Emergent Monday: Slaying In The Charismatic Movement

Like "Speaking In Tongues" and "Faith Healing" the spectacle of being "Slain In The Spirit" is a farce, a ruse to amuse the rubes. It's an "ear tickle" designed to entertain the goats, an act of extreme silliness born in greed, ignorance, and occult practices.

According to the practitioners of spiritual slaying this is a phenomena that occurs when a Christian is so overcome by the Holy Spirit that they fall down incapacitated for a while. Normally when a Christian is overcome by the Holy Spirit it's not in the presence of 10,000 laughing, babbling, fainting people, it's generally in quiet prayer with the Lord and quite often while studying the bible. In a Charismatic circus service it's a safe bet that there's not a lot of bibles getting the dust blown off of them. Instead there's a highly animated "pastor" who stands before the rube parishioner, he waives his hands and shouts into the wireless microphone and down goes the parishioner. Benny Hinn can knock out an entire auditorium of tithe bearing goats.

Marcions Among Us

Marcion of Sinope (85 AD - 160 AD) was a wealthy shipowner on the Black Sea in what is now Northern Turkey. His father was the Bishop of Sinope (their home town) and Marcion was probably consecrated a bishop too, and most likely became an assistant bishop to his father.

It is said that at one time he made a donation of 200,000 sesterces to the Church of Rome. At the time you could buy 2 loaves of bread for one sesterce so let's estimate equivalent of a sesterce in today's money at $5.00, which means a gift of 200,000 sesterces was worth $1,000,000 in today's money. It is also said that the Church of Rome returned that gift. I will pause for a moment while your brain recovers from that thought-hammer. The Church of Rome RETURNING money? 

Emergent Monday: Watching A Man Of God Fall From Grace

The Emergent Church, and the Charismatic Movement has a primary goal in mind and they don't speak it out loud except in the most flowery, deceptive terms. A smattering of discernment and knowledge of the word of God would rob the emergent church of their goats and protect the sheep from the heretical views of these false teachers. However not enough people bother to read God's word any more and wouldn't know a commandment from a cup of coffee. 

Sometimes it's hard to understand what the bible is saying and we put our trust in a man that preaches the word of God in an honest manner, unpolluted by personal agenda and worldly goals. Watching a man who can teach the bible, who can preach the Gospel, who has shown a devotion to the doctrine of salvation, team up with false teachers like Rick Warren and Mark Driscoll is heartbreaking. Why Greg Laurie, why? 

Led Astray By The Blind

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I was a young eager student receiving a parochial education in a parochial institution. There I learned all kinds of good things a young mind needs; a solid grounding in actual mathematics rather than the "New Math" that was perverting the thought process of those poor students trapped in a public school, proper grammar enabling me to properly communicate my thoughts and ideas, and enough science to know the difference between a solid theory, a weak hypothesis, and a pagan religion cloaked in scientific jargon that's taught as a fact but mysteriously labeled a theory (you know - like Darwinian evolution). These things I learned were good.

Of course I learned a lot of things that are not so good; the Jews killed Jesus and are going to burn in hell (What about the Italians? The men who actually did the deed were Roman citizens) and Protestants were blasphemous heretics who blaspheme, spread heresy, have no idea how to properly worship God, and are going to burn in hell. And #1 on the list was praying to a dead woman. 

Emergent Monday: Joel Osteen - Pantheist, Pagan, Agent of Satan

“If you develop an image of success, health, abundance, joy, peace, happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you,” - Joel Osteen Your Best Life Is Now

Peace, joy, happiness, wealth... I wish Joel Osteen would point out in the bible where this is promised. No, wait - I think I found it:

⁸ Again, the devil *took Him to a very high mountain and *showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; ⁹ and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8-9)

