Why Bishop Eddie Long Should BeTransparent

by J. Lee Grady | Charisma

The church has had enough spin, denial and closed-door settlements. Leaders must demonstrate humility and repentance.

A few years ago a minister in my city went through a divorce, and the messy details of the settlement between the pastor and his wife were reported in our newspaper. But when the divorce was finalized there was no public statement. The man’s wife disappeared from the stage, her photo vanished from the church website and nothing further was said. Zip. Nada. No comment.

The message: It’s none of your business what happened between the pastor and his wife. He’s the anointed messenger of God. Just follow him.

“People who talk out of both sides of their mouths certainly cannot preach an uncompromised gospel. And liars cannot be trusted to give us the truth.”

Another pastor in my city stepped down from his pulpit briefly for unknown “indiscretions”—and then it became known that he had been carrying on an affair with a stripper from France. The man never resigned from leadership, and his wife eventually divorced him. Today, this preacher appears on Christian television, and he still has a following.

The message: Anointing is what’s important. Character is secondary. If a guy can preach the paint off the walls and get everyone shouting, then relax—it really doesn’t matter how he runs his personal life.

Then last month, Bishop Eddie Long of Atlanta settled out of court with four young men who had accused him of using gifts, trips and jobs to entice them into sexual relationships. The pastor of 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church told his congregation last fall that he would fight the charges. But in late May, Long agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the four men, and the terms of the agreement were sealed. The church said in a statement that the settlement was engineered “to bring closure” and that the congregation will now “move forward with the plans God has for this ministry.”

The message: Case closed. We are never going to tell you what happened. It really doesn’t matter whether your pastor committed serious sins.

Is this how we’re supposed to run a church? I don’t think so. Neither does Bishop Paul Morton, founder of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship and a former colleague of Eddie Long’s. Morton rebuked Long in a recent sermon and demanded that he come clean about what happened with his accusers.

Morton aired his public message to Long on June 19, saying: “If you have repented, show me some signs. Show me some humility. You can’t just come and tell me nothing. Tell me something. Those who have stood with you, tell us something. Tell your church something.”

The issue at stake here is crucial: Should a pastor who falls into serious sin—or who is just accused of a serious sin—respond publicly and address the charges? Does he need to be open with his congregation? Or does the Bible give him immunity? Does his standing as a Christian leader give him permission to hide his faults from view?

In the squirrelly world of independent charismatic churches, where accountability is sometimes a dirty word, some pastors think their ability to make people shout and swoon on Sunday mornings gives them a Get Out of Jail Free card whenever they commit a heinous sin. But I don’t see that concept in Scripture, especially when I read the Apostle Paul’s list of required qualities for church leaders in 1 Timothy 3. Notice these:

“An overseer must be … above reproach” (3:2, NASB). The King James Version translates this as “blameless.” That doesn’t mean leaders never sin. But it means his or her record is important. The Greek word is anepilemptos, which means “cannot be laid hold of; not open to censure.” In other words, if a man bilked people out of thousands of dollars, he’s not qualified to be in ministry now because his reputation would bring a reproach on the gospel. A Christian leader should not have a dark cloud of scandal hanging over his head.

“An overseer must be … the husband of one wife” (3:2). Christians have argued for years about whether this verse disqualifies people who have gone through a divorce. Regardless of that aspect, most scholars agree that the sense of the phrase means “a one-woman man”—in other words, sexually pure. Church leaders should not be involved in adultery, fornication, homosexual affairs, perversion or sex with minors. Period.

“An overseer … must have a good reputation with those outside the church” (3:7). Again, the inference here is that a leader’s past is important. If he is dragging the baggage of past marriages, children out of wedlock, rumored affairs or criminal activity, he has no business in the ministry unless those issues can be fully resolved.

“Deacons … must not be double-tongued” (3:8). While this qualification is mentioned for deacons in Paul’s list, I mention it here because we charismatics are the masters of spin. “Double-tongued” comes from the Greek word dilogos, which means “saying one thing with one person and another thing to another, with the intent to deceive.” Sound familiar? People who talk out of both sides of their mouths certainly cannot preach an uncompromised gospel. And liars cannot be trusted to give us the truth.

God has abundant mercy and forgiveness for all of us when we fail Him. But when a leader fails, he must walk through the humbling process of restoration—and this requires full confession, authentic repentance, willingness to accept discipline from others and the good sense to step out of the pulpit, when necessary, until he can be trusted again.

J. Lee Grady is contributing editor of Charisma. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. His most recent book is 10 Lies Men Believe (Charisma House).

The Health & Wealth Assembly

By Thomas Lee Seng Hock

(Thomas Lee has been a journalist and editor for more than 30 years (X-Echo, x-Star, x-NST, x-MM, x-Sun, x-Edge, x-mysinchew.com) He did his undergraduate theological studies in Singapore and Australia, and obtained his Master in Ministry from the Malaysia Bible Seminary. Currently an Independent Socio-Political Analyst and Bible teacher in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. Contact: tomlee48@gmail.com)

In a place called Bolehland, there is a church called the Health & Wealth Assembly (HWA), pastored by the Rev Kaputt Ked ("kaputt" means "useless" in German, while "ked" means "a wingless fly that parasitises sheep") or Pastor KK as he is generally known.

Pastor KK started out in church work the moment he graduated with a Diploma in Taboology from the Babble College of Motivation. He had no choice but to go to the college when he finished secondary school education as he was not qualified for university studies or even teacher-training. Church work was not his initiate choice as he had ambition to become a lawyer or accountant, but he didn't make the grade at the SPM examination. Since he did not do well in the SPM, he decided to take up church work, convincing himself and others that it was God who called him to the "ministry". So he enrolled at the Babble College of Motivation, whose principal and lecturers all obtained their so-called advanced degrees from the same denominational seminary in the West, whose academic standard is suspect and its degrees of doubtful value.

Since his graduation over 25 years ago, Pastor KK had pastored several churches. He became pastor of HWA about 10 years ago and had single-handedly built up the church from a mere 30-member church to become a mid-range mega church of nearly 500 worshippers. Most of the members, however, are not converts won through evangelistic efforts but recruited from unhappy members of other churches. One of the carrots Pastor KK tantalizes before the members from the other churches, especially the rich businessmen, is to offer them positions of leadership.

The HWA has recently moved from a rented shophouse to its new church complex which has, among other facilities, a swimming pool. Pastor KK hopes that the swimming pool and the other facilities would attract members from other churches to his church, especially those who are rich and can give him and the church big fat love gifts.

Pastor KK keeps his congregation happy by his polished diplomatic people-pleasing public relations efforts. He smiles all the time and is a smooth-talker, especially among the rich and powerful in his church. He preaches sermons that do not touch on moral ethics or sin, but emphasize on the "feel good" factor. His favorites are "God will bless you with riches", "Name it (prosperity) and claim it in God's name", "God loves you and will bless you abundantly with riches", and "Give, and you will receive hundred-folds in return".

Pastor KK also likes to invite his friends who are fellow prosperity preachers to preach in his church, sharing their so-called success stories. One of them kept coming to share what he said was a miraculous escape from a huge fire. He claims that God saved him from death, but does not reveal that scores of others, many of them non-Christians, also escaped with minor injuries. The gullible congregation laps up the dramatic story as gospel truth by the obviously excellent speaker with is religious motivational sales pitch.

Pastor KK also invites tycoons who know nothing about doctrines and have shallow understanding of biblical knowledge to preach in his church, hoping that these tycoons will donate generously to his church coffer and also perhaps give him big fat love gifts. He couldn't bother about the harm such ersatz speakers do on his congregation, so long as they give big donations and give big love gifts.

The HWA members do not question or challenge what their pastor does, generally because most of them are biblically and doctrinally illiterate. They do know know why they believe what they believe, and only accept everything that the pastor says as the truth and nothing but the truth. This is because since its establishment there has been no organized Bible studies in the church most of the time, and cell group meetings are generally gossip sessions led by spiritually incompetent and untrained "leaders". Even those who are appointed Elders are not selected based on the qualifications specify in the Pastoral Epistle or elected by the membership, but on the basis of their wealth and their friendship with the pastor. When approached for guidance over a conflict, the Elders will say they do not want to get involved. The worst thing is that they are biblically and doctrinally deficient, making them the spiritually blind leading the spiritually sightless.

Pastor KK is certainly very satisfied with such a condition among his leaders and church members, because biblically and theologically illiterate church leaders and gullible members will not be able to challenge him on his teaching (if any), preaching, and church organizational and administrative practices. In the kingdom of the spiritually blind, the one who can bluff the best with a bit of Bible knowledge, and twists theological truth to his  personal advantage and benefits is the king. And Pastor KK is such a person.

As he looks back at his younger days, Pastor KK gives thanks to God that he had entered the "ministry" and never have it so good, being his own boss with flexible hours, having a big fat pay with a luxury car thrown in, getting lots of extra income via love gifts without having to declare and pay income tax, and he and his family members need not pay for church functions like dinners, church camps and overseas mission trips.

Pastor KK, however, recalls with horror one period in his church when a spiritual revival nearly happened, when he allowed one theologically trained, spiritually matured and articulate person to conduct a series of Bible studies in his church.

It was certainly lucky for him that the trouble-maker opted not to continue with teaching after getting strong hints from him to stop. Pastor KK heaved a sigh of relief after the fellow left the church. He has certainly learned his lesson not to allow any doctrinally sound, theologically educated, and spiritually matured person to teach and preach in his church.

Such a person may ignite a spiritual revival and ecclesiastical revolution in his church. He has cold sweat each time he thinks of the near-miss when he allowed that Back-to-the-Bible proponent to conduct Bible studies for his church leaders and members.

But that trouble-shooter has stimulated a spiritual appetite among his congregation for biblically-sound spiritual food. Pastor KK knows that having solid Bible-based series in his church would result in his church leaders and members becoming spiritually wise and will start to question his character, conduct, and charade. But he needs to meet the demand for Bible studies in the church. So he seeks the help of his spiritual godfather, a Western missionary, to conduct a series of prosperity motivational lessons, masquerading as Bible studies. Pastor KK knows that the words "Western" and "missionary" will invoke an impression of awe and reverential respect among his gullible congregation, especially those still having the colonial mentality that "the West is best", a spiritual terminal disease in many churches in Bolehland. But Pastor KK knows that his Western missionary won't hurt his own position in the church, but will enhance his tight grip on their souls.

Everyone in the congregation is happy that Pastor KK is organizing regular "Bible studies" for them, with Mr Western Missionary teaching them..

Things have returned to normal at the HWA -- Pastor KK is happy, the church leaders are happy, the church members are happy.

Their happiness will last until the roll is called and they found their names missing.

--
ThomasLee

Doomsday Prophet Camping Leaves Radio Show

Thursday, 23 June 2011 Jennifer LeClaire

The voice of prophetic doom is silenced, sort of.

Harold Camping, the 89-year-old Christian radio broadcaster who three times predicted the world would end—most recently on May 21—is putting an end to his weekday segment called Open Forum on Family Radio.

Camping suffered a stroke on June 9, and Family Radio has been playing reruns of earlier recorded episodes on the radio station he founded since then. Specifically, Camping’s staff aired 20 segments he recorded between May 23 and June 9, according to the Oakland Tribune.

"When those are completed, we will have other programming that is scheduled to run in that time slot," Program Department Secretary Judi Rathbone wrote in a published e-mail. “Mr. Camping is still in the hospital and continues to recover.”

Like many whose prophecies fail, Camping did not admit that he was wrong. In fact, he said that Judgment Day was May 21—in a spiritual sense. Although we didn’t see Jesus crack open the sky and rapture the church, Camping is nevertheless convinced his prediction was accurate.

"On May 21, this last weekend, this is where the spiritual aspect of it really comes through," Camping said. "God again brought judgment on the world. We didn't see any difference but God brought Judgment Day to bear upon the whole world. The whole world is under Judgment Day and it will continue right up until Oct. 21, 2011, and by that time the whole world will be destroyed."

Put Away Childish Things

by R.T. Kendall 

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. —1 Corinthians 13:11

We expect children to behave in certain ways—to talk, think, and reason like children. We all recognize the sound of a child. For example, we don't expect a teenager to talk and act like a small child. Similarly, we can listen to people who claim to have been Christians for years and yet talk like a baby Christian. Immature speech in people who have been Christians for many years is to their shame, and Paul is challenging the believers over this.

Childhood is marked by a particular way of talking and also a particular way of thinking: "I thought as a child," said Paul. A child is the most selfish person that ever was. As far as he is concerned, the whole world revolves around him. He thinks only of himself and wants immediate gratification. He wants to be loved, but it never crosses his mind to be loving. And some of us, who have been Christians for quite some time, have never moved beyond just wanting to be loved, pampered, and encouraged. When will we take the responsibility and begin to grow up? If we are still waiting for others to show if they care about us, we need to start caring instead.

A third characteristic of children is shallowness. A child is easily influenced, is gullible, and has no discernment. This is why Paul says we should no longer be infants who are tossed about by every wind of doctrine.

So immaturity in Christians is just like the painless pursuit of childhood, characterized by baby talk, selfishness, and shallowness.

Rather, let us demonstrate the love of God through mature speech, selflessness, and discernment. As Christians, let us love one another and put away childish things.

Excerpted from Just Love (Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 1997).

Promises that do not fail

by Terry Enns | Words Of Grace

Being a truth teller is fundamental to godly character (Ps. 15:2b). Where truthfulness is absent, godliness is absent. That’s one reason it is so important to keep promises. A promise-keeper is a God emulator. For God keeps His word. He always has. He always will. And Joshua 21 is one demonstration of that truth.

Hundreds of years earlier God had made a promise to Abraham that a great nation and God’s chosen people would be his legacy. And God also promised that through His nation would come blessing to the world and that He would also provide for them a land in which to live. As a ratification of the promise, God made a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15:12ff). And Abraham even saw the promise beginning to be fulfilled with the birth of his son Isaac. But over the next few years, things began to look bleak. The land fell into famine, and one of the sons of blessing (Joseph) disappeared. And then the tiny seedling of a family moved to a foreign land (Egypt). “Can God be trusted?” certainly could have been a question that the 70 family members of Jacob asked as they moved to Egypt.
For 400 years they stayed in Egypt. No promised land was in sight. Then came a Pharaoh who did not know the story of Joseph and his people (Ex. 1:8). “These invaders,” he might have thought, “would make good slaves.” And while they eventually made their escape across the Red Sea and watched the warriors of Egypt die under the falling wall of water, they still wondered over the next 40 years if they had been sent to the wilderness to die, without seeing they land. “Where is God now?” they asked (Ex. 16:1-3; 32:1; Num. 14:1-4).

Could God keep His promise? Would God keep His promise?

The book of Joshua is a testimony to the fact that God is the promise keeper. Joshua led the Israelites (now a group of not 70, but more than 2 million!) in the conquest of Canaan (Josh. 6-12). And then the land was divided among the 12 tribes. For seven long chapters (chs. 15-21), the details of the division are provided. It would be boring reading of a list of unknown cities and land marks except for one fact. With each allotment, with each landmark, with each city, God declares: “I told you the truth. I have a place for my people. I am yours and you are Mine. And I will do for you what I said. I will do for you everything that I said.”

And that simple truth is affirmed by the writer: “Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass” (21:45). God was faithful to keep all of His promises to Israel.

Now those promises related to the land are not for us today. Yet the benefit from reading this passage is that we discover something about the character of God. He is the only true promise keeper. The hope for the believer today is that God is still the same kind of promise-keeping God that He was to Israel. He never fails (He cannot fail) to uphold His promises. God is faithful to keep all of His promises always to all His people.

The encouragement to us, as A. W. Tozer noted is that, “The tempted, the anxious, the fearful, the discouraged may all find new hope and good cheer in the knowledge that our Heavenly Father is faithful. He will ever be true to His pledged word. The hard-pressed sons of the covenant may be sure that He will never remove His loving-kindness from them nor suffer His faithfulness to fail.” [The Knowledge of the Holy.]

The Dark Side, the Grace of God and Obedience

by Dr Beng | Call It Grace

When God wakes you up in the early hours of the morning with spiritual revelations, a command to pray and to write down what He’s shown you, you had best obey.

He’s showing me the work He’s doing in me, demonstrating that only He can do it.

First there was L, who gets her blood pressure medication from the polyclinic, and comes to me for her diabetic medicine. This is what we call "fragmented care" and it is NOT GOOD for the patient. I tried to explain to her that she should just consolidate her care under one doctor (preferably the polyclinic, for cost reasons), but she kept interjecting about why this and why that, and basically had no interest in hearing what I had to say. I got impatient with her and asked her to just hear me out, in a rather irritated manner. There on the wall to my right were the reminders about the fruit of the Spirit - Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self control. I asked God to forgive me. I was tempted to just keep quiet and refer her away (the passive aggressive way) but was restrained from doing so.

Before she left she said, "Don't be angry..." I said I wasn't, but I was lying. The truth is that I knew I was not going to charge her more than $5 for my time (she's unemployed) and I was angry that she was taking up so much of my time, and there was a long queue of paying patients waiting outside. Resentful charity. Way to go, Beng - what a wonderful witness. (I'm being sarcastic, in case you did not realize).

Then there was J, who shouted outside and demanded to see the doctor straightaway. She had been waiting for more than half an hour, had popped out of the clinic to run an errand, and became furious when she came back in to find that that I had started seeing the other patient (for just five minutes, I might add). The other patient was gracious enough to interrupt the consultation to let her see me first. She vented about how this is why she never came back to Singapore, because people here were so inconsiderate, and grumbled about how she had to wait so long, not realizing that if she had wanted more time, others behind her would have had to wait as well. And if I had been seeing her halfway, I doubt she would have been gracious enough to be asked to interrupt her consultation (especially if she had just mentioned to me that her husband had been having an affair, like the patient before her did, which is why I had some serious and time-consuming counselling to do in the first place).

By these things, God showed me what the human heart is like. Mine, and that of all mankind.

He also demonstrated His power remarkably by the calm I was able to muster, keeping my lips tightly shut and refraining from explaining all of the above, but merely being polite and professional and not commenting on her ranting. In front of me were the words reminding me that "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." She looked ashamed enough of her ranting and stopped it after a while, rebuked by my silence on the matter.

Now God chose to wake me up at 4.30 am in the morning to make me ponder these things. The first incident was to show me how weak I was in my own flesh, despite my good intentions. He pointed out to me that if it were not for His Holy Spirit I would never have behaved that way in the second incident (believe me, I have no problem cutting people down to size when I choose to). Thank you Lord. Not only that, He would have me pray for her, as the Word came to me: "Pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you." God showed me that He loves even people like her, and can and will save them. Weak human nature. It's all about God's love and grace.

I rejoice that He keeps me close to Him and obedient and holy that He may show these things to me. I know that without holiness, I would be much less sensitive to these promptings. The effort to be holy results in rewards like these - Joy in the father's presence and being able to hear his voice, and being given the ability to obey holy unctions.

Then He wants me to write all this down, lest the morning comes and all the things He has revealed to me disappear from my mind like the mists of the morning. What, Lord? You have got to be kidding! Do you know what time it is?

But I've learnt a long time ago that He gives what He commands, and I don't have to worry about not getting enough sleep. All I have to do is obey.

Tattoos at Mill Creek church pierce skin, soul

A Mill Creek church invited its members to be tattooed during Sunday services.

By Nick Perry Seattle Times staff reporter


 
Above: Matt Sawdon covers Erica Armendariz's tattoo with plastic after working on her religious iconography at Sunday's 10:30 a.m. service at the Gold Creek Community Church in Mill Creek. Below left: Armendariz started her tattoo with religious images a year ago.

Erica Armendariz, 24, a hairdresser and member of the church, started her tattoo with religious images about a year ago. She wants to share what she believes in- faith and family- through art. On one arm, there is a guardian angel, a sacred heart, a cross and a ribbon with the words.

The sight of a woman being tattooed live on the altar accompanied by the sound of a buzzing ink gun provided a startling backdrop to Sunday's evangelical sermon.

Your parent's church service this was not. In the drive to stay relevant, the Gold Creek Community Church has been hosting a series called "Permanent Ink" that featured Sunday's live-tattoo finale.

The Mill Creek church is not exactly staid — booming 20-minute rock sets launch regular sermons — yet the pastors acknowledge this series was pushing societal norms.

"We've said from the start that we are not advocating tattoos — nor discouraging them," said pastor Larry Ehoff.

"We think of it as amoral. It's neither immoral nor moral, it's just the choice of a person."

Ehoff said the church is telling the same story of Jesus as always, it's just finding different ways to tell it.

Sharon Snell was one of several congregants who volunteered to be tattooed Sunday. At the noon service, she got on stage and faced away from about 150 parishioners while tattoo artist Matt Sawdon worked on the image of a police shield on her lower back.

It was Snell's third tattoo and represents her husband's work as an Everett police officer. Snell said last month's shooting death of Seattle police Officer Timothy Brenton forced her to confront the fragility of life and the dangers inherent in her husband's job.

"Anything can happen at any time," Snell said. "Him being an officer is a big part of my life and of who I am."

As Snell's tattoo took shape, pastor Dan Kellogg told the congregation that permanent markings, both good and evil, are mentioned in the Bible. The most famous symbol, he said, is "666," the sign of the devil. But there's also mention in the Bible of markings on Jesus, saying he is the king of kings and lord of lords, Kellogg said.

Another congregant who volunteered was Erica Armendariz, who was getting work done on an arm tattoo she calls her "faith sleeve." "Surprisingly, I was not nervous to get up on stage," she said, adding that the tattoo process, which in her case stretched through two sermons, was getting painful toward the end.

Tattoo artist Matt Sawdon said he'd never tattooed anyone at church before. Aside from the limited time he had during each sermon, he said, it wasn't much different from a normal day's work. Last week, as part of the Permanent Ink series, a member of the church had a tattoo of Texas removed. Because the equipment was too cumbersome to transport, parishioners watched a video of the process.

The man now lives in Washington, and he doesn't see much need for the Lone Star State anymore.

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010334052_churchtattoo23m.html


Tattooing, carvings, cuttings, piercings, etc. Throughout history has been seen as pagan practises. God wanted Israel to separate from these practises.

Strict instructions to not mark your body in ANY WAY

Leviticus 19:28 “You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD.”

Your body is the temple of God

1 Corinthians 3:16 16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

1 Corinthians 6:19 19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

You do not follow after the World, you abandon the things of this World

Deuteronomy 18:9 9 “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

Sin is a stumbling blog for others - sends message that sin is OK.

1 Corinthians 8:9 9 But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.

Associated with rebellion. Rebellion is sin, Stubbornness is iniquity. Satan rebelled against God.

1 Samuel 15:23 23 “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”

Related: What Does the Bible Say About Tattoos? / Can a Christian Get a Tattoo?

Prepared For The Slaughter: The Disarming Of The Church

by John Green

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed…" -- Noah Webster of Pennsylvania An Examination of The Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually." -- George Mason of Virginia: Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788

As history has shown, it is a common tactic for the oppressing force to gain control of a nation by seizing the means by which individuals might defend themselves. Once the citizenry are disarmed, it is a relatively easy matter to exert complete tyrannical control. It seems to me that the same principal holds true in the spiritual realm.

The New Testament is replete with warnings of false teachers and teachings, of lying signs and wonders, and of corrupt men who would seek to draw followers after themselves. God has not left His people defenseless. He has indwelt us with His Spirit of Truth, provided us with the example of Christ, His teachings, the teachings of the apostles, and all the other writings found in the Bible. There is a gift of the discerning of spirits given to some, but more importantly, there the ability to test all things and to be discerning, which is the responsibility of all believers. If the believer is to be armed against the deceptions of the enemy, and to remain free from his oppressive regime, then he must exercise discernment with continual vigilance. If this defensive weapon is seized and taken from you, then you are easy prey for any who would desire to take you captive.

Because of these things, it is very disturbing to me to observe a trend in the Body of Christ today. This trend is to scorn and belittle those who would exercise their God-given self-defense weapon of discernment. Those who would obey scripture and "test all things" are mocked and ridiculed from the pulpit, and labeled ‘Pharisees.’ It seems that the Church has fallen prey to the pluralistic, non-judgmental mindset of our present age. The one unpardonable sin is to question someone’s belief, or dare to say that it might be wrong. These new leaders demand you climb on the bandwagon, and if you cannot agree, then you must remain silent at all costs. They call for us to experience now, and evaluate later. Adam and Eve had no experiential knowledge of good and evil. The Serpent called their attention to the attractiveness and desirability of the fruit, and enticed them to experience for themselves. In their later evaluation, they knew that they had been wrong to ignore what God had said on the matter, but by then the damage had been done.

Those who would remove the defensive weapon of discernment are binding the hands of the Church. They are preparing God’s people for the slaughter. Why are they doing this? Why would they want to expose millions to the myriad deceptions of the enemy with no protection. Why do they take away what the Father has given? The Church is becoming a slaughterhouse slick with the spilled blood of saints who have been seduced by false teachers. The faithful plod forward to the killing floor, their trusting eyes fixed on their leaders. Error and deception runs rampant. Charlatans rule the bestseller list. Pseudo-knowledge is dispersed around the world, speeding through electrical synapses. Make no mistake. It is a battle, and much is at stake.

Let us examine the logic (or lack of it) behind what some of these leaders are saying:

"You have to experience it yourself before you judge it." This is pure nonsense. It is the method the Mormons use to get people hooked in (pray about the Book of Mormon and see if you get a ‘burning in your bosom’). You don’t have to experience suicide to know that it is bad for you. Christians are never commanded to authenticate a questionable spiritual experience by submitting themselves to it.

"If you don’t jump in the River, then you may miss out on the move of God." If you don’t exercise your duty to test everything and hold on to what is good, then you may be deceived. God is not in a hurry. If you are walking with Him, seeking to please Him, then He will guide you into all He desires for you. Just because someone proclaims something is a move of God, doesn’t make it so. Beware of the salesman who pushes you to make a decision on the spot. He may have something to hide.

"God offends the mind to reveal the heart." I don’t know what this is, but it is not Scripture. It is true that God’s ways may be offensive to human wisdom. Often though, this quote is used to say that if you are offended by something going on in the Church, then your heart isn’t right. The real issue is, are you offended because what is going on is unscriptural? If so, then stand fast.

"Don’t oppose what is going on, in case it turns out to be a move of God." This is the argument used by Gamaliel in Acts chapter 5. Although this argument worked in favor of the apostles, it must be pointed out that Gamaliel was a Pharisee making a pragmatic argument. His was not a directive from the Lord on how believers should conduct their discernment. If something is not from God, ultimately, it is true that it will not succeed. In the time that it takes for a false movement to runs its course however, many lives will be damaged, and many souls deceived and damned. Look at the phenomenal growth and apparent success of Mormonism. Christians rightly oppose Mormonism on a basis that it twists and deviates from Scripture. Things which occur within Christianity should receive no less scrutiny. Or consider the works of Satan. We know that he will not succeed, but we certainly do not sit back and allow him to do his work unhindered. When souls are at stake, we cannot afford to sit back and do nothing.

"Don’t you want more of God in your life?" This is a sneaky one. Of course, any sincere Christian realizes that they need to grow closer to God, and they desire to do so. This should not lead us to embrace everything that comes down the pike however. Part of growing closer to God includes obeying His commands to test and be discerning. The desperation of some Christians reminds me of King Saul turning to the witch of Endor. He wanted an answer at any price. The price he ended up paying was his own destruction.

Look for yourself. See how many times the New Testament references false teachers, false teaching. Using your concordance, look up the commands to discern and test, to not be deceived. Shake off the chains of those who would seek to bind you. Exercise your "Right to bear arms" as a believer.

The healthy soul, like the healthy blood system, has it's proper proportion of white and red blood cells. The red corpuscles are like faith: they carry the life giving oxygen to every part of the body. The white cells are like discernment: they pounce upon dead and toxic matter and carry it out to the drain. In the healthy heart there must be provision for keeping dead and poisonous matter out of the life stream. A.W. Tozer

Source:  http://www.spiritwatch.org/fireslaughter.htm

Related:
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The Stronghold of Lawlessness

The Stronghold of Lawlessness

by Jerry Lavery | Harvest Ministries

"While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18).

"For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it" (Romans 8:24-25).

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).

"When you lose hope, you become a no-direction generation person. When you lose your hope, you lose vision and you lose purpose. When you lose hope, you become lawless; you become involved in drugs and alcohol to cover up your fear, insecurity and pain. You cover it up with crime. You do wrong things while thinking, "What’s the use, nobody cares anyway." So you might as well become lawless and live for yourself, even if it means you do so at the expense of hurting other people. That’s the attitude of the society we’re living in today." (From It’s Time to Cross the Jordan by J. Doug Stringer—dedicated to all who are weary and are earnestly searching for the Promised Land: that perfect rest of faith that is in Christ Jesus.)

Christianity is being confronted with our biggest stronghold: lawlessness. It is the number one attack on love. The Church and the country are at a point of "constitutional crisis." Our personal "constitution" is what we are made up of, individually and corporately. "Crisis" is the point at which determination is made to life or to death. Many in the Church have gone to the world for comfort and are holding on to the things of the world, to idols, in an effort to ease discomfort. God says that friendship with the world is hatred towards Him. (James 4:4; I John 2:15-17) We must seek the Lord to be our source of comfort and to be restored.

As lawlessness abounds, many people’s love will grow cold. (Matthew 24:12) God says, "Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14).

We must be holy; we are in training for reigning. We are called to be the light of the world; we cannot continue to destroy the temple. We must repent now during this window of grace. There is liberty in the cross. If we’re letting lawlessness rule in our hearts, we’re doing more to prepare for the antichrist than for the Lord. (2 Thessalonians 2)

"He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy" (Proverbs 28:13).

"If we are not in love with Jesus Christ, who or what are we in love with?" - Holy Spirit

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Prepared For The Slaughter: The Disarming Of The Church

Why Hell Is Integral to the Gospel

Greg Gilbert | Christianity.com

For some, the horror of the Christian doctrine of hell—that it is a place of eternal, conscious torment where God's enemies are punished—has led them not just to avert their eyes and minds, but to deny it entirely. "Surely," they say, "hell is a fictional construct used to oppress people with fear; a God of love would never allow such a place to really exist." There's an emotional power to this argument, to be sure. No one, certainly no Christian, likes the idea of hell.

At the same time, this doctrine isn't just drapery on the side of the Christian worldview, something with no relevance to the structure of the faith itself. Nor is the doctrine of hell an embarrassing, unnecessary, primitive wart that we believe just because we're told we have to.

On the contrary, the doctrine and reality of hell actually throws the glory of the gospel into sharp relief for us. It helps us to understand just how great God really is, how sinfully wretched we really are, and how unutterably amazing it is that he would show us grace at all. Moreover, the reality of hell—if we don't push it out of our minds—will focus us, above all, on the task of proclaiming the gospel to those who are in danger of spending eternity there.

With that in mind, here are five biblical statements about hell which, taken as a whole, demonstrate why hell is integral to the gospel.

WHY HELL IS INTEGRAL TO THE GOSPEL

1. Scripture teaches that there is a real place called hell.

I won't belabor this point. Others have made this case with crystal clarity. Suffice it to say that medieval bishops didn't invent the doctrine of hell as a way to scare the serfs; they got it from the apostles. And the apostles didn't invent it to scare the pagans; they got it from Jesus. And Jesus didn't borrow it from the Zoroastrians to scare the Pharisees; he was God, so he knew it to be real, and said so. And besides, hell's reality had already been revealed in the Old Testament.

At the most basic level, therefore, if we claim to be Christians and to believe that the Bible is the word of God, we have to recognize that the Bible teaches the reality of hell. But there's more.

2. Hell shows us how heinous our sin really is.

Have you ever heard someone make the argument that no human sin could possibly deserve eternal torment in hell? It's an interesting argument, one that reveals a lot about the human heart. Why is it that when people think about hell, they always conclude that God must be at fault and not themselves? You can see how the doctrine reveals our hearts: when we consider our own sin, our first inclination is always to minimize it, to protest that it's not that bad and that God is wrong to say it deserves punishment.

The reality of hell stands as a massive refutation of that self-justification. Non-Christians will always see the horrors of hell as an indictment of God, but as Christians who know God to be perfectly just and righteous, we must understand that the horrors of hell are actually an indictment of us. We may want to minimize our sin, or excuse it, or try to argue our consciences down. But the fact that God has declared that we deserve eternal torment for those sins should remind us that they are not small at all. They are enormously evil.

3. Hell shows us how immovably and unimpeachably just God really is.

People have been tempted throughout history to think of God as a corrupt judge, one who sets aside the demands of justice simply because he likes the defendant. "We are all God's children," the argument goes. "How could God hand down such a horrible sentence on some of his children?" The answer to that question is simple: God is not a corrupt judge. He is an absolutely just and righteous one.

Over and over the Bible makes this point. When God reveals himself to Moses, he declares himself to be compassionate and loving, but he also says, "Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished." The Psalms declare that "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne." What an amazing statement! If God is to continue being God, he cannot simply set justice aside and sweep sin under the rug. He must deal with it—decisively and with exacting justice. When God finally judges, not one sin will receive more punishment than it deserves. And not one will receive less than it deserves, either.

The Bible tells us that on that day, when God sentences his enemies to hell, the whole universe will recognize and acknowledge that what he has decided is unimpeachably just and right. Isaiah 5 makes this point with bracing clarity: "Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opens its mouth without measure." It's a grotesque image, the grave widening its mouth to swallow the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And yet by this means, Isaiah declares, "The Lord of Hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness." Similarly, Romans 9:22 tells us that by the torments of hell, God will "show his wrath and make his power known," so that he might "make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy."

We may not understand it fully now, but one day hell itself will declare God's glory. It will—even in its horror—testify together with the psalmist, "Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne."

4. Hell shows us how horrific the cross really was, and how great God's grace really is.

Romans 3 tells us that God put forth Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement "to demonstrate his justice." He did this "because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished."

Why did Jesus have to die on the cross? It was because that was the only way God could righteously not send every one of us to hell. Jesus had to take what was due to us, and that means he had to endure the equivalent of hell as he hung on the cross. That doesn't mean that Jesus actually went to hell. But it does mean that the nails and the thorns were only the beginning of Jesus' suffering. The true height of his suffering came when God poured out his wrath on Jesus. When the darkness fell, that wasn't just God covering the suffering of his Son, as some have said. That was the darkness of the curse, of God's wrath. It was the darkness of hell, and in that moment Jesus was enduring its full fury—the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

When you understand the cross in that light, you begin to understand better just how magnificent God's grace to you is, if you are a Christian. The mission of redemption that Jesus undertook involved a commitment to endure God's wrath in your place, to take the hell that you deserve. What an amazing display of love and mercy that is! Yet you will only see and understand this display of love clearly when you understand, accept, and shudder at the horror of hell.

5. Hell focuses our minds on the task of proclaiming the gospel.

If hell is real, and if people are truly in danger of spending eternity there, then there is no more urgent and important task than doing precisely what Jesus told his apostles to do before he ascended to heaven—proclaim to the world the good news that forgiveness of sins is offered through Jesus Christ!

I think John Piper got it exactly right in a Gospel Coalition interview: "It's very hard to give up on the gospel if you believe there is hell, that after this life, there is an endless suffering for those who did not believe in the gospel." There are all kinds of good things that Christians can do—and in fact should do! But if hell is real, it is worth keeping in mind—no, it is imperative that we keep in mind—that the one thing that Christians can do that no one else in the world is ever going to do is to tell people how they can be forgiven of their sin, how they can avoid spending an eternity in hell.

CONCLUSION

There is no doubt that the doctrine of hell is horrible. The doctrine is horrible because the reality is horrible. But that's not a reason to avert our eyes and ignore it, much less to reject it.

There are those who think that, by rejecting or at least ignoring the doctrine in their preaching, they are making God more glorious and more loving. Far from it! What they are really doing is unwittingly stealing glory from the Savior Jesus Christ, as if what he saved us from was…well, not so bad after all.
In fact, the horrific nature of what we have been saved from only intensifies the glory of what we have been saved to. Not only so, but as we see ever more clearly the horror of hell, we look with ever more love, ever more gratitude, and ever greater worship to the One who endured that hell for us and saved us.

Greg Gilbert is the senior pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and is the author of What is the Gospel? (Crossway, 2010).

The Coming Economic Armageddon

by Dr David Jeremiah

“Greece sneezes and Portugal catches a cold. Portugal coughs and Spain falls ill. Spain runs a fever and Italy comes down with the flu.”¹ They call it financial contagion. . .the corrupting, fast-spreading influence of debt on the world economy. The debt virus has infected an economic system that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The most noticeable evidence of financial contagion is the continued borrowing of money by governments for the purpose of living beyond their means. As global financial earthquakes continue to increase in frequency and intensity, many are beginning to wonder if we are on the threshold of Armageddon!

Armageddon. It’s a ten-letter word that is often misspelled and mispronounced, and it is just as often misapplied. It can refer to three things: the place of a future “final and conclusive” war between good and evil; the name of that specific battle; or a massive conflict or confrontation.² Of course, as Christians know, the word Armageddon is from the Bible, designating the world’s final, climactic battle that will be fought on the plains of Megiddo.

Drawing its power from that biblical imagery, in today’s common usage the word refers to any event of cataclysmic proportion, such as that experienced by the major stock-trading boards in October 2008. ³
I chose to use that word in the title of this book because it pictures the catastrophic conditions that will prevail on the earth in the end times, and because many of those conditions are beginning to be visible today.

The ten chapters of this book are about these end-time occurrences and the financial warnings that are pointing us toward the Armageddon of the Bible. While that Armageddon is still in the future, the trembling of our financial foundations is a call for us to “awake out of sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11).

I believe that much about the future of this world has been revealed to us in the prophetic pages of the Bible. We begin with a look at the state of the American economy, which is still deteriorating and threatening to collapse. Although there are glimmers of hope, unemployment is at near record highs in most of the country, and in my home state of California, it continues to rise.

In October 2009, according to the Labor Department’s report, the National Unemployment Rate had risen to 10.2 percent, more than doubling the rate when the financial crisis began to be evident in December 2007.

These cold numbers translate into some 15 million real people—sisters, brothers, neighbors, maybe you—who are unemployed and looking for work. Forty-four percent (6.5 million) have been unemployed for more than twenty-seven weeks. Add to that another 9.1 million workers who have become “involuntary part-time workers” since their hours have been cut, and another 2.3 million who have given up looking for work.⁴

According to my calculations, that means there are 26.4 million would-be workers in our country today in some degree of financial distress related to unemployment. Rising unemployment has added to the already burgeoning crisis in Social Security and Medicare with benefit payments projected to exceed payroll tax revenues in 2010. Unemployed workers do not contribute to Social Security or Medicare programs, so the number of recipients is rising while the number of contributors is falling. In addition to the unemployment tragedy, more than 11 million homes nationwide are now “underwater”—that is, worth significantly less than the mortgage owed on them. According to the Federal Reserve, the collapsing housing market has produced a $7 trillion loss in value from late 2006 through the end of 2009. ⁵

While most of us are understandably concerned with the impact of the American financial crisis, we cannot ignore the global economic meltdown that seems to be herding us in the direction of a new world order and a one- world government.

The idea of a one-world government is as old as the Book of Genesis and as current as the United Nations. Our world is ripe for globalization. When the Cold War ended with a widespread thaw in hostilities, the nations and their economies began the process of trying to conglomerate from separate nationalistic entities into one heterogeneous unity.

Politicians, economists, scientists, and futurists have long sought such a supranational unity. The eight-year struggle to ratify a reform charter/constitution for the European Union is a good example of the difficulty inherent in combining twenty-seven separate national identities into one coherent unit. The European Union was ultimately successful in adopting a constitution-type government in November of 2009 opening the door for a stronger and more centralized government in Europe.

Reversing a promise by global leaders in April 2009 to end the recession, only China, France, Germany, and Japan were into the recovery stage by the end of that year. Today Canada, Italy, Greece, Great Britain and the U.S. are still struggling to check the downward trend of the economy.

Historically, it has been the economy of the United States which has recovered earliest and has been able to “pull the rest of the world out of its funk.”⁶ This time around, it is hoped that China will lift the U.S. out of recession. If neither of these two nations can rise to the challenge, there seem to be few options left on the horizon.

Could we be standing today on the edge of a recession from which no one economy, no one nation, no one union will be able to extricate the world? The Bible predicts that such an era is coming. Fueled by the world’s economic convulsions, the only answer will seem to be the unification of the nations under one economic system and one world ruler.

One would expect such a process to begin with the gradual consolidation of wealth and power, both nationally and globally. Today as we witness the merging of banks and the centralization of financial regulations, we cannot help but wonder if the Antichrist is waiting in the wings, ready to make his entrance onto the stage of this desperate world.

When he finally appears, the world will embrace him. He will be the ultimate Financial Czar—Satan’s CEO, and he will deceive the world with a promise of stability and order. When the whole world is singing his praises, he will unveil his master plan for the destruction of all those who refuse to fall down and worship him and his idol.

In those final months of his evil reign, no one will be able to buy or sell without his special identification mark implanted in his or her forehead or hand.

From his center in the ancient rebuilt city of Babylon, the Antichrist and his partner, the False Prophet, will regulate the commerce of the world until Almighty God brings it all to an end “in one hour.”
Then there will at last emerge a one-world government and a one-world economy that will be the ultimate answer to the longing of the human soul. The Bible assures us that a golden age of unprecedented peace and prosperity is coming. What the Antichrist will have failed to do with his militaristic and computer surveillance, Jesus Christ will do by His omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.

In light of all that is happening and all that is going to happen, how should we organize our schedules and live our lives? I have called the last chapter of this book, “Keep Your Head in the Game and Your Hope in God!” This is the instruction that God has etched upon my own heart. In these desperate days, this is my prayer for you!

David Jeremiah

May, 2010

1 Caroline Baum, “Greek Contagion Myth Masks Real Europe Crisis,” Bloomberg Business Week, Businessweek.com, 9 May 2010, (accessed 10 May 2010).
2 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., 2003, 67.
3 Allan Roth, “The Stock Market – One Year after Armageddon,” CBS MoneyWatch.com, 9 March 2010, http://moneywatch.bnet.com/investing/blog/irrational-investor/the-stoc-market-one-year-after-armageddon/1188, (accessed 25 March 2010).
4 “Bureau of Labor Statistics: Economic News Release/ Employment Situation Summary,” U.S. Department of Labor/Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS.gov, 5 April 2010, (accessed 26 April 2010).
5 Stephanie Armour, “Underwater mortgages drain equity, dampen retirement,” USAToday.com, 24 March 2010, (accessed 25 March 2010).
6 Bill Bonner, “Don’t Count on China,” Fleet Street Invest.com (U.K.), 26 August 2009, http://www.fleetstreetinvest.co.uk/daily-reckoning/bill-bonner-essays/china-rescue-world-ecnonmy-54115.html (accessed 26 August 2009).

Order Dr. Jeremiah’s new book, The Coming Economic Armageddon.

The Second Coming: What Are We Looking For?

by Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll

The Second Coming: What are we looking for? The greatest cataclysm of world history. The prophets talk about the bad news of the return of God to earth in the person of Jesus by a phrase that’s been mentioned a number of times in this book. The phrase is the Hebrew phrase yom Adonai. We translate it “the day of the Lord” or “the day of Yahweh.” The prophets stumble over each other trying to find adequate language to describe the horror of that day.

Turn to the end of the Old Testament to the little book of Zephaniah. Zephaniah shares with Joel and many other prophets of God a phrase that is the phrase of absolute horror. It’s called the great day of the Lord.

Zephaniah in 1:14-16 writes that the great day of the Lord is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of Yahweh is bitter. Mighty men will scream aloud. That is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, devastation and desolation, darkness and gloominess, clouds and thick darkness. I look at all of those pairs of words, and I see a man ransacking a thesaurus, if there were such a thing available, trying to find adequate terms to describe the calamity of the day of the return of Christ to the earth, because when He returns it will be in the worst judgment in the history of the world.

How can that be? How can that be if Genesis 6 to 9 describes the death of all living by the great flood? How can that be, given the suffering that we’ve experienced even in our own lifetime, like the recent calamitous flooding in places like Honduras, from typhoons, tsunamis, horrible earthquakes, hurricanes, all of these so-called acts of nature? How can there be something worse than all of those things?

I think what makes the Second Coming worse in judgment is that all of those things God did through mediation, that is through Creation, nature gone riot, Creation in upheaval. But in the Second Corning, the judgment will be done, not by water, not by flood, not by fire, not by storm, but by His own hand. Did you hear that?

We’re all familiar with the story of the ten plagues. Are we familiar with the wording of Exodus 11? Turn back there where the announcement of the tenth plague is given. The last plague God used to deliver Israel from Egypt is the most horrendous of the list. There were others that were awful, the turning of the Nile to blood, the darkening of an eclipse that lasted for days and was specific on the Egyptians and not the people of Israel. Some eclipse that was. Cattle disease, boils, gnats, flies, awful things, but none of the plagues is like the tenth. Because in the tenth plague we’re told that from the house of pharaoh, to the humblest farmer in the land, and even extending out to the barn, the firstborn of Egypt will die. They will not die, however, as Sunday school lessons have it, by the “Angel of Death,” but by the hand of God.

Look at Chapter 11 verse 1: “The LORD [Yahweh] said to Moses, ‘One more plague I will bring on Pharaoh.’” He says I will do this. Verse 4, “Thus says the LORD, ‘About midnight, I am going out into the midst of Egypt’” You see what we’ve done? We’ve softened this because it’s almost intolerable. It’s something that we can’t stomach. God? No, we’d like it to be done by an angel. God? No, we’d like it to be done by a demon. God? No, we’d like it to be done by a storm or a disease, but God says, “I will do this.” And so He did.

Turn to Chapter 12 and look at the summary in verse 29. “It came about at midnight that the LORD struck all the first-born.” Not an angel, not a seraph, not a messenger, but the Lord.

I do Passover Seders in the spring. The rabbis sometimes got things right, and this they nailed. In the Passover Haggadah, the liturgy for that wonderful service of praise to God for deliverance from Egypt, there is a homily on these words from Chapter 11 where God says, “I will go out into the midst of Egypt.” Listen to this. “The Lord, Yahweh, brought us forth from Egypt, not by means of an angel, nor by means of a seraph, nor by means of a messenger, but the Most Holy. Blessed be He in His own glory. As it is said, ‘I will pass through the land of Egypt in this night, I will smite every firstborn of the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.’ I, Yahweh, I will pass through the land of Egypt, I, Myself, and not an angel. I will smite every firstborn, I, Myself and not a seraph. And on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment, I, Myself, and not a messenger. I, Yahweh, I am He, there is none other.” And that’s the way it was. When the final act of deliverance was done, it was God who did it. And that was to get His people out of Egypt. And then when they came to the watery mass, and the army was behind them and the Sea of Reeds or the Red Sea was before them, then it was again that God acted in His own person, not by an angel, not by a seraph, not by a messenger, but in His own glory.

Turn to Exodus 15. This psalm, the first psalm in the Bible, is the celebration of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and it’s celebrated every year by Jewish people all over the world. Jewish people who follow their own Haggadah know this better than we Christians, because they recite this every single year. When God brought Israel from Egypt, not only was it He, and He alone, who slew the firstborn, but it was He, and He alone, who fought against their enemies and destroyed them. And when the song was sung, verse 3 says, “The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is His name.” Yahweh is a man of war, Yahweh is His name. And in those words, we are celebrating the fact that it was God, and God alone, who delivered them. Adonai ish milchamah, Adonai shemo. Yahweh is a warrior, His name is Warrior God.

That’s what we have portrayed about sweet King Jesus in Revelation 19. Jesus, when He comes down, is a man of war. Look at the words, verse 11, “He judges and wages war.” Look at the words of verse 15, “From His mouth comes a sharp sword.” The point is that it is He who will fight directly, personally.

The Second Coming of Jesus: What are we looking for? The greatest calamity in all of human history.
The people of the world don’t understand this. They use the word Armageddon which is our word, a Bible word. But they use Armageddon to describe nuclear holocaust, nation against nation. Back in the days of the Soviet Union there was such a threat of the end of the world, we thought, by one nation lobbing missiles against another and though it was thought that was Armageddon, it was not. That would be horrific, it would be world war, but it’s not Armageddon. Armageddon is the nations gathered together at the end of the Tribulation period to withstand God the Father putting His Son Jesus Christ on the throne of David in Jerusalem. That’s what Psalm 2 is about. That’s what Psalm 110 is about.

In Psalm 2, the nations are gathered together against the Lord, and against His Messiah, His anointed. And the One who is in heaven laughs in derision as He says, “I set My king on My holy hill, Zion.” Do you think the nations can withstand the power of God? That’s why there’s the greatest cataclysm of all of history. What makes it the worst is it’s not water, it’s not fire, it’s not disease, but it’s the Lord Himself who comes to judge.

Taken from Charles R. Swindoll, John F. Walvoord, J. Dwight Pentecost, eds., The Road to Armageddon: A Biblical Understanding of Prophecy and End Time Events (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1999), 161-165. Used by permission.

THE PERILS TO A POWERFUL PULPIT

By Dr. John Edmund Haggai | Haggai Institute

1. First is the peril of slight.
An improper evaluation of the pulpit's potential power leads to its sad collapse.

It is true, the preacher's task is never done. He can never sit down and feel there is no work on the desk, no letters to write, no calls to make, no problems to pray over. Nevertheless, he must cultivate that fine sense of discrimination. He must maintain a priority list, and preaching should be at the top.

The ministry itself is to blame for the decline in pulpit emphasis. We have indulged in amateur psychology, sociology, political science, and an empty eclecticism. While wise-cracking our way to popularity, we have failed to challenge men's lives.

The preacher is not a priest nor a presiding elder. He is a prophet. He is not to spend his time lighting candles, arranging furniture, or leading a ritual. A priest never brings a spiritual revolution. A prophet does. The preacher is to declare the whole counsel of God. He is to "preach the Word."

The first step to a revitalized pulpit in America is a proper evaluation of its importance.

2. The second peril is slovenliness. This naturally results from slight.
A man will give his most strenuous effort and his best hours to the thing he deems most important.

It is rather out of proportion for a man to spend twenty hours on a forthcoming financial program and only four hours on a forthcoming sermon.

How many preachers there are who complain they get no time to study until after 10:00 o'clock at night. Gentlemen, God help us to protect our time, as we protect our reputations and our families.

A man may prepare his head for the pulpit in a few hours, but to prepare himself takes time. Preaching is more than the prating of platitudes. It is the projection of the Gospel message through the total personality which has become the incarnation of the message projected. It is one thing for a preacher to master a sermon. It is a finer thing for the sermon to master the preacher.

Carelessness, neglect of study, failure in mental and spiritual growth, reliance upon antiquated jargon and threadbare clichés, taking success for granted — all of these will precipitate a sad and sudden collapse of pulpit power.

God deliver us from undisciplined minds, cold hearts, and crippled wills. A quick wit, a facile use of epigrams and witticisms, and a supply of tear-jerking stories will not take the place of the message of God preached in the power of God by a man of God.

3. A third peril is substitutes. This quite logically issues from slovenliness.
When a man is consistently unprepared he welcomes substitutes. Indolence bestirs his conscience which now tortures him. He knows he has nothing for his people, so he gladly accepts a substitute.

Said one preacher in Detroit to an evangelist friend of mine, "We haven't been able to attract large crowds at our revivals, so we are going to have a Gospel film revival."

One Church secured a man to lead singing with his feet while standing on his hands.

Music is great, but it is no substitute for Gospel preaching. It will not do for us to substitute the potentially powerful Sunday night service with vesper hours, panel discussions, and candlelight meditations. As Vance Havner has said, "My friends, when they come lugging out the candles, you may know that the power isoff."

There is a danger in substituting organization and organizational programs for virile Bible preaching. My present staff, our program at Ninth & O Baptist Church, and the fact that I have graded two Sunday Schools and have started on the third (and may the Lord help us) are evidences that I believe in organization. But organization is no substitute for preaching.

The pulpit acrobat is a pervert and not a preacher. The man who makes his pulpit a showboat rather than a lifeboat is vitiating the potential power of his pulpit. On the other hand, the sacred desk is no platform for the display of philosophical pyrotechnics. The Christian preacher is a descendant of the Hebrew prophet, not the Greek philosopher.

There is no substitute for preaching. Preaching, as set forth by Phillips Brooks, is the truth of God communicated through human personality. Men magnify methods. God magnifies the man.

The pulpit is imperiled when the preacher permits any substitute for Gospel preaching.

(To be continued)

Copyright © 2011 John Edmund Haggai

What Is Grace?

by John MacArthur

Many years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined a term that has come to characterize much of evangelical Christianity - it's the term "cheap grace." Cheap grace is in reality a self-imparted grace, a pseudo-grace, and in the end the consequences of living by it are very, very costly.

Cheap grace is not at all a reference to God's grace; it's a contemptible counterfeit. It's a grace that is "cheap" in value, not cost. It is a bargain-basement, damaged-goods, washed-out, moth-eaten, second-hand grace. It is a man-made grace reminiscent of the indulgences Rome was peddling in Martin Luther's day. Cheap? The cost is actually far more than the buyer could possibly realize, though the "grace" is absolutely worthless.

Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and Nazi resister. He was hanged in 1945 by SS guards, but not before his writings had left their mark. Bonhoeffer's theological perspective was neo-orthodox, and evangelicalism rightly rejects much of his teaching. But Bonhoeffer spoke powerfully against the secularization of the church. He correctly analyzed the dangers of the church's frivolous attitude toward grace. After we discard the neo-orthodox teachings, we do well to pay heed to Bonhoeffer's diatribe against cheap grace:

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure the remission of sins. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. "All for sin could not atone." The world goes on in the same old way, and we are still sinners "even in the best life" as Luther said. Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world's standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin (The Cost of Discipleship [New York: Collier, 1959], 45-46).

Cheap grace has not lost its worldly appeal since Bonhoeffer wrote those words. If anything, the tendency to cheapen grace has eaten its way into the heart of evangelical Christianity. While verbally extolling the wonders of grace, it exchanges the real item for a facsimile. This bait-and-switch tactic has confounded many sincere Christians.

Many professing Christians today utterly ignore the biblical truth that grace "instruct[s] us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age" (Titus 2:12). Instead, they live as if grace were a supernatural "Get Out of Jail FREE" ticket-a no-strings-attached, open-ended package of amnesty, beneficence, indulgence, forbearance, charity, leniency, immunity, approval, tolerance, and self-awarded privilege divorced from any moral demands.

Sadly, the rank-and-file Christian is further cemented in an unbiblical view of grace by what comes out of some seminaries. There are scholars who actually legitimize the error as a correct understanding of grace. They call their teaching "grace theology" and their movement "The Grace Movement."
They advocate a "grace" that alters a believer's standing without affecting his state. It is a grace that calls sinners to Christ but does not bid them surrender to Him. In fact, no-lordship theologians claim grace is diluted if the believing sinner must surrender to Christ. The more one actually surrenders, the more grace is supposedly watered down. This is clearly not the grace of Titus 2:11-12.

No wonder Christians are confused. Christian churches mirror the world; Christian leaders follow the culture; and Christian theologians provide their stamp of approval. The situation is nothing short of deplorable.

But here's what I propose - let's start by laying down a biblical definition of grace with this simple question: What is grace?

Grace is a terribly misunderstood word. Defining it succinctly is notoriously difficult. Some of the most detailed theology textbooks do not offer any concise definition of the term. Someone has proposed an acronym: GRACE is God's Riches At Christ's Expense. That's not a bad way to characterize grace, but it is not a sufficient theological definition.

One of the best-known definitions of grace is only three words: God's unmerited favor. A. W. Tozer expanded on that: "Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits on the undeserving." Berkhof is more to the point: grace is "the unmerited operation of God in the heart of man, effected through the agency of the Holy Spirit."

Grace is not merely unmerited favor; it is favor bestowed on sinners who deserve wrath. Showing kindness to a stranger is "unmerited favor"; doing good to one's enemies is more the spirit of grace (Luke 6:27-36).

Grace is not a dormant or abstract quality, but a dynamic, active, working principle: "The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation…and instructing us" (Titus 2:11-12). It is not some kind of ethereal blessing that lies idle until we appropriate it. Grace is God's sovereign initiative to sinners (Ephesians 1:5-6).

Grace is not a one-time event in the Christian experience. We stand in grace (Romans 5:2). The entire Christian life is driven and empowered by grace: "It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods" (Hebrews 13:9). Peter said we should "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18).

Thus we could properly define grace as the free and benevolent influence of a holy God operating sovereignly in the lives of undeserving sinners.

Paul frequently contrasted grace with law (Romans 4:16; 5:20; 6:14-15; Galatians 2:21; 5:4). He was careful to state, however, that grace does not nullify the moral demands of God's law. Rather, it fulfills the righteousness of the law (Romans 6:14-15). It does not annul the righteous demands of the law; it confirms and validates them (Romans 3:31).

Grace has its own law, a higher, liberating law: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2; cf. James 1:25). Note that this new law emancipates us from sin as well as death. Paul was explicit about this: "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:1-2). Grace reigns through righteousness (Romans 5:21).

That is the good news of the gospel! God has acted to set us free from sin - not just the consequences, but it's very power and presence. One day we will never know the experience of temptation, a stray thought, a misspoken word, a false motive. Guilt will be gone, and with it shame, and "so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

In the meantime, we enjoy the liberation from sin's cruel power and defiling influence. God has enabled us, through grace, to "deny ungodliness and worldly desires" so that we can enjoy a sensible, righteous, and godly life in the present age (Titus 2:12). "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10).

Adapted from The Gospel According to the Apostles © 2000 by John MacArthur. All rights reserved.

Related: Caution: "Destined to Reign" by Joseph Prince

Getting in Christ's Way

Michael S. Horton

What would things look like if Satan actually took over a city? The first frames in our imaginative slide show probably depict mayhem on a massive scale: Widespread violence, deviant sexualities, pornography in every vending machine, churches closed down and worshipers dragged off to City Hall. Over a half-century ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Philadelphia's Tenth Presbyterian Church, gave his CBS radio audience a different picture of what it would look like if Satan took control of a town in America. He said that all of the bars and pool halls would be closed, pornography banished, pristine streets and sidewalks would be occupied by tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The kids would answer "Yes, sir," "No, ma'am," and the churches would be full on Sunday ... where Christ is not preached.

"Only in Christ is discipleship the consequence of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, rather than its own contribution to human redemption"

Not to be alarmist, but it looks a lot like Satan is in charge right now. The enemy has a subtle way of using even the proper scenery and props to obscure the main character. The church, mission, cultural transformation, even the Spirit can become the focus instead of the means for "fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). As provocative as Barnhouse's illustration remains, it is simply an elaboration of a point that is made throughout the story of redemption. The story behind all the headlines of the Bible is the war between the serpent and the offspring of the woman (Gen. 3:15), an enmity that God promised would culminate in the serpent's destruction and the lifting of the curse. This promise was a declaration of war on Satan and his kingdom, and the contest unfolded in the first religious war, between Cain and Abel (Gen. 4 with Matt. 23:35), in the battle between Pharaoh and Yahweh that led to the exodus and the temptation in the wilderness. Even in the land, the serpent seduces Israel to idolatry and intermarriage with unbelievers, even provoking massacres of the royal family. Yet God always preserved that "seed of the woman" who would crush the serpent's head (see 2 Kings 11, for example). The story leads all the way to Herod's slaughter of the firstborn children in fear of the Magi's announcement of the birth of the true King of Israel.

The Gospels unpack this story line and the epistles elaborate its significance. Everything is leading to Golgotha, and when the disciples-even Peter-try to distract Jesus away from that mission, they are being unwitting servants of Satan (Matt. 16:23). "The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers"-not simply so that they will defy Judeo-Christian values, but "to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake" (2 Cor. 4:4-5).

Satan lost the war on Good Friday and Easter, but has shifted his strategy to a guerilla struggle to keep the world from hearing the gospel that dismantles his kingdom of darkness. Paul speaks of this cosmic battle in Ephesians 6, directing us to the external Word, the gospel, Christ and his righteousness, faith, and salvation as our only armor in the assaults of the enemy. In Revelation 12, the history of redemption is recapitulated in brief compass, with the dragon sweeping a third of the stars (angels) from heaven, laying in wait to devour the woman's child at birth, only to be defeated by the ascension of the promised offspring. Nevertheless, knowing his time is short, he pursues the child's brothers and sisters. Wherever Christ is truly proclaimed, Satan is most actively present. The wars between nations and enmity within families and neighborhoods is but the wake of the serpent's tail as he seeks to devour the church, employing the same tried and tested methods: not only martyrdom from without, but heresy and schism from within. In the rest of this article, I want to suggest a few of the ways we are routinely tempted toward what can only be called, tragically, "Christless Christianity."

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