Lord Veritas

Mobile Truth

2009-05-08T21:53:00.004+09:30

Hard Truth

2008-09-25T22:07:00.001+09:30

John Piper says it so well...

". . . softening hard truth for evangelism in public undermines truth for the waffling believer in private.

I think in general this is what cultural adapters fail to realize: making the truth more palatable for unbelievers to help them make a step toward orthodoxy serves even more (it seems historically) to help loosely orthodox people feel how unpalatable orthodoxy is and move away from it."

(H.T. Ligon)

True (?) Prosperity Gospel

2008-09-25T21:53:00.003+09:30

Michael has a great post over at imonk.

“I live in the same world as you do; a world with the same problems, the same questions and the same kinds of pain and failure. God doesn’t provide some kind of insurance or protection from this world, and Christians aren’t wise enough to understand or fix everything in this world. In some ways, you (atheists) may be wiser than any one of us. What we have to offer is the gospel of Jesus, and the truth of the gospel isn’t a pay off in this world. Whatever changes the Gospel makes in us, we remain human, fallen and in need of final rescue, redemption and resurrection. There is plenty wrong with us, and some of it is shocking and terrible. In this world, we’re on a pilgrimage to follow Jesus, to love neighbor and to live our lives in an authentically human way.”
What’s scary about that paragraph? It refutes the real prosperity gospel.

That’s why it scares me.

(H.T. Internetmonk)

My Dad in Glory

2008-04-06T15:22:00.003+09:30

Today we pay tribute and celebrate the life of my Dad. To many, who have been so kind to support us and who remember him fondly, he was a friend; a mentor; a teacher; a preacher; an uncle; a grand-father; a brother; a father-in-law; a father; a husband; and most importantly he was a man of God. This was an underlying bedrock foundation upon which his whole life was securely grounded.

On the 17 January 1931 he was born of the flesh. At the age of 21 he was born of the Spirit. On the 21 March 2008 his body ceased to live. However, reports of his death are wildly exaggerated, as he his now more alive than ever. Since he was a young man and responded to the grace of God he has always lived his life with a passionate goal of being faithful to his Saviour. From very humble and poor beginnings in Bowral to his earlier days of ministry and adventures in the primitive western highlands of Papua New Guinea to counselling hardened criminals and prisoners he has always acted selflessly and peacefully working to the best of his ability and beyond at the work that God had prepared for him. He thanked God for his family and felt privileged to care for them deeply, all the while so pleased that all his family individually shared a common faith. Over all the poor health he has endured and suffered over the past 35 years or so he has always considered his life a blessing and would not change anything. All the good and bad times have sculpted him into the man and father whom I loved dearly. He was not a man of opinion as these can often change over time or be swayed by fickle aspects and influences. He was a man of conviction. He always spoke and acted out of deep conviction of his belief in a loving faithful God. Nothing could change his God-given conviction. As G. K. Chesterton said, "If a man doesn't stand for something, he will fall for anything." No one could push over my Dad. My Dad was a larger than life character who stood strong and faithful and always humble to praise God. He could not do otherwise as he stood int he shadow of the Cross.

As kids growing up we did not have much also and Mum and Dad would often go hungry so that we could eat. We were pretty poor amongst our community – but we had a richness of life to which nothing could compare.

Not long ago at a church service one Sunday the preacher asked the congregation if anyone had seen an angel. Now the preacher was probably speaking rhetorically but my Dad, without hesitation, spoke out in his usual loud, bold voice of conviction - "Seen an Angel? I married an Angel !" He could not have been more true as my Mum really is an Angel. She has faithfully loved, supported, prayed over and cared for Dad and all of her kids all our lives and the last 12 months have been extremely taxing on her as she continued to care for Dad in all his terrible pain. The self-effacing angel she is, thanks God for all His blessings upon their lives and gives God the glory and thanks of upholding her through the tough times. I thank God for such wonderful parents.

John Bunyan describes how Christian enters the Kingdom of Heaven – and I can see my Dad walking along with Christian:

The King then commanded to open the gate, That the righteous nation, said he, which keepeth the truth, may enter in. Now I saw in my dream my Dad and Christian walk in at the gate: and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There was also that met them with harps and crowns, and gave them to them -- the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them, Enter ye into the joy of your Lord. I also heard my Dad and Christian, and they sang with a loud voice, saying, Blessing and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth Upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever. Now, just as the gates were opened to let them in, I looked in after them, and, behold, the City shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men, with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden saxophones to sing praises withal. There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord. And after that they shut up the gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them.

More like a close shave

2008-03-04T23:34:00.003+10:30

than shearing season - but then again some people are just as dumb as sheep.

".. Hinn ... is a professional, so he and his minders have got this fraud game down pat. Book your own venue. Promote yourself on your own TV show. A few local churches will happily oblige with further publicity, even volunteers and would have prepared the suckers for a reaping with their own brand of prosperity gospel teaching (local churches like the Assemblies of God, Christian City Church and most independent pentecostal churches). And quickly weed out the imposters at the rally.

And note how it is done: after hyping up the crowd, then fleecing them, comes the promotional side show of "healing miracles". The minders screen those who claim they have been healed for the obligatory interview and fall down. Only the 100% healed get on stage.
But that is how Hinn "stays clean". It's because they say they are healed. And everyone in the auditorium believes them. Hinn just says "praise the Lord and pass me your cheque book".

H.T. Saint

Soon - The Saviour

2007-12-22T22:55:00.000+10:30

We all come with different personal feelings to the Christmas festival. One comes with pure joy as he looks forward to this day of rejoicing, and friendships renewed and of love. That is true of most children. Others look for a moment of peace under the Christmas tree, peace from the pressures of daily work. They want to dream of times and days long past. They want to forget all the unpleasant happenings around them and see the world only in the light of the Christmas tree, they want to hear the old Christmas carols. They long for this blessed forgetfulness. Others again approach Christmas with great apprehension. It will be no festival of joy for them. Personal sorrow is painful especially on this day for those whose loneliness is deepened at Christmas time. Human hearts feel things in the lights of the Christmas tree in so many different ways. And it is surely right that each of us should for a while look around at the outside world. Perhaps, this year, something wonderful will occur, that will help us to celebrate Christmas. Before our eyes stand the crowds of unemployed, the millions of children throughout the world in hunger and distress, the hunger in China, the oppressed in India and in our own unhappy land. All eyes tell us of helplessness and despair. And despite it all, Christmas comes. Whether we wish it or not, whether we are sure or not, we must hear the words once again: Christ the Saviour is here! The world that Christ comes to save is our fallen and lost world. None other.

Wonderfully have you dealt with me,
blends of bitterness and sweet to see.
Let me through the veil of death behold,
My people at their festival bold.
God, into your eternities going,
I see my people march with freedom glowing.
You who punish sin and forgive readily,
God, you know I have loved this people steadily.
That I have borne their shame and sacrifice
and seen their salvation - will suffice.
Hold, support me, I lose my stave,
faithful God, prepare me for the grave.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - 21 December 1930

The weight of waiting

2007-10-27T18:56:00.000+09:30

Celebrating Advent means learning how to wait. Waiting is an art which our impatient age has forgotten. We want to pluck the fruit before it has had time to ripen. Greedy eyes are soon disappointed when what they saw as luscious fruit is sour to the taste. In disappointment and disgust they throw it away. The fruit, full of promise rots on the ground. It is rejected without thanks by disappointed hands.

The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfilment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.

Who has not felt the anxieties of waiting for the declaration of friendship or love? The greatest, the deepest, the most tender experiences in all the world demand patient waiting. This waiting is not in emotional turmoil, but gently growing, like the emergence of spring, like God's laws, like the germinating of a seed.

Not all can wait - certainly not those who are satisfied, contented and feel that they live in the best of all possible worlds! Those who learn to wait are uneasy about their way of life, but yet have seen a vision of greatness in the world of the future and are patiently expecting its fulfilment.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - 2 December 1928.

Chesterton Chestnuts

2007-10-01T00:05:00.000+09:30

Some champion truth but have no mercy. Others dispense mercy at the expense of truth. But perhaps the greatest damage done by disconnected virtues is the skewing of our sense of humility. Modesty is no longer related to ambition, but to conviction. We were intended to doubt ourselves but not the truth, but humility now seems to imply that one cannot believe he possesses the truth.

Our day is marked by misplaced goodness, righteous sentiments which are all out of proportion. The danger we now face is the self-destruction of intellect. If there is no validity in human thought, then there is nothing to be gained by thinking. Reason requires us to believe that our thinking is truly related to reality, a conviction which the modern skeptic has lost. And this loss of faith reduces all thinking to a pointless exercise.

The role of religious authority was to defend reason, to keep mankind from spiraling into this nothingness of skepticism. The reason for the creeds and the crusades was to protect reason, not to obliterate it. Religion and reason are intimately connected because both are founded on a faith which cannot be proven. When the former was rejected, a dynamic was set in motion which would destroy the latter as well.

Current philosophy, then, is more than insane; it is suicidally insane. Even as it heralds the coming of free thought, it writes its epitaph. We cannot move on to a greater skepticism than that which questions our own existence and the reality of reality. This is not a beginning. It is an end, a dead end...

...Christianity offers us a rigid exterior which protects an inner core of joy and abandonment, whereas modern philosophy offers us all of the beauty of emancipation on the outside, but the inner void is deep and dark. Materialism finds no meaning or romance in the universe, for without limits there can be no danger. Adventure exists only in the land of authority, but never in the land of intellectual anarchy.

This brings us to a final but important thought. The great paradox of our faith is that we are not ourselves. Due to the Fall, our normal condition is not normal at all. We can appreciate this truth, however, only when we begin to recover our true selves. Orthodoxy leads us to that recovery, and that recovery leads us to joy.

Most men find happiness in little things but despair in the big ones. This situation, however, is all upsidedown. Joy should be the norm and melancholy the exception. When we embrace orthodoxy and find meaning in the universe, we also find joy. And once that joy is ours, we know that we are finally right-side-up.

Anti-Gospel

2007-09-02T14:03:00.000+09:30

You will not hear about dark nights of the soul from the likes of Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen and Paula White (who, with her husband, is treating their divorce this week like a hiccup that doesn't matter much to their "ministry" aims -- which means keeping the gravy train running).
My money is on the ~~business folding~~ congregation being told that after 18 years, ~~they've been milked dry and~~ they should be all grown up enough to pay their own way in life.
You will not hear about the real world and the real gospel in response to it from these charlatans because they are afraid you might actually become satisfied in Christ and tire of their lies. They need you discontent so that you will still need them to pick you up.
And if you think this crap is limited to the name-it-claim-it crowd, you are mistaken. It has been creeping into our evangelical churches for years, and you see this discontentment with the Gospel every time you hear a message that treats the Bible like an advice column or a self-help quote book or that treats worship like a performance. Any time the purpose of worship is YOU, you might as well be getting the holy spirit pixie dust from Rod Parsley. It's the same false gospel, just packaged for a different crowd....
Dear God, make us crave the gospel, make us desire grace, make us satisfied in and with You alone for Your glory alone. Make us satisfied -- joyously, exuberantly, righteously satisfied -- in Your Son for Your glory.

(H.T. iMonk and Jared and Saint)

Pulpit Pimping for Prosperity

2007-09-01T14:27:00.000+09:30

Mega-churches have spawned the inevitable rise of mega-pastors. There is nothing inherently wrong with having a large church or being the pastor of a large church. But the how and why are more important. A lot of churches are being constructed and run more like a business than a church and those in promulgation of the false gospel of prosperity pimping are tainting all evangelical preachers with a similar brush. Soon to be released by Reuben Armstrong is the book Snakes in the Pulpit who highlights four prominent pastors saying they are "deceiving true believers" and "..these four pastors are using the word of God to manipulate the true believers for fame and fortune..." The fame and finances generally don't travel far from the pockets of these style of pimping preachers. Now without trying very hard there are many more high profile names that could go on his list of preachers who are more obsessed with pimping their pulpit. Those pulpit sharing impastors who go on the lucrative preaching circuit (or is that circus - you be the judge) inviting such style of preacher to fleece their flock in return for the reciprocated opportunity to do likewise on prosperity promotion tours.

(H.T. Think Christian)

True interpretation

2007-07-19T23:47:00.000+09:30

My focus on NT studies has been largely historical and I have only approached theological questions well-after thoroughly engaging the historical horizon of the biblical texts. But what of theological interpretation and its value? I understand theological interpretation to be the model of interpretation that focuses on the ecclesial context in which Scripture was written and its utility for answering the theological questions confronted by its ecclesial readers, ancient and modern, when reading these texts. That means that one consciously approaches the NT not simply as a historical artifact as any other, nor as a source book for creating religious dogma, but as a document created by Christians and for Christians that speaks fundamentally a word from God and about God. A sympathetic reading of Scripture means that faith and theological perspectives can never be divorced from reading and research of the message of the Bible itself. That does not require jettisoning the historical horizon or blanketing them with theological issues, but theological readings are not ancillary to the task of reading Scripture in and for the church.

(H.T Euangelion)

John Piper on the prosperity gospel

2007-07-14T20:12:00.001+09:30

H.T. The Christian Mind

The Lost Gospel

2007-07-12T20:52:00.000+09:30

I've been reading a bit of what Tom is talking and walking about - makes good sense - maybe others should be on the same page.

I am much more hopeful of those whose commitment to Scripture's authority is not mixed with political ambition or misguided bureaucratic loyalties. Honest evangelicals know that something is horribly wrong in our corporate life. Too many evangelical churches are spiritually unhealthy due to the extended neglect of basic biblical teachings, principles and practices. At the top of this list is the Gospel itself.

When we interview perspective church members, we always ask them to give us a brief explanation of the Gospel. Some of the answers that we have received--even from long-time members of conservative evangelical churches--have only confirmed in my mind that the Gospel has been significantly neglected in much of American evangelicalism over the last generation. If you want to liven up your next Sunday School party, ask people to take 2 minutes and write down a simple statement of what the Gospel is. Then collect those papers and read them aloud. It will be better--and potentially more profitable--than pictionary! It will probably also be very sobering.

The Gospel is all about Jesus Christ. I teach the people I serve to think of it simply like this: It is the message of Who Christ is, What He has done, and Why it matters. Answering these questions from the Scripture will provide an outline of the biblical Gospel.

Here is a summary of my concerns about spheres in which we have lost or are losing the Gospel in our day.

1. In preaching
I took several hours last spring to listen to a number of SBC seminary chapel sermons. I heard lots about leadership, commitment, courage, faithfulness, sheep, shepherds, prayer and devotion, I heard very little of Jesus Christ. Often Christ was mentioned almost as an afterthought. I realize that this is far from a scientific study (but if you are interested in one that corroborates my concerns about Southern Baptist preaching, see Marsha Whitten's All is Forgiven) but the sermons were preached by well-known and highly respected Southern Baptist pastors. It is not unreasonable to expect that their sermons to seminarians would be carefully prepared. Assuming that to be the case, I came away from my exercise rather discouraged.

Here is an experiment that I recommend. Get a simple outline of the Gospel in your mind and listen to the sermons preached in your church (even if you are the preacher!) or other churches and try to determine to what degree the Gospel is the basis of them. Too often only some facts related to the Gospel are tacked on at the end of a message in order to justify some kind of altar call, but the Gospel itself is not foundational to it. If a sermon would play just as well in a Kingdom Hall or Jewish Synagogue as it would in a Baptist church, you can be sure it is void of the Gospel.
2. In Christian living
Very often the Gospel is viewed only as the threshhold into the Christian life by which one must enter the kingdom. Once in, however, the Gospel loses its importance. Where this happens in conservative churches moralism tends to gain preeminence and Christianity tends to be conceived in terms of rules and requirements. In moderate and liberal churches sentimentalism tends to reign and attitudes and actions are evaluated in terms of how "loving" they feel. Do not misunderstand--the Christian life includes both rules and especially love (rightly understood, of course), but the Christian life is based on neither. It is based on Jesus Christ--who He is, what He has done and why it matters. That is why we are called to live by faith. Faith in what? Or whom? The person and work of Christ. This is also why Paul could write, "For to me, to live is Christ." Christ was life for Paul because the Gospel had come to him in power. Read the ethical portions of the New Testament to see how the Apostles exhorted the early church to holy living. It wasn't by moralistic teaching. They teach the law on the basis of the Gospel. I see very little concern for the relationship between law and Gospel in Southern Baptist life today. The reason, I believe, is due to the removal of the Gospel from the heart of Christian living.
3. In our churches
The Gospel is the power of God to save all who believe. Churches are to be comprised of those who testify to having experienced this saving power. Of all the sectors of evangelicalism, Baptists most certainly should stand firm on this point. Yet, simply take an honest look at our churches--even good, "Bible-believing," "flagship" SBC churches. What do you find more often than not? Bloated church rolls with twice as many members as regular attenders. The overwhelming majority of our churches have neglected Gospel order, taking cues more from the marketing world or corporate America or therapeutic professions than from Scripture. John Dagg, the first writing theologian among Southern Baptists put this in his Treatise on Church Order, "When discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it." If he is correct, then how many Christless churches might we have within our ranks? Read Revelation 2 and 3 to see that Jesus Himself warns of this possibility. If the candlestick has been removed from a local church then the Gospel has been taken with it.
So, have we lost the Gospel? I think we have, in many ways. I know this seems like a harsh judgment, but I do not make it with any joy or intent to harm or even embarass. Neither am I suggesting that every church or evangelical (or denominational) entity has lost the Gospel. Rather, I am suggesting that the Gospel has been forgotten, misunderstood, undervalued and marginalized by many churches and ministries that consider themselves evangelical. We can no longer assume that we know the Gospel and prize it as the transforming power of God that saves all who believe. Such assumption, I fear, has contributed to the Gospel's demise in many churches.

Why even raise this question, knowing that it will inevitably provoke the angst of some brothers and sisters whom I respect and tempt them to dismiss me as a crank or some kind of helpless malcontent? I do so because it is simply too important to leave unaddressed. Too much is at stake. The glory of God in the salvation of sinners is at stake. So is the eternal destiny of many who may think that they are right with God but who are merely religious (Matthew 7:21-23).

If I am right in my suspicions, then all of the many other issues that are clamoring for our attention right now in SBC life and beyond are minor in comparison to this. If we have lost the Gospel, or are losing it, then nothing else matters.

H.T. Founders

Watching Closely

2007-07-11T20:35:00.000+09:30

Here is an excerpt of an interview of Dr Tom Ascol - worth the repeating and worth the application to all of our lives. See this also for similar theme.

What practical steps should be taken by preachers to "watch their life and doctrine closely"?
Recognize that this admonition is given to us for a reason. Every preacher should remember that better men than we will ever be have fallen into grievous sin and error. Ministers need the gospel as much as anyone and we must learn to live by the grace of God in Jesus Christ every day. We need to deal with our sin daily and trust Christ for forgiveness daily. We must fight against every tendency to resign ourselves to professionalism in ministry. As Robert Murray M'Cheyne said, my people's greatest need is their pastor's personal holiness. Dealing daily with our hearts before the Lord is not optional. This work does not compete with my ministry, it is a vital part of my ministry.

Using trustworthy catechisms and confessions can help guard our doctrinal commitments. Such documents are not infallible, but they provide guardrails which we should overrun, if ever, only with great caution and clear biblical warrant.

The New Testament warns us about the subtlety of error. If false teaching isn't always obvious how can we keep ourselves from being deceived?

The best way to avoid being deceived is to be well-grounded in sound doctrine. Becoming vitally connected to a good church is the means which God has provided to provide this.

Why does God allow his church to be troubled by false teachers?

Deuteronomy 13:1-4 indicates that one purpose false teachers serve is to provide a test for the devotion of God's people. Paul makes a similar point in 1 Corinthians 11:19 when he indicates that factions (heresies) within a church are necessary to prove the faithfulness of genuine followers of Christ.

Have you been surprised that the point of attack in evangelicalism over the last fifteen years has been over doctrines that are central to evangelical orthodoxy?

No. Evangelicalism lost its center long ago in its pursuit of relevance and acceptability to the popular and academic cultures. When the gospel has been forgotten and theology has been marginalized, we should not be surprised to fundamental doctrines attacked and discarded.

Are the denials of eternal punishment, penal substitution, and justification by faith alone the "unpaid debts" of the church? Are they a sign that evangelicals did a bad job of teaching these doctrines or is there some other dynamic at work?

I think they are an indication that we have too long assumed that we know what we believe and why. Attacks on such core doctrines as these are a call to reexamine our convictions in the light of the Bible and to decide whether or not we really do believe what we have professed and too often assumed. Of course, while we can never shirk our responsibility in this we must also remember that we have an enemy who is the father of lies and loves to deceive people.

How do you pray for those in error?

I ask the Lord to open their eyes and show them the truth.

Is there a point of no return for those who embrace heresies? What are the signs that this line has been crossed?

I operate on the conviction that as long as there is breath there is hope. If the Lord can save me then I have no reason to believe that anyone is beyond the reach of His grace.

H.T. Against Heresies

Real Orthopraxy

2007-06-03T14:37:00.000+09:30

G. K. Chesterton once said that “heresy always affects morality, if it is heretical enough.” It is true to say that any form of error, and not just heresy, will show itself in some form of deficiency or delinquency in the life of the church and the Christian.

But there is a danger with Chesterton's statement. The danger is that we will form in our minds a narrow and set idea of what that immorality will be. And, based on that assumption, we will expect those moving into theological compromise to be immoral only in that particular way. If we follow the logic of Paul in the pastoral epistles we will expect false theologies to produce ungodly behaviour.

Yet in the history of the church there have been those who clearly and definitely embraced and taught error who were known for their personal moral integrity. In fact men as notorious as Pelagius and Faustus Socinus we respected in just this way. You would expect the opposite to be true wouldn't you? But there is more to it than a simple, straightforward, personal moral failure.

In recent writing on orthopraxy there has been a stress on the outworking of orthodoxy in terms of changed Christian behaviour along the lines of the fruit of the Spirit. Sometimes this has been married with an affirmation that this kind of orthopraxy is in fact what orthodoxy is really all about. What has been neglected, in my estimation, is the stress on orthopraxy at the very point where it connects to orthodoxy. This is the kind of orthopraxy that values guarding the good deposit, of being found trustworthy with the mysteries of God, of rightly handling the word of truth, of keeping the faith, of holding firm to the trustworthy word as taught. This also is included in biblical orthopraxy.

Holding to orthodoxy involves more than affirming certain things to be true. Holding to the gospel includes being found faithful and trustworthy is receiving and passing on the gospel as revealed in Scripture. This is genuine orthopraxy.

(H.T. Against Heresies)

A World Split Apart

2007-05-27T22:18:00.000+09:30

Solzhenitsyn's warning of Western decline is as relevant today as it was twenty-five years ago.

Harvard's motto is "VERITAS." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter..

The split in today's world is perceptible even to a hasty glance. Any of our contemporaries readily identifies two world powers, each of them already capable of destroying each other. However, the understanding of the split too often is limited to this political conception: the illusion according to which danger may be abolished through successful diplomatic negotiations or by achieving a balance of armed forces. The truth is that the split is both more profound and more alienating, that the rifts are more numerous than one can see at first glance. These deep manifold splits bear the danger of equally manifold disaster for all of us, in accordance with the ancient truth that a kingdom ---- in this case, our Earth ---- divided against itself cannot stand.

There is the concept of the Third World: thus, we already have three worlds. Undoubtedly, however, the number is even greater; we are just too far away to see. Every ancient and deeply rooted self-contained culture, especially if it is spread over a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes a self-contained world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking.

But the persisting blindness of superiority continues to hold the belief that all the vast regions of our planet should develop and mature to the level of contemporary Western systems, the best in theory and the most attractive in practice; that all those other worlds are but temporarily prevented (by wicked leaders or by severe crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from pursuing Western pluralistic democracy and adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in that direction. But in fact such a conception is a fruit of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, a result of mistakenly measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development bears little resemblance to all this.

The anguish of a divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between the leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not evolving toward each other and that neither one can be transformed into the other without violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this can hardly suit anyone.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

When the modern Western states were being formed, it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. (See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence.) Now at last during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state.

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and in such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.)

The individual's independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed; the majority of the people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about; it has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, preparing them for and summoning them toward physical bloom, happiness, and leisure, the possession of material goods, money, and leisure, toward an almost unlimited freedom in the choice of pleasures. So who should now renounce all this, why and for the sake of what should one risk one's precious life in defense of the common good and particularly in the nebulous case when the security of one's nation must be defended in an as yet distant land?

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.

If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

Today's Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people's right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say about the dark realms of overt criminality? Legal limits (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also some misuse of such freedom. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency ---- all with the support of thousands of defenders in the society. When a government earnestly undertakes to root out terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist's civil rights. There is quite a number of such cases.

This tilt of freedom toward evil has come about gradually, but it evidently stems from a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which man ---- the master of the world ---- does not bear any evil within himself, and all the defects of life are caused by misguided social systems, which must therefore be corrected. Yet strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still remains a great deal of crime; there even is considerably more of it than in the destitute and lawless Soviet society.

Here again, the overriding concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no true moral responsibility for distortion or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to the readership or to history? If they have misled public opinion by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, even if they have contributed to mistakes on a state level, do we know of any case of open regret voiced by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No; this would damage sales. A nation may be the worse for such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. It is most likely that he will start writing the exact opposite to his previous statements with renewed aplomb.

Because instant and credible information is required, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be refuted; they settle into the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed everyday, confusing readers, and then left hanging?

The press can act the role of public opinion or miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters pertaining to the nation's defense publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion into the privacy of well-known people according to the slogan "Everyone is entitled to know everything." (But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.)

Hastiness and superficiality ---- these are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century and more than anywhere else this is manifested in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press; it is contrary to its nature. The press merely picks out sensational formulas.

Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within Western countries, exceeding that of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Yet one would like to ask: According to what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? In the Communist East, a journalist is frankly appointed as a state official. But who has voted Western journalists into their positions of power, for how long a time, and with what prerogatives?

There is yet another surprise for someone coming from the totalitarian East with its rigorously unified press: One discovers a common trend of preferences within the Western press as a whole (the spirit of the time), generally accepted patterns of judgment, and maybe common corporate interests, the sum effect being not competition but unification. Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and that general trend.

Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block dangerous herd development.

It is almost universally recognized that the West shows all the world the way to successful economic development, even though in past years it has been sharply offset by chaotic inflation. However, many people living in the West are dissatisfied with their own society. They despise it or accuse it of no longer being up to the level of maturity by mankind. And this causes many to sway toward socialism, which is a false and dangerous current.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper, and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points.

Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism, as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to numerous observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are telltale symptoms by which history gives warning to a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, a decline of the arts or a lack of great statesmen. Indeed, sometimes the warnings are quite explicit and concrete. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present debility? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing steadily in accordance with its proclaimed social intentions, hand in hand with a dazzling progress in technology. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very foundation of thought in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world in modern times. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was born in the Renaissance and has found political expression since the Age of Enlightenment. It became the basis for political and social doctrine and could be called rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the pro-claimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance was probably inevitable historically: the Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, having become an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. But then we recoiled from the spirit and embraced all that is material, excessively and incommensurately. The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs.

Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.

And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

The communist regime in the East could endure and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who (feeling the kinship!) refused to see communism's crimes, and when they no longer could do so, they tried to justify these crimes. The problem persists: In our Eastern countries, communism has suffered a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and less than zero. And yet Western intellectuals still look at it with considerable interest and empathy, and this is precisely what makes it so immensely difficult for the West to withstand the East.

I am not examining the case of a disaster brought on by a world war and the changes which it would produce in society. But as long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we must lead an everyday life. Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us. I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.

It has made man the measure of all things on earth ---- imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now paying for the mistakes which were not properly appraised at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.

We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West. This is the essence of the crisis: the split in the world is less terrifying than the similarity of the disease afflicting its main sections.

If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on earth evidently must be more spiritual: not a total engrossment in everyday life, not the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then their carefree consumption. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become above all an experience of moral growth: to leave life a better human being than one started it.

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.

Today it would be retrogressive to hold on to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Such social dogmatism leaves us helpless before the trials of our times.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, life will have to change in order not to perish on its own. We cannot avoid reassessing the fundamental definitions of human life and society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities should be ruled by material expansion above all? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our integral spiritual life?

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage. No one on earth has any other way left but ---- upward.
Abridged version of speech 8 June 1978 by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

(H.T. Orthodoxy Today)

You have the right...

2007-05-26T23:39:00.000+09:30

To happiness..? Or do you..? Do I..? Do we..? There are so many people soapboxing about their entitlements to rights or the lack thereof that it is becoming so passé. But where did we get the idea that we have a right to be happy. What if you have had a wonderfully charmed life of blessed existence and prosperity – was that a right that you were entitled to or a right that you earned or a right that other people were supposed to allow you to have? Who says we have any rights at all let alone the right to happiness? And what of the poor wretched tormented soul surviving a tragic existence who can’t even call it a life – do they have a right to be happy?

We have no right to happiness. If we said we have the right to good luck – we would think that strange. If we said we have the right to sadness – even stranger. Do we depend a great deal for our happiness or sadness on circumstances beyond human control? A right to happiness doesn’t make much more sense than a right to be 6’ tall, or to have a millionaire father, or to get good weather whenever you go on a picnic.

A right is a freedom guaranteed to me by the laws of the land and society I live in. I have a right to travel along the public roads because society gives me that freedom; that’s what we mean by calling the roads ‘public’. I can also understand a right as a claim guaranteed me by the laws, and correlative to an obligation on someone else’s part. If I have a right to receive $100 from you, this is another way of saying that you have a duty to pay me $100.

Does one have the right to pursue happiness? Of course man is not entitled to pursue this happiness by any and every means – including murder, rape, robbery, treason, fraud etc; etc. Man is expected to live according to societal laws and within boundaries of legislature – which provides our freedom. Man in his pursuit of happiness has a right to do whatever they have a right to do. Whatever means of pursuing happiness are lawful for any should be lawful for all.

What then is the definition of lawful in this context? What methods of pursuing happiness are either morally permissible by the Law of Nature or should be declared legally permissible by the legislature of a particular nation? Surely people don’t have the unlimited right to happiness?

If we establish a right to happiness, which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behaviour, we do so not because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it. Hence, while bad behaviour is real and works miseries and degradations, the happiness - which was the object of the behaviour - turns out again and again to be illusory. The fatal principle seeps through our whole lives. We advance towards a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche. And then, though our technological skill may help us survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart and will be swept away.

Adapted from C.S. Lewis written shortly before his death.

Aletheia

2007-05-11T23:47:00.000+09:30

"..is the word for truth commonly used in the Christian scriptures ("I am the way, and the aletheia, and the life"; "You shall know the aletheian, and the aletheia shall make you free"), is a lived experience rather than a correspondence function of propositions. Aletheia is an event (actually, we should probably speak of "truthing" rather than "truth") that unconceals Reality or Being. It is a moment of disclosure, of unveiling, of revealing. The Reality unconcealed in an alethic event is God. So truth is God's act of unconcealing or unveiling. When we experience this unconcealing, we experience Truth.

There are three moments in the alethic experience. Aletheia refers to the gracious event of divine unconcealment, to the bringing-forth of that which was concealed, and to our response to that which has been brought forth. Unconcealment is a grace, a revelatory moment in which the doors of spiritual perception are thrown open. It's an outburst of divine invitation which ruptures the ordinary. Bringing-forth is this invitation's disclosure of that which is ultimately Real, the unveiling of the great I AM in our midst, of the Presence whose absolute plenitude defies the mind's usual strategies of classification and definition. Accordingly, our response to the bringing-forth can frequently be one of initial panic (there's a good reason why angeloi, messengers from God, are always telling people "Be not afraid!"). But panic is either swiftly or slowly replaced with a lived sense of the Mystery and Beneficence of the unconcealed Reality. A lived sense, not merely a head or intellectual one. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote, "Christianly understood, truth is obviously not to know the truth but to be the truth." Truth in the alethic sense doesn't just add another item to your cerebral inventory. It suffuses your fiber and transfigures your life. It nudges you toward deification."

(H.T Subversive)

Heaven without Christ?

2007-04-30T21:21:00.000+09:30

"The critical question for our generation - for every generation - is this:

If you could have heaven,

with no sickness
with all the friends you ever had on earth
all the food you ever liked
all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed
all the natural beauties you ever saw
all the physical pleasures you ever tasted
no human conflict
no natural disasters

------------------------could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?"

From God is the Gospel - John Piper

We should never separate what is heaven, what is in heaven and Who is Heaven. So often we think and are told what heaven is or will be like - but the fact is we don't truly know and we won't know till we get there. Our focus, our passion, our desire should always be only Christ. Our rewards or treasure - whatever they may or may not be - can never compare to Christ.

Many people will think that their dear departed loved one who has (we presume) gone to heaven is looking down upon them left here on earth in pain, suffering and grief and is aware and even concerned with how they continue living their lives. This is probably just a sentimental coping mechanism invented by man to comfort one's grief. Surely to look down upon earth would cause pain and heartache seeing mankind in their current condition and if in heaven we have no pain, suffering or sadness then how could that be so? Surely whilst in heaven the last place they would be interested in would be our fallen planet - especially with the wonder and rapture of seeing and being with Christ.

Too often we focus on the 'message' of the Gospel - yes it is good news - yes it is great news - but not enough focus that the Gospel is Christ and our preaching should also focus and centre on Christ. There are many sermons preached that can only be described as pep talks - may we avoid the Christless preaching and return to the One and only Truth and worship Him whom God has lifted up.

W W J R

2007-04-28T00:17:00.000+09:30

According to the acrostic What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) which is now so obsolete and abused we all thought that campaign was history then out came again the similar What Would Jesus Drive which seems to resurface every time a manufacturer brings out a new car and especially when they are now eco-friendly.

Now not to be outdone nor to offend the two-wheeling chopper loving soft-tails I have discovered the next big thang - What Would Jesus Ride?

(H.T. Think Christian)

Book Review: Living Spirituality

2007-04-24T22:29:00.000+09:30

Robbymac does a great review of Living Spirituality by Dr. Greg Laughery. Here's a taste:-

Greg's depiction of impoverished spirituality includes a rather accurate, if stinging, assessment of churches that have become "institutionalized":
"This is partially due to the fact that Christians often seem to be primarily interested in themselves: propogating their programs, building their churches, even manipulating some of their own in order to achieve social status and accomplish their goals and aims. People are left behind in the wake of promising words that give the pretense of care and concern, but translate into intolerable levels of neglect and inconsistent waffling." (page 15)

Many people suffer emotional and spiritual abuse by such self-centred; navel gazing; churchtainment; wealth chasing oriented businesses dressed up in church clothing.

Post-Charismatic - Post-Hype

2007-04-20T23:03:00.000+09:30

In the tradition of Charismatic Defects One and Two.

The more discerned and aware Christians or Jesus-followers (depending on how emerging/missional your persuasion) will recall a good essay written by Robbymac of which below is a sample. Keep a look out for it in book form by Kingsway Publications in a bookstore soon in 07 - should be a good read.

"In some ways they are very akin to the postmodern people I meet who are open to God but indifferent or hostile to church. These self-described post-charismatics are open to the working of the Holy Spirit, but due to excesses and abuses that they have seen or experienced, they are skeptical and even wary of ministries that are charismatic. Further, there are some who have come to a place where they overtly reject – or passively neglect – the more obvious supernatural workings of the Spirit.

It would probably be more accurate to call these people “post-HYPE”. They are tired of hearing great stories about the good old days, jaded from hearing too many prophecies about the great move of God that seems to always be just around the corner, fed up with exaggerated or even fabricated stories of healings and miracles, and disillusioned with a view of spiritual formation that is lived through a weekly crisis moment at the front of the church.

Broadly speaking, there are four major areas that come up repeatedly as reasons for post-charismatics pulling away from their Pentecostal, Charismatic, or Third Wave roots. The four areas are:

1. Abuses and elitism in prophetic ministry, coupled with a “carrot and stick” approach to holiness that many find legalistic, manipulative, and repressive.

2. The excesses of Word Faith teachings (health and wealth, prosperity doctrine) which clash with the emerging generations’ concern for a biblical approach to justice and ministry with the poor.

3. Authoritarianism and hierarchical leadership structures that exist more to control people than to equip the saints for works of service.

4. An approach to spiritual formation (discipleship) that depends on crisis events – whether at “the altar” in a church service, or in a large conference setting – but either neglects or deliberately belittles other means of spiritual maturation (ie. spiritual disciplines)

A saying that I have come to use a great deal in recent years is: “We only deconstruct in order to reconstruct”. As much as postmodernism is a critique of modernism, and the emerging church is a critique, but hopefully much more, of the modern church, I am hoping that a post-charismatic understanding of how the Holy Spirit works in individuals and communities of faith will serve as a critique of charismania excesses and questionable teachings, and lead ultimately to a more mature and balanced understanding, expectation, and functioning in the Spirit of Christ."

(H.T. Next-Wave)

Stretching the Truth

2007-04-07T12:05:00.000+09:30

H.T. David

Circus Pentecostalis

2007-04-03T21:36:00.000+09:30

This keen observer obviously talks from experience:

Among Pentecostals, with whom I’ve fellowshipped for 17 years, I have seen the very best and the very worst evangelical Christianity has to offer. I’m not quite sure why we seem to have such a monopoly on the extremes, but for the individuals I know who were instantly delivered of drug addictions, alcoholism and serious illnesses through the power of the Holy Spirit, there were also the freaks and flakes who thought they deserved pulpit time to showcase their dubious gifts and messages. And I mustn’t neglect to mention the innumerable “shakers and fakers” who made public displays of themselves during services by hollering, yelping, jerking and even trying to throw a punch at someone — all at wholly inappropriate times, and all under the guise of being “moved” by the Holy Spirit.

And she is also not blind to the elephant in the room either:

But we have got some big-time problems.

I know from my own observation that sexual immorality is widespread among Pentecostal clergy, and in many cases no church governance structure exists to do anything about it. Church leadership is frequently passed down in families as though salvation is acquired through DNA.

Prosperity teaching — which, when taught responsibly, can extract people from the mire of poverty mindsets — has degenerated into unabashed greed and charlatanism, with preachers shilling for multilevel marketing schemes that will never benefit the vast majority of the peons who buy into their promises of easy money.

Well-known ministers flaunt the trappings of wealth while Pentecostalism draws in more and more of the desperately poor in the developing world, and believers follow Jesus Christ in jeopardy of their lives in hideously repressive places such as Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and Pakistan while we believe God for a tricked-out Crossfire.

Bible Girl then concludes with:

The recent scandals among Pentecostals have shaken me. I struggle to understand how people who’ve come into contact with the very presence of God through worship, who’ve seen the power of the Holy Spirit at work in miraculous ways, can get involved in such craziness.

The problems continue and will continue to be problems when they pursue such wrong teachings as prosperity doctrine; the inherited church franchise system; the multi-level marketing schemes; the lucrative speaking circuit; the self-grandizing; the spiritual abuse; the lack of financial and ethical accountability; the nepotism; the selective out of context abuse and distortion of scripture verses to self-justify their position; etc etc - the list should never be this long for people who claim to be modeling their life on Jesus and His commands.

(H.T. 4:14)

Believe or Belief in God

2007-04-03T20:40:00.000+09:30

Now belief in God is not the same thing as belief that God exists, or that there is such a thing as God. To believe that God exists is simply to accept a proposition of a certain sort - a proposition affirming that there is a personal being who, let's say, has existed from eternity, is almighty, perfectly wise, perfectly just, has created the world, and loves his creatures. To believe in God, however, is quite another matter. The Apostle's Creed begins thus: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and earth..." One who repeats these words and means what he says is not simply announcing the fact that he accepts a certain proposition as true; much more is involved than that. Belief in God means trusting God, accepting Him, committing one's life to Him. To the believer the entire world looks different. Blue sky, verdant forests, great mountains, surging ocean, friends and family, love in its many forms and various manifestations -- the believer sees these things as gifts from God. The entire universe takes on a personal cast for him; the fundamental truth about reality is truth about a Person. So believing in God is more than accepting the proposition that God exists. Still, it is at least that much. One can't sensibly believe in God and thank Him for the mountains without believing that there is such a person to be thanked, and that He is in some way responsible for the mountains. Nor can one trust in God and commit oneself to Him without believing that He exists: "He who would come to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek Him"(Heb 11:6)

Alvin Plantinga - God, Freedom, and Evil.

Churchtainment

2007-03-27T20:07:00.000+09:30

For centuries the Church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognizing it for what it was—a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability. For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers. So today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven.

Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God. Many churches these days have become little more than poor theatres where fifth-rate ”producers” peddle their shoddy wares with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defense of their delinquency. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.

The great god Entertainment amuses his devotees mainly by telling them stories. The love of stories, which is a characteristic of childhood, has taken fast hold of the minds of the retarded saints of our day, so much so that not a few persons manage to make a comfortable living by spinning yams and serving them up in various disguises to church people. What is natural and beautiful in a child may be shocking when it persists into adulthood, and more so when it appears in the sanctuary and seeks to pass for true religion.

Is it not a strange thing and a wonder that, with the shadow of atomic destruction hanging over the world and with the coming of Christ drawing near, the professed followers of the Lord should be giving themselves up to religious amusements? That in an hour when mature saints are so desperately needed vast numbers of believers should revert to spiritual childhood and clamor for religious toys?

Aiden W. Tozer

Even though this was written by Tozer in 1955 - how relevant [or prophetic] are his words of wisdom.

Church - a good walk spoiled

2007-03-26T22:58:00.000+09:30

Following along the points from Charismatic Defects 1 and 2 are the far too common results of not being the church that Christ wanted us to be. With good and noble intentions churches start their walk with God but the main problem - people! (and all their self grandizing egos and hunger for power, control and money etc etc) Grace has also posted on this subject and is very worth your while the trip over to check out "How to Ruin a Church".

It is difficult for people to grasp that the reality is drastically different from the idealistic picture that they want to believe is true.

Now it has become more of a pseudo-community. The teaching emphasizes the necessity of unity and being likeminded. The corporate ideal is promoted, and anything threatening corporate unity is challenged. Disrupting corporate unity will hurt one's social standing in the group.

This produces the attitude that in order to be accepted, you must get with the program. The fear of losing relationships silences questions and keeps people in line. They have seen that if you disagree or leave, then you will lose your friends.

Flattery is used to nurture people's feelings of inclusion and importance. Prophetic words are given to reward those who perform well and to lure back those who appear to be wavering.

New titles and positions have been fabricated to reward those who want to move up in the organization. These positions add requirements and standards of commitment to prove who really is a team player. Compulsory meetings keep the members involved to the point that most of their time and relationships revolve around the church.

This creates an environment where people are eager to prove their commitment to the leaders and afraid to be seen as disagreeable. One way of proving loyalty is to be an informant to the leadership, letting them know of anyone who is questioning or struggling. Often thoughts shared in deepest confidence are reported to leadership...

..Elitism is another subtle form of control. When a group claims to have a better understanding of truth, it is implied that to leave the group will cost you your opportunity to be successful in what God is doing. The evidence that this is at work is in the attitude taken toward those who leave. Are they still viewed as brothers, or is it implied that they have fallen away?

Liberty from the fear of death

2007-03-24T22:58:00.000+10:30

Who is the man who does not fear to die? I will tell you - the man who is a believer. Fear to die? Thank God, I do not. The cholera may come again. I pray to God it will not, but if it does, it matters not to me. I will toil and visit the sick by night and by day until I drop If it takes me, sudden death is sudden glory.

And so it is with the weakest saint. The prospect of dissolution does not make you tremble. Sometimes you fear, but more often you rejoice. You sit down and calmly think of dying. What is death? It is a low porch through which you stoop to enter heaven. What is life? It is a narrow screen that separates us from glory, and death kindly removes it!

C. H. Spurgeon

(H.T. Sunshine)

Athanasius contra mundum

2007-03-23T22:10:00.000+10:30

We were made "in the likeness of God." But in course of time that image has become obscured, like a face on a very old portrait, dimmed with dust and dirt.

When a portrait is spoiled, the only way to renew it is for the Subject to come back to the studio and sit for the artist all over again. That is why Christ came--to make it possible for the divine image in man to be recreated. We were made in God's likeness; we are remade in the likeness of his Son.

To bring about this re-creation, Christ still comes to men and Lives among them. In a special way he comes to his Church, his "body", to show us what the "image of God" is really like.

What a responsibility the Church has, to be Christ's "body". Showing him to those who are unwilling or unable to see him in providence, or in creation! Through the Word of God lived out in the Body of Christ they can come to the Father, and themselves be made again "in the likeness of God."

IF... it is by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ That death is trampled underfoot, it is clear that it is Christ Himself and none other Who is the Archvictor over death and has robbed it of its power. Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the sojourn of the Savior and the death and resurrection of His body, it is despised; and obviously it is by the very Christ Who mounted on the cross that it has been destroyed and vanquished finally.

When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit Up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior's manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it is He Himself Who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to His victory in His own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you see men naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but preferring thus to rush on death for Christ's sake, rather than to remain in this present life?

If you see with your own eyes men and women and children, even, Thus welcoming death for the sake of Christ's religion, how can you be so utterly silly and incredulous and maimed in your mind as not to realize that Christ, to Whom these all bear witness, Himself gives the victory to each, making death completely powerless for those who hold His faith and bear the sign of the cross? No one in his senses doubts that a snake is dead when he sees it trampled underfoot, especially when he knows how savage it used to be; nor, if he sees boys making fun of a lion, does he doubt that the brute is either dead or completely bereft of strength. These things can be seen with our own eyes, and it is the same with the conquest of death. Doubt no longer, then, when you see death mocked and scorned by those who believe in Christ, that by Christ death was destroyed, and the corruption that goes with it resolved and brought to end.

Dumb as Sheep

2007-03-21T14:20:00.000+10:30

H.T. David

Maybe the metaphor of a pastor being a shepherd for his flock is because they are as dumb as sheep?

Charismatic Defects - Part 2

2007-03-12T21:59:00.000+10:30

Following on from Defects 1 and the positive Effects are another 5 points worth considering and evaluating about the charismatic movement:-

6. Charismania - or the description for the habit of the mind which measures spiritual health, growth and maturity by the number and impressiveness of people's gifts, and spiritual power by public charismatic manifestations(as described by O'Conner in The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church). Again this a negative and a habit that is bad, for the principle of judgment is false and where it operates, real growth and maturity are likely to be retarded.

7. Super-supernaturalism - For those amongst the movement that exaggerate and over emphasize the extraordinary of the supernatural and those that reduce the ordinary to a lower class of spiritual life. When the desire to become extra supernatural is not in accordance with Scriptures and the disdain given to others who don't go in for the weirdness associated with the charismatic movement in comparison to the more staid or orthodox. When the natural, regular and ordinary is undervalued it shows that they are immature and weak in grasping the realities of creation and providence as basic to God's work of grace.

8. Eudaemonism - Dr Packer's use of the word for the belief that God means us to spend our time in this fallen world feeling well, and in a state of euphoria based on that fact. The regular and expected projection of euphoria from their stages with their standard theology of healing, and awesomeness, shows that the assumption and presumption of euphoria to which they want their followers to adhere. Hence the term 'happy clappy'. Good health at all times is not God's will for all believers which is evidenced by the fact of many Christian leaders that have not been supernaturally healed - and this includes many of the charismatic leaders also.

9. Demon-obsession - If all of life is seen as a battle with demons in such a way that Satan and his hosts get blamed for bad health, bad thoughts and bad behaviour without reference to physical, psychological and relational factors then a very unhealthy demonic counterpart of super-supernaturalism is developed. Also the personal evil and personal responsibility and culpability is shifted away by blaming the devil made me do it.

10. Conformism - Group pressure and group think is tyrannical when the group believes itself to be super-spiritual and finds the evidence of its members' spirituality in their power to perform along approved lines. The pressure imposed (sometimes subtly) for members to perform and copy others such as in hand waving, tongues, prophecy, laughing, etc encourages the individual to follow the group instead of following the Lord and can become another legalistic type of bondage.

Some of these listed defects are not only confined to the charismatic movement but are a threat to the maturity of Christians in and out of the charismatic movement.

Charismatic Defects - Part 1

2007-02-27T21:27:00.000+10:30

Separate from the positive features and attributes of the Charismatic Movement are the more noticeable poor characteristics inherent within the movement. Some people have described the movement as an experience in need of a theology. It is a young movement traditionally considered to have started in the early 1900’s by those considered not to be intellectuals especially in comparison with mainstream Protestant and Catholic intellectual giants of the calibre of Luther, Calvin, Augustine and Aquinas. Even after 100 years there is a cavity and dearth of high intellectuals within the movement who can give a worthwhile apologia of their beliefs. Is it because the more educated individuals have studied the Scriptures and found that the more orthodox and traditional understandings are actually correct in opposition to an experience-based belief inherent and over-emphasized within the charismatic movement?

The following are some attributes of the movement by Dr J Packer and for the widely read individuals they may notice a few of these characteristics resemble those found amongst cults.

1. Elitism - The (unsupported) feeling of those within the movement of being superior to others outside of their movement. Elitist tendencies are reinforced by the restorationist theology, which sees charismatic experience as the New Testament norm for all time and is inevitably judgemental towards non-charismatic Christianity. The claim that those not exhibiting the so-called second baptism of the Holy Spirit gifts or speaking in tongues are not real Christians.

2. Sectarianism – The absorbing intensity of charismatic fellowship, countrywide and worldwide, can produce a damaging insularity whereby charismatics limit themselves (an sometimes limited by their leaders) to reading only charismatic books, charismatic magazines, hearing only charismatic speakers, fellowshipping only with other charismatics and supporting only charismatic ventures or endeavours.

3. Emotionalism – Only a fine line divides healthy emotion from unhealthy emotionalism, and any appealing to or playing on emotion crosses that line. Its warmth and liveliness attract highly emotional and disturbed people to its ranks where many find within its ritual emotionalism and insistence of conformity levels of relief from their strains and stresses. Generally, the movement seems to teeter on the edge of emotional self-indulgence in a decidedly dangerous way. As a result there are many victims of this over emotional indulgence.

4. Anti-intellectualism – The movement preoccupies itself with experience, which observably inhibits the long, hard theological and ethical reflection for which the New Testament letters so plainly call. Without the intellectual rigour and training the result often is naiveté in handling the biblical revelation. Looking for a prophecy when difficult issues arise, rather than embracing the hard grind of prayerful study and analysis. Not maintaining a sense of balance but emphasising certain aspects of faith over others is detrimental to the overall well-being of a Christian. Often the result of this lack of discernment of fact and truth causes the gullible adherents to be led astray by their inept, manipulating charismatic leader.

5. Illuminism – Sincere but deluded claims to direct divine revelation have been made in the church since the days of the Colossian heretics and the Gnosticizers of the secret knowledge revealed again which manifests more attitudes of elitism. When the charismatic movement stresses the Spirits’ personal leading, and the revival of revelation via prophecy of its certain individuals they become very vulnerable. The person with unhealthy ambitions to be a religious leader, dominating a group by giving them the sense that he is closer to God than they are, can easily climb on the charismatic band-wagon and find there good-hearted, emotionally dependent folk waiting to be impressed by him; so too, the opinionated eccentric can easily invoke the Spirit’s directions when he refused to let his paster stop him disrupting the congregation with his odd ideas.

Ode to Matty

2007-02-23T20:52:00.000+10:30

The other day I lost a mate by his own hand. He was a gifted young man and played a mean trumpet in our church band. For the last six years we enjoyed making music together as part of 'The Brass' in praise to our God. He was a man who loved God, who loved to worship Him in music and song, who was a friend to many, who knew his place in God's hands and who also had his own troubles. Those troubles got too much for him to shoulder any longer and we will miss him terribly but glad that he is now face to face with the Glory to whom he so often raised up his voice and horn. May the family he left behind be comforted by our loving God. Let it be so.

David has had these issues to deal with a short time ago and I thought they were very insightful and worth repeating here - thanks Dave.

LISTEN: People aren’t necessarily fine. Just because someone looks and seems fine, it doesn’t mean they are. I’ve dealt with several suicides before. All of them are a shock, but some more than others. I’ve heard a statistic that about 80% reveal signs beforehand that suicide is an option. The other 20% are a complete shock to everyone, even those closest to them. I’ve learned over the years that people aren’t what they seem. I’ve learned not to be impressed with the persona that’s put out there. I always try to assume that people are wrestling with fundamental issues and many are carrying a great deal of pain. Hear what they are saying, how they are saying it, body language, anything! Underneath the calm can be a great deal of turbulence.
LEAN: Find someone to lean on. Learn how to express what you are going through. Find someone who can listen to your deepest fears and most intense pain. Learn to not be ashamed of yourself and trust someone with your truest self. If you start thinking life isn’t worth living, immediately realize it is a lie. If you start thinking of suicide, for God’s sake, tell someone! If someone asks you if you are, be honest and tell the truth. Life is worth living! Don’t believe the lie. There is help out there! Try talking.
LOOSEN UP: Follow your passion. Find out now what you really, really want to do in life and pursue that. Since Nato’s suicide, some people who knew him have actually quit jobs that they hated or are contemplating doing so, figuring correctly that life’s too short to be stuck in something that’s killing their soul! Why stay trapped in a cell to which you hold the key in your own hand? Go for it! Be released!
LET IT GO: Money ain’t everything. So what if you are in debt up to your eyeballs! So what if you seem forever to struggle for money. Some people feel so overwhelmed with money problems that they see no way out of the trap and would rather escape the whole world than deal with it. This is related to the point above, but settle it in your heart right now that it doesn’t matter how much or little money you have, joy is the possession of everyone, including you, no matter what size the bank account or the burden of debt.
LOVE: Love the one you’re with. I mean really love them. Don’t believe the myth that the grass is greener on the other side. The one you fell in love with years ago might be gone tomorrow. You might be gone tomorrow. Love is the greatest! So do it, and do it now. Don’t wait for perfect conditions. Love Lisa. Love your kids. Love them unconditionally. Extravagantly! Stop holding back, being reserved and cautious. Love her like there is no tomorrow.
LIVE and LAUGH: Stop and smell the roses. Enjoy life. It isn’t all about working, making money, paying bills, chores, deadlines. It is about life. It is about enjoying the trees, the sunsets, the walks, the drives, the stars, the music, the wine, the people, the movies, whatever. Take it all in. Drink life to the dregs. Live every day as though it were your last. You’re taking life too seriously. Have fun. Enjoy what you have and enjoy what is. I am surrounded by all kinds of things to enjoy and to rejoice in. Gandhi’s mantra was “joy”. In spite of indescribable struggles and hardships, joy characterized his demeanor. Rejoice! Again I say, rejoice!
LOSE IT: Don’t put up with the crap. Suddenly, some things are no longer important to those of us left behind. When faced with death or other kinds of great loss, superficialities lose their appeal. Things that waste time and energy and money no longer tempt. Things that are fake are forsaken. It’s time to get real! If you smell crap coming, reject it! If you detect it in yourself, dump it! Hate hypocrisy! Abhor pretension!
LEARN: Learn that God is far more mysterious than you give him credit for. You so want to believe silly notions about God because they give you a false sense of security and comfort. Suddenly, this kind of tragedy makes you realize that God and life aren’t as simple as you’d like or thought. God is very unlike you, and his ways are not your ways. He doesn’t subscribe to your neat little packages. You are swimming in an endless, fathomless ocean of profound, beautiful and terrifying mystery!
LEAP: Take some chances. Live a life of risk. Do what you’ve always wanted to do. Take that trip. Try a new venture. Start that business! Sell all you have and give to the poor. Whatever it is that you’ve dreamed of doing, give it a shot. Life’s too short to live a life of just dreaming, of caution and inevitably of regret. Take that extraordinary leap of faith. What are you waiting for?
LET THEM BE: One of the consistent burdens that you carry are the expectations put upon you by others. Of course, you need to learn to resist carrying other people’s expectations they place upon you, but my point here is that you need to let people be! Don’t thrust your goals for others upon them. Not even your children or wife! Release people from your desires. Let people be free to choose their own destiny, to find themselves, to live as they see fit. Loosen your hold on others. They are already extraordinarily beautiful!

Charismatic Effects

2007-02-20T23:36:00.000+10:30

How does one assess or evaluate the Neo-Pentecostal, or, as it is more colloquially termed, the Charismatic Movement. There are two camps with many ardent supporters within each side espousing either the cessationist or restorationist viewpoints. To evaluate any movement purporting to be of God we should be discerning and according to Dr J I Packer there are two tests that can be used.

Credal Test:
Anyone claiming to be Spirit-inspired who fails to confess the incarnation is not of God so they must affirm that the sacrifical death of God's Son cannot be denied and also the Spirit of God leads no one to say cursed be Jesus but leads men rather to sincerely call him Lord. Naturally this sort of credal test applies to all who profess a faith not just charismatics and it is the degree of honour paid by confession, attitude and action to the Son whom God the Father has made Lord.

Moral Test:
Anyone who truly knows and loves God will show it my keeping his commandments, avoiding all sin and loving his brethren in Christ.

Following on from this are quite obvious positive features within the charismatic movement after a biblical assessment:

Its stress on personal fellowship with, and devotion to, the living Christ.
Its stress on the need to be filled with the Spirit, and to be living a life which one way or another displays the Spirit's power.
Its recognition of, and provision for, the necessary emotional dimension - necessary because we are human beings - in apprehending and responding to the love of God in Christ.
Its stress on the need to cultivate an open, ardent, constant, whole-hearted habit of prayer.
Its stress on the need to cherish and express Christian joy in both speech and song.
Its insistence that each Christian be thoroughly involved in the church's worship.
Its concern that all Christians be actively involved in ministry; finding and using their gifts, whatever these prove to be, for others' welfare.
Its missionary zeal and concern to share Christ.
Its awareness of the potential of small groups for prayer, study and ministry.
Its stress on the need for church structures to be flexible enough to allow all gifts within a congregation to be fully used.
Its experiments in community living; in particular, the establishing of extended families composed of nuclear families who unit to fulfil ministries of shelter and support which no nuclear family on its own could manage.
Its cultivation of childlike openness, spontaneity, warmth, and expectancy in relationships with both God and man.

Naturally, not all of these features are present, nor have to be, within all charismatic churches but are common within the movement as a whole.

There are many churches who purposefully do not recognise themselves as being part of the charismatic movement per se but yet display such admirable features.

Problems do arise where there are distortions of these basic characteristics, over-emphasis of certain areas at the compromise of others and more importantly corruption of the interpretation of Scripture, greed and self-promotion.
(See forthcoming post on Charismatic Defects)

Deceitful Prosperity Teaching

2007-02-16T11:51:00.000+10:30

John Piper has some good points to read about the deadly and deceitful false teaching - otherwise known as the 'prosperity gospel' but to anyone who has done some real research themselves and have discovered the real truth they will realize that the prosperity doctrine is a path back to atheism.

(H.T. - Justin)

Are you an IF or a THOUGH?

2007-02-13T23:25:00.000+10:30

Our faith is always being challenged and we often are reminded (sometimes not nearly enough) that we are frail people who live on a fallen planet. Philip Yancey tells the story of George Everett Ross, who as a pastor said he observed two kinds of faith in his congregation:

One says IF and the other says THOUGH.

One says:

IF everything goes well,
IF my life is prosperous,
IF I am happy,
IF no one I love dies,
IF I am successful,
then I will believe in God, say my prayers, go to church and give what I can afford.

The other says:

THOUGH the cause of evil prosper,
THOUGH I sweat in Gethsemane,
THOUGH I must drink my cup at Calvary
nevertheless, precisely then, I will trust the Lord who made me.

So Job cries: 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust him'.

Intention and Evil

2007-02-12T22:35:00.000+10:30

Intention is still a powerful part of some forms of evil, such as terrorism, but to limit evil to cases where the intent is clear is to simplify evil and miss the many cases in which evil is profound but less clear-cut and more elusive. Intent to do wrong may be necessary for a crime, but not for doing evil. Villains are evil by definition, but many who do the worst evil could be described as good citizens rather than villains...Evil may be done by people with no evil intentions; indeed, evil may be done by people with good intentions. Personal virtue is no longer a sufficient barrier to evil...The heart of darkness is a mystery...Just when we think we understand it and have it pegged, it disappears and reemerges in a different guise. With its myriad forms, its infinite capacity to morph between them, and its talent for breaking out where we least expect it, evil never allows us to declare ourselves safe and free.

We can all agree that Hitler was malevolently and malignantly evil. But if we relax after analyzing Nazi evil and thanking God it was so long ago and far away, we will be unprepared for a different form of evil-perhaps democratic, perhaps liberal, perhaps American, perhaps British, certainly surprising, and perhaps close to home. As modern people, we have to face the fact that modernity has made evil as modern as we are, and in doing so it holds a mirror to our thinking and our ways of life. As Einstein warned, "It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man".

Os Guinness - Unspeakable

Evil is like the outbreak of a highly contagious virus that is not containable nor controllable. No matter how much insulation we try to bubble wrap ourselves in for protection we tend to forget that we have already been infected and death the only antidote.

Prospective Tither?

2007-01-31T13:51:00.000+10:30

(H.T - David for more good stuff)

Critical Thinking

2007-01-30T10:34:00.000+10:30

"Herein lies one of the big problems in conservative Christianity. Evangelicals are not encouraged to think for themselves, not encouraged to do critical thinking, not encouraged to be open minded in the good sense of that phrase. They have too often been taught to blindly accept what they are told. This of course becomes dangerous when it is applied to watching the news and we are dealing with vital life and death matters and some aspects of politics. Of course it is true as my granny used to say that "we should not be so open minded that our brains fall out". Christians should be leading the search for the truth. Christians should be committed to finding out the truth, however uncomfortable and however much it makes us adjust our political or even religious views. The question is can we handle the truth?"

(H.T Ben)

Naive or Gullible

2007-01-29T22:45:00.000+10:30

Some people are either and sometimes both and because they are they don't know that they are. Seems like a quandary of inescapable illogic - but true nevertheless.

If you're one who is easily conned or tricked or sucked into something - how did you let yourself get into such a position. Was it that you were too trusting? Didn't you see the warning signs of a fraud? Did you think that everyone speaks and lives the truth?

A lot of times incidents that suck us in to believing a fallacy actually allow us to learn something - so we don't repeat our mistakes.

Why is it that many seemingly intelligent Christians fail to learn from their own life experiences of being had or conned. Far too many Christians who read anything 'Christianesque' in books; the internet; or listen to so-called 'sermons' automatically believe them - even of people they have never met or know nothing of their backgrounds. Why is it that their 'conman radar' doesn't give them warnings of false teacher; false prophet; false values; false words.

No wonder so many fall into cults.

There are so many internet sites that want you to believe their dribble and want you to pay for them to dribble their false ideas all over you like so many of the Word of Faith 'ministries' of the calibre like Benny Hinn, Dollar, Tilton, Crouch, and Steve Shultz and his amazing Elijah List (what a joke).

The mark or sign of any (and all) true prophet/teacher/preacher is 100% correctness and truth and their life, standards and values should dovetail with the Scriptures - if they don't match up the only logical, sensible andbiblically correct thing to do is run, run now, run fast, run like your life depended on it, don't look back, run away.

So when the carrot of prosperity doctrine is dangled in front of you - how will you react.
(Hint - run)

When the carrot of false teachings and prophecies looks attractive will you be conned?
(Hint - run now)

Will you renew that magazine subscription of false teachings and piffle that wants to sell you Jesus oil; Jesus handkerchiefs; blessed doilies; or anointed hats?
(Hint - run away, run away)

Will you grow into maturity and discerning truth from fallacy or will you be gullible and naive?
(Hint - follow God not man)

Bull Flop

2007-01-26T23:29:00.000+10:30

Bull Flop Absolute Bull Flop

Read this - if you are game - to gain an understanding of the total amount of how much anti-bibilical awesome bull flop coming from "Dr Increase - Bob Harrison" - where does he get his material from - oh that's right he makes it up out of the Harrison bible and the rest of the plagiarism - thanks to Lance and John. I wonder how much moola they raked in after such a disgusting lead up. As Halieus says - utterly tragic.

How tragic is it that suckers actually believe and worse still - give their hard earned dollars to these charlatans in a bid of selfishness to increase their own personal wealth.

So sad.