Joel Osteen and his fellow Word-Faith charlatans have taken Satan's litany of temptation and twisted it around to sound like heavenly blessings. Just the same as a tire-iron twisted around to look like a pretzel is no more a pretzel than Satan's gospel of temptation twisted around to sound like blessing. How can the leader of the biggest church in America be so ignorant to allow this kind of heresy to escape his mouth? Several reasons. First of all, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Focus On The Family Starts Its Slide Into Heresy

³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, ⁴ and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

I expect nonsense, muddled thinking, and idle idol worship from the likes of Joel Osteen, Rodney Howard-Browne, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, but Focus On The Family? According to Elliott Nesch of Holy Bible Prophecy, Focus on the Family aired a conversation with Bono and followed up with an article titled  “Why Orthodox Christians Should Appreciate an Unorthodox Bono” Daly says:

“Bono may at times be a bit unorthodox in his approach, but he is quite orthodox in the areas that matter most – loving God and loving people.”

What does Jim Daly base his theory that Bono is a Christian? Because Bono was quoted as saying "I believe that Jesus was, you know, the Son of God."  So what? Even Satan knows that Jesus is the Son of God:

 You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. (James 2:19)

Knowing that potatoes grow in dirt doesn't make you a farmer any more than knowing that three strikes makes an out doesn't make you a major league ball player, and knowing that Jesus is the Son of God doesn't make you a Christian. Turning your life over to Jesus makes you a Christian, acknowledging with your mouth that Jesus is your Lord and Savior makes you a Christian. Simply stating that Jesus is the Son of God doesn't make you anything other than someone who is repeating a truth. 

Emergent Monday: Let's ALL Make Our Own Bibles!!!

Just when you thought it can't get any weirder our friends in the New Apostolic Reformation just went over the top. The NAR is quickly becoming the poster child for heresy and I'll bet if Anton La Vey were alive he'd be cheering the sheer audacity of the NAR.

The NAR has taken a page from the emergent playbook, they've been tired of being accused of being unbiblical so they resorted to what's been working for other sects. Do you have a New Age unbiblical view of the world? Eugene Peterson fixed that by making up the Message perVersion of the bible. Have a favorite sin that you'd like changed from sin to sacrement? We got the Queen James bible for you. Have a doomsday cult that's missed the doomsdate multiple times? We have the New World Translation to help while away the hours handing out Watchtower magazines door to door. Wanna spread a new version of the word with your multiple wives while waiting to take over for God? Try the Joseph Smith version. Have a money grubbing, goat herding, snakeoil selling road show called a church that John MacArthur is ready to lower the boom on? Just wip up your own version of the bible to justify your heresy. And the NAR has their own now - it's called "The Passion" which I will abbreviate to TP.

Emergent Monday: Holy Ghost Bartender

A while ago my bride and I were listening to a Christian fiction novel on audio book as we drove up to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The story wasn't too bad but the authors image of heaven was nonstop laughter, which to me is not heaven. I mean, I enjoy a good joke as much (if not more) than the next guy, but I don't see heaven, or God for that matter, as a joke. However when the book mentioned a vision of heaven the soundtrack was filled with laughter. It was maniacal laughter. It was unhinged laughter. It was totally unnerving. It was bizarre. It was the creepiest thing I ever heard. That is until I heard Todd Friel of Wretched Radio feature a bit of Rodney Howard-Browne.

Rodney Howard-Browne calls himself the "Holy Ghost Bartender" because he "serves the new wine and his goats followers get drunk with joy". RH-B was born in Port Elisabeth, South Africa and emigrated to the United States in 1987, the same year that Microsoft unleashed Windows on an unsuspecting world. (I'm not drawing any conclusions here, I'm just sayin'...) He claims to have committed his life to Christ at age 5, and also claims to have been filled with the Holy Spirit at age 8. At the age of 18 he claims that he was praying for hours seeking a deeper spiritual experience when he challenged God:

"'Either You come down here and touch me, or I will come up there and touch You,' he prayed in desperation. Suddenly, his whole body felt like it was on fire. He began to laugh uncontrollably. Then he wept and began to speak in tongues. 'I was plugged into heaven's electrical supply,' he later wrote in his book, The Touch of God. 'And since then my desire has been to go and plug other people in'" (Julia Dulin, "Praise the Lord and Pass the New Wine," 8/94, Charisma, p. 22).

