, 2018, The Free Lance–Star.

I don’t believe in attacking other churches, but I do believe in speaking clearly about false teachers. Especially when they show up on the front page of the newspaper because they spoke at the largest church in the area.

Make no mistake, Joel Osteen is a false teacher and should not be trusted as a source of biblical teaching by Bible-believing Christians.

That raises the question “Why?” It is a serious charge to call someone a false teacher. It is a charge that I take seriously and do not throw around lightly. So why would I call Osteen a false teacher? Is that fair? Those are important questions that are worthy of an answer.

Osteen’s message is built on the power of positive thinking. If we will remove any semblance of negativity from our lives and focus only on things that are positive, then we can live lives that are victorious and successful. The clear problem with this message is that it ignores the reality of Christian persecution and suffering around the world.

The Trinity - Proven By Logic

There is a bit of a debate going on elsewhere in this blog regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. A reader, whom I assume based on his or her virulent anti-trinitarian stance is a worshiper of Joseph Smith, wants to know more about the "concept" of the Trinity. 

To begin with, a concept is an abstract idea, a general notion. To call the Trinity a concept not only demeans God but is calling 2000 years of study, prayer, and debate meaningless. The Trinity is a much more complex doctrine than simple questions such as "To whom did Jesus commend his spirit? Himself?" The answer is "Yes" and "No" at the same time.

Glenn Chatfield at The Watchman's Bagpipes did a great job explaining the Trinity using Logic:

 TheTrinity - Proven By Logic

There many cults who teach against the idea of a Triune God, often claiming the idea originated with the Nicene Creed. However, the Trinity is really mentioned often in the Bible, even though the term “Trinity” isn’t.

Several years ago I read a book (I don’t remember which one) in which a short logic exercise was used to demonstrate the truth of the Trinity. I thought it was such a good idea that I came up with my own logic exercise, which I am now posting here. 

The True Origins of the Prosperity Gospel

The True Origins of the Prosperity Gospel AKA Word Faith Theology

By Anton Bosch, pastor-teacher

Originally posted at Apprising Ministries

The prosperity gospel has to be one of the grandest deceptions of all time. A Time poll conducted in the USA in 2006, produced the following statistics:

“17% of Christians surveyed said they considered themselves part of such a movement, while a full 61% believed that God wants people to be prosperous. And 31% – a far higher percentage than there are Pentecostals in America – agreed that if you give your money to God, God will bless you with more money” (Time, Sept. 10, 2006).

From America the message has permeated the whole world, most notably Nigeria where two of the biggest promoters are David Oyedepo, whose Canaanland church seats 55,000, and Enoch Adeboye, whose Redeemed Christian Church of God claims branches in over one hundred countries, 14,000 branches in Nigeria, and 5 million members in Nigeria alone. In 2008 Newsweek magazine listed him as one of the 50 most powerful people in the world.

The prosperity message has mutated into many variants that all share certain common traits and roots. A closely related teaching to the prosperity message is the “word-of-faith” teaching with its erroneous views on faith. Many regard these errors as the same thing and while they are related and claim to produce the same fruit, their doctrinal and historical roots differ.

The word-of-faith message developed simultaneously and parallel to the prosperity message, but its roots trace back through EW Kenyon to Christian Science, while prosperity’s roots trace back through Oral Roberts to Napoleon Hill. This article therefore only deals with the roots of the prosperity gospel which can be summed up as “give to God and He will give back to you” or “sowing and reaping”. (Word of faith is summed up in “name it and claim it” aka “blab it and grab it.”)

The Book of Mormon And It Came To Pass - lifeafterministry

The Book of Mormon And It Came To Pass

From the book by Mark Twain, “Roughing It”, Chapter XVI;

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few, except the elect have seen it or at least taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me. It is such a pretentious affair and yet so slow, so sleepy, such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print.

"If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle. Keeping awake while he did it, was at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out of the way locality, the work of translating it was equally a miracle for the same reason.

"The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history with the Old Testament for a model followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint old fashioned sound and structure of our King James translation of the scriptures. The result is a mongrel, half modern glibness and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained, the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern, which was about every sentence or two, he ladeled in a few such scriptural phrases as, “exceeding sore,” “and it came to pass,” etc. and made things satisfactory again. “And it came to pass,” was his pet. If he had left that out, his bible would have been only a pamphlet.”

From the Book of Mormon:

2 Nephi 4:14; “…for a more history part are written upon mine other plates.”

Mormon 9:35; “And these things are written that we may rid our garments of the blood of our brethren, who have dwindled in unbelief.”

