Posted on 08/05/2013 3:40:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
ping
Good grief!
A very sober word for today’s church and our nation. Few will head the warning, however. “Without me you can do nothing,” Jesus stated. In evangelical churches “getting saved” is as far as most of them go. There are “seekers” - they are looking for answers but Jesus is just one of the many choices for them. Some will find the Truth but most will just keep looking. Next, are followers of Christ - they hang on for awhile till they begin to feel the nails of the cross of the surrendered or exchanged life that Christ calls all true believer to. So they get offended at Jesus because they thought he was going to make them “successful” or just couldn’t understand why he allowed their spouse to leave them or their child to die, or to lose their job or a hundred other things that they thought Jesus shouldn’t have allowed them to suffer. Just like in Jesus’ day many stopped “following” after he told them, “… unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part with me.” Finally, there are disciple. These are people that have found their life in Christ. It doesn’t matter what happens to them - they are sold out 100% for Christ. They have given up finding fulfillment in this life and have found a fulfillment that this world cannot offer. Their joy springs from a source not of this world, i.e., God’s Holy Spirit - and the world hates them for it. Christ has flooded their hearts and they just can’t get enough of Jesus. They just can’t stop talking about him, living for him and are ready to do whatever he asks of them. They endure to the end, are ready to suffer anything for their Lord and have (important word coming) gratitude in their hearts for the privilege of knowing Christ and can’t wait for him to conform their life to match up with his through his power. The self-life is just too tempting for the rest of humanity. Fulfillment here and now is just soooo attractive. They can all be heard singing, “I did it my way,” with Frank Sinatra and they will all share the same eternal destiny as Frank. Wake up America! Your hour of trial is upon you. “If the righteous scarcely be saved where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?” Jesus still stands at the door of your heart, knocking, waiting to be invited in. The time for accepting this truth is growing very short. Please consider carefully what you will do with the Son of God.
I think of myself as an "evangelical" Christian..... so was taken aback and read on.
But the definition (according to Webster's) of evangelical is as follows....
1: of, relating to, or being in agreement with the Christian gospel especially as it is presented in the four Gospels
2: Protestant
3: emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual.
According to the above definition, "evangelical" seems to follow ALL that she stated was sound practice except for #2 which says "protestant" and the little part of #3 that says "importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual".
Could this mean that the author is NOT Protestant, insists on a ritual (such as a Mass)to be the only true form of worship) and as such deems all Protestants as heretics?
Sounds to me like you have never visited an evangelical church. I am an evangelical Christian and my church teaches that getting saved is only the first step in leading a life immersed in the all encompassing Trinity (three persons of our One God)... true fellowship with God- the Holy Spirit as He indwell us, worship of God-the Father, and understanding of the saving grace of what God-the Son (Jesus Christ) did for us. After "being saved" we then STUDY the scriptures (thus in my church all the sermons are tightly enmeshed in study of the scriptures, word for word, precept upon precept)to learn how to lead a more Godly life following Christ's example and how to carry His good news (the Gospel) to the world.
It is not my intention to start an argument with you about your choice of religion. If your church is doing the above, then you are in a sound Christian church. I was just dismayed to hear that you think something else is going on in all Evangelical churches.
Look for America to become a new missionary field for the Christians coming from the “global south” nations.
Well the article is all over the place, to be ironic, pointing fingers and acting pharisaical means you are not truly saved either, so let the author be warned. I have fenced with many Catholics, some clearly biblically illiterate and who believe in the doctrine of demons, but where they go after they die, well that's up to G*d. Ultimately far too many Christians worry about what their neighbor is doing for salvation instead of with fear and trembling thinking about their own. If someone believes Mary is the Mother of God, in transubstantiation, the Pope's interpretation is inerrant, really in the scheme of things means zero to me. We can debate about such things but not divide.
Some of the other points, including the observations by one of my favorite theologians Fulton Sheen are spot on and very relevant today. From Rick Warren to Joel Oesteen, there is a growing apostasy, a doctrine of demons, that the gospel is a cosmic vending machine, that ask you shall be given healing 100% of the time, financial success, perfect peace with no tribulations..etc, etc. I have personally witnessed many of these types, people coming out of bad situations, drug addictions, divorce, losing someone close to them. They are on fire for the Lord, go to church, bible study, tithe, talk the talk, act pious and then,.......further calamity hits and they turn on God, they fall away sometimes never to come back. They are at the Master's table for what the Master has for them, not for the company of eating with him. A said faith instead of a real faith. Why sadly MOST people living today are going to hell, they don't really love God, they love sin and cry out when the consequences of sin are more than they can bear. Thankfully God gives chance after chance UNTIL we either blaspheme the Holy Spirit or we take our last breath, then it is too late.
I think Kimbal’s article makes some valid points, but nothing that hasn’t been said before many times over.