I believe he was touched, but who was he touched by is the big question.

Emergent Monday: The Disaster of Dominionism

The core doctrine of Jesus Christ's second coming, as taught consistently in Scripture, can be summed up in one line: "Jesus Christ is coming again bodily to earth to rule and judge." This is kind of a no-brainer for anyone that's sat down and read the bible. 

For those that haven't read the whole bible - SPOILER ALERT: Jesus is coming back and he's got a whole lot of judging to do. This revelation (which comes from the book of the same name) has lead to many differing doctrines; Pre-Tribulational Rapture, Mid-Tribulational Rapture, Pre-Wrath Rapture, and Post-Tribulational Second Coming (In most versions of postribulationism, the "rapture" and the "second coming" are at the same time. Jesus Christ comes back for His elect, they meet Him in the air and He comes bodily to earth immediately to rule and reign.)

Are these doctrines important to your salvation? No. Do they have anything at all to do with your salvation? No. Agree with them or not, each one of these doctrines is based on interpretation of scripture and what they all come down to is a matter of timing, and since Jesus told us that even He didn't know the exact hour they're all fair arguments. Unfortunately another doctrine has gained popularity in the emergent church and it is not based on scriptural interpretation, or any scripture at all. The doctrine is Dominionism (AKA Kingdom-Dominion AKA Restoration) and its the darling heresy of the emergent darkness church. 

The Mess of the Message: Denying Christ On The Printed Page

I was going to write on KJV Onlyism, and probably still will. (I have nothing against the KJV and the KJV Onlyism, except the Onlyists uses the word "Only" way too much.) So while looking up the KJV Onlyist's assertions I found them to be not groundless or sensationalized but a little exaggerated... then I looked at the Message. Oh sweet Lord in Heaven... we can only pray for those poor souls that actually read the message and think they're reading the Bible. We also need to pray that those who are preaching out of the Message will repent, seek forgiveness, and help those souls that they mislead.

So lets get into this mess. As Christians we believe that Jesus Christ is the one and true son of God, not a spirit child of some ancient astronaut, not a created being like you or I, definitely not a sinner, and most definitely not a vacuous "idea man" concept but the human embodiment of God Himself, the living Son of God, and the sinless man all in one. We get the truth of Jesus' nature from the scriptures which in fact are simply Jesus' autobiography. One of the most important quotes from the bible that reveals just who and what Jesus is, is found in John 10:30

"I and the Father are one.”

In the Message bible this becomes

"I and the Father are one heart and mind.”

Don't bother to defend Eugene Peterson's choice of wording, the words of the real bible and what Peterson put in the Message do not mean the same thing. The English language hasn't devolved so far that people can't understand "I and the Father are one" so no cute, trite cliched 'one heart and mind' is needed. The real bible shows that Jesus is God, the Message shows that Jesus and God agree on everything but are not one. 

Pope Francis Re-Writes The Bible

Not The Pope

On Wednesday Pope Elliot Carver Francis stood before the world, opened his mouth, and with all the power of his office got the Gospel completely and utterly wrong. One would guess that being the head of the largest organized religion on earth Pope Francis would be slightly familiar with the writings of Paul, or maybe even the words of Jesus, but obviously one would be wrong.

“The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart, do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can… “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ, all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!” We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

It's hard to open the bible and then come away with something as wrong as this. Of course the left, the Jesus haters, the godless and the unbelievers are overjoyed that the pope came around to their way of thinking, but that was pre-ordaned by 2 Timothy 4:3-4. Let's take a look at what Pope Carver Francis said to get the ear tickling started:

Pope as Bond Villain

Not The Pope

Whoo hoo! We got a new pope, and the whole world goes crazy. My church got a new pastor a while ago and the world didn't say a thing, not even mentioning the huge difference between Pastor Brimstone and  pope Francis,  (which is the fact that Pastor Brimstone has read the bible and follows it) Pope Francis looks a lot like one of my favorite Bond Villains  Elliot Carver. (Ok, he's not a great Bond villain but Tomorrow Never Dies had my favorite Bond girl, Michelle Yoeh). But what is the pope?