I had a pastor ask me to provide him with a synopsis of the Book of Mormon and I have to admit that it took a few days to fulfill his request.  It’d be easier to tell you the number of times I’ve dozed off while reading it (100% of the time) than it would be to give a quick analysis.  And as I write this I have an incessant memory of a visit with my mother in Utah.  She was sitting on her couch reading her Book of Mormon and after a half hour or so of not turning a single page I asked her what truths she had gleaned from her experience. 

Tony Campolo: 'God Is Not in Control'

Liberal Christian Leader Tony Campolo: 'God Is Not in Control'

By Chris Queen June 5, 2018

A couple of weeks ago, I introduced you to the Red Letter Christians, a group of liberal believers whom the New York Times breathlessly profiled recently as the face of Christians who don't worship Donald Trump. One of the group's leaders, Tony Campolo, recently gave an interview with Premier, a Christian website in the UK, in which he stated that he doesn't believe that God is in control — yet.

Campolo barely touches scripture to support his assertion when he says:

So often we read the scriptures but don't pay attention to what is really going on. In the temptation story, for instance, Satan says to Jesus: "Here are all the kingdoms of the world, they are mine to give you". Does Jesus say: "Oh no they're not"? No, he doesn't!

Did you know that St Paul, in five different places, announces that God is not in control?

Of course, he doesn't cite any of those specific places. He does mention a passage in Ephesians that doesn't really support his point before he goes off on a tangent about worship music.

I have problems with a lot of the new worship music. I think it's wonderful that it's captured the music that young people can relate to and they get into it with great love and emotion. But compare 'My God reigns' with the old hymns which say: "Jesus  shall reign" - it's future tense, not present tense.

The Hallelujah Chorus never says: "God is in control". It says: "The kingdoms of this world will (when the second coming occurs) become the kingdoms of our God and he shall reign forever and ever hallelujah".

(Of course, we use the future tense when we talk about the future. It doesn't take a grammar nerd — or a theologian — to see that lyrics or statements that address the future won't necessarily be in the present tense, even if those statements are true in the present.)

9 Things You Should Know About Wicca and Modern Witchcraft

9 Things You Should Know About Wicca and Modern Witchcraft

by Joe Carter

A growing number of young women—driven by feminist politics and the #MeToo movement—are being drawn to a new brand of witchcraft, according to a report by NBC News. Here are nine things you should know about Wicca and modern witchcraft.

1. Witchcraft refers to the worldview, religion, and practices associated with using rituals that are believed to harness and focus cosmic or psychic energies to bring about some desired change. Modern witchcraft is the largest and most common subset of neo-paganism, a diverse group of religious movements that claim to be derived from historical pagan religions.

2. Within the witchcraft revival movement, the largest subset is Wicca. The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey estimated that in the United States there were about 600,000 neo-pagans, with about half identifying as Wiccan. Some estimates conclude that in 2017 there were more than 3 million practicing Wiccans.

3. In modern usage, the term “witch” is considered gender-neutral and can apply to either men or women. The term “warlock” is often considered a derogatory term as the original usage of the term meant “oath-breaker.” A group of witches who meet together regularly are known as a “coven.” Some witches believe a coven must have 13 or fewer members, though not less than three.

6 Fitness Tips for Senior Church Members

Several (actually very many) weeks ago Jason Lewis of Strongwell.org asked if he could write a guest column centering on the health of our senior saints. Being a member of a church with quite a few folks with longevity I said "Sure!" and proceeded to allow life to interfere and his article got pushed back as much as my articles did. Here at long last is his article, and being a veteran of various forms of physical therapy I can say the advice for physical fitness for the elderly in this article is perfect. I personally like the advice on walking because I know for a fact that cardiologists set great store in walking

6 Fitness Tips for Senior Church Members

For seniors who are concerned about their physical health, they may not know where to turn for help and support. Fortunately, many seniors who are active in their churches find exactly that from fellow congregation members when they make a commitment to getting fit. From exercise groups to accountability partners, church families are a blessing for seniors who want to improve their physical health.

1. Join Group Exercises

Churches often have large fellowship halls and education wings that they can open for various classes throughout the week. And, many churches across the country are opening their doors for group exercise classes for seniors
who want to enjoy socializing, getting fit, and improving their overall health and balance. Some churches set their exercises to Christian music. Other churches focus on daily devotions to guide yoga classes, stretching exercises, and  meditation.

No matter the type of exercise being offered, seniors find that joining exercise groups at church provides them with a welcoming, comfortable atmosphere that they have difficulty finding at gyms and other fitness centers. Seniors enjoy participating in exercises with their friends from church and are more likely to attend class in their church than elsewhere.