L'inferno

2007-01-25T21:35:00.000+10:30

A heavy peal of thunder came to waken me
Out of the stunning slumber that had bound me,
Startling me up as though rude hands had shaken me.

I rose, and cast my rested eyes around me,
Gazing intent to satisfy my wonder
Concerning the strange place wherein I found me.

Hear truth: I stood on the steep brink whereunder
Runs down the dolorous chasm of the Pit,
Ringing with infinite groans like gathered thunder.

Deep, dense, and by no faintest glimmer lit
It lay, and though I strained my sight to find
Bottom, not one thing could I see in it.

“Down must we go, to that dark world and blind,”
The poet said, turning on me a bleak
Blanched face; “I will go first – come thou behind.”

Then I, who had marked the colour of his cheek:
“How can I go, when even thou art white
For fear, who art wont to cheer me when I’m weak?”

But he: “Not so; the anguish infinite
They suffer yonder paints my countenance
With pity, which thou takest for affright;

Come, we have far to go; let us advance”

Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy L’inferno

True Evangelism

2007-01-18T13:47:00.000+10:30

A.W Tozer has written many quality works and had an almost timeless grasp on what was going on around him and within the church as a whole.

Mere evangelism is not our present need. Evangelism does no more than extend religion, of whatever kind it may be. It gains acceptance for religion among larger numbers of people without giving much thought to the quality of that religion. The tragedy is that present day evangelism accepts the degenerate form of Christianity now current as the very religion of the apostles and busies itself with making converts to it with no questions asked.

We must have a new reformation. There must come a violent break with that irresponsible, amusement-mad, paganized pseudo religion which passes today for the faith of Christ and which is being spread all over the world by unspiritual men employing unscriptural methods to achieve their ends.

We should all rememeber that

Evangelicalism is in need of a serious overhaul. It has become a self-grandizing, over indulgent glutton devouring the hearts and minds of many. If evangelicalism started to get back to proper principles of being an evangelical by re-examining themselves and thereby seeing the need for reformation.

(H.T The Blind Beggar)

Ranting

2007-01-12T21:56:00.000+10:30

Is the descriptive conclusion used by many reviewers of the recent body of work by Dawkins in The God Delusion. Back in October '06 Terry Eagleton wrote a fine and lengthy review of the book and aptly named his piece 'Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching':-

Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be...

...Such is Dawkins’s unruffled scientific impartiality that in a book of almost four hundred pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false. The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history – and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry. He is like a man who equates socialism with the Gulag. Like the puritan and sex, Dawkins sees God everywhere, even where he is self-evidently absent. He thinks, for example, that the ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland would evaporate if religion did, which to someone like me, who lives there part of the time, betrays just how little he knows about it. He also thinks rather strangely that the terms Loyalist and Nationalist are ‘euphemisms’ for Protestant and Catholic, and clearly doesn’t know the difference between a Loyalist and a Unionist or a Nationalist and a Republican. He also holds, against a good deal of the available evidence, that Islamic terrorism is inspired by religion rather than politics...

...Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass.

...Dawkins could have told us all this without being so appallingly bitchy about those of his scientific colleagues who disagree with him, and without being so theologically illiterate. He might also have avoided being the second most frequently mentioned individual in his book – if you count God as an individual.

The most recent review and discussion of Dawkins is by the esteemed Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga.[Renowned for many works and one of my favourites is God, Freedom, and Evil (1974).]

From Page 8 ...So why think God must be improbable? According to classical theism, God is a necessary being; it is not so much as possible that there should be no such person as God; he exists in all possible worlds. But if God is a necessary being, if he exists in all possible worlds, then the probability that he exists, of course, is 1, and the probability that he does not exist is 0. Far from its being improbable that he exists, his existence is maximally probable. So if Dawkins proposes that God’s existence is improbable, he owes us an argument for the conclusion that there is no necessary being with the attributes of God—an argument that doesn’t just start from the premise that materialism is true. Neither he nor anyone else has provided even a decent argument along these lines; Dawkins doesn’t even seem to be aware that he needs an argument of that sort.

...People like Dawkins hold that there is a conflict between science and religion because they think there is a conflict between evolution and theism; the truth of the matter, however, is that the conflict is between science and naturalism, not between science and belief in God.

By way of conclusion: The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn’t give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a “delusion”. The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it

Tom Gilson (H.T) has also picked up on the way Dawkins describes God:-

So Dawkins is objecting to a God that Christians don't believe in either. Ho hum.

As does Prothesis and Brian.

That then raises the question of do we actually believe that Richard Dawkins exists?

Ben Witherington (H.T)

Yet we do have people like Richard Dawkins are writing best selling books like "The God Delusion". Now Dawkins is an Oxford don. He's erudite and clever. He is also arrogant and ignorant when it comes to the Bible and theology.

Keep an eye out for the new book The Dawkins Delusion by Prof Alister McGrath expected in Feb 07. You can find mp3 of his lecture here.

Update: Check Al here for an update and further comment.

Faith or Fake Healer

2007-01-08T16:04:00.001+10:30

Watch as you see the pain just fade away from this healed man.

Straw Man Makes Hay

2007-01-08T14:09:00.000+10:30

Does anyone seriously believe this guy?

Why do the media actually court him for comments?

There are so many gullible people in this world who don't use their brains - when will people start respecting and expecting some truth?

Who is he allegedly speaking for (other than himself)?

I think I know where he gets his material from.

He uses up more ink in apologizing for wrong predictions than he did in actually making the so-called 'God told me so' prediction in the first place. Missing 'sometimes' or at any time is a sign of falseness.

(H.T. Get Religion)

Unamuno

2007-01-05T22:21:00.000+10:30

"I am a man;
All men are mortal;
Therefore, I will die."

Church Marketing

2007-01-02T13:36:00.000+10:30

There is a veritable plethora of supermarket shelves within both secular and non-secular bookstores containing a variety of books for the self-help or church-help manifestations and fads. These money making machines are well oiled with a high productivity. There is so much crap - for lack of a better word - that is pushed and promoted for the well being of the individual and for the betterment (allegedly) of one's church. Naturally, there are some great theologically sound and scripture adhering books and products also available in thse stores, however, it would be good to sort the rubbish out every now and then.

As Michael Spencer says:-

Let me ask any sheep out there who are offended that I said your Jabez wall hanging might be a bad choice if they have any idea how much money is made by Christian authors, publishers and marketers? How much money is made and where does it go? When you see Joyce Meyer handing out a bag of rice, are you actually taken in that she deserves $50 million a year rather than mission agencies and humanitarian ministries?

It is a “scam.” Most of evangelicalism is becoming so “scammable” it’s embarrassing. The rhetoric defending this nonsense is even more embarrassing.

Why don’t we just stop? I’m almost certain that if we quit buying this stuff, they’ll quit marketing it. If we can get over our fetish for successful fads, new trends, the next big thing, quick fixes, cool promos, ads and hype, we make do something startling in our walk with Jesus. What a shame that a newspaper editor has to tell us this. We already know it, because we know Jesus wouldn’t approve of all this marketing and he wouldn’t participate in it on the level we do.

Perhaps we allshould all be more discerning (myself included) in our selecting of resources that are actually truthful and full of truth.

Tithing Money Back Guarantee

2006-12-20T16:02:00.000+10:30

The discerning guys from Fide-o have noticed the 3 month tithing challenge put forward by the Life Church.tv that has a written money back guarantee if God doesn't prosper you.

It seems that this unbiblical principle keeps on raising it's ugly head yet again as a means of making money out of some gullible undiscerning selfish people.

I wonder what Russell Kelly says about this?

So if I tithe - what's in it for me?

And if I don't tithe do I get accused of robbing God?? (good grief - sigh)

Double Up

2006-12-19T14:19:00.000+10:30

Discover how to Double Your Church Attendance in 90 Days or less, Guaranteed!

(sigh) What more could I say??

Learning from the Fall

2006-11-14T22:48:00.000+10:30

It's good to see others have also thought about what we can learn not only from our own errors and experiences but also from those of others. Bob has some good comments on the Haggard Sad Saga that are worth repeating in short form. For a more detailed look check out the expanded commentary here.

Sin is Universal - everyone sins and everyone's sin is the problem.

Sin is Deceptive - everyone needs to be diligent against sin and the lure of temptation.

Sin has Consequences - everyone should remember that there are personal ramifications of sin and sometimes public ones - either way it doesn't bring glory to God.

Sin has One Ultimate Solution - everyone should strive not to sin and we need accountability. God's provision of forgiveness, grace and strength should be what we trust in.

Sin doesn't have the Final Word - everyone has failed to live righteously and the scriptures reveal many poor sinners used greatly of God. God's plans will not be thwarted and He is still in ultimate control.

Every single event of every day in everyone's life confirms we need a Redeemer. Thank God we have one.

Photo Friday: Friendly Freeloaders

2006-11-10T21:52:00.000+10:30

Arrive home after a long day at work and greeted by a friend at my mailbox.

Then walk out the back and find his freeloading wife and kid.

Pastor Preservation

2006-11-09T21:18:00.000+10:30

There is a new book Preaching the Cross due for release in 2007 and advance details have been provided to Tim and Justin. Compiled from the teaching sessions from the Together for the Gospel conference C J Mahaney has written a chapter entitled 'Watch your life and doctrine' addressed to pastors in order that they make it a priority in their everyday (and spiritual) life.
It considers a number of very important aspects of sound doctrine is not enough and recommendations for pastors to practice accountability measures and the consequences of neglect.

Here is an exerpt:-

As pastors our lives can be filled with reading, studying, sermon preparation, sermon proclamation, and counseling. Ironically, a busy schedule of absorbing and communicating truth can leave little time for practicing truth. But truth must be proclaimed and then applied, heard and then obeyed, preached and then practiced. For until I practice truth, I will not experience the transforming effect of truth on my soul. Faith practices truth by crying out to God in the midst of suffering. Love practices truth by actions of kindness and patience. Humility practices truth by specific confession of sin. Forgiveness practices truth by overlooking an offense. Hope practices truth by recalling the mercies of God. Indeed, I have never truly, fully learned truth until I have practiced truth. In this book, you will encounter much rich truth. I hope you read every chapter, and more than once if necessary. But please understand: according to James, if you consume truth without applying truth, you risk the false and dangerous impression that spiritual growth was achieved without application. But it never is. Never. We must be ever wary of the self-deception of which James speaks. Let’s recognize the limitations of sound doctrine, and make the practice of truth a daily priority. Never stop watching your life.

May we all take such advice and apply the truth, God's truth to all aspects of our lives.

(H.T. Justin and Tim)

Sad Saga

2006-11-06T13:37:00.000+10:30

The developing sorry state of affairs of the Haggard Saga shows us that everyone has secret sins and when exposed - well it hits the fan pretty hard and then everyone gets a spray.

What can we learn from it?

What should we learn from it?

Andrew Jackson has already thought about this:-

The sad Haggard saga should not drive Christians mad, it should drive us to truth, the Bible. The message that should be filling the Christian blogosphere is that our lives and ministries are so very fragile unless we are anchored and deeply rooted in biblical truth. Unless truth is ruling our heart affections, the tornado winds of this evil age will blow us to and fro. This is the time for all of us to remember that things around us change all the time, but God’s word stands forever. It is in it I take my refuge.

Reformation Required Again

2006-11-04T19:08:00.000+10:30

It’s only been a few days since the anniversary of Luther’s nailing of 95 theses onto that famous castle door in Wittenberg on 31st October 1517 declaring a challenge for change to the Roman Catholic Church and birthing of the Reformation. This was a much needed opposition to the indulgences and effrontery with which priests and the church licensed themselves. It was a transformation that was needed. A redefining and reforming of biblical principles that had been disregarded or manipulated over the years. Now we see those biblical principles degraded yet again. Evangelicalism is in need of a serious overhaul. It has become a self-grandizing, over indulgent glutton devouring the hearts and minds of many. If evangelicalism started to get back to proper principles of being an evangelical by re-examining themselves and thereby seeing the need for reformation.

The deepest doctrines of Christianity, the ones which are not on the surface of the scriptures but lie waiting in its depths, were quarried through disciplined theological meditation and patient discernment. It was not academics or aesthetes with too much time on their hands who did this work, but busy pastors, suffering martyrs, and bishops overseeing the evangelization of entire cities. As they preached and taught and suffered for the gospel, they worked out the deep logic of the revelation of the Trinity, the incarnation, and redemption.

The more seriously they took the life-changing power of the good news, the more concentration they devoted to the details of sound doctrine. ...

J. I. Packer once defined evangelicalism as “fidelity to the doctrinal content of the gospel,” taking care to not to bypass the “doctrinal content” in the rush to get to a gospel. Fidelity to the gospel requires recognition of doctrinal content, and those who would preach the gospel must make use of the tools of theology.

There is too much emphasis on being pragmatic and following the herd of market driven fads of being popular and entertaining when inside they are morally bankrupt instead of standing for the doctrines of Christianity. For a sad classic example of this is the latest revelations of the downfall of Ted Haggard.

Haggard has since resigned from the presidency of the National Evangelical Association which also issued a rather generic statement without many details and reads pretty lame as though they are making excuses for him.

Yesterday, National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard submitted his resignation from NAE leadership when serious allegations were made on a Denver radio talk show. In response to Rev. Haggard’s admission yesterday to church leaders in Colorado that there were some indiscretions, the eleven-member Executive Committee met today via teleconference and unanimously accepted his resignation with regret.

We can only hope that the subsequent investigation is timely, accurate and truth tolerant. Naturally every accused person is innocent until proven guilty however, he has admitted to some of the allegations but some of the response are reminiscent 'Clintonesque' in their truth and one would hope Haggard is vindicated (if only in part) after being so publicly vilified.

May this be a valuable lesson to all ministers and preachers world wide of the need to follow sound doctrine, biblical principles, obedience to God's trusted word and above all else the truth.

Truth lost out of context

2006-10-26T21:55:00.000+09:30

Egyptian born Taj El Din Al Hilaly, the Imam of Lakemba and the first and only Mufti leader of Australia’s 300,000 Muslims arrived in Australia from Egypt, on a three month visitor’s visa in 1982. He was sponsored into Australia by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils and has dual citizenship: Egyptian and Australian.

Hilaly is a mufti of many masks; Anti-Semite, jihad supporter and extremist, and occasional virulent critic of Australian and western society .

Most people have already heard or been insulted by the outrageous inflammatory comments of Hilali:

In the religious address on adultery to about 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheik Hilali said: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

The sheik then said: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

He said women were "weapons" used by "Satan" to control men.

"It is said in the state of zina (adultery), the responsibility falls 90 per cent of the time on the woman. Why? Because she possesses the weapon of enticement (igraa)."

Waleed Ali said Sheik Hilali was "normalising immoral sexual behaviour" by comparing women to meat and men to animals and entirely blaming women for being victims.

Of course the typical excuse of self justification occurs by claiming he was being taken out of context. The trouble is when one reads or hears the whole speech then the full context is available and known which does not contradict what he said. Is this the example that the mufti wants to teach Muslims on how to treat women?

Hilali is no stranger to controversy nor stranger to the old chestnut excuse of being taken out of context:

Foreign Minister Downer: ‘He [Hilaly] talks out of both sides of his mouth. When there was initially a suggestion in the media that he had called for a jihad, a spokesman for Hilaly said that his words had been taken out of context’.

Interviewer: ‘Well, that’s not true’.

Foreign Minister Downer: ‘Exactly. That did not turn out to be true. We got a copy of the speech, we translated the copy and it’s pretty obvious…that he’s been calling for jihads and suicide bombers to kill innocent Israeli men, women and children. He’s been praising September the 11th as Gods work’.

On 9 March [2004], on Al-Aribya, TV in Arabic he claimed:

‘Australia is a multicultural society, and is not the property of Howard or the foreign minister. I am an Australia citizen like him…. If he thinks Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, then I disagree with him’. Interviewed by the ABC, Sheikh Hilaly predictably and routinely claimed he was ‘taken out of context’ and claimed he was merely reading a poem. Like most poets, he did not support suicide bombings except ‘in the right circumstances… Against an army, not civilians’ a false distinction as Sheikh Hillay knows. Especially in the ‘context’ of suicide bombers and martyrdom operations conducted by Hezbollah, his favourite terrorist organization, against Israel and Western targets.

When interviewed on ABC by Geraldine Doogue in early March 2004

He responded: "Of course, you are talking about two different environments" and added that "when addressing an Arabic community I am using the high literary Arabic language".

How convenient. It's just that no other prominent Muslim in Australia appears to experience such language-induced misunderstandings.

To some, Al Hilaly's presence in Australia is an example of what is wrong with multiculturalism. Born in Egypt, he arrived in Australia on a tourist visa in 1982 from Lebanon and declined to return home. Soon he was making extremist comments which culminated in a manifestly anti-Semitic address at the University of Sydney in September 1988 where he accused Jews of trying "to control the world through sex, then sexual perversion, then the promotion of espionage, treason and economic hoarding".

The history of Hilali in Australia is not a pretty one.

Should there be a future for him?

How does he think he could justify comments and beliefs?

Is there any truth to what he claims or is it later retold out of context?

It seems he is following his usual doctrine of ex contextus.

I think a lot of Australians (even those of the Muslim persuasion) would like to tell him where he can jam his context.

Check out Dogfight for more info.

Book Review - Waging Peace on Islam

2006-10-14T00:31:00.000+09:30

Publisher’s Description
How can caring Christians approach Islam? Relations between Islam and the West grow more polarized. At a personal level, many Christians are scared about meeting Muslims. We should start by seeing Muslims as people. "When Muslims are sceptical of our creed, confused by our message and wounded by our warfare, the most credible witness left is our lives” stresses Christine Mallouhi. “Muslims need to see Jesus, and the only way most of them will see him is in us."

About the Author
Christine A. Mallouhi is an Australian author, speaker and a Christian member of a Muslim family. She has lived in five countries in North Africa and the Middle East, and spent time with Muslims in Asia, Southeast Asia and the Arabian Gulf. Along with her husband, an Arab author, she directs an association that publishes Arabic books. The Mallouhis currently live in Tunisia and in Melbourne, Australia.

Christine Mallouhi writes from personal experience of her life and contact with many famous (some might say infamous) people and hence it is more biographical and subjective than a précis of Islam and even at a far stretch would not be classified academic. Mallouhi goes to extended lengths of reiterating the life and ministry of St Francis of Assisi. Some connections with Francis and Islam were clearly established with some pertinent messages conveyed. Although historically interesting it did seem to be more of a filler and slightly disjointed.

If you are looking for a balanced perspective between Christianity and Islam with their core beliefs explained and compared then another book may be more helpful. The basic tenets of Islam are explained basically but there is no real comparison with Christianity nor the major components of belief that are diametrically opposed. Mallouhi seems to concentrate on the similarities, the sincerities and the spirit of Muslims in their faith but fails to point out the one and only true path of salvation. Numerous times Christ is referred to as a prophet by Islam but nowhere was this challenged with the Incarnation.

From the appearances and information that the West glean of Islam through normal media exposure there are obvious discrepancies and incomplete information of truth, lies, and half-truths. Mallouhi goes to lengths to perhaps try and even out or balance the weight of blame. There are various examples throughout this book of what the Palestinians and Muslims have suffered at the hands of Israel and the West but without wishing to denigrate or invalidate their experiences Mallouhi has not provided a balanced outlook and borders on the biased approach. Mallouhi reports about her contacts with Arafat and his wife but fails to mention the known terrorist activities committed by Arafat and his followers. Mallouhi, defending her position, says “..the violence has not been one-sided and Palestinians have also perpetrated violent attacks on Jews. I have not related any of these stories because they usually made front-page news around the world and I believe this will continue to be so. I have told the Palestinians’ story because they are the oppressed whose voice is still not being heard.” Earlier she mentions an incident where some Christians were talking with Muslims and when discovered by local Police the local Muslims were told “We will tell you what you must believe and you do not need to know any more than that”. There is propaganda, pre-suppositions, personal perspectives and selective reporting on all sides influencing everyone's opinions. This book is no exception.

Mallouhi is critical of the Christian Wests’ ideological views on Islam and critical of the many verbal, written, displayed, and encouraged militaristic terminologies and expressions of warfare or battle against the scourge of Islam. Yet at the same time fails to see the irony of the militaristic connotations implied through the title of her own book.

Mallouhi correctly advises through the experiences of history that Muslims cannot be converted to Christianity by force but only through the example of following Christ in His love and His grace. “[The] militant approach causes offence to Muslims and does nothing to draw them closer to Christ.” As Francis prayed, “Almighty eternal, Just and Merciful God, grant us in our misery that we may do for your sake alone what we know you want us to do, and always want what pleases you, so that cleansed and enlightened interiorly and fired with the ardour of the Holy Spirit we may be able to follow in the footsteps of your Son and so make our way to you by your grace alone.”

Ramp into Church

2006-10-11T20:08:00.000+09:30

Just about everyone knows the story of Noah and the Ark. Everyone (except Noah and his family) were considered to be utterly corrupt in the eyes of God who decided to destroy them all and start over again. It must have been bad in those days and we think the world around us is bad and yet we still go on living.
(How long O Lord?)

Imagine a story comprised of 6 episodes or time periods.

Episode 1 - Mankind is corrupt. The wickedness of the world. God decides to start over again.

Episode 2 - Noah is identified as righteous and unlike the wickedness surrounding him. He becomes the hero (human hero) of the story.

Episode 3 - The building of the ark. In Noah's case a long time - that's a big ark to build. A time of construction.

Episode 4 - Once the Ark is built comes a time of gathering in of his family and all the animals to be saved from destruction. The means of salvation is ready. Clouds forming. A sense of looming anticipation and urgency as time is so short.

Episode5 - Catastrophe. The rains and the floods just keep on coming destroying everything in its wake. There is death, disaster and judgement.

Episode 6 - Floods subside to a new world and new start. A new life full of peace and contentment.

So often we tend to think that we are living in Episode 6 where everything to us is fine, peaceful and we have no problems. But what of those around us. Are we not actually living in Episode 4 where our means of salvation is already and waiting?
Are we not supposed to be gathering in as many as possible to save them from the impending destruction?
Are we not supposed to be helping as many up the ramp into safety as possible?
What is the ramp up into the Church and how do we show and help others up the ramp?

Where is our sense of urgency?

Culturally Relevant

2006-10-10T20:02:00.000+09:30

There is an increasing desire for churches to be relevant to society and their local community. Most pundits think this is a new concept but the Church and the majority of churches down through time have not only desired this but with it have also struggled.

On the one hand they admirably want to be true to God and His commandments and the message of the Gospel. At the same time they want to be attractive to the members of their community not attending their church. Sometimes proselytizing other churchs' members (some would call it poaching members) was the way to increase the membership roll, attendance (and income). Having a large church with thousands attending each weekend was just in itself an attraction which we see in the megachurches of today. If a church has thousands of members what are the inferences of what is actually being preached? For some churches it indicates man-made marketing ideas promoting themselves and for others it means that Christ's message of reconciliation is being heard.

What they tended to forget was that the message of the Gospel was Good News to the saved but to the unredeemed it was the worst news of all because it meant that the unsaved were doomed for eternal separation from God - or in other words the place of hell which doesn't get mentioned much these days. Why? Is it because that part is not attractive even though it is the truth? So many churches these days gloss over that part or worse still do not even mention the ultimate consequences of sin. Instead everyone wants to hear that they are going to be blessed and be prosperous.

How does the Church remain true to the message of the Gospel and be relevant to today. The Gospel itself does not need us to make it relevant to us. It remains what it is and should be told in full as it has been done for over 2000 years. When we delete, gloss over, placate, disregard, under emphasize anything of the Gospel message - then it is not the Gospel.

While we need to have a burning desire to take the Gospel to non-Christians, we also have to begin with an unwaivering commitment to the message, and a pragmatic realization that the message will not appeal to all. And we cannot compromise the message to those who will not hear it. Beyond that point we are no longer ambassadors for God, we're peddling a culturally-compromised message.
(Hat tip: Melinda - Stand to Reason)

Having and developing relationships with others is much more important than being appearing relevant. All the efforts to becoming culturally relevant tend to be facade constructions where the most pragmatic entrepeneur is the winner.

There are some great ideas of outreach and evangelism that have been used over the years - and there are equally some terrible ideas. Like come to church and win a car! Come to church - we have great music and pretty singers in the band!

There are some fantastic ministries that are made up of passionate people who work (even though they are dead tired) to serve the members of their church and their local community providing food, shelter, clothing, help and love. That is much more relevant than how many lights illuminate your church signboard.

Kindness is a potent weapon in combating spiritual darkness. Free gifts and acts of service break down barriers and build relationships; and as the barriers come down and the relationships build we should expect opportunities to befriend. As we befriend, we will on occasion find ourselves called upon to give that which has greatest value to us – our time; our schedules and ‘to do’ lists will need to be put aside as we seek to be relevant to that person’s needs. Sometimes all our spouse, our kids, our brother or sister, or our neighbour needs is a friend; and as we take the time to be that friend, God will reveal things to us that we otherwise would have missed.

It’s a fine line between gimmick and genuine, lifestyle and tool. Some cynical types will never agree that it can ever be anything more than a gimmick or marketing initiative, and while it is used and abused by people who treat it that way, such cynics will always have a case. However, I believe there is a quiet sub-culture of Christians who have been doing this stuff day in, day out, quietly loving their cities, communities, neighbourhoods and streets; they never shout loud about what they do, preferring rather to let their actions do the talking.(Hat tip: Andy - Servant Blog)

May we struggle against the influence of the world to be relevant and instead with the help of God and His sovereign will develop a servanthood relationship in living out the Gospel.

Desiring God Conference

2006-10-01T16:34:00.000+09:30

If you are looking for a great sessional summation of the Desiring God Conference 2006 then take a link over to read what Tim is writing as he attends this conference.

This conference has notable speakers such as :

David Wells, Professor of Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, will set the stage on the theme, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World.

Don Carson, Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, will speak on “The Supremacy of Christ and Love in a Postmodern World.”

Tim Keller, Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, will address “The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World.”

Mark Driscoll, the Lead Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, will aim at the topic “The Supremacy of Christ and the Church in a Postmodern World.”

Voddie Baucham, the founder and leader of Voddie Baucham Ministries in Texas, will tackle the theme “The Supremacy of Christ and Truth in a Postmodern World.”

John Piper will focus on “The Supremacy of Christ
and Joy in a Postmodern World.”

After the conference audio recordings will be available at the Desiring God website.

Worldview Evangelism

2006-09-29T21:54:00.000+09:30

Don Carson analysed the sermon of Paul as recorded in Acts 17 where Paul addresses the members of the Areopagus. Looking at the passage of this address he does not go directly telling them about Christ but first laid a platform of basic knowledge and worldview. Then he built upon that recognising the people were religious and identified areas of common interest and belief before revealing to them Christ the Messiah.

1. He established that God is the creator.
2. He insisted that God is completely sovereign over everything and cannot be limited by man, cannot be contained in a temple or building.
3. He is self existent and everything else is dependent upon Him and does not need us.
4. Man is totally dependent upon God.
5. The origin of all mankind is from one man and that sin and death is the inherited problem.
6. Such creation of the world and man was perfect but is now flawed due to sin and the fall.
7. God is knowable and has revealed Himself to man and can have a personal relationship with us.
8. Identifies the sin of idolatry and the bad news of man and his own sin.
9. Outlined creation to the fall to the present and to the future coming judgment.

Once he has this groundwork set of where man is in relation to God - a biblical worldview - then he can proceed to telling them about Christ and affirming the resurrection of Christ.

For a good and extended commentary see this link to article (H.T. - Justin Taylor) and also to a major essay on same here.

(Source information from Telling the Truth - Evangelizing Postmoderns C.2000.)

Christian Taliban in Oz?

2006-09-28T13:46:00.000+09:30

The recent Four Corners episode/documentary/expose on the Exclusive Brethen within Australia showed ex-members of the controlling sect telling their own stories of expulsion from the sect for not complying with their over zealous superior men.

This sect controls its members and rules out their watching any television, technology, radio and books and keeps their members separate from all outside.

Is it not ironic that they have their own website?

From the history of the sec t led by power hungry and money hungry men there were reports by these victims of not only illegal activity but also the flagrant disobedience of Family Court rulings in relation to custody and access.

WARREN MCALPIN, EX-MEMBER, EXCLUSIVE BRETHREN: "We are a higher court" is what they believe, and they refuse to obey the courts and refuse to obey the orders that were set down that I should have access.

They are not allowed to vote but they still try and influence political parties by some underhanded methods.

One responder to the Four Corners open forum regarded them as dangerous and compared them to a Christian Taliban enforcing their extreme views and rules upon its members.

They have their own exclusive schools and most members of the sects are employed by fellow members so if one decides to escape this sect be prepared to lose your job, lose your family, lose your friends and be shunned by them.

However, it was surprising that of the ex-members interviewed they retain a strong faith in God and have not abandoned Him when they have been abandoned themselves by those who purported to be God's people.

How is that people can get sucked into these types of sects? How gullible are they?

SELWYN WALLACE, EX-MEMBER, EXCLUSIVE BRETHREN: These people claim to represent Christianity in its purest form, but you look at the history stretching back 30 or 40 years, and it's just carnage - broken families, broken lives. Children that don't know their parents. Brothers and sisters that haven't seen each other for 20, 30 years, and it's all over the world. And that's one reason why I'm speaking today. The carnage must stop. And if we don't speak out, the wheels of pain will just keep turning.

"I have never come across a more deceitful explanation of involvement in the political system than I have seen with the Exclusive Brethren," Senator Milne said.

Cardinal Pell, the Pope and Islam

2006-09-24T14:25:00.000+09:30

Australian Catholic Cardinal George Pell has recently spoken out in support of the comments of the Pope that caused a lot of sabre rattling amongst aggreived members of the world Islamic community. The Islamic response to the comments go to show that the comments were valid and he also said "the pontiff did nothing wrong in making the speech, and says he does not rule out a link between Islam and violence."

Australia's Cardinal George Pell weighed into the debate, suggesting that violent responses to the Pope's September 12 lecture demonstrate the link "for the Islamists" between religion and violence.
The Koran: It is self-evident that some Koranic verses encourage violence. Consider for example a verse which implies that fighting is "good for you": "Fighting is prescribed upon you, and you dislike it. But it may happen that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. And Allah knows and you know not." (2:216)

On the other hand, it is equally clear that there are peaceful verses as well, including the famous "no compulsion in religion" (2:256).

The New Testament takes a completely different approach.

Throughout the New Testament there is a systematic rejection of religious violence. The key to this is Jesus' message that his kingdom was spiritual and not political. Jesus explicitly and repeatedly condemns the use of force to achieve his goals: "Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword." (Matthew 26:52)

As Jesus goes to the cross, he renounces force, even at the cost of his own life: "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place." (John 18:36) The Sermon on the Mount elaborates several aspects of Jesus' non-violent ethic.

Retribution was no longer acceptable (Matthew 5:38), enemies were to be loved, not hated (Matthew 5:43), the meek will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5) and Jesus' disciples should rejoice when they are persecuted (Matthew 5:10).

While Benedict's comments on Islam and holy war may not have been "politically correct," said former Vatican diplomat John-Peter Pham, "today much of our dialogue is fruitless because we feel constrained from saying what we really think."

The source of the Islamic anger was a speech last week in which the pontiff cited a Medieval text that characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

While the pope later said he was "deeply sorry" over the reactions to his remarks and that they did not reflect his own opinions, top churchmen rushed to his defense.

"The violent reactions in many parts of the Islamic world justified one of Pope Benedict's main fears," said Australian Cardinal George Pell.

"They showed the link for many Islamists between religion and violence, their refusal to respond to criticism with rational arguments, but only with demonstrations, threats and actual violence," Pell said Monday.

Carindal Pell has not shrunk away from the media nor from contentious or potentially volatile comments and has previously been outspoken (5 May 2006) in relation to the connection between violence and reactions of muslims.

Having read the sacred text, Cardinal Pell then sets out what he discovered.The Koran, he says, is riddled with invocations to violence.
There are so many of these, he says, that after about 50, or 60, or 70 pages, he stopped taking notes.
He goes on to say that considered strictly on its own terms, Islam is not a tolerant religion and its capacity for far-reaching renovation is severely limited.
And he points to the difficulty that scholars and commentators face when analysing the Koran, such as receiving death threats and violence when questioning the divine origin of the holy book.

Dr Pell said while he was grateful for the contributions of moderate Muslims, "evil acts done falsely in the name of Islam around the world need to be addressed, not swept under the carpet".

Dr Pell has repeatedly said Islam is more warlike than Christianity.

In June this year he told the National Catholic Reporter in the US: "It's difficult to find periods of tolerance in Islam."

Funeral for nun

2006-09-22T16:45:00.000+09:30

The nun, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, who was murdered along with a bodyguard was remembered on Thursday in Kenya.

Amid speculation that the death of Sister Leonella Sgorbati might have been a result of anger at Pope Benedict's recent remarks on Islam, the pontiff sent a message urging mourners "not to be prisoners of religious or ethnic hatred" but to "take an example" from the nun's life.

"The [Somali] people love us, they want us. We know the risks, but we will go back soon to continue our work," Sister Gianna Irene Peano said during the funeral at a packed Catholic church in Nairobi.

She was then was buried in a graveyard at a village in the hills north of Nairobi, Kenya.

Is this your purpose in life?

2006-09-22T16:32:00.000+09:30

The Moral High Ground

2006-09-22T12:06:00.000+09:30

Further to this post re that now famous exposition and investigation from Zombie time there is now a removal of hi-res image from the International Red Cross website - all this in an attempt to keep the moral high ground. With thanks to lgf.

War Crimes

2006-09-19T23:03:00.000+09:30

It is now just over a month since the cessation of official hostilities between Israel and Hizbullah and now Amnesty International has finally come out and commented on a bit of balance.

They initially condemned Israel with some selective investigative journalism but now have found out that Hizbullah launched almost 4000 rockets into northern Israel.

Photo courtesy and ©Amnesty International

Amnesty International's briefing includes evidence of:

* Hizbullah's firing of some 900 inherently inaccurate Katyusha rockets into urban areas in northern Israel in clear violation of the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets under international law;
* Hizbullah's use of modified Katyusha rockets packed with metal ball bearings, designed to inflict maximum death and injury; one such rocket killing eight railway workers;
* Statements from Hasan Nasrallah and other senior Hizbullah leaders that the group intended to target civilians as a form of reprisal, violating the prohibition on direct attacks on civilians as well as the prohibition on reprisals against the civilian population;
* The flight of civilians from northern Israel and the existence of shelters preventing a higher death toll than the 43 civilian fatalities recorded.

Directing attacks at civilians or civilian objects is a violation of international humanitarian law, and doing so with intent constitutes a war crime.

"The scale of Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli cities, towns and villages, the indiscriminate nature of the weapons used, and statements from the leadership confirming their intent to target civilians, make it all too clear that Hizbullah violated the laws of war," said Amnesty International's Secretary General Irene Khan, "In the conflict between Hizbullah and Israel, the suffering of civilians on both sides has been repeatedly ignored with those responsible escaping all accountability. Justice is urgently needed if respect for the rules of war is ever to be taken seriously -- and that means accountability for the perpetrators of war crimes and reparations for the victims,"

Pope and Peace

2006-09-18T23:47:00.000+09:30

This incident is proof that Islam in no way resembles the out of context comments made recently by the Pope. The European Commission called for Pope Benedict's remarks not be "deliberately taken out of context".

Islam is a religion of peace and peace lovers so the natural response from such a peace loving religion is -

The killing came less than two days after a hardline Mogadishu cleric urged Muslims to "hunt down" and kill those who insult Islam following the pope's controversial remarks about the religion last week.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome ... (May) God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Bedri Hashi, an information officer for the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), said the killing may have been an attempt by enemies of the Islamists to hurt their image, "I believe this attack was orchestrated by people who want to discredit the Islamic Courts,"

But then going on the history of the ICU this is all so totally believable.

11 More Things

2006-09-16T22:10:00.000+09:30

I resemble that remark!

11 More Things That Will Make Everyone Dislike You
and Shipwreck Your Faith

1. When you share something and people think it is strange and don’t like it, call it conviction. When someone shares something you think is strange and don’t like, call it discernment.

2. Assume that someone’s lust/gluttony/cursing problem is worse than your unlovingness/unkindness/just generally being a jerk. God is willing to overlook your sin because you hand out tracts, the good kind.

3. If something bad is happening to someone else assume it is because of sin. If something bad is happening in your life assume it is spiritual attack or persecution.

4. If you ever disagree with anything someone says, make sure to write off the 90% of good stuff they are saying. After all, a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. I don’t care if their book did point out a bunch of stuff I needed to hear.

5. Use the word heretic all the time. Don’t worry about whether it is true or appropriate. People need to know you are serious. Get really mad at people that call you one.

6. Establish a million extra-biblical rules. Make sure that everyone serves Jesus out of fear and “responsibility” and never cheerfully with grateful heart. You may be robbing people of their joy, but they can suck it up.

7. Preach the Bible as completely inspired and authoritative, but make sure to never talk about the verses that people “abuse”. Verses like “my burden is easy, my yoke is light” and “learn from Me because I am gentle and humble of heart” turn people into slackers. Don’t even get me started on Jer. 29:11.

8. Always believe the person that speaks the loudest and with the most certainty about their views. Become this person.

9. Always preach about the sins your not involved in. That way you can be really ungracious about it and not feel like a total hypocrite.

10. Preach a standard even you can’t keep. Preaching a standard twice as hard as you actually want people to keep will produce the results you’re looking for. People typically compromise and will only come halfway. Don’t worry about the condemnation they feel for the other half.

11. Never let people see you aren’t as spiritual as you portray. Don’t let on that you are feeling sad/depressed/struggling with sin. This could cause people to stop esteeming what you have to say. You can suck it up and hold it together until Jesus comes.

Thanks to Michael.

de Jesus de Fake

2006-09-16T00:48:00.000+09:30

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda (or more commonly referred to as Jesus Christ Man) is making a name for himself (and lots of money at the same time) and has big plans ".. for the role he believes he is destined to play on the world's stage. 'I will be president of the biggest government that this earth has experienced,' promised de Jesus."

Maybe he will achieve this because his followers believe all other religions must be destroyed from Catholics, to Baptists and Jehovahs Witnesses.

You thought you've heard it all - well listen to this guy! (here or below)

And thousands of gullible people just keep on falling for it. Well I don't and Rick Ross certainly hasn't.

Check this out and this for more of a background and a bit of history about this cult leader who first thought he was Paul, then the Other and now Jesus - a bit of an identity crisis.

Minister or Fleecer

2006-09-15T23:28:00.000+09:30

As reported in the Telegraph on the 8 September 2006 Tony Craggs, church minister and thief of Charlesworth Congregational Church, Derbyshire was sentenced to 240 hours of community service after fleecing some his flock. Not since the days of Robin Hood has Nottingham Court seen such a bounder. Vulnerable and trusting people he was supposed to care for and pastor became his victims. It seems he was more interested in lining his own pockets. When the police searched his computer they came upon a file reading "A good conman takes a bit of the truth and lot of the lies and binds them together to pull the wool over the eyes of the ignorant."

Are there more 'pastors' out there doing the same thing albeit perhaps with a bit more subtlety?
(Like refusing to provide audited financial statements)

When will people be more discerning?

Maybe the metaphor of a pastor being a shepherd for his flock is because they are as dumb as sheep?

Purpose of the Bible

2006-09-15T22:19:00.000+09:30

The editor in chief of Modern Reformation magazine, Michael Horton, wrote an article 'What are we looking for in the Bible' in 1996.

Ten years on it seems that a lot of people have ignored what he said. A lot of people today still view the Bible as a tool or guide or like a written life coach or a self improvement instruction manual especially when there are such books published like 'Your Best Life Now' by Joel Osteen.

However, is not the Bible so much deeper and more important than that? It is the revelation of the Grace of God in Christ.

"To preach the Bible as "the handbook for life," or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, however, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus, all of them amounting to something akin to Trivial Pursuits: "What happens if a person divorces and remarries?" "Why do your disciples pick grain on the Sabbath?" "Who sinned--this man or his parents--that he was born blind?" For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas. To be sure, Scripture provides God-centered and divinely-revealed wisdom for life, but if this were its primary objective, Christianity would be a religion of self-improvement by following examples and exhortations, not a religion of the Cross."

Biblical Discernment

2006-09-14T11:03:00.000+09:30

Dr Mac Brunson who is the pastor of FBC Jacksonville recently talked about the lack of discernment amongst and within the church and how we should re-identify this need and re-instate Biblical discernment.

He focused on three major points:

1. We have forgotten discernment because we have depreciated doctrine for shallow emotionalism. Neglect of theology results in loss of discernment.

2. We have forgotten discernment because we have abandoned the absolutes of God’s word for the approval of the world...the church has turned loose of what we should be holding on to (the absolutes of God’s Word) and is holding on to what we should be turning loose (the approval of the world).

3. We forget discernment when we become infatuated with influence and preoccupied with prestige. In our culture, we have confused image with substance. We have confused reputation with character. Many people in ministry are just looking for a crowd, but that was never the heartbeat of Jesus.

Blab it and Grab it

2006-09-13T11:57:00.000+09:30

Time Magazin e reports on the growing trend amongst churches (predominantly of the pentecostal persuasion) of the Prosperity Gospel. Commonly known as the Name and Claim it, Health and Wealth Gospel or the more colloquial Blab it and Grab it. These are some of the megachurches not only in the United States but also in Australia amongst the network of the Assemblies of God with the most notable being Hillsong and affiliated churches who also endorse such doctrine (You need more money authored by Hillsong pastor Brian Houston)

Prominent purveyors of this Prosperity Gospel or Prosperity Lite as it is now becoming known are the well known televangelists such as Hinn, Osteen, Meyer, Dollar et al who regularly travel the world in well paying speaking engagements promoting such doctrines.

"Who would want to get in on something where you're miserable, poor, broke and ugly and you just have to muddle through until you get to heaven?" asks Joyce Meyer, a popular television preacher and author often lumped in the Prosperity Lite camp. "I believe God wants to give us nice things."

However one does not have to sell out to this Lite Gospel to have a megachurch. Dr John MacArthur has a large church in Sun Valley, California and is totally opposed to such money hungry doctrines and preachers.

More important than numbers, programs, and structures, however, is the foundation for the spiritual life of Grace Community Church that has been built. This foundation includes sound doctrine, spiritual leadership, and active service. We are convinced that God's legacy of faithfulness to us will continue in the future if we remain faithful to Him and His Word.

The promotion of such 'doctrine' or 'theology' as Health/Wealth is dangerous as it is a step back towards aethism.

As Rev David Cook puts it very plainly - "[That]is the tragedy of Pentecostalism that people do not have a biblical contentment with their current experience of Christ and go looking for more and when the answer is given to them and they don’t find it there they think there’s nothing in this Christianity and they leave the faith and that is the great tragedy. We need to call on our brothers and sisters who are in Christ to get back to the Word because that’s where certainty alone is to be found."

Walking under water - only once

2006-09-13T11:14:00.000+09:30

This Scottish tabloid newspaper seems to be the only source of this story of a man you would normally descirbe as having lost any perception of reality. So coming from a tabloid it must be believeable.

A PRIEST has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water.

Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle.

But he drowned after walking out to sea from a beach in the capital Libreville in Gabon, west Africa.

One eyewitness said: "He told churchgoers he'd had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus.

"He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat.

"He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."

So it naturally begs the question what was he thinking?

Why did he attempt such foolishness in the first place and try to trick his congregation into thinking he was more than just a mortal stupid man?

When he got half way in or even up to his shoulders in water why did he not realize that he was not walking on the water but in it and getting deeper?

Maybe this was his nomination for the Darwin Awards?

No coercion in Islam Take 2

2006-09-09T15:12:00.000+09:30

The publicity surrounding her arrest - enhanced by widely distributed images of Leslie modelling clothes and lingerie, then accelerated by pictures of her in a burqa - and release after serving three months in jail, made Leslie a celebrity victim. Glaring holes in her claims are now apparent. According to Leslie, almost everyone involved is to blame, except herself. She said she was an innocent victim: "In life I have made many mistakes, you know? But this isn't one of them."

Ms Leslie, who was criticised for wearing traditional Muslim dress during her trial, said she never intended to offend the Islamic community.

"I am a Muslim and I do understand the significance of wearing the burqa," she said.

"I should have thought more carefully about wearing it in that situation and I apologise for any offence I have caused, it was an extreme situation."

Ms Leslie said she chose to wear the burqa because it was a "sign of public privacy and modesty".

Ms Leslie was back at work (modeling) recently and still no sign of the hijab.

So what happened to the conversion to Islam?

Surely there are many similarities between the two Fox journalists' gun point conversion to Islam only instead of a gun it was the fear of gaol time and exposure to other inmates.
Is this any different?

The coercion by force to Islam for gaining freedom rears its ugly head yet again. Get Religion has a good take on this and where the actual idea came from - Rev. Canon Andrew White an Anglican leader at the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East - shame, shame, shame.

Vale Crocodile Hunter

2006-09-06T13:14:00.000+09:30

Sadness and grief grips a nation of admirers of a man who was so unashamed of himself and his passion for nature and wildlife. He will be missed by many but none more so than his wife and children.

Why is it that The Guardian in the UK would think to illicit any sort of a comment from Greer? What were they thinking? Don't they know any other ex-pats? Why would anyone pay her for any of the stupid, fallacious, dribbling piffle coming out of her vacant excuse of a cranium.

As a lot of commenters to her story have already stated

Shame on you Germaine, you have done a great disservice to his memory but a greater one to yourself. You were much more appealing when you were irrelevant, now you are just pathetic. Your article is so plainly uneducated, self indulgent and at best it is an off putting piece of tabloid gutter journalismGermaine Greer, what have you ever done for Australia except whinge, moan and complain about it on an international stage, and make us feel embarassed to share your nationality?

I'm far more proud to be Australian because of Steve Irwin, than because of Germaine Greer.

[I] fully agree with [..]and ..condemn the bitter and malicious article by Greer as reprehensible. She's completely wrong, it's a potty and twisted article from a woman who doesn't know the difference between a stunning bloke and a hippo- why on earth was she comissioned that article atall- no wait, she put herself forward. The silly bag's (apparently!) degenerated from 'opportunistic feminism' into slanging a gorgeous man she just plain can't have (even if the complete darling of a bloke has just died) and instead of demoting his work as intended, she shows up her own as worthless.

Greer seems so intent on bashing Irwin that she deludes herself into presupposing facts that aren't even in evidence. The best case of self-delusion is when Greer herself imagines what Irwin MIGHT have said (about the sting killing a horse) and then says "Yes, Steve, but a stingray...". Hang on - Greer is crucifying Irwin for something she herself has supposed him to say!

Patrick Barkham and Jono Coleman both had a much pleasing take at reportage of a great man as did Mark Bristow in his official obituary.

Wonder Lost

2006-09-05T21:21:00.000+09:30

Ravi Zacharias has such a great way of explaining things :-

The older you get, the more it takes to fill your heart with wonder, and only God is big enough to do that...How do you find that wonder?..It is not in argument, nor is it in mere dogma. It is not even found in the church. There is a clue to meaning in our experience - that clue is in relationships. The centrepiece of history, ..is Christ Himself, and you will find unending wonder in a relationship with Him...The answer to the search for wonder is in a relationship with Christ. Jesus Christ went beyond fantasy: He pointed to the Truth.

No coercion in Islam

2006-09-01T22:50:00.000+09:30

Back in 2003 Im am Abdul Feisal Rauf continually aims to update and adapt his religion. A cleric in the liberal Sufic (Muslim mystical) tradition, and co-founder with Faiz Khan of the American Sufic Muslim Association (ASMA) which was designed to foster an American expression of Islam based on tolerance and religious harmony within a pluralistic society.

Now we can have authoritarianism or totalitarianism in any context and in any belief system. And we have had in our history totalitarian expressions of Islamic rule. We've also had pluralistic expressions of Islamic rule. So totalitarianism is not a function of religion or theology, it's a function of human attitude and psychology. And what unfortunately exists in a number of Muslim countries today is a totalitarian regime.

What we need is a pluralistic regime. And that's perfectly consistent with Islam. And I would argue that a pluralistic idea is in fact what the Koran commands. Because God says in the Koran, 'there shall be no coercion in religion’. Had God willed he would have made you all believing in one faith tradition.
But this is part of the divine plan.