Simply stated the pope is the Roman catholic bishop of Rome whose office decided that Rome wasn't big enough. The term Pope comes from the Greek πάππας which means "Father" which is a familiar form of address  that is specifically forbidden by Jesus Christ Himself as recorded in Matthew 23:9 

Emergent Monday: Rob Bell Wants You to Roast in Hell

When a supposed Christian purposely preaches to you a false Gospel and you as a Christian ignore the word of God to embrace the word of the false teacher, where do you expect to end up?

I'll give you two hints: you're going to end up with that false teacher, and you're not going to end up in the presence of God. 

Don't blame the false teacher if you find yourself embracing heresy or blasphemy, the bible gives plenty of warning that these antichrists will abound to fool and deceive us. In fact the bible shows what to do when you hear someone claiming to preach God's word. Acts 17:11 gives us a perfect example of how to listen to a man of God: get into the scripture, double check his message, take nothing for granted. Be a Berean - isn't your eternal soul worth the effort of double checking the preachers word? in 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 we're ordered to test everything and to hold on to what is good. 2 Corinthians 13:5 also tells you to test yourself, and if you're testing yourself you have none to blame but yourself if you allow the heresy of an antichrist to become your Gospel.

I tell you that to tell you this: Rob Bell is back and he's not empty handed, he's brought his new book.

Word Faith Movement - Mormon Lite?

At one time I actually thought that the Word-Faith movement was a simple money making scam, nothing more: con a few simpletons out of a tithe that should be going to a biblically centered church, convince them that the bible says they'll get their money back with interest, and hint that Jesus wants them in a new Mercedes (available at low low prices from Pastor Cashbox's brother-in-law at Midtown Mercedes Isuzu just off the Gehenna exit of I266) you know, that kind of scam. I heard TBN was a Word-Faith based broadcaster and I thought "Well duh! They're TV!" (making a living on the periphery of the entertainment business doesn't leave one with a generous attitude about said entertainment business) I figured not too many people can get fooled by this cash generating ponzi scheme, and there's not a lot one can do about it because, in the words of Cpt. Tom Pickett from the movie Last Man Standing:

"...because that is the nature of things a certain amount of corruption is inevitable."

A little research shows that the leadership of the Word-Faith movement goes well beyond scamming a lot of sheep out of their hard earned tithe, they're damning those sheep to hell and enjoying every bit of the ride.

The Mess of The Message: Gibberish Passing as Prose

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a fan of The Message Bible perVersion, nor am I a fan of it's author Eugene Peterson. I like the real Bible, and I love the real Bible's author, God. But to me it appears that the Bible, the real Bible, isn't interesting enough for Mr. Peterson, so he had to make up his own. 

Unfortunately for the  whole world this abomination was published and distributed exactly like it is a real version of the Bible, rather than what it truly is: one man's satirical rewording of God's inspired word. 

From what little I've read of Peterson's revision of the Book of Revelations he didn't even leave that book alone, maybe it's because he no longer has enough faith left to take heed to the warning in  Revelation 22:18-19, every word inspired by the Holy Spirit is fair game for his creative (read: heretical) pen.

Take 1 Timothy 2:11-12 for example

¹¹ A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. ¹² But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

Emergent Monday: Pastor Oprah, Superstar

During her appearance on her April 23 2012 LifeClass Tour Oprah Winfrey professed twice to be a Christian during her introduction, which the media decided was proof enough that she was indeed a Christian. "My favorite Bible verse – because I am Christian – is Acts... something..." The Black Christian News Network suggested that Miss Winfrey was a "secret follower" of Jesus Christ and that those that doubt their word are modern day Pharisees. 