2. Designate a Fitness Buddy

Studies show that people who exercise with a friend and have a fitness buddy stay committed and enjoy their workouts more than those who don’t. Seniors who want to get and stay fit are more successful when they have a support system because fitness buddies provide support, accountability, motivation, and perhaps even healthy competition. The key is for seniors to find a fitness buddy who motivates them and pushes them to keep going.

Churches that promote fitness buddies as a critical component of getting fit also should welcome members and non-members to participate in their group exercises and fitness classes. Seniors will feel more comfortable when they can choose their fitness buddy, and the buddy may be a non-member. And, churches have a better chance of gaining new members when they open their doors to everyone.

3. Start Working for the Church or Another Church Member

If you are a senior who likes to stay active but does not enjoy working out, you should enquire about becoming the housekeeper or groundskeeper for your church or for fellow church members at their homes. People who clean for a living bend, stretch, lift, and move quite a bit; becoming a housekeeper will keep you fit even if you don’t feel like you are working out while cleaning. Groundskeepers also find themselves getting more fit as they complete tasks such as raking leaves, using a push mower, and shoveling a walkway.

4. Invite Fellow Senior Church Members to Go for a Walk

Walking is an ideal way to exercise and get fit regardless of your age or athletic skill level. The more you walk, the more time you spend outside, and the more you will relieve your stress. Walking has been shown to stop bone mass loss in older adults, strengthen muscles, improve circulation, improve sleep, increase mental sharpness, improve balance and stability, and increase your lifespan.

If you don’t like to walk alone, invite your fellow senior church members to start walking with you. You may walk to church on Sundays when the weather cooperates, plan to walk after Sunday services, or meet during the week at a nearby park or large shopping center that welcomes walkers to get fit indoors when the weather does not permit you to walk outside. Seniors who walk in groups tend to walk a little faster and a little further than when they walk alone. If you don’t get enough interest in your walking group, advertise in the church newsletter or bulletin to gain more members.

5. Become a Mentor

To get well and do good at once, consider becoming a mentor to one of the younger members of your church. Many youth and young adults attend church because they want to be closer to God and better themselves, and having a senior member to advise them on both faith- and life-related subjects could be extremely meaningful to both of you. This kind of partnership is also a great way to get in your daily dose of physical activity: ask your mentee to go on a walk with you as you discuss this week’s sermon, or invite them to tend to the church garden with you while you explore ways he or she can work out a personal issue at home. You’ll be so engaged in your conversation and bonding that you won’t even notice you’re exercising.

6. Seek Guidance

Your mental wellness is just as important as your physical wellness. Your faith will provide you with a framework to tackle life’s challenges as you age, but being a church member also offers you great opportunities to seek counsel from others. Whether you suffer from a substance abuse problem or are simply lonely and depressed following the loss of a spouse, your pastor and fellow church members, especially Sunday school class members, will offer support, advice, and a listening ear, when needed. Sometimes simply knowing there’s someone out there who cares about how you’re doing can make you feel a lot better when you’re struggling.

Senior church members have several options when it comes to getting fit. You may want to try joining an exercise group at church, designating a fitness buddy, working for the church or a fellow church member, inviting fellow senior church members to join you for a walk, or becoming a mentor to a younger congregant.

Image via Pixabay by ZOE-Animation-Studio

How To Tell if it’s a Prosperity Gospel Church

How To Tell if it’s a Prosperity Gospel Church

by Tim Challies

The prosperity gospel is a diverse, popular, and worldwide movement that understands faith to be the instrument through which Christians can attain physical health, material riches, and divine favor. There are countless thousands of these churches around the world with various levels of adherence to the key tenets of the wider movement, yet they rarely advertise themselves as prosperity gospel churches. So how can we know if a church is part of this movement? In Kate Bowler’s book Blessed, she provides some helpful guidance.

Look for Keywords. There are certain keywords that may demonstrate an association with the prosperity gospel. The first place to look is in the name of the church since most churches have names that reflect their ethos. Words like “victory,” “abundant,” or “conquerors” provide what may be key information. Beyond the name, look at the language used either in the church’s material or in its services. In different ways these churches will emphasize their core conviction that faith is the instrument through which believers attain their desires. This leads to language like, “releasing your faith,” “speaking your faith,” or “believing God for” things. 