But now to more recent news showing how there is absolutely no coercion of religion within Islam.

Centanni described how the pair had been dragged from their car at gunpoint in Gaza City two weeks ago. They were blindfolded and had their hands tightly bound behind their backs. "That was just the beginning of our torment," he said
"Then they forced us to convert to Islam at gunpoint," said Centanni. "I have the highest respect for Islam and learned a lot of very good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had guns and we didn't know what the hell was going on."

A video with his fellow camerman was made and distributed prefaced by the notice that they were not forced into this alleged conversion to Islam.

Steve Centanni, 60, an American correspondent, and his freelance cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, a New Zealander, were later released and dropped off by Palestinian security forces at a hotel in Gaza City. They were then driven to Israel.

They are obviously very pleased to be out of the clutches of their religion enforcing captors.

"I’m a little emotional because this is overwhelming, but I’m fine,” Centanni said. “I’m so happy to be freed.”

Suffice to say that the video produced under gun threat is the truth of the whole matter and that these kidnappers are following Islamic commands. So obviously they don't think that a gun threat is coercion. If not coercion - what is it?

False Teachers in Church

2006-08-28T11:12:00.000+09:30

7 Characteristics of False Teachers - by Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)

Now, the best way to deliver poor souls from being deluded and destroyed by these messengers of Satan is, to discover them in their colors, that so, being known, poor souls may shun them, and fly from them as from hell itself.

1. False teachers are men-pleasers. They preach more to please the ear than to profit the heart.

2. False teachers are notable in casting dirt, scorn, and reproach upon the persons, names, and credits of Christ's most faithful ambassadors.

3. False teachers are venters of the devices and visions of their own heads and hearts. Are there not multitudes in this nation whose visions are but golden delusions, lying vanities, brain-sick phantasies.

4. False teachers easily pass over the great and weighty things both of law and gospel, and stand most upon those things that are of the least moment and concernment to the souls of men. They are nice in the lesser things of the law, and as negligent in the greater.

5. False teachers cover and color their dangerous principles and soul-impostures with very fair speeches and plausible pretenses, with high notions and golden expressions. They will put a great deal of paint and garnish upon their most dangerous principles and blasphemies, that they may the better deceive and delude poor ignorant souls. They know sugared poison goes down sweetly; they wrap up their pernicious, soul-killing pills in gold.

6. False teachers strive more to win over men to their opinions, than to better them in their conversations. They busy themselves most about men's heads. Their work is not to better men's hearts, and mend their lives.

7. False teachers make merchandise of their followers. They eye your goods more than your good; and mind more the serving of themselves, than the saving of your souls. That they may the better pick your purse, they will hold forth such principles as are very indulgent to the flesh. False teachers are the great worshippers of the golden calf.

Now, by these characters you may know them, and so shun them, and deliver your souls out of their dangerous snares; which that you may, my prayers shall meet-yours at the throne of grace.

RIP Maynard Ferguson

2006-08-26T23:44:00.002+09:30

Walter Maynard Ferguson born 4 May 1928 died Ventura, California 23 August 2006.

If you have never heard Maynard play high notes - you have sadly missed out on an incredibly talented trumpet player of the highest calibre.

He involved everyone in his music and loved to teach. "A professional is simply an amateur with a job," he said. "Outside influences are fine, but the greatest delight for any musician is when you begin to sound like yourself."

Elephants and Groucho Marx

2006-08-26T18:48:00.000+09:30

Have you ever wondered what an elephant and

have in common??

"If an elephant is thundering towards you, you are probably not too concerned with the finer points of biomechanics or whether they are truly running or not," said John Hutchinson, of the Royal Veterinary College.

Dr Hutchinson led a team of researchers who recorded elephants moving at speed. Analysis showed that while at least one foot remains on the ground even when an elephant is moving at top speed, its legs exhibit the bounce and springiness to qualify the species as a runner.

"We call it Groucho running because they have the same gait as Groucho Marx," said Dr Hutchinson. "Like Groucho with his famous silly gait, elephants never quite leave the ground. We are finding they seem to bounce -- they use their legs like pogo sticks without leaving the ground. They use them like springs and that's what running is all about.

"They speed up the way they move their feet but never change the sequence. ... They are really, really bizarre. As elephants speed up they get more and more springy."

Dr Hutchinson added: "Studies of animal locomotion are key to the design of effective walking robots."

Now I might be able to claim that watching

is scientific research.

Truth - the first casualty of war

2006-08-26T18:10:00.000+09:30

Traditionally the first casualty in war is the truth and the latest Middle East conflict is certainly no exception with thanks to some astute investigation of the truth at zombietimes

Saint mentions in the quote below who the real war criminals are and sheds light on the hypocrisy that is Hezbollah and the propaganda promoting terrorists.

Every Katyusha - an inherently indiscriminate weapon - launched by Hezbollah was a war crime under international law.

Using civilians as human shields is a war crime under international law. On every single day of the war, Hezbollah violated Article 58 of Protocol 1, which requires parties to a conflict to "avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas" because it had located its command outposts, weapons and ammo storage, and rocket launchers in residential areas - including in and under schools, hospitals and mosques - and consistently fired from behind civilians.

Israel is within its rights to pursue Hezbollah in populated areas under Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." My guess is that that right comes with or without cluster bombs, bombs which are legal under international law against soldiers or enemy fighters.

Do we go on?

Anyone want to remind Reuters and a few hundred newspaper editors about smoke - with or without photoshop?

Shall we spell it out again: Hezbollah are the war criminals here.

All terrorists are war criminals.

Every. Single. One. Every. Single. Time. They. Attack.

Biblical Realism

2006-08-26T00:01:00.000+09:30

We have been losing our grip on biblical realism to the point where even in our own churches we often fail to hold leaders accountable, as though somehow they are too good, too holy to be questioned...No one is excluded from the fall[of man] and it's effects ... No one is exempt from checks and balances in power.

[The doctrine of man's fall and sin] magnifies God's grace. If we don't have a sufficient knowledge and understanding of the seriousness of sin and it's consequences - we can't appreciate grace of God as the cure.

Modern day man warps this concept out of shape so that we feel stressed out instead of feeling guilty and hence we re-design a gospel message that offers a stress relief instead of a relief from guilt. If we are man enough to face up to our real problem then we will be ready for God's solution - Grace. (From Michael Horton-Putting Amazing back into Grace)

Salt and Light

2006-08-20T15:30:00.000+09:30

Christ said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” (Matt 5:13)

What does this mean to us today? We know that salt is used for flavour enhancement today and especially in 1st century Palestine it was used for preservation. But Christ called us who follow Him ‘the salt of the earth’. We are the preservative of the world around us and we are to apply it daily and liberally. If we water it down or dilute it we become weak and useless. We are to retain the essence, strength and value that we were meant to be – otherwise we are useless. He wants us to continue being of use as a preservative to the world. However, some Christians wrongly get the idea that they have the pious and legalistic right to apply ‘salt’ in every situation in disregard of the other person’s needs or situation. May we apply ourselves as salt with gentleness, compassion, in the right dosage and not throw salt in raw, open wounds.

Christ expounds further and calls us “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven”. (Matt 5:14-18)

If we are to be the light that God wants us to be we should use it appropriately and effectively. We are to shine to illuminate and show people God – not to illuminate ourselves. By doing good deeds people will see God (not us) and give the praise to Him (not us).

May we use the light of God as He wants to – as a lamp that gives light to everyone. Too often that same light is thrust full glare into the eyes and thus blinding people against God. In order to show someone the way to God we need to light the path not blind the eyes.

In all this striving to be salt and light may we do this with love and compassion. Being careful to avoid open wounds and not shove blinding light into their eyes.

Benn Hinn or Benny Hill ???

2006-08-12T21:13:00.000+09:30

So which Benny is it?

How is that so many people get sucked in by this charlatan??
Obviously they must check their brains at the door on the way in.
Discernment on sleep mode and gullibility on overdrive.

Why do so many of the Australian penetcostal churches welcome this guy with open arms??

A very sad state of affairs.

Uganda

2006-07-31T16:32:00.000+09:30

The recent mission trip ranged from being great fun, a cultural exposure, a risky adventure, an experience of sightseeing, to assisting builders construct a house and then be impacted by the faith of a poor people of a nation not obsessed with materialism. To be involved in a group of two dozen people traveling to the other side of the world to build house is no mean feat and to be proud in their success of construction of an orphan house is not wrong. To compare the way they live in a country ravaged by the aids virus and the cosy opulent lifestyle of which westerners are accustomed was always going to be inspiring and a change in worldviews.
Summing it up the best is when you look at a people who survive and live because Jesus is all they have. We learn and grow when we realize that in our materialistic world Jesus is all we need.

Cult$ong Music

2006-07-21T11:55:00.000+09:30

At last those long lost first two albums have been found. Although not much of a success the first time, for some reason, but get ready for the new release coming soon!

Another poor sucker

2006-07-15T19:38:00.000+09:30

I spoke to a guy [name withheld] the other day who related to me his difficult financial situation. He has very little money available for food or rent as he has invested a lot of his funds into a particular venture and is awaiting a publisher to pick up on the idea. The time period between now and potential publishing (if ever) is undetermined and so the realised prospective return of his invested savings is very distant. How or why did this situation develop? As a committed Christian he was in contact with a person of the AOG persuasion who had ‘prophesied’ over him and his investment [his words] saying that it will be a very profitable venture. Believing this person to be speaking the truth he is now in this difficult situation. What is sad is he still believes in this prophesy.

How is it that the lack of depth of knowledge of faith and lack of discernment against charlatans allows a person to believe piffle like this. How many others are also so gullible to allow themselves to get into this situation. Are not people aware of false prophesies and shysters? There is validity in believing in an idea or concept with the future prospects of financial improvement but one should not put such trust into any scheme on the basis of any so-called prophesy that it will be successful. Do we want to believe in monetary gain more than wanting to believe in truth?

Minds w--i--d--e shut

2006-07-14T12:25:00.000+09:30

What is all the hype and ‘awesomeness’ associated with Cult$ong? The attraction of moshe pits, light shows, hand waving and incessant repetition of trance inducing songs is obviously attractive to the audience. (When did they change from a congregation to an audience or were they ever a congregation?) The search for Churchtainment has been achieved but at what expense. The Gospel has no need of dressing up – it remains what it is - good news. Good news to those who believe – but to those who don’t it is not good news at all as it means they are eternally lost and no amount of amusing can replace that. Perhaps Neil Postman was currently and prophetically valid in Amusing Ourselves to Death.

What do the Cult$ong groupies actually know about their faith? They may have large numbers each ‘service’ in an appearance of a wide community of believers but the one inch depth of their knowledge is more indicative about them. Like most gullible followers of shysters like Hinn, Meyer, Copeland and Bonke they are treated like mushrooms. They seem to be happy to be mushrooms and don’t want to find out that what they have been giving their money to is a sham. Where is the transparency and financial accountability? Discernment is sadly lacking in these places. Be transformed by the renewing of your minds – not be transfixed by keeping your minds wide shut.

As Homer Simpson said,

‘Hurry up! Entertain me - I’m starting to think!’

Church - where to now?

2006-07-12T16:16:00.000+09:30

Today [attention] is on church growth on the mega-churches, epitomized by the recent explosion of churches that have more than three thousand members.
All innovation is open to question and different assessments. And the darker side of this innovative genius is the church's proneness to compromise with the spirit of its age..to innovate and adapt for the sake of the gospel...innovation is not a problem. If Christians would use the best fruits of the managerial revolution constructively and critically, accompanied by a parallel reformation of truth and theology, the potential for the gospel would be incalculable.
Whatever criticisms need to be raised, this point is beyond dispute: the church-growth movement is extraordinarily influential and significant... At its best, it should be applauded. Where it is not at its best, it requires criticism so that it might be. The church of Christ concerned for the glory of Christ needs more - not less - of the best of true church growth.
.. the church-growth movement is a grand mixture of things good, bad, and in-between. The good is worthy of praise, ... however, it is not the good, but rather the bad and the in-between, and in particular the range of problems that grow from the movement's uncritical use of such insights and tools of modernity as management and marketing.
.. [Is] the term growth to be understood quantitatively, in terms of size and numbers, or qualitatively, in terms of depth, character, and spirit? .. qualitative growth does not exclude quantifiable growth. Nor does the quantitative growth exhaust qualitative growth.

...[The] church-growth movement has...deficiencies..its theological understanding is often superficial, with almost no element of biblical criticism. As a well-known proponent states, "I don't deal with theology. I'm simply a methodologist" .. But in fact, theology is rarely more than marginal in the church-growth movement and discussion of the traditional marks of the church is virtually nonexistent. Instead, methodology, or technique, is at the center and in control. The result is a methodology only occasionally in search of a theology.
.. the movement relies on a minimal sense of historical awareness. It is particularly unaware of comparisons with earlier periods that could throw light on the possibilities and pitfalls we face today.... earlier 19th century change was not so much from Calvinism to Arminianism as from theology to experience, from truth to technique, from elites to populism, and from an emphasis on "serving God" to an emphasis on "servicing the self" in serving God.

.. [The] church-growth movement has flaws through which the confusions and deficiencies become more serious... it employs an unbalanced application of a biblical principle. Known technically as "contextualization," or more simply as "relevance," this principle is indispensable to communication and obviously rooted in Scripture. The supreme pattern of the contextualization and relevance is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and such passages as 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 capture its full dynamic perfectly (climaxing in Paul's summary: "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some").

..[Here] is the main doorway to idolatry many in the movement employ an uncritical understanding of modernity and its insights and tools. "Truth is truth," as George Macdonald put it, "whether on the lips of Jesus or Balaam." .. it is amazing to witness the lemming-like rush of church leaders who forget theology in the charge after the latest insights of sociology-regardless of where the ideas come from or where they lead to. Carelessly handled, innovation and adaptation become a form of corruption, capitulation, and idolatry.

..Through these weaknesses and above all through its uncritical use of the "new ground" of modernity, the church-growth movement has the potential to unleash a deadly form of idolatry and practical atheism in the churches. The result would be one more contemporary testament to the extraordinary power of religion that has no need for God.
Critical discernment is essential. ..If the church makes anything else the principle of its existence, Christians risk living unauthorized lives of faith, exercising unauthorized ministries, and proclaiming an unauthorized gospel.
..It is most dangerous at its best - not its worst - when its benefits and blessings are unarguable. No civilization in history has amplified the temptation of living "by bread alone" with such power and variety and to such effect. In today's convenient, climate-controlled spiritual world created by the managerial and therapeutic revolutions, nothing is easier than living apart from God. Idols are simply the ultimate techniques of human causation and control - without God.
One ..pastor with a 7000 member mega-church expressed the fallacy well: "I must be doing right or things wouldn't be going so well."

If Jesus Christ is true, the church is more than just another human institution. He alone is its head. He is its sole source and single goal. His grace uniquely is its effective principle.
The church of Christ is more than spiritual and theological, but never less. Only when first things are truly first, over even the best and most attractive of second things, will the church be free of idols, free to let God be God, free to be itself, and free to experience the growth that matters.
The problem with this mentality is that quantity does not measure quality. Numbers have little to do with truth, excellence, or character.
[The] exaggerated half-truth about the church's "needing to meet needs" once again breeds unintended consequences. Just as church-growth's modern passion for "relevance" will become its road to irrelevance, so its modern passion for "felt needs" may turn the church into an echo chamber of fashionable needs that drown out the One voice that addresses real human need below all felt needs.
The challenge of modern church growth is the problem of modern discipleship writ large - how to engage in the world freely but faithfully. Clearly, a tough blend of attributes is required: integrity and effectiveness, enterprise with humility, spiritual devotion along with common sense. God is not only against the idolizing of alien gods, God is against His own gifts when idolized. The fate of the tabernacle and the temple are both a warning to mega-churches built not on rock but sand.
From Sounding Out the Idols of Church Growth by Os Guinness

Tithe

2006-07-10T15:37:00.000+09:30

As the first and newly annointed South Australian Regional Superintendent for Cultastic it is now a requirement for all to tithe. This can be done by placing gold coins into the fountain. Unlike Cult$ong, who have holes in their collection containers, I will accept every coin. Feel free to make a wish at the time of submission but do not feel obligated. Tithing will make you feel better about yourself.