Allow me to school the Black Christian News Network for a moment. Attention BCNN: This isn't North Korea. Here in America where the only people being persecuted for freedom of speech is conservatives being persecuted by liberals for not aping their twisted versions of the truth by being called racists regardless of the content of the discussion. (Note to readers: If someone calls you a racist, you just won the argument) Allow me to remind you of what the Old Testament says about "secret followers" of Jesus: Psalm 34:2, and what the New Testament says about "secret followers" of Jesus: 1 Corinthians 1:31. If the Black Christian News Network actually took a look at Oprah they'd find that she's a "secret follower" of someone else.

Emergent Monday: Dealing With The Devil

What would you do if next Sunday your pastor shows up with a publicly avowed satanist and introduces him/her/it as a Christian then allows him/her/it to expound to the congregation from the pulpit on the joys and wonders of satanism?

What would you do if you found out your church was accepting money from a atheist Nazi sympathizer who has publicly stated that he intended to overthrow the constitutional government of the United States?

What would you do if your church decided to invite a person that is still active as an "actor" in pornographic movies to address the church, not to witness how Jesus came into his/her life but to talk about the porn industry and how porn actors are just people like you? 

What would you do if your pastor announced a joint service with a religion that has based their entire theology on killing you for your beliefs? What would you do if your pastor preached in an attempt to convince you that except for that whole murdering thing and blasphemy of God and Jesus thing, this other person's religion is the same as yours?

What would you do Christian?

Some Times You Feel Like A Nut

I wish I could listen to Glenn Beck's show, I really do. When he's talking about the rabid fatuousness that is pervading the current political climate he's dead on. Anyone that can make "Squirrel Worshiping Socialists" like James Cameron suffer stress incontinence just by reading said watermelon's exact quote on the air is all right by me. However when Glenn gets on the subject of the church it starts to get ugly.

Oh, sometimes he gets it right, a couple of years ago  on his TV show he said:

 "I beg you, look for the words social justice or economic justice on your church web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes! If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish. Go alert your bishop and tell them, 'Excuse me are you down with this whole social justice thing?' If it's my church, I'm alerting the church authorities: 'Excuse me, what's this social justice thing?' And if they say, 'yeah, we're all in that social justice thing'--I'm in the wrong place."

Emergent Monday: The Mess of the Message 2

When Eugene Peterson sat down to write his version of the bible titled "The Message" he claims that his purpose was to reach out to the parishioner through modern use of language. Unfortunately what we have been given is not a translation of the bible, but a satire. 

The first time I read the bible verse by verse, cover to cover I read using the NIV but would refer to The Message when dealing with a difficult passage, especially in the old testament. But as time went on I began to feel bad about what I was reading in The Message to the point where I began to avoid using it completely. I now know it was the Holy Spirit pushing me away from The Message and as I research The Message I praise the Lord for leading me away from the word of Peterson and back to the word of God. Let's compare a few passages to illustrate what Peterson did: 

Emergent Monday: Is My Church Submerging?

Pastor Joe Schimmel, senior pastor at the Blessed Hope Chapel in Simi Valley CA has been a leader in exposing the emerging church for what it really is: a Submerging Church; submerging into the depths of humanism, heresy, and apostasy. Emergent pastors are now preaching the joys of polluting the purity of the Gospel with Hinduism and Islam, they're ignoring the fact that God made man in His image and are busy remaking God in man's image. Pastor Joe's websites, GoodFight.org and Submerging Church.com are both a real eye openers to what is happening in the formerly God centric world of the evangelical church. At one time it was thought that the emerging church was a passing fad, but Pastor Joe plainly shows that the emerging church is here, it's real, and that the Bible is right when it says that the emergent church is not going away until Jesus comes back to fix things. 

1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (2 Peter 2:1-3)