God Is Not Like “Whatever, Dude”

This is probably one of the best things I've ever read concerning the sin of Reckless Worship. If you don't know what reckless worship is, then you haven't been paying attention. God is not our buddy The Great Dudemeister, Jesus is not a romantic interest in a song that with a few words changed can be published in the secular world as a "date song", and the Holy Spirit is not an out of focus Asian woman who is a spiritual Magic 8 Ball. 

I know some wonderful people in the church who need to read and heed, not because I fear for their Salvation (that's not my job) but because they don't fear for theirs. And if you don't want to read this because it's a woman teaching, you can suck it up and give it a go, or you can consider it's my instructions if that will help. It's that good, and it's that important, and it needs to be shared.

God’s Not Like “Whatever, Dude,” About The Way He’s Approached in Worship

By Michelle Lesley

Social media is a strange universe to live in. There’s a lot of stupidity, but there’s also a lot that can be learned from various trending issues.

Such was the case recently when Christian social media was up in arms (and rightly so) about Cory Asbury’s worship song Reckless Love, and whether or not churches should use it in their worship services. Discussion centered around the use of the word “reckless” to describe God’s love for us and whether or not that was a semantically and theologically appropriate adjective. “Relentless” was suggested as an alternative lyric. “Reckless” was defended as an appropriate lyric. And then Cory Asbury’s explanation of the song came to light and did further injury to his doctrinal cause.

It was all a very interesting and helpful discussion, but, to some degree, it was a rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic.

‘Cause we’ve hit the ice berg, folks. And the ship is taking on water.

Focusing on the word “reckless” missed the point – at least the big picture point. You see, Reckless Love was produced by Bethel Music. And Cory Asbury is a “worship leader, songwriter and pastor” with the Bethel Music Collective. Prior to joining Bethel, he spent eight years as a worship leader with the International House of Prayer (IHOP).

Why is this important? Because Bethel “Church” in Redding, California, and IHOP are, functionally, ground zero for the New Apostolic Reformation heresy. Heresy. Not, “They just have a more expressive, contemporary style of worship,”. Not, “It’s a secondary theological issue we can agree to disagree on.” Heresy. Denial of the deity of Christ. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Demonstrably false prophecy that the head of IHOP, Mike Bickle, has publicly rejoiced in (He estimates that 80% of IHOP’s “prophecies” are false.) And that’s just the tip of our metaphorical ice berg when it comes to the NAR.

IHOP and Bethel are, by biblical definition, not Christian organizations and certainly not Christian churches. They are pagan centers of idol worship just as much as the Old Testament temples of Baal were. The only difference is that, instead of being creative and coming up with their own name for their god, they’ve stolen the name Jesus and blasphemously baptized their idol with that moniker.

The point in this whole debate is not the word “reckless”. The point is that Christian churches should not have anything whatsoever to do with idol worshiping pagans as they approach God in worship. Yet Sunday after Sunday churches use Bethel music, Jesus Culture music, Hillsong music, and the like, in their worship of God.

And it’s not just that churches are using music from the temples of Baal in their worship services. We have women who usurp the teaching and leadership roles in the church that God has reserved for men – many even going so far as to preach to men and/or hold the position of “pastor”. We have men setting themselves up as pastors who do not meet the Bible’s qualifications. We have churches that let anyone – Believer or not – participate in the Lord’s Supper. We have pastors who welcome false teachers and their materials into their churches with open arms and castigate anyone who dares point out the false doctrine being taught. We have preachers who have forsaken God’s mandate to preach the Word and use the sermon time to talk about themselves, deliver self-help tips, or perform a stand up comedy routine.

And everybody seems to think God’s up there in Heaven going, “Cool! Whatever y’all want to do in the name of worship is just fine and dandy with Me. You do you.”

Well, He’s not.

God demands – and has every right to do so – that He be approached properly. In reverence. In awe. In holy fear. With clean hands and a pure heart.

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false
and does not swear deceitfully.
He will receive blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
Psalm 24:3-6

Let’s take a stroll through Scripture and be taught by those who learned that lesson the hard way…

Cain

Most of the time, when we read the story of Cain and Abel, we focus on the fact that Cain killed his righteous brother. But we tend to gloss over the event that precipitated the murder. Cain and Abel both brought offerings to the Lord. God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.

Scripture doesn’t tell us why God found Cain’s offering unacceptable. The Levitical laws delineating offerings and sacrifices hadn’t yet been given, and even if they had, grain offerings and other offerings of vegetation were perfectly appropriate if offered at the right time and for the right reason. Was it because Cain had a wrong attitude or motive when he gave his offering? Or maybe because he offered God leftover produce instead of his firstfruits? We don’t know. What we do know is that God had a standard of how He was to be worshiped, Cain violated it, and God expressed His displeasure.

Aaron and Israel

It’s shortly after the Exodus. The Israelites have seen God perform ten – count them – ten plagues on Pharaoh for his idolatry and failure to bow the knee to God’s command to let Israel go. They saw God destroy the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea. And now, their fearless leader, Moses, has trekked up Mount Sinai and is late getting back. The people are worried and restless.

Does Aaron lead them to pray? Trust God? Be patient? Nope. He fashions an idol for them – a golden calf. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he wasn’t even creative enough to come up with his own name for this idol. He stole God’s character and work and blasphemously baptized the idol with that moniker. He led the people to worship the false god as though it were the true God. (Does that ring any bells?)

“These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” And they rose up early the next day and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings.

Surely God gave them a pass, right? I mean, Moses broke the tablets of the Ten Commandments when he came down from the mountain before they even had a chance to read the first and second Commandments that prohibited what they were doing.

Uh uh. God told Moses to get out of the way so He could fire bomb Israel off the face of the Earth and start over with him. It was only after Moses pleaded with God to stay His hand that God relented and allowed for the lesser punishment of having the Levites kill 3,000 of them with the sword and sent a plague on the rest of them.

Doesn’t exactly sound like an “anything goes in worship” kind of God, does He?

Nadab and Abihu

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace.

Are you seeing a pattern here? God is so not OK with people approaching Him irreverently, via idol worship, or in any other way He deems inappropriate that He’s willing to kill them.

Saul

God sends Saul and his army on a mission to defeat the Amalekites. His instructions are simple: completely destroy everything. “Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

But Saul’s a smart guy, see? He knows better. He goes in and destroys all the worthless stuff, but saves the good stuff for himself. It’ll be OK with God, he reasons, because he’s going to take some of the really nice sheep and make a big, showy sacrifice. Like a rich man pitching pennies to an urchin shoeshine boy.

And when Samuel confronts Saul about his rebellion, “Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you pounce on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord?”, Saul has the temerity to say, “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord.” Because he was going to perform an act of worship. And the fact that he was doing it his way instead of God’s way didn’t matter. In Saul’s mind, it was the outward act that counted and God should have accepted it.

God didn’t see it that way:

And Samuel said,
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,
as in obeying the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
and to listen than the fat of rams.
For rebellion is as the sin of divination,
and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
he has also rejected you from being king.”
(1 Samuel 15:22-23)

God is not pleased with worship offered by hands dirtied with sin and rebellion. Saul paid the price: his throne and God’s favor.

Uzziah

Uzziah started off well as king of Judah. He listened to the counsel of Zechariah, obeyed God, and prospered. But after a while, prosperity can make you proud, and that’s just what happened to Uzziah.

He became so proud, in fact, that he took it upon himself to enter the sanctuary of the temple and offer incense to God on the altar. That was a position of leadership restricted to the priests. Uzziah had never been installed as a priest because he wasn’t biblically qualified to hold the office of priest, much like many who take on the role of pastor today.

Bravely, Azariah and eighty of his fellow priests stood up to the presumptuous king – at the risk of their lives, but in defense of proper worship as commanded in God’s Word – rebuked Uzziah, and kicked him out of the temple. “You have done wrong,” they said, “and it will bring you no honor from the Lord God.”

Well! Uzziah was hot with anger. How dare these mere priests stop him – the king whom God had blessed and prospered – from worshiping God any way he wanted to!

Guess who God sided with? The priests who were upholding His Word and His standard of worship. God struck Uzziah with leprosy for the remainder of his life, which exiled him from the palace and a royal burial, and effectively ended his reign.

The Pharisees

Hypocrites! Blind guides! Fools! Blind men! Greedy! Self-indulgent! Whitewashed tombs! Lawless! Serpents! Brood of vipers! Murderers!

How would you like to be dressed down like that by Jesus? You’re teaching the Scriptures. You’re tithing to the nth degree. You’re traveling over land and sea to proselytize. You’re behaving with outward righteousness. You’re memorializing the prophets. As far as you can tell, you’re doing pretty well with this holiness thing.

And here comes the Messiah – the One you’re (supposedly) doing all of this for – and He shames you. Publicly. He exposes your blackness of heart to the commoners you want looking up to you. All because God’s way is for you to worship Him in spirit and in truth, but you insist on doing it your way- for all your deeds to be seen by others, and because you love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.

You’re approaching God in arrogance and selfishness, and He will have none of it. You won’t die to self, so He – if only temporarily – kills your pride.

