Flannery O'Connor Country Redux: The Brian Nichols Story Remembered

Five years ago, a desperate man broke out of a Georgian jail where he was facing rape charges and in the process murdered several people in an orgy of calculated rage.

On the run from a massive manhunt, armed, dangerous and with absolutely nothing to lose, something else happened to Brian Nichols as he took a hostage and hid for several hours - and what happened was an uncommon visitation of grace that intervened in his life that deserves to be recounted.

Here's the story by Ashley Smith, the hostage, as told by a Wall Street Journal column writer.

This story needs to be remembered for in the Christian life, the weapons of our warfare, as the Scripture says, are not carnal.

Next Up: The Contention Of Discernment, Brought To You By The Intolerant Jesus And His Bigoted Apostles

.. be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, .. grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
Ephesians 4:14-15

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying ..
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? .. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
Matthew 23:3, 24-25

Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, and said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?
Acts 13:9-11

Western civilization's descent into postmodern amorality continues largely unabated. It's now possible to label anyone's criticism of anyone or anything else as hate speech inspired by intolerant bigotry in an effort to deflect or nullify its plain thrust. Such a strategy is employed when attempts are made by the discerning to understand the immoral and/or unethical influences that cults and extremist philosophies exert over the lives of millions of people. This kind of approach increasingly finds cultural traction in the West as it becomes more and more sensitized to the civil liberties of the individual apart from the prevailing social order that it may come into conflict with.

To support this controversial perspective, civil libertarians and social engineers who adhere to it have developed a new generation of social custom that have been popularly called political correctness. A lot of bandwidth over the years has been spent about what this term means, but there's no question that to be politically correct is to be, simply put, profoundly sensitized to avoiding any sort of offense to anyone's personal persuasions. The slowly prevailing trend in Western culture, which is advocated as the highest mark of social convention, is for complete conformity to the prized secular value of inoffensiveness. So things like teaching Biblical absolutes, Judeo Christian values and personal lifestyle choices and expressions of thought based upon them are pretty much fair game in a politically correct culture that views anything smacking of absolutism as bad manners at best and a hate crime at worst.

This is well illustrated in one of my favorite science fiction novels, the classic Dune by Frank Herbert, by the decisions made by the fictional Commission of Ecumenical Translators who are given sway over the known Dune galaxy to advance the rejection of any opposing arguments or critical views between religious faiths claiming "the one and only revelation". The universe's peace and stability, they believed, rested upon suppression and elimination of any belief that there could be just one definitive truth, revelation or faith .. it welcomed all spiritual claims equally as valid, to be fitted into an ultimate cultural mosaic that would advance peace and prosperity on the basis of a harmony that brooked no opposition to alternative perspectives.

This view of political correctness in Herbert's 1960's novelization is a great example of how all encompassing this value-free approach to life wants to make human society. Such an ideal has preoccupied Western society and it is this prevailing wind of cultural thought that sweeps over all expression of personal thought and conscience today in America and beyond, profoundly coloring and affecting human interaction. While I certainly advocate personal freedom of conscience, respect of diversity among people and individual choices of lifestyle they might make, I roundly reject any kind of cultural brinkmanship that demands my compliance to not offend anyone with anything like an opposing view based upon my own convictions. Any intellectually responsible individual should recognize such a perspective as incomparably more inclusive and defensible to those who insist that there are no absolutes at all (a bizarre belief that self-destructs by actually stating an absolute when insisting that there are none).

But it is this kind of warped cultural zeitgeist that Christian discernment in the last days will find itself battling with as well. For when the heat is finally on and the light is brightest in the eyes of false teachers and cultic leaders who don't like it, they resort to knee jerk reactions to valid questions that use this political correctness as their shield against them. When presented with Biblical reasoning and personal testimony that exposes the spiritual emptiness and error of their ways, cults and false teachers find a convienient dodge in the marketplaces of public discourse where their false teaching is confronted by calling criticism "intolerance" and discernment "religious bigotry." It serves to twitch the antennae of the politically correct and summons philosophical unity and support from a variety of parties that wouldn't agree any other way, thus furthering the advance of error, heresy and religious abuse that stems from it.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the very incarnation of God Himself as the Bible says so clearly again and again (John 14:9 and Hebrews 1:3 are just two places you can see this). Jesus is not just loving - He is love itself (1 John 4:8, John 15:9) If you want to see what love looks like, you'll see it in the person, character and attitude of Christ Himself as He strode throughout our sinful world of pain to fulfill the Triune God's steadfast determination to show mercy and love to an evil, gainsaying world that didn't deserve it as John 3:16-17 and 1 John 3:16 beautifully express it. The only reason this world hasn't been plunged into judgment sooner than it has deserved it is because of that unfailing, eternal love that God regards fallen humanity with, through the person of Jesus and manifest in this veil of tears by His Spirit. Thanks be to God for such grace!

The apostles of Jesus gave us the greatest examples of walking out a Christian lifestyle that embodied that same grace of godly charity. They intended on being examples of what they beheld in the Master and lived lives of struggle through which their triumph over adversity by their faith in Christ (1 John 5:4) helped establish the faith of the newborn Church itself. They suffered and endured endless rounds of persecution, deprivation and spiritual assault with delight, cheer, joy and godly love in settings completely unimaginable to most Western believers (1 Corinthians 4:9-16, 2 Corinthians 11:23-30, 1 Peter 4:11-15, Hebrews 6:11-12, 1 Thessalonians 1:5-7, ). Their utter willingness to spend and be spent for others (2 Corinthians 12:15) to advance the Kingdom of God in a world that hates Him and His truth is a sure sign of their apostolic authority and grace.

And these very same divinely inspired examples were also - as Scripture shows - as defiantly confrontational as needed when the message of the Gospel and the truths of God's Word were opposed and distorted by false teachers. The example of Jesus and His apostles was not marked just by their love, endurance and patience but by their resolute willingness to call out the sinful, the deceptive and the injustice that they encountered as they preached the Gospel and called the world to repentance. They fearlessly lifted up their voices to expose, refute and identify those sources of spiritual deception and religious abuse where ever they found it as well as the social institutions that gave it the authority it usurped. This is a dimension of their example that few people know about or admit to, but it is there, nonetheless. "Contending for the faith" isn't just some motivational aphorism, according to their example, but is a Biblical mandate to intentionally engage in a very real, very literal contention for the sake of Christian truth.

The verses I cited in the opening lines of this post show that the same loving Jesus who took children into his arms to bless them and laid his hands on dying lepers also did not hesitate to take up a whip to beat covetous merchants who defiled the temple with their crooked dealings and lambast the Pharisees as "snakes" worthy of the fires of hell. The same apostle Paul who wept over the souls of the congregations he cared for also unsparingly gazed upon an occultic magician who opposed his preaching and called him a "child of the devil." They asserted an authority by the power of the Word and Spirit of God that unblinkingly faced down by both word and deed those satanically inspired deceivers who sought to overthrow truth. The stakes are high - the spiritual destinies of those who are audiences to these contests. There are none higher.

Such decisive action effectively flies in the face of the cultural idolatry done in the name of political correctness, but that's never been the concern of Christ or the apostles: read these verses from Scripture and see just how seriously they took this:

Watch the example of Jesus:

And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other. Mark 3:1-5

Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Mark 7:5-7

The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Luke 13:31-32

Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things: Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him. In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. Luke 12:52-54, 13:1-3

And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. Acts 8:19-23

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. Romans 16:17-18

Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality. Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure. 1 Timothy 5:20-22

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. 2 Timothy 2:15-18

Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works: Of whom be thou ware also; for he hath greatly withstood our words. At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. 2 Timothy 4:14-17

A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself. Titus 3:10-11

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. 1 John 4:1-3

I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church. Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God. 3 John 9-11

If they were physically among us now, in this gainsaying fallen culture of today, it's easy to see how quickly how these mandates and examples of Jesus and the apostles would be quickly labelled as intolerant religious bigotry. They'd be tried immediately by self-anointed cultural elites in their media-driven star chambers and be summarily found guilty of hate crimes and violence.

It remains to those who claim to be disciples of Christ to decide which side of this cultural divide they will choose to identify with - whether contending for the Faith, once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) is something they'll obey or opt out from. The Biblical prophecies about the last days we've been reviewing here in this blog show, sadly, that far more professed Christians will inexplicably embrace darkness as light and jettison confrontational discernment as antisocial and meanspirited traditional thinking that truly enlightened people will reject.

In the meantime, for those whom the discerning contentions of Jesus and the apostles is enough of an example to follow as an act of worship and love of God's truth, the daily prayer of "Uncle Bud" Robinson, a Nazarene preacher from White County, Tennessee (just north of where we live), will resonate like a trumpet call from on high .. may it be as much yours as it is mine ..

"Oh Lord, give me a backbone as big as a sawlog, ribs like the sleepers under the church floor, put iron shoes on me and galvanized breeches, give me a rhinoceros hide for a skin, and hang a wagonload of determination up in the gable-end of my soul, and help me to sign the contract to fight the devil as long as I've got a fist and bite him as long as I have a tooth, then gum him till I die. All this I ask for Christ's sake. Amen."

You Can't Keep The Only Good Man In History Down!

It was Friday.

The Pharisees thought they'd solved their troublesome religious problem that threatened their authority. The Romans had washed their hands of their part in handling a civil disturbance in one of their conquered provinces. The Jewish mob of easily excitable pilgrims passing through the temple there in Jerusalem assumed another blasphemer had been dealt with. The disciples of Christ all assumed that their Master was gone and struggled with the dark nights of their souls and a shattered faith.

And world history as well as the skeptic, atheist and deconstructor over time tries to rationalize, mock or redefine away the plain facts of the matter, trying to "prove" that this was all a legend, a myth, a delusion.

The Lord Jesus Christ had greater plans. For Sunday was coming!

He AROSE from a grave that wasn't his, taking up again a life He laid down, paying a cost He didn't owe, and proving once and for all that He loved us first even we were and are still yet so unloving. The tears on every face can be dried .. the hurts and pains of humanity's misery can be healed .. and the doors to Heaven opened up once more!

Praised be to God, Jesus is ALIVE!

And because He lives, all who trust Him and Him alone for salvation can live also! It's there He has sealed our every victory, grappled and beaten every enemy, bestowed unspeakable spiritual giftings and authority to walk as He did, and dried every tear

Sing it brother Keith!

Being Mormon Before Being Mormon Was Cool: It's Ok To Be "Mormon" Once More

How the times they are a-changing.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, long before the 1838 adoption of this official title to identify itself, had been called the "Mormon Church" for years by both its members and its detractors from upstate New York to Ohio, Illinois and Missouri. At times embraced as a badge of honor and rejected as a mocking epithet, the term came into popularity from its earliest days when people recognized its unique claims about the alleged visitations of an angel by that same name. This became more the case when Joseph Smith authored and had published a so-called translation of supposedly sacred texts that came to be known as the "Book of Mormon." Ever since late 1800's, the LDS Church has grudgingly sought to educate the "Gentiles" outside of it that they consider themselves to be "Latter Day Saints" and not Mormons. Even while accepting it among their own social circles as part of their identity, the church officially disdains the title still, especially when the church came under greater attention then before in the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic games. An official statement makes no bones about this. In their elitist attempt to distinguish themselves as "The Restoration" unlike any other, the LDS Church's attempt to distance themselves from their popular identity as the "Mormon Church" has been a largely useless attempt to focus their public image on a seemingly innocuous if not long and cumbersome corporate title.

Until now.

With new attention focused on LDS fundamentalist groups scattered across the Western United States, whose emphasis on patriarchal priesthoods that indulge in wholesale sectarian polygamy claim to practice the purest form of Mormonism, the LDS Church's historical twists and turns have become impossible for them to shake. So, it would seem, with the coming of the LDS Church's annual assembly this year, the leadership has now concluded that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The adoption and usage of the term "Mormon" now appears to be flourishing like never before. This will have enormous implications for those wanting to be discerning when it comes to the claims of the Mormon revelation and its supposed authority. Throughout Salt Lake City, it's now cool to be called "Mormon" once more. Click this link for a story on this strange issue, which as it usually goes, is indeed stranger than before.

The Only Hope For An Apostate And Evil World of Pain

Do you think we've got problems on this planet?

Do you look upon this increasingly filthy and lawless world and wonder how much longer things can go as they are?

Are you filled with pain of secret scars and silent anguish?

Do you wonder how you can go on?

There was a Man two thousand years ago who took upon Himself the pain of you, me and creation across all time itself as He was murdered.

All for our evil, our sin, our rebellion.

All for mine. All for yours.

The greatest argument for the truth of the Good News He came to tell us of can be seen below .. in that He took at the cost of His own life the burden He didn't have to bear, to dry the tears you cry, bring light to darkness, and truth to a world of lies.

Think about that today, Good Friday. This world doesn't care what day it is.

Over two thousand years ago, He did.

Ruminations Coming: In The Meantime, A Public Service Announcement

Maybe the term "naturalism" would be more exact. Still, atheism has a long standing affinity with the form of naturalism described above. It's the belief about the natural world that rejects any notion of any kind of higher power having any influence over the observable processes of the creation around us. They scorn the belief of a Creator who creates and then come up with this cock and bull story to solemnly inform us this is the only "provable" explanation for all of physical natural reality as well as ancient natural history itself.

This kind of scientific "theory" is what many of the best minds in the world are convinced explains how the world came to be. No wonder those who question it are viewed as ignorant and unwashed Neanderthals - to admit that truly critical examination of this bizarre fairy tale might have a point to concede would cause the whole house of naturalism's cards to blow away.

All We Are Is Dust In The Wind? Hardly ..

I cannot stop watching this. I normally wouldn't post this on this kind of blog, but the haunting beauty of this video demands an audience.

The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.

It's tempting to view this magnificent and compelling video and begin to feel the chill of how seemingly remote, miniscule, and lost we are in a bigger, larger world and universe around us.

And yet, the Word of God is so much clearer on where we fit in .. hear these portions of Psalm 139

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. .. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee. ..

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Discernment Is Discernment When Truth Confronts Error

In the early 1800's, the continuing advance of white Americans into the lands of the Cherokee Indian nation in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia were among many of the manifold pressures Native Americans had to deal with. Whether they faced unsuccessful negotiations with local governments or armed conflicts with white settlers and militia, the question faced by Native American tribes across the land was always the same - how to respond to the increasingly aggressive dealings of colonial advances that sought to push Indians further west away from their traditional homelands. It became one of the darkest and tragic moments of American history.

The situation almost changed dramatically in 1811. A fervent excitement swept Indian tribes across the East as efforts to form a great alliance among them to drive the whites back began in earnest. Indian shamans and many Indians themselves had long resisted the social seductions to give up their folkways, spirituality and culture for those impressed upon them by contact with white settlers and state governments. It was given a huge surge of support when word of a prophetic vision delivered by Tenskwatawa, the shaman brother of the great Shawnee Chief Tecumseh began to spread as well, emboldening those who favored armed warfare. Many unsettling and inexplicable occurrences that seemed to be supernatural visitations from the Great Spirit began to occur among the tribes, further bolstering the conviction that this alliance should proceed. Had this occurred, it's not hard to see - with the second British invasion of America iminent in 1812 - how American history could have been vastly different. For such a conflict to confront the young American nation on two massive fronts certainly would have changed the course of history itself - and world history as well.

So in May, 1811 the governing council of the Cherokee Indian nation could no longer ignore the issue and had to meet to consider certain visions claimed to have come to three Cherokees that advanced the same point of the Shawnee shaman and chief - the return to their former way of life and rejection of any futher white advances into their lands. The Cherokee were the most dominant and powerful of the Native American tribes of the Eastern United States and were clearly in a position to powerfully influence the smaller ones around them to proceed one way or another. Having almost 150 years of largely peaceful contact and interaction with white America, the Cherokee had come away from it profoundly influenced by many of their practical and cultural innovations from government to agriculture to trade. They were aware that such advances would help their own people grow - and had not yet come to fully believe that the United States would ever engage in the systematic expulsion of their people from the East in the debacle of the Trail of Tears.

But with the pressures at hand, tribal opinion was mixed and decidedly unsettled, and the council would be a place for the Cherokee nation to gather direction. As the accounts of the vision were discussed excitedly in the council at Red Clay in Bradley County, Tennessee (where our ministry is based), one lone Cherokee leader had serious doubts about them. Author John Ehle, in his book "Trail Of Tears" commented that Chief Ridge, a well known and well respected man among his people, listened closely as

the man among the three who had seen the vision closed by saying that if one would deny his message, the Mother of the Cherokees would strike him dead.

Ridge sat stone still as excited commentators roamed about the council house, most of them chiefs who were known opponents of acculturation with the whites; they were celebrating this revelation. Finally, Ridge got to his feet and asked for audience, and when the noise subsided, he made his speech.

"My friends, the talk you have heard is not good. It would lead us to war with the United States, and we should suffer. It is false; it is not a talk fom the Great Spirit. I stand here and defy the threat that he who disbelieves shall die. Let the death come upon me. I offer to test this scheme of impostors."

Even as he finished speaking, angry delegates assaulted him. He struck back at them and several fell; like a great bear he batted off his assailants. Eventually they overcame him, pummeling him, trying to knife him ... Ridge, once on his feet again, continued to defy the nay-sayers and their shamans. Again, furious chiefs assaulted him, but this time elder chiefs demanded order and enforced it.

Ridge, his clothing torn, bleeding from cuts, stood before them all. You see, he told them, I continue to live, so these prophets are deceivers.

"Trail Of Tears" (Anchor 1988), page 98-99

And history continues to change today as the last day deceptions of Satanic and humam design continue to get the P.R. they do as those in the position to confront and correct them utterly fail to do so, even embracing such "new truth" as divine revelation from on High.

What history have you changed today?

The Company Heresy Seeks To Keep - Some Thoughts

Acts 20:29-30

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

2 Peter 2:1-3

But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

Titus 3:10-11

A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

2 Corinthians 11:3-4

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

I'm going to continue to explore what the Bible says about the end time apostacy and the kind of company that last days that end time heresy likes to keep .. or diss.

Read well, all you RF operatives out there. You believe you're reading this just to serve your ends. God is giving you merciful grace to consider your crooked ways by being allowed by study these. Don't harden your heart further and forget this day of visitation you are reading this under - because in the Judgment, you will be reminded of having been here where you need to be and where this could be your final chance to FREE YOUR MIND.

In my first post this year, I cited the prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself out of Matthew 24:1-14 detailing his stark warning that in the time preceding His Return to the world. When asked what would the signs be that heralded this, it's important to remember that the first thing He said was "take heed that no man deceive you." He did not point to social utopia or religious revival as a sign of His return but to a world staggering under the advance of deceptive figures he called false prophets and false pretenders claiming to be Him. Among these other signs were plagues, warfare and earthquakes in different places all over the world - all heralds of His coming that are largely being dismissed as "coincedence" by those who are clueless to His warning.

In my second post concerning end time apostasy as Scripture teaches, I spoke of what the Bible speaks about what the word literally means, emphasizing that the sense of the word in Scripture is that an apostasy is an abandonment or rejection of true faith, morality and conviction which God has ordained as acceptable to Him. I wrote that it always leads to immorality as sinful people act out their sinfulness on one another in the absence of any moral constraint and that mankind has suffered from the primal falling away of Adam and Eve from God in their failures in Eden to obey Him.

In this post, I want to share briefly on what the Scriptures say about another side of the Janus face of apostacy - how its unholy offspring that is called heresy routinely stalks and ensnares all manner of people as one of the most cunning devices of Satanic inspiration created to destroy the souls of men.

The word heresy is what we want to focus upon first. The word, coming from the New Testament Greek words hairesis, literally meant "a choosing" and in other contexts "a faction." The sense of the word was to define the act of choosing to divide from what was accepted as the established normalcy. Applied withing the context of the Christian faith, it was given wide usage in the Christian church (as cited in the Scriptures above) as it faced the first great onslaughts of apostasy in the first and second century that arose from within it. The iminent spiritual onslaught against the Body of Christ was what the great apostle Paul wept over with hot tears of agony in Acts 20, seeking to impress upon the Ephesian elders that these trials of strange fire from within would test the infant Christian church after he left, to see them no more:

Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.

Acts 20:31

The Ebionite, Marcionite and Gnostic heresies were among the first spiritual challenges that the first believers had to deal with, issues that the apostles grappled with in the book of Acts and alluded to in their Epistles to the churches. And these issues originated from earnest, passionately spiritual people who looked, acted and spoke just like Christians themselves but who preached "another gospel" setting forth "another Jesus" by the spiritual power of "another spirit" as Paul wrote to the Corinthians. With that kind of deceptive power, major confusion and disruption was poised to turn the Christian church into squabbling sects who would fade into utter obscurity, with the destiny of humanity itself at stake.

It's almost virtually impossible for the lukewarm and backslidden Christian church of today to fully appreciate just how much at stake their personal faith itself actually was in those first few years. Few of the self-centered Christians of today's casual Christianity seem to even care that the very shape of what they would believe and trust in concerning their temporal and eternal destinies could have been forever lost. But that is indeed how vital the issue was, and is and always shall be until the Lord Jesus Himself returns. History itself would have been also profoundly altered had the unbiblical truth claims of these groups had found the foothold they desired and therefore spiritually warped the truth of the Gospel itself - and hence the missionary outreach of the Church which transformed the ancient world. Heresy, as shown by the Bible and history, is indeed a pretty big deal then as now.

In his seminal book, Heresies (a book I've got in my list of favorites here on the blog), the late Harold O.J. Brown described heresy best as:

.. (designating) either a doctrine or the party holding the doctrine, a doctrine that was sufficiently intolerable to destroy the unity of the Christian church. In the early church, heresy did not refer to simply any doctrinal disagreement, but to something that seemed to undercut the very basis for Christian existence. (p. 2)

Heresy, then, is not only a teaching that denies orthodox Christian truth but a deceptive trickery claiming to unveil lost or restored truth. It results in the creation of a rogue spirituality that defies the Christian faith and creates division among Christians who were formerly united around apostolic doctrine and practice.

And those individuals who bring about this spiritual baiting and switching that leads to all of this trouble for the church are what the Scriptures we've reviewed above call heretics. The Bible's view of heretics, from the boldness of the occultic Simon Magus in the book of Acts to the seductions of the false prophetess Jezebel in the book of Revelation, shows that they are a bold and driven people. Heretics are both men and women who are brilliant, charming and engaging folks who can tell engaging stories, ooze appealingly earnest passion over their beliefs, and who can quote the Bible better than Jesus could. The Bible says they are driven by an agenda of self-aggrandizement based upon their measure of human nature and mastery of their misguided message. For all of their seemingly meek and humble bearings and origins, we would do well to remember Peter's warning is that such people are stealthy, cunning interlopers - wolves in sheep's clothing (Matthew 7:14) who sneak into the sheepfolds of the church to tell amazing tidings of deeper depths and higher heights they are called of God to lead them into.

As we've seen, heresy is a lonely beast and a social animal. It seeks company, craving a captive audience from people, who, through the best of intentions, end up in an alternate spiritual reality that is a mimicked version of the Christian faith. It can only replicate itself at the cost of Christians who have failed to get their own grip on sound Christian doctrine. So it's qute understandable why today's modern heretics who have a vested interest in posing as orthodox Christians quite obviously don't like being called heretics. It's difficult to pull the wool over the eyes of those they seek to bewitch if they are identified as someone who does just that!

So they do everything they can to prove their self-anointed calling as a lonely voice of truth in the world and convince their flocks that they alone have God's favor. They point to anything they can to find divine verification of their doings and their teachings. They demand complete and total surrender to their authority at the cost of their follower's eternal enlightenment or salvation. They cast a vision of a doomed world outside the social circle of their own sect. They cry aloud how they are being persecuted for "The Truth" when their ultimately corrupt doings are exposed and emotionally whine about how unloving and judgmental their unspiritual critics are, knowing that in this pluralistic day that they'll score points among people just for that evasive comment alone.

Their "Messages" are little more than legalistic busywork they bind to the shoulders of their folowers, a compulsion they impart to their flocks to follow their codes of conduct which involve self-denial or spiritual sacrifice to purify and perfect themselves. They ultimately indoctrinate them with a keen sensitivity to works-based self-righteousness

And they know that there are still enough people left for whom the concept of heresy and the figure of the heretic is still a trumpet call of alarm that hastens deeper discerning of their doings. In the end, the company kept - a host of neophytes forsaking all to become their leader's clones - shows just what kind of a spiritual dead end heretics follow. They are the blind leaders of blind followers who, Jesus said with terrifyingly evocative bluntness shall both "fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14).

And the tragedy of it all is that millions of people both within and without the church are being confronted with the siren songs of cultic heresy, voiced by cultic heretics who never fail to find new audiences ever day .. as this video so painfully dramatizes.

Bad Moon Falling - When A Cult's Empire Shows Its Strain

Cultic movements, for all of their allegedly divine commission and exclusive claims to the authority of the Almighty, ultimately are no different then any other humanly organization since they are still populated by human beings filled with frailty, imperfection, sin and the same kind of self-centered drama all of us can fall into.

So when the aging "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon decided to finally start giving up his iron control over his Unification Church, vast business holdings and overall control a few years ago, the internecine squabbles within his "True Family" between factions of sons are of course not surprising. The fighting for ultimate control of the church, its business enterprises and the direction of the Unification movement worldwide - and the billions of dollars that underlay them - has long ago begun. Things have gotten decidedly uglier since Moon's more recent actions to turn over day by day operation to his sons have escalated their war of words and have even launched rival claims to their control.

Check out this link if you'd like to read a bit more.

Unificationists have long been used to having to turn blind eyes when seeing their "True Parents" and the "True Family" exhibit behavior that shows them to be far more subject to sin and falsehood then they would want to be known for. Any authoritarian cult with an elite clique exalted as royalty who exercise complete temporal and spiritual control over their followers will of course do all they can to spin, deny and cover up their failings. But the first salvos of this conflict are seemingly going to open a lot of eyes up within the Moon organization. May God's grace and His Gospel somehow get through to them as well!

When The Heresy Comes Home - some more thoughts

I've been busy with life in general among other things, so unfortunately, I've not been blogging .. again! I try hard to strike the balance in personal time so as to do this, but alas, things are just too pressing.

As I regather my ruminations, here's a few interesting ones that I thought I'd post on the more memorable things that happen when the sectarian missionaries of error get put into places they don't easily adapt to. I'm not referring to situations involving gun toting Russian gangsters, desperate English housewives with see through negligees, or a Saturday Night Live skit either ..

Here's a link to a blog write up on when two Jehovah's Witnesses are temporarily gotten out of their box by a Christian "householder" .. with something as simple as questions ..

This one will take you to show how well disguised Unificationists (AKA Moonies, disciples of the antichrist Sun Myung Moon) will make themselves when working through their front groups.

The reveries of two former members of an abusive church in Louisiana and the Crossroads movement that became the cultic International Churches of Christ can be read in this bulletin board thread here. Both accounts took place decades and hundreds of miles apart .. but are, as almost always, frighteningly the same ..

And this De Novo article, written by a professedly Hindu agnostic, about the Latter Day Saint's missionary's attempt to sell his religion without revealing much of it, speaks volumes about how deception looks when its cloak falls off ..

The Prosperity Gospeliers On The Haitian Crisis

I responded to a post on a bulletin board I do most of my online posting on concerning this subject. Most of my online personal commentary on the heresy and false doctrine advanced by Charismatic and Pentecostal extremism is made either on our website, in private emails to those who contact us, or on this blog.

The BB is frequented by many leaders, clergy and laity of my movement, the Church of God (Cleveland) where I am a licensed minister at. The post below piqued my interest concerning the possible reactions of those members of the Word of Faith clergy who might find some uniquely perverse ways to profit from the horrors of the Haitian calamity.

In case you've been under a rock for the past week, a natural disaster of the most horrifically first magnitude has tragically visited that Haiti with a 7.0 earthquake, destruction and the deaths of possibly over a quarter million people in a country where no decent infrastructure to supply food, water, shelter and medical care has ever quite existed. It was tough enough to live in a place like Haiti, but with thousands now dead and dying in the streets, the flow of commodities like food and basic living supplies cut off, hospitals and market destroyed, and no way to get fresh water easily, life just got inconceivable.

We can and should discuss Pat Robertson's ill timed lambasting of the Haiti for it's adherence to voodoo, but now is not that time. These precious people - be they voodoo practitioners or Catholic or anyone else - need our prayers, our giving and our assistance and for the West to dig deep and help out - click on the links following to the American Red Cross and another great relief organization, Operation Compassion, operated as a ministry of the Church of God if you'd like to help.

The post I reference, in a sad, yet inevitable jar from the stark reality of the horror, asked the question:

Are prosperity preachers in Haiti? I was just wondering if they could get a seed offering from some folks so they can get their 100 fold blessing and move to the next level. Maybe they could get some partners to stand in the gap to help their ministry. I hadn't noticed.

I responded ..

Post: A quick ck to see what the prosperity ministries are doing

Kenneth Copeland Ministries - says on their website they support Christian Haitian Outreach—Cares for orphaned and abandoned children in Haiti. They say they have people there, and it's likely these and others. They do point you to a relief fund where they say 100% of everything donated goes to "provide timely assistance to Partners and Friends affected by major disasters."

Not to worry though, you can also donate to Kenneth Copeland Ministries, their Elite CX Team and the KCM Scholarship Fund. It's right there alongside the KCM Relief Fund checkbox, so you can donate to run KCM, help pay for millions of dollars of new HD TV equipment and production, or subsidize the creation of more KCM clones.

Kenneth Hagin Ministries - No record of any ministries they directly support was found in Haiti, although it's possible RBC alumni may be there. But their massive Flash display shows you can follow them on Twitter, apply to RBC and ensure you get registered in their "Winter Bible Seminar."

Haiti is mentioned as a focus for prayer.

Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association - the Online Services website has a massive picture inviting you to offer "Help For Haiti", but by following the links, you get shuttled to a page where you can Sow a Seed to them directly with absolutely no information on what they are going to do to Help Haiti.

Rod Parsley.com - has a similar huge graphic, a link to several articles that make much about the suffering there, and thanks "for RUSHING your Bridge of Hope gift to help provide immediate earthquake relief and help me preach the Gospel to a lost and hurting world through our Breakthrough Television Broadcast."

Minimum suggested donation. $50.

Jesse Duplantis Ministries and Paula White.org - Both Jesse and Paula say in an article they are trying to figure out what organization with boots on the ground they can give to in order will best help the people. In the mean time, you can send in a donations to them.

Once again, the call for help is appealing .. and the help is desperately needed.

But as usual, as in most prosperity preacher mission products, they are cryptic, vague and short on any specifics. Why they have to handle any money at all you might want to donate is certainly open for some serious question. I guess giving to the Red Cross just isn't spiritual enough ...

I just hope people really are going to be helped by this, although HD suites certainly are needed to get the Broadcast out in the clearest way possible. Why, if we don't give for that, who will?

Analog TV ministry and unpaid satellite bills lead to an uncertain sound.

What Is The Tide Of End Time Apostasy? A New Year's Clarification

After arriving home quite late from a Saturday trip up to Middle Tennessee for an ex-cultist support group meeting, I woke up really late this morning and decided to forego church services until tonight at my homechurch, the South Cleveland Church of God, here in the Holy City. I decided to spend a few moments this morning diving in to address the foundational issues concerning the content and scope of this blog, as I discussed in one of our last entries.

Many visit here may not fully understand what I am speaking of when I mention that this blog is dedicated to responding and critiquing what I have repeatedly called an advance of the end time apostasy that the Lord Jesus Christ predicted in Matthew 24. Perhaps a bit of explanation is in hand since so very few people understand what the Bible says about this, even if many of them recognize quite plainly that America and the world can scarcely be described in what we fancy to be "Christian." The issue goes far more deeper than we want to believe, but I want to keep this as easy to understand as possible.

The word apostasy literally means, from the Greek to stand apart, while another form of the word refers to the act of rebellion. The sense of the word in Scripture is that an apostasy is an abandonment or rejection of true faith, morality and conviction which God has ordained as acceptable to Him. The Bible also shows that this kind of spiritual rebellion against His revealed always leads to immorality as sinful people act out their sinfulness on one another in the absence of any moral constraint.

The apostasy of all apostacies that forever changed the course of human history was the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, unflinchingly related in Genesis 3, was an act of disobedient sin (eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) that in effect was a rebellion from God's revealed will (to eat of any other tree in the Garden except that one tree). It had cataclysmic consequences for us, cutting us off from fellowship from God and imparting unto mankind a sinful depravity that has resulted in several thousand years of tragic history in which violence, oppression, greed and immorality have had a free hand among the tribes of humanity.

The only hope for humanity is Jesus Christ. As a Christian minister and believer, I am called to embrace and preach an obedience and embracing of faith in the person, work and message of Jesus Christ as the literal salvation for us all. His Gospel, as the Christian faith follows it, is the summit of His Father's will for mankind to choose His Lordship over their lives for salvation as well as for responsible social lifestyle and order. Faith in Him and obedience to His commands will deliver us from ourselves.

As a preacher, I call men and women, as Christ did, to repent and believe His Gospel (Mark 1:15) but unlike the coercive religious figures in our world that demand an unholy usage of the power of the state to legislate this kind of obedience, I simply proclaim and admonish .. and leave those same people to make their own choice to do so and then live it out practically in their ethics and morals - in full awareness that God will judge all in light of His revealed will to them (Revelation 20:11-13)

That is all that the advance of Christian faith should ever attempt to do. Jesus did not call upon any earthly government to subsidize the creation of a state church or a divided Christendom to create a social utopia. He calls upon the sinful to embrace His transforming power by repentance from their sin and a faith in Him and to also become responsible members of the great Body of Christ, the "Church invisible" existing across sectarian and temporal divisions , to minister to the needs of a hurting world as well as call it to Christ. When the Church went beyond this mandate, it became a tool of statecraft and ultimately oppression backed by the rule of law, not of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:12-16) - and became part of the problem itself, becaming the fodder for agnosticism, atheism and the encouragement to explore antichristian spiritualities.

Be that as it may, in those places in the world where the Christian faith in the world has sought to provide a moral example to our fallen culture, and where it has not been embraced for any of the thousand reasons that people reject an active and legitimate faith in Christ, the apostasy of Adam still goes on.

Our blog seeks to show you where the entry points of this rebellion are pulling down whatever truth and relevance the church still has to establish its own rival religiosity and again highlight that what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 24 still has the most powerful urgency today. We seek to warn you to never forget what tidings of these very things imply for us, for it was Christ Himself who said bluntly that when you see these things coming to pass in human history, His Second Coming and Return to the earth to pour out judgment upon sinful mankind was at hand.

Let one of my favorites from the 1960's by none other than Barry McGuire further clarify just how warped and tragic the world is and where we are heading. You can walk out with an entertained shiver from the next blockbuster movie about the end of the world thinking you'll always be able to just go back to a reality where things always go on as they have (2 Peter 3:3-4), where you'll get dinner and go to work the next day and live life as you please.

But it won't ever really impart unto you the truly terrifying reality that the Eve of Destruction is indeed at hand.

But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.
1 Peter 4:7

Spiritwatch Ministries seeks to ensure no man deceive you as to the time and the hour. So if you're not sure where you stand, you'd better get ready .. and remember the challenge of Jesus Christ to this big, rebellious, irreverent world:

Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Luke 18:8

How Cultism And Yoga Mix - Very Well, It Seems ..

There's nothing more troubling to behold then when cultism, as it usually does, gets recognized in what many would view as the most mundane of human endeavors.

When it does it stirs up controversy, a meating of the press and the documenting of claims and counterclaims through videography and interviews. Such recognition never surprises us though, for we've asserted over and over in our ministry and teaching about this social blight that cultism is always more than just a eccentric doctrinal unorthodoxy in the body politic of human life. It involves a robust and unethical cooption, a coercive takeover of the hearts and minds of trusting followers by manipulative leaders that cannot be denied, ignored or brushed away by the usual spin doctoring of cult group apologists.

What we've pointed out is that cultism can and does take forms that would surprise you. The social dynamics of the Weigh Down Workshop diet program when coupled to the Remnant Fellowship "church" are just such an example as is the seemingly benign outer forms of Scientology, est, and Red Chinese Communism.

So when we saw the CNN investigative reporting done by Kyra Phillips on the Dahn Yoga business empire and aired on the Campbell Brown show this week, once again we fail to be surprised. Cultism in any human enterprise is possible - and if you mix profit-centered business with pliable spirituality, add a few dollops of junk science and PR imagery and combine with a generous helping of blindly trusting people who will buy into a product line they think will work for them, the recipe will turn something disturbing up every time.

Check it out. The last segment of the 3 part series airs tonight, but they are all featured on the CNN website for viewing on demand.

A New Year To Discern : Some Thoughts

Matthew 24:1-14

And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, blessed and meaningful Christmas as well as trust in God for a happy New Year.

There. I've said it the way I would want to say it and not in the safely emasculated way that secularizing sentiment would have the holiday seasons observed ("Have a Happy Holiday!", cut and paste on every marketing campaign they could get it on, from Victoria's Secret to Captain Morgan, and show lots of people buying stuff). There is enough to say about our rotting culture right there but I trust many who read here get the point.

I am reassuming the helm on my blog here, after some time traveling and being with family, and in so doing, I do so with a lot of prayerful hope that 2010 will be a more fruitful year for our lives, ministry and one in which I personally seek my Lord afresh. Above all I want to be an overcomer. To each church Jesus sent word to in the book of Revelation (chapters 2-3), He indicated that only those who withstood all of the potent temptations and trials of this world and overcame them would gain the prize of eternal life. This is a battle, as the struggles of those churches indicate, that involves not only personal moral sanctity, responsible relationships with others in the church and the world, but head on conflict in the age old battle between truth and error, against spiritual deception.

Through it all, I want to be about the business of bringing healing to the broken hearted, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who need to hear it, and announcing deliverance to those bound by chains of darkness, sin and bad religion and philosophy. If that sounds like a tall order, it's only because you may be looking at it from a viewpoint that fails to see how God uses ordinary people to do the extraordinary, as they seek to obey His express will for their lives. The ministry of the Gospel, above all, is one that is based upon reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:8), the bringing together of those separated from the gracious fellowship God offers to all through a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ (Matthew 11:28-29).

Joy and I, Bryan and Cheryl and Steve and Kathy have sought to do this in Spiritwatch Ministries for the past decade. We have all seen and beheld how the spiritual darkness Jesus warned us would come has claimed the lives of so many in the cults and culture of today. And each of us in our church outreaches and personal discernment ministries have done what we can to walk with Jesus so we can take a stand for the truth and then run to the battles where souls have stumbled as angels of light bearing false doctrine and practice blind them. God willing, we hope to continue to do so as time goes by.

In the next few days, we'll be backing up to punt .. I want to focus upon the ABC's of our ministerial ethos and examine just what the last days apostasy is a bit more. In this blog, I've been writing as if many who visit assume that they know what that is. I've responded to various news items that show signs of it all around us. But in the next day or two, I want to start addressing what the Bible says about this apostasy, and why the church today is increasingly a bigger player in it then ever before .. just as Jesus warned it would be.

Facing The Music: When The Church Has To Discern Itself

The Lausanne Movement is a massive global effort of evangelicals who are dead serious about world evangelization with the Gospel of Jesus Christ who have been working together to reach the world for almost fifty years. It is a massive and global effort involving hundreds of Christian ministries seeking to motivate and spark renewed efforts in obeying Christ's commands to ensure that the "Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world

They are preparing to have only their third congress in that time in Capetown, South Africa in 2010. Lausanne describes itself in the following:

Throughout its history, the Lausanne Movement has intentionally avoided building a large bureaucratic organization. Instead it strives to be a dynamic, catalytic force that propels a movement of like-minded missional Christians who pray, plan and work together on global evangelization.

Since 1974, dozens of Lausanne-related global, regional, and topical conferences have been convened all over the world. Global gatherings include the Consultation on World Evangelization (Pattaya 1980), Conference of Young Leaders (Singapore 1987), Lausanne II (Manila 1989), The Forum for World Evangelisation (Pattaya 2004) and The Younger Leaders Gathering (Malaysia 2006). Lausanne has also inspired a constellation of regional networks and topical conferences such as the Asia Lausanne Committee on Evangelism (ALCOE), Chinese Coordination Center for World Evangelisation (CCCOWE), three Nigerian congresses on world evangelization, and eight international consultations on Jewish evangelism.