Her article is also unnecessarily academically pretentious in trying to tie the general apostacy of today with all kinds of non-Christian movements and ideas of the past.
The truth is false teaching and accommodation to the world has been a problem since the 1st century. These problems will never go away until Jesus returns and they just reappear under new names and guises.
The answer is teaching Christians sound, historical, Biblical doctrine, and, how to read and study the Bible with sound principles of Biblical interpretation, i.e. context of the passage, continuity of a teaching with the entire Bible, a general understanding the original languages used (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc.), historical context of when the passage was written, who was the audience the passage was directed to, and what kind of literature the passage belongs to (narrative, poetry, letter, parable, allegory, etc.).
I do agree that there is an overall move on American Christianity away from the importance of reading and studying the Bible, that doctrine is “boring” and not all that important. Emotionalism also seems to be a prominent element of the “preaching” and “worship” of many churches today.
There has also been this idea of learning to “hear the voice of God” for oneself with the idea that you, the individual, can learn how to “hear” God’s voice and receive personalized messages from God for you. This is part, I think, of the trivializing of the value of studying the Bible as God’s revealed word as the sole written source of truth from God to mankind. The Bible is now just one of many “sources” of God’s “truth”. A sort of renewed “mysticism”. I think this idea of learning to “hear” God’s voice is un-Biblical and dangerous.
There is also a renewed and repackaged extreme Calvinism on the rise which is caused strife and division within the church. This is under the guise of the absolute “sovereignty” of God, which under Calvinism means that no one has the capacity to respond to God’s love and mercy - in fact, they teach that it is literally impossible for sinful humanity to respond to God’s love, and therefore God must supernaturally intervene in certain select human beings lives and force them to accept Christ as Savior. This is the Calvinist’s view of predestination - that God has preordained all who will believe in Christ and those who won’t - even babies who die face the fact that some of them will go to hell and some will go to heaven, based on God’s sovereign choice.
This renewed Calvinism also teaches that every single act or event, whether good or evil, has been preordained of God. Even the sins you commit were preordained for you to commit by God’s sovereign choice. Every act of bravery or cowardice, love or hate was foreordained.
I think this type of thinking is also dangerous to the Gospel as well.
Very good point and so true.
Rather than criticizing someone's for of worship (whether it is Protestant, Catholic, ritualistic, informal, choir with organ, quartet with guitars, or even no music , it makes more sense to look at one's personal statement of faith.... and see if it contains the essentials:
- One God, consisting of the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit)
- Saved by Grace alone (we are all sinners and unable to save ourselves) in the belief that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, Crucified, risen, in order to offer atonement in our behalf
- The day will come when we will be judged by God, Jesus will return, bodily and visibly to receive His people to Himself
- Bible is the written word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit and without error in the original manuscripts, infallible and authoritative
(hope I didn't leave any out)
“...the Emerging Church, whose leaders include Brian McLaren, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, and the pantheist Rob Bell.”
Hmmm, this shows ignorance of “Emergent” church leadership, either wilful or not. While Brian McLaren and Rob Bell have always identified themselves as “Emergent,” Rick Warren and Bill Hybels have never been a part of that clique, as both have theologically very conservative beliefs—and are not self-consciously post-modern (which defines the Emergents).
McLaren and Bell have recently shown themselves allied with the (so called) “evangelical” Left—defined by “Sojourners” Jim Wallis—in supporting homosexual “marriage,” but not so, for Warren and Hybels.
This author doesn’t show much familiarity with actual evangelicalism.
I don’t know who this person is who wrote this article, but unless I totally misunderstood, then I am hearing her say that “evangelical” is heresy.
We The People do so need such a work among us. Sadly, I now believe this nation is a wasteland where evil struts and the lie is the hallmark of power. We are, I believe, at the end times. America as a nation is not going to be redeemed. But Christians must remain active, to give those who will awaken a chance to faithe in Him for a little season, before the close of the age.
If you’re going to try to convince people that Rick Warren is somehow a conservative church leader, you’re going to have a tough sell. Just sayin.
thus while the average Christian knows what he believes, he is unable to articulate why he believes it,
ping for later
And this doesn't even come close to the irony of attacking paganism while invoking a "triune gxd."
I sense that a spiritual revival, like a “last call” before the end of the age though.
Jesus gave a huge hint that such would happen, with the story of the invited guests from the highways and byways. Included in that hint was a warning to those ‘without the prescribed wedding garments’. I have no doubt that a last minute invitation will go out, but I am afraid that revival will not stir America back to a fear of the Lord. We have gone too far down the evil pathways, with wholesale slaughter of the alive unborn and integrating sexual degeneracy into the fabric of the society. Couple those services to evil with the embrace of a continuous liar and his regime of professional liars and we have the perfect recipe for being rejected by God.
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