The Corinthian Church

You’ve probably never seen a Lord’s Supper as messed up as the way the Corinthian church was doing it. Some people were going without while others were getting drunk. The “important” people got to go first while the poor and lower class went to the back of the line. People were using the Lord’s Table as an opportunity for selfishness rather than putting self aside and focusing on the fact that the purpose of this meal was to proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

That wasn’t acceptable to God. He didn’t want the church observing the Lord’s Supper just any old way. It was dishonoring to Christ and shameful to His church.

So God declared that “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord…For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”

“But all of that was back in Bible times!” you might protest. “God isn’t killing anybody these days for worshiping Him improperly. In fact, some of the worst violators of God’s Word are rich ‘Christian’ celebrities!”

That’s right, they are. Exactly like God said they would be: “teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.” And woe betide them when they stand before Christ in judgment. Because judgment is coming for them:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

God is high and He is holy, and so are His standards for those who approach Him. He expects His people to obey His Word about how He is to be worshiped.

“I, the Lord, do not change,” God says in the Old Testament. The New Testament tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” God hasn’t mellowed out or calmed down or gotten more tolerant. The God who poured out His wrath on those who blasphemed Him with unbiblical worship in the Old Testament is the same God we worship this side of the cross. Nothing escapes His notice. He doesn’t let sin slide. Whether in this life, or the next, or both, there will be a reckoning for unbiblical worship.

When it comes to worship, God is not a “whatever” kind of God.

Injecting Jesus Into Everything

Daily Wire reporter Matt Walsh is told by his readers that his writing is too religious, this is his response;

One of the most common complaints I hear from readers is that my writing is too religious. Borrowing a phrase from an email I just read, I am guilty of “injecting religion into everything.” I need to “tone down the religious talk,” according to a guy on Twitter. “Please cool it with the Jesus stuff,” someone else recently told me. I was informed by many people that the piece I wrote last week about fathers was “ruined” because I “brought God into it.” Some of the commenters here have given me the moniker “Pastor Walsh,” because only pastors talk about religion, I guess. I have even noticed, unsurprisingly, that many of the people who lodge these complaints often declare themselves to be Christian. In America today, nobody hates hearing about Christianity more than a Christian.

Rather than ignore these criticisms, I thought I might try to explain why I don’t plan on toning it down. In fact, I’m headed in the opposite direction. The reason is very simple: I really do believe this stuff. I have often been pretty bad at living and acting according to my belief — I am no expert when it comes following the teachings and making all of the sacrifices a Christian is called to make — but no matter my personal weaknesses (which are many and daunting), I still believe it all.

When Scripture says we are fighting not against “flesh and blood” but “the powers of darkness,” I believe it. And when it says that the Devil is prowling the world “like a lion seeking someone to devour,” I believe that, too. And when Revelation tells us about the war between Michael and the angels of God against Satan and his minions, I believe exactly what it says. I have sometimes wished that I didn’t believe any of it. I have even had terrible times in my life when I have tried not to believe it. But I still do. I believe it for the simple fact that it is true, no matter how I happen to feel about that truth. It just is. That’s all.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon's Thoughts on Christmas

Spurgeon on Christmas

December 8, 2015 by Ray Rhodes, Jr.

A few days before Christmas 1891, while recovering in Mentone, France, from poor health, Charles Spurgeon wrote a moving letter to the children of his orphanages. From the time Spurgeon moved to London in 1854, he was deeply concerned about the plight of the hundreds of orphans that lined the city’s streets. Between 1866 and 1876, he led his church to build two orphan’s homes.1

As long as Spurgeon’s health allowed him to remain in London during the cold winter months, he, along with Susannah, visited the orphans each Christmas Day. He led the children to remember generous benefactors who supplied funds for the orphanages, to be kind to their caretakers, and to give thanks to God for his provision. Affectionately, he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a coin for each child.2

As what would be Spurgeon’s last Christmas Day drew near, he wanted the orphans to know that he loved them. In his letter, Spurgeon wished them a “glorious,” “jolly,” and “merry” Christmas. When the children received his letter, they cheered. The children wrote back warmly telling him that they prayed for him every day “that God would make you well again, for what should we do without you?”3 Spurgeon’s care for his orphans each Christmas Day demonstrates his positive outlook on the holiday.

To assert that Spurgeon was a Scrooge, as some have suggested, is to misunderstand him. It is true that he opposed ecclesiastical enforcement of, and superstitious practices related to, Christmas.4 He also denounced excesses that were prevalent at Christmas, such as drunkenness and gluttony. However, he did not discourage Christians from celebrating the birth of Christ. Spurgeon valued Christmas Day and said, “I love it as a family institution.” He wished there were “20 Christmas Days.”5 He viewed Christmas as one of “England’s brightest days,” because laborers rested, families gathered, and joy was expressed.6

Rekindling the Gratitude

from John MacArthur

The Thanksgiving season is a wonderful time to heighten your sensitivity to the blessings bestowed by God. Thanksgiving grabs your attention, shakes the cobwebs loose, and reminds you of all God's most precious gifts. That's one reason Thanksgiving has always held such a special place in my heart. It rekindles in me the kind of God-centered gratitude that our Lord demands and deserves—the kind that should readily be on our lips year round.

To help stimulate that kind of deeper gratitude, my family has adopted a Thanksgiving tradition we've found extremely helpful. Each year after our Thanksgiving meal we gather in our living room and simply recite the blessings of God that have touched our lives. One by one we circle the room, each one of us expressing our gratitude to God for His many physical and spiritual blessings.

Allow me to share with you just five blessings that deeply touch me every year and prompt me to thank God. Perhaps it'll catch and you'll be able to rekindle your gratitude!

You're Saved and You Know It

No work of God's is more beyond my comprehension yet closer to my heart and more worthy of gratitude than salvation. Before coming to know Christ, each of us lived in a self-imposed prison. Guilty, condemned, spiritually blind, and with no means to pay our debt, our destiny was one of eternal separation from God.

Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

From the Pulpit & Pen:

I am writing this for my church. I think it might be helpful for others, and so I will make it available here.

Clearly, certain questions are a matter of adiaphora, and no one should deny the reality that certain ethical questions fall into that category.

Adiaphora is a term developed by stoic philosophers and adopted by Christians to describe decisions that are neither inherently moral or immoral, right or wrong, or necessarily good or bad. As a category or framework to understand ethical conundrums the concept of adiaphora is often helpful.

However, not every ethical question can be answered by categorizing the matter adiaphora. There are also questions with answers that do not echo sentiments of Christian liberty, but can rather be clearly categorized as moral or immoral, right or wrong, righteousness or sin. Christians seem all-too-eager today to silence the collective conscience by putting every issue in the pigeon hole of adiaphora, shrugging their shoulders and mumbling something about floating your boat. In reality, even if something is adiaphora – meaning that it is neither explicitly forbidden or explicitly commanded – it doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t a wise or unwise, helpful or unhelpful, healthy or unhealthy decision to be made regarding that ethical decision. In short, even if something is adiaphora, it doesn’t mean you’re off the hook of thinking out the costs and benefits, implications and consequences of ethical decisions.

Paul references this notion in 1 Corinthians 10:23, “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up.” Clearly for the Apostle, even those things that may not necessarily be wrong, may still be unwise, unhelpful or unedifying. It would be foolish of the Christian to embrace “all things are lawful” while neglecting his admonition, “but not all things are helpful.”

First, we need to ask if it is sinful for a Christian to celebrate Halloween. Then, we must ask – if it is not sinful – if it is wise, helpful or edifying to celebrate Halloween.

In order to answer the first question, I need to explain the holiday known as “Halloween.”

Is N.T. Wright a Christian?

This is an excerpt of John MacArthurs address to the 2017 Lingonier National Conference

Maybe more subtle and certainly more pervasive is what is currently being called the new perspective on Paul. It’s been propagated by a man by the name of N.T. Wright. You could kind of shift that a little and make it New Testament wrong, and you’d be closer to reality.

But N.T. Wright has written hundreds and hundreds of pages on the gospel, and the more you read of it, the less you understand what he affirms. It is confusing, it is ambiguous, it is contradictory, it is obfuscation of the highest level. Academic slight of hand. But while I cannot figure out what it is that he does believe, even after hundreds of pages, it is crystal clear what he does not believe.

More recently, he has written a book ‘The Day the Revolution Began’ and in that book he says this, “We have paganized our understanding of salvation, substituting the idea of God killing Jesus to satisfy his wrath for the genuinely biblical notion we are about to explore.” So, all of us who believe in the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross have been worshiping a paganized perversion of biblical truth now to be clarified by him.

Another quote, “That Christ died in the place of sinners is closer to the pagan idea of an angry deity being pacified by a human death than it is to anything in either Israel’s Scriptures or the New Testament,” end quote. He’s clear on what he rejects; he rejects substitutionary atonement of Christ, he rejects imputation, he rejects the gospel. He says, “To worship God as one who justifies through sacrifice and by imputation is nonsense.”

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.

The Modern Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

The Modern Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

A Sermon by John MacArthur

Oct 23, 2011

Well, now that I don’t have to preach on anything but what I want to preach on, since I finished the New Testament, I find myself all over the place, trying to decide what to preach on in sequence.  It’s a new kind of experience for me and I’m working on some kind of sequence that makes sense over the future.  But I am sort of at the liberty point of my life where whatever is on my heart is where I can go, and this is a wonderful opportunity for me.  And there is a subject that has concerned me for a long time, and I have wanted to address this subject, but it hasn’t been a part of the preaching through the gospels in the way that it can be now and that is the subject of the Holy Spirit – the Holy Spirit. 

After all the emphasis of so many years, 25 years of preaching through the four gospels, and much emphasis, of course, on the person of Christ, as it should be, much emphasis on the character of God and the nature of God as manifest in Christ and is seen elsewhere in Scripture, it is time now to give honor to the third member of the Trinity; namely, the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the most forgotten, the most misrepresented, the most dishonored, the most grieved, the most abused, and I might even say the most blasphemed of the members of the Trinity.  That’s a sad thing. 

When our Lord cleansed the temple in John 2, He said that He was, in a sense, fulfilling the attitude of David from Psalm 69:  “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up, the reproaches that fall on you are fallen on Me.”  And what our Lord was saying was, “When God is dishonored, I feel the pain.”  “You have taken My Father’s house, which is to be a house of prayer, and turned it into a den of robbers.  You’ve corrupted My Father’s house.  You’ve blasphemed My Father’s name.  You’ve dishonored My Father.”  And I can say that I have long felt that same thing with regard to the Holy Spirit.  Yes, I grieve when God is dishonored.  It is a constant grief to me.  I grieve when Christ is dishonored. 

But in this contemporary sort of Christian evangelical church world, people are a little less reluctant to bring dishonor on the name of God and the name of Christ, but they think they have a free run at dishonoring and abusing the Holy Spirit, apparently, because so much of that goes on.  I’m not here to defend the Holy Spirit; He can defend Himself.  But I am here to say that reproaches that are falling on His holy name are falling on me as well, and mostly this comes in the professing church from Pentecostals and Charismatics who feel they have free license to abuse the Holy Spirit and even blaspheme His holy name – and they do it constantly. 

No, Jesus didn’t ‘hang out’ with sinners

No, Jesus didn’t ‘hang out’ with sinners

by Matt Walsh May 11, 2017

I was recently informed by a fellow Christian that it’s perfectly OK for a follower of Christ to march in a gay pride parade because, as he explained it, “Jesus hung out with sinners.” It was far from the first time that I’ve heard a clearly objectionable act justified on these grounds. This is just one of the many dubious slogans that has overwhelmed and suffocated the faith in our country. For many of us, our faith is really nothing more than a collection of these empty mantras, which we confidently shout over and over again, hoping repetition will make them true.

Of course, “Jesus hung out with sinners” is a loaded statement. There’s always some erroneous insinuation or conclusion attached to it. “Jesus hung out with sinners, therefore [xyz].” Jesus hung out with sinners, therefore it’s OK for me to do whatever it is I’m doing right now. Jesus hung out with sinners, therefore I need not follow whatever commandment or moral teaching we’re currently discussing. Jesus hung out with sinners, therefore this sin that we’re discussing isn’t as bad as you suggest.

I’ve heard “Jesus hung out with sinners” as a sincere justification for going to strip clubs and gay bars. I’ve seen “Jesus hung out with sinners” trotted out during debates about pornography. Somehow “Jesus hung out with sinners” tends even to enter discussions of abortion. “Jesus hung out with sinners, therefore killing babies is alright.” Generally, whatever the application, the argument is always that Jesus “hung out with” such and such a sinner, which means He didn’t mind such and such a sin.

Last week I wrote a piece about misconceptions around the idea of Christian compassion, and many of the critical responses hinged on this theme. One example:

“Matt, this was nothing but a badly disguised anti-gay diatribe. Jesus would have hung out with the people you are judging. Jesus wasn’t judgmental and in your face like you. He didn’t shove religion down people’s throats. Jesus hung out with sinners….” Etc. and so forth.

Leaving aside the bizarre contention that any discussion of Christian morality is automatically “anti-gay” (I didn’t mention gays in the post at all), what we have here is just your standard “Jesus hung out with sinners” formulation. Jesus “hung out” with people who sinned, ipso facto Jesus had no problem with the sins they committed. And if it were true that Christ merely “hung out” with people, this line of logic would hold a little water.