The Lausanne Theology Working Group (LTWG) is right now working to prepare for the 2010 congress. Who is the LTWG? They are a steering committee of Christian leaders and theologians who work together before their meetings to hammer out the doctrinal issues that the congresses are meant to consider.

The Lausanne Theology Working Group (TWG) serves the whole Lausanne Movement by ensuring that its passion for mission strategy and activism is grounded in careful theological reflection, and by challenging evangelical theology to have biblical effectiveness for holistic mission in the spirit of the Lausanne Covenant. The TWG has a core steering committee drawn from around the world and convenes small annual international consultations and several regional ones. Currently the TWG is working with the leadership of Lausanne in preparation for Lausanne III, in Cape Town 2010, by engaging in careful theological examination of each phrase in the Lausanne motto, “The Whole Church taking the Whole Gospel to the Whole World.”

What is powerfully significant is that Lausanne's TWG found it important enough to have to grapple with the doctrines loved by so many in the Charismatic and Pentecostal worlds, the "prosperity gospel" and release a statement on it to help provide a framework for Lausanne 2010 to discuss it upon.

The importance they assign to it, however, isn't very encouraging to the passengers of the Full Gospel ship. The LTWG's statement can be found here in full. We lament at having to post this below.

We further recognize that there are some dimensions of prosperity teaching that have roots in the Bible, and we affirm such elements of truth below. We do not wish to be exclusively negative, and we recognize the appalling social realities within which this teaching flourishes and the measure of hope it holds out to desperate people. However, while acknowledging such positive features, it is our overall view that the teachings of those who most vigorously promote the 'prosperity gospel' are false and gravely distorting of the Bible, that their practice is often unethical and unChristlike, and that the impact on many churches is pastorally damaging, spiritually unhealthy, and not only offers no lasting hope, but may even deflect people from the message and means of eternal salvation. In such dimensions, it can be soberly described as a false gospel.
We call for further reflection on these matters within the Christian Church, and request the Lausanne movement to be willing to make a very clear statement rejecting the excesses of prosperity teaching as incompatible with evangelical biblical Christianity.

Read it and weep. Thanks to the American church, the Gospel of Christ is being daily perverted and twisted and then neatly packaged as the latest thing from heaven to vast populaces of Christians dwelling everywhere in both Africa and the world. A Christian missionary painfully recounts here how the prosperity gospel cancer is defiling the Body of Christ in Zambia

I highly doubt that men like Rod Parsley, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland or Paul Crouch will give the LTWG the time of day though.

What Would Tommy Do? The Advance of Adventism At The Expense Of Truth

As I've often said here, when the End Time Apostasy comes knocking at your door, truth is usually the first thing brushed aside by the eager gush of friendly, sincere crowds who want to come calling and "share." It's the first casualty in a cheerfully grim war of spiritual attrition in which heretics are no longer identified - they're welcomed as guests at the the table.

Last month, a Seventh Day Adventist publishing house announced the launch of a brand new study Bible using the New King James Version text. The SDA Church, in case you are unaware of it, was born out of the proselytizing efforts of its founder, the alleged "prophetess" Ellen G. White, whose legalism and exclusivism is legendary around the world. Rejecting both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and assuming themselves to be the only true "remnant" of God's people on the earth (because of their adherence to a Saturday Sabbath and White's free reinterpretation of Jewish dietary laws as binding upon Christians today), the SDA Church's legalistic approach to the Christian faith well known, yet almost universally overlooked by the non discerning church today. The latitude given to White's skewed interpretation of Christianity borders is both illegitimate and unbiblical, and the unbelievable deference given to her teachings has led many of them to hail her as the "Spirit of Prophecy."

For generations, hordes of SDA evangelists have endlessly conducted"Bible prophecy" seminars in efforts to raid members from established Christian churches, as well as penetrate the world with the gospel according to Ellen G. White. The strident and almost cultic exclusivism driving the SDA vision has left many a victim in its wake and far too many people who've honestly questioned and striven against its challenges to ignore the Biblical and logical answers to Adventist errors. What many of these same people are also unaware of is how the Watchtower Society is an offshoot of the SDA movement itself, abandoning the "prophetess" Ellen G. White's alleged prognosticatory power for that of "pastor" Charles Taze Russell, who was as obsessed with Biblical chronologies and Bible prophecy as she was.

So it was no surprise again, with what Jesus has said about these dark times in Matthew 24, that we'd eventually find a major Christian publishing house, no less then the venerable Thomas Nelson Publishing house, creating a study Bible for Seventh Day Adventists. In doing so, they created a brand new marketing tool that will enable them to penetrate more homes then ever with the legalistic deception of White's questionable doctrine and false prophecy. Creatively restated and recrafted for a new generation of Christians conditioned by a backslidden and media-dependent church to read Bible study notes to glean truth and not rely upon God's Word as taught by God's Spirit (John 14:26), it will fly:

Yes, the new Remnant Study Bible (NKJV) has all the study aids serious Bible students have come to expect from their study Bibles — but it goes way beyond that. Way beyond.

For the first time ever, the masterful commentary of E. G. White is now included alongside the Bible text! You’ll also find a complete array of other unique Bible study aids, such as a complete set of Chain Reference Bible Studies and detailed sections on prophetic symbols, the prophecies of Daniel, and the awe-inspiring sanctuary services.

Remnant Publications, the publishing house behind this project, makes abundantly clear where they are coming from, in that they are unashamedly advocating SDA doctrine. Thomas Nelson, says this about their allegedly Christian focus, sounding more like a greeting card company run by Joel Osteen or Kahlil Gibran :

At Thomas Nelson, we believe that we exist to inspire the world. We believe that the world desperately needs inspiration—the right kind of inspiration—and that we are a conduit for change.

To make this personal and memorable, we have reduced this to a slogan: “We inspire the world.” Here’s how we understand each phrase of this statement.

“We”

The pronoun “we” emphasizes our commitment to teamwork. We cannot accomplish God’s purpose for our company on our own. It takes more than a handful of star performers. It takes all of us, collectively working together, each employing our unique gifts, to fulfill our calling.

“Inspire”

According to the dictionary, “inspire” means

1. To affect or guide; 2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion; 3. To be the cause or source of; bring about.

All of these meanings are relevant to our purpose as a company:

• First, we want our products—books, videos, and conferences—to affect people. We are not in the business of merely entertaining our audiences or “tickling their ears.” Instead, we want our products to have a positive impact on consumers. In addition, we live in a day when people are desperate for direction and advice. As a result, we want our products to provide practical guidance.
• Second, we want our products to have a positive emotional impact. Emotions are not something to disparage or disregard. They can be the very thing that provide the impetus for action. Inspired emotions can lead to noble actions. We want to intentionally stimulate (though not manipulate) those kinds of emotions through the products we produce.
• Third, we want our products to be a source of real change, both in individuals and in our larger culture. Looking back over our lives, most of us recognize that real change frequently came about as a result of the books we read, the conferences we attended, or both. These types of products provide an opportunity to affect deep and lasting change.

It is interesting to note that the word inspire originally came from the Greek work theopneustos. It literally means “God-breathed” (Theos, God, and pneo, to breathe). This is particularly fitting for our company, since we acknowledge that God is the ultimate Source of inspiration. We want our products to be a means by which God breathes new life into His world.

With that reverent coda, the publishers at Thomas Nelson no doubt want to impress upon us that their core mission - the creation of Christian literature that God uses to "breathe new life" into the world - is one which Christians should trust.

The problem is that Thomas Nelson betrays an obscene naivete, gross negligence, or immoral indifference when agreeing to this project - or is guilty of all three. SDA doctrine is a distortion of Christian doctrine and has created untold amounts of unbiblical legalism that have plagued the SDA Church and all who have come under its orbit. 

It's fascinating to note that Mr. Nelson, who founded the company in London in 1798, was of sturdy Scottish Covenanter stock and that the Covenanters' had rejected the King of England as the head of the Christian Church there and steadfastly asserted that Jesus Christ alone stood in that authority. The Covenanters endured these "Killing Times" as a result, enduring persecution, civil strife and civil war that dragged on as a result of their unbending rejection of human authority over their faith. 

What would Tommy do if he was alive today to see the company he started to now being used to champion another agenda to exalt a purely human authority over the Christian faith? And what might that old Scottish Christian might think in a day in which that same kind of human authority, having no temporal power of state to back it, can easily litigate to shut the voices of dissent off?

What would Tommy do?

Did Christianity Cause The Crash?

Don't laugh.

It probably didn't help as much as it should have.
In a allegedly "Christian" land whose financial foundations were supposedly engineered by a historically rigid and pious Protestant work ethic, the religion supposedly serving the Faith of our Fathers seems to show an awful lot of wear in these recessional days. Especially when the Prosperity Gospel is what's being preached from the pulpits of today.

Yes, you heard me and yes, you can give it some thought yourself by checking out this painfully honest and all too illuminating essay here. Frankly, I'm not just outraged, disturbed and angry. I'm just not surprised. Faking it til you make it has reached a whole new level of cultural delusion among the "children of light," which is why the "children of this world" still possess a level of wealth that is supposed to be possessed by confession of those same well-lit King's Kids.

What Would Jesus Buy? Just In Time For The Holidays!

Well, it's Christmas time again. And while I hate to spit in anyone's figgy pudding, it must be firmly noted this Advent season that America is not a Christian nation, becoming more profane and pagan by the day. On Black Friday and every Shopping Day since, millions of Americans are thinking more about Stuff then the Savior the Christmas season is to herald. I assure you, the only opening prayers at the gates of the Big Boxes uttered were that people got in and didn't get trampled to death by the hordes of materialistic people behind them.

If even a fraction of the estimated 60 to 70 billion dollars of discretionary income people pump into the chimera's maw of Christmas shopping was diverted to clothe the homeless, improve a widow's shattered house, or feed hungry people, it might truly be more of a holiday season.

Instead, we lose ourselves in the minutiae of glittery cultural trapping and forget that for much of the rest of the world, where Christians live daily under threat of death or imprisonment in slave labor, Christmas is just a way to line their pockets from the wealth of the distracted West. The packaging becomes the Reason for the Season. Christ is the kid in the manger hidden behind the gaily wrapped Play Station, power tool or Mudd boots.

Merry Christmas.

Seriously Overdue Update Department

I can't believe it's been that long since I've last blogged. Well, New Year's resolution # 5 .. blog more (resolutions 1-4 are private and will remain so).

One of my other ones is .. Reach out more .. Be even more available. You can email me direct at rafael (at) spiritwatch.org.

I've already been at it the past few months, which is why I haven't been blogging.

It's been an interesting year, between helping spiritually abused people, writing and updating the Spiritwatch article list - primarily in our Strange Fires section - and engaging in counseling sessions as well. It's been also an intriguing year keeping abreast of the rumblings in Remnant Fellowship and fielding media inquiries about them as well as withstanding yet another attempt by Gwen Shamblin and her sycophantic lieutenant Tedd Anger to litigate me into silence over their authoritarian ways (to no effect, we will continue to exercise our First Amendment rights). I haven't yet found Shamblin's lawyer trashing me on blogs yet, so maybe's he's busy buying printer toner or something.

We also were invited to help plan and execute a discernment conference for Spanish speaking Churches of God in South Carolina in Anderson. We laid a foundation for discernment using teaching on sound doctrine, critical thinking and a review of what spiritual deception is which we will build upon in our next trip there (hopefully sometime early next year) on cultism itself. We understand that aside from the LDS and JW heresies, the apostolic Oneness movement as well as assaults by the cultic La Luz Del Mundo movement have been a great problem for Spanish speaking Christians in the area. We want to be ready to address those.

I preached on cultism at our local church, the South Cleveland Church of God as well and hopefully will be preaching a lot more there and in other venues in the future. I wanted to post here on that but was so busy preparing for that and never got a chance. Hopefully, we will be returning soon there.

This next Sunday, December 20, I will be preaching a Christmas message at the Third Street Church of God in Fort Wayne, Indiana . If you're in the area, it would be a pleasure to see you there. Pastor Truman Smith and his wife are dear friends of ours, a mentor in the faith and someone whose ministry has been a great blessing to Fort Wayne for many years.

The Lord willing, we intend to be more visible and more involved here on the blog this next year and everywhere else we can. It's the last days. We need to keep pointing and working for the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6) while we still can ..

agape

rafael

The Never Ending Story: Another Perspective On The Jonestown Tragedy

There isn't much about the absolutely horrific tragedy at Jonestown that hasn't already been said. The deaths of over 900 people in an orgy of religiously stoked suicide and murder in the jungles of Guyana initiated at the demonically warped whim of a cult leader named Jim Jones on November 17, 1978 have long ago become a cautionary epic in our cultural mindset about how twisted human nature can be.

Allusions and references to the utterly mind shattering atrocity of the deeds of that dark day are now just another part of the lore and language we use to describe the indescribable power of spiritual deception. But no matter how familiar the horrors of death by cultism may ever seem to be, one thing that never ceases to profoundly arrest me .. or any other human being with a heart and soul .. is the power of the account of a personal testimony about it. It pulls away the blunted edge of the social cancer it describes and reveals how razor sharp it's foul appendages actually can be. The sting of the scorpion becomes once again a strike into naked, unshielded human flesh and spirit that cannot be defended against.

Such is this long forgotten account of one family's descent into the hell that Jim Jones' deviancy prepared for them. You will not easily be able to read this - but you will learn again how the Pied Pipers of our time dance to their tune.