$130 Million For A Church Building? Maybe The House Church Advocates Have A Point!

What would your church do with $130,000,000.00?

Killing The Fuzzy Gospel

Killing the Fuzzy Gospel – We’ve Got a Problem (Pt. 1)

Killing the Fuzzy Gospel – Moving Forward (Pt. 2)

Our Great High Priest Jesus Christ In The Book Of Hebrews

Our Great High Priest in Hebrews: The Son Greater than the Prophets (pt. 1)

Our Great High Priest in Hebrews: The Son Greater than the Angels (pt. 2)

Voddie Baucham: The Wide and the Narrow Gate

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Voddie Baucham: The Wise and the Foolish Builders

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Voddie Baucham: Beware False Prophets

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Voddie Baucham: The Permanence View of Marriage

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Proving The Existence Of GOd

From this Christian apologist.

Jewish Rabbis Embrace Jewish Jihad (Against Non-Jews Only Of Course)

When your religion is based on the opinions of man (Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, liberation theology) instead of the Bible (Christianity) well these things happen! And by the way, this IS taking Zionism, including Christian Zionism, to its logical conclusion, because Christian Zionism teaches that the Old Testament is still in effect and binding for Jews. Christian Zionism actually regards teachings that Jesus Christ fulfilled, replaced and superseded the Old Testament to be anti-Semitism. So, since the Old Testament is still in effect, Jews have carte blanche to kill anyone that they regard as an enemy, and when I say kill I mean GENOCIDE.

Courtesy of PJ Miller:

West Bank rabbi: Jews can kill Gentiles who threaten Israel

 

John Piper: Was Jesus Christ Tempted With Homosexuality?

http://desiringgod.org

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The Proper Christian Response To The Nalid Malik Husan Terror Attack: Concentrate On The Gospel!

With regards to the crime and tragedy of Nalid Malik Husan’s attack at Ford Hood, Texas, where he shot at least 31 people, killing at least 12 people including women and civilians while screaming Allahu Akbar (and motivated by his desire not to be deployed against Iraq (or Afghanistan) as part of a force invading a fellow Muslim and Arab nation) allow me to propose a proper Christian response.

1. Prayer. We must pray for those wounded. We must pray for the families and loved ones of the wounded and deceased. We must pray for those who witnessed or responded to this horrific event, especially police officers, firefighters, ambulance personnel, nurses and doctors. We must pray for the counselors and therapists, both Christian and non-Christian, who will aid people deal with the physical, mental and emotional aftermath of this carnage. And yes, we must pray for the loved ones of Nalid Malik Husan and – presuming that he survives – Husan himself for his conversion to Christianity. Finally, we must pray that the body of Christ responds in a wise, Biblical manner to this event. We must pray that Christians discipline those who fail to respond in such a manner, and that we reject those who respond in a manner that does not honor Jesus Christ.

2. Evangelism. This is the primary way that the New Testament teaches Christians to deal with the non-Christian world, which is sharing the faith of Jesus Christ. This terror attack may cause an increase in fear, hatred and government action. Or it may cause people’s hearts to be desensitized and grow cold. With either reaction, the appropriate Biblical response is to go out and tell as many people as we can, or more accurately as many people as God leads us to, about the kingdom of heaven. Whether Jew, Gentile, Muslim, atheist, Hindu or a person involved in a false expression of Christianity, we must tell people that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who is God, that He is the only way to heaven, that His sacrifice on the cross is the once and for all payment of sins, and there is salvation in no other. This evangelism should not be event-driven, as some attempt to exploit this event or the fear that comes as a result of it. We should not indulge in the sort of “this is why Christianity is better than Islam” triumphalism, for that is a political and cultural worldview argument engaged in by people whose heart is with this world, not those who consider themselves pilgrims, for whom the world and the evils and hardships thereof are not worthy to be compared to the glory of eternity with Jesus Christ. Also, such a message is more useful to preaching to the false Christian cultural chauvinist choir than winning any converts, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. Instead, this tragedy should serve is a reminder that this is truly a wicked, fallen world that we live in, one ruled by the evil one, the prince of the power of the air who is Satan, and that evil and death and judgment are the fate of the world and the people not redeemed from it through Jesus Christ’s blood. Events like this one, wars, famines, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, oppressive political regimes etc. should all remind us of this fact, they should remind us of the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, the Olivet discourse, the parables on the kingdom of heaven, his teachings on last things (New Jerusalem and the lake of fire), and serve as a burning fire shut up in our bones to go forth and obey the commandment of Jesus Christ given in the great commandments, to go and make disciples of all men, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If we go forth and keep this great commission commandment, then God will use us to save whom He will, and we will be as drink offerings poured out before God, and by our evangelism God will be praised, honored and glorified.

3. Resist temptation. For many, the temptation to indulge in an improper and non-Christian response will be very strong. Many quarters will use this as an excuse to fan the flames of hate against Muslims. Others will use it as an attempt to attack Biblical Christianity with its stand that Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven as well. However, for many the primary temptation will be a political and cultural one, the opportunity to assert Christianity’s superiority over Islam because of western culture and politics, because it is a superior worldview. Well, the west will come under the judgment of Jesus Christ along with the rest of the sinful world, and on that day the western cultural and political systems will be judged as part of Babylon and fall with the rest, including but not limited to the Arabic cultural and political systems. Further, even if the western worldview is superior, it is still a WORLDview, making it worldly, not holy, not of God, and not something that will last forever in New Jerusalem, but instead is something that will be consumed with this world when it is destroyed with fire. The western worldview will have no part in the new heaven and the new earth that Christians inherit. Further, incidents like this should remind Christians that true followers of Jesus Christ do not give themselves over to passions of revenge, hate, or reprisal. Christians are not to get involved in those things directly, nor in the indirect channels that the political debate allows us to. Where in the past, reprisal to incidents such as this may have been lynch mobs, the current political context allows us to simply demand a toughening and extension of the Patriot Act, profiling, immigration crackdowns, gun control, invading etc. While those issues may have their merits, the fact is that they have nothing to do with Christianity. Read the New Testament, especially the teachings of Jesus Christ. The church was never promised peace, prosperity or an easy time, but rather only conflict, warfare and persecution at the hands of the world that has rejected Jesus Christ. Christians have often forgotten that message by walking in agreement with the world. So Christians should reject the foolish idea that by taking political actions we can somehow make this country and world safe and better for Christians and the spread of the gospel. Take, for instance, the war on terrorism: it has been a disaster for Christians all throughout the Muslim wolrd, especially in Iraq.

So instead of trying to take revenge (or the offensive) against Muslims through political means, we should remember that Jesus Christ alone is to whom judgment was given, that God alone is the one capable of executing vengeance, and that Jesus Christ alone will conquer and rule the nations with a rod of iron, and that Christians cannot and should not perform judgment, vengeance, or rule in Jesus Christ’s place. (Of course, this does not preclude civil governments from doing what is necessary to punish crimes and defend its citizens from criminals and aggression from other nations, see Romans 13 with regards to that issue, but instead those actions are at best the just and necessary ones and should not be viewed as Christian in any sense.) Our job is not to pretend to be Jesus Christ and to usurp His place, but instead to obey and serve Jesus Christ so that He will act through us as His Body.

So in summary, the Christian response to this event is prayer, evangelism, and resisting temptation. Please realize that this should be the Christian response to all events. Thank you.

Is Evangelicalism Confusion By Design?

There are a lot of criticisms of evangelical Christianity. Some are legitimate issues aired by those motivated by or searching for doctrinal truth – particularly those which come from current or former evangelicals – but others represent sniping by agenda motivated or ill informed sectarians. I admit that in my criticisms of “evangelicalism” (to employ the derisive term, at least when it is wielded by sectarians that is) I was the latter of the latter: an ill-informed sectarian. I am still sectarian, but I would hope that I am now better informed.

My issue: evangelicalism’s melting pot nature. You have free will Christians and predestinarians. Pentecostals and cessationists. Premillennials and amillennials. Believer-immersers and baby-sprinklers. State churchers and free churchers. Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Anglicans oh my, and now even a Quaker or Messianic Jew or two!

Of course, this primarily exists for unity in the Body of Christ, fellowship and cooperation among all Bible-believing born again Christians. And that is very good. However, we should never forget that these denominations, for all their merits and good works, exist for a reason.

Now I am not talking about such things as denominational splits over whether to use electric instruments or not. Instead, these various Christian groups and movements all represent serious differences on very important areas of doctrine. Maybe they are not quite what Al Mohler calls the theological triage (http://www.albertmohler.com/?cat=Commentary&cdate=2004-05-20) but instead real differences that can have significant implications on what Christians believe and how we live out the faith.

Recall the “melting pot” analogy. In a nation of diverse cultures, that is a good thing, as it results in a blending of peoples that makes the whole more vibrant and cohesive. However, in religion it is not so good. Among different religions, it is the snare (to Christians anyway) of syncretism. But even among disparate Christian traditions – which again have legitimate reasons for existing – it results in a sort of leveling, a settling to the bottom (if not quite a race to the bottom) that shifts and pushes out whatever it was that made these disparate traditions special in the first place. Compare it to eating at restaurants. Instead of a really good Italian, Chinese or American restaurant that serves excellent and near authentic meals, you get this greasy buffet or cafeteria style cuisine where you can mash your spaghetti, french fries and stir-fried vegetables all onto the same platter without knowing or caring that they really don’t belong together so long as it goes down easy with your soft drink and your antacids keep it from coming back up again later.

I suppose that if you want to remain on the externals of the faith, the basics, or even if you penetrate somewhat deeper, that is fine. But if you really want to delve into the faith, then you are really in for it! On one hand, you have the teachers, preachers and theologians who simply want to stay “in the evangelical mainstream”, so they simply avoid topics that may offend the Methodists (or the Lutherans or the Baptists etc.) However, even those who maintain their distinctiveness can tie you in knots. You may attend a Presbyterian church, read a Baptist devotional, listen to a Methodist radio show, subscribe to an Anglican podcast and hear all of these doctrines, theologies, interpretations, systems etc. and it is a mishmash. No coherency of thought, no unity of message, but rather you start on one path, pick up another denominational thought mid-stream, then you hop on the other boat that you have no idea where it is taking you or why, and you wind up trapped in a labyrinth of religious ideas that is impossible to organize. The problem isn’t that you have all the pieces of a puzzle that you have to put together, for that is a challenge that, while daunting, is still achievable. The problem is also not that you have all the pieces of several puzzles that you have to put together to make several pictures, because even though the degree of difficulty may be several magnitudes greater, it is still theoretically feasible.

Instead, the problem is that you have pieces of DIFFERENT puzzles that you have to assemble together TO MAKE ONE PICTURE! Further, you don’t even possess all of the pieces required to make a single picture. Instead, you have some pieces of Arminianism, some pieces of Wesleyanism, some pieces of Lutheranism, some pieces of dispensationalism, some pieces of Pentecostalism etc. that you have to fit together, a goal that is not so much impossible – for with God all things are possible – as it is suspect. It is confusion, and God is not the author of confusion. It results in our simply having to omit and not talk about things – important things! – for the sake of unity (or rather simply to avoid interminable arguments), and because of the gaps and discontinuities, so little deep and wide Bible knowledge exists. Instead, there are just fragments, pieces – and a lot of them! – that float around unorganized. That may be precisely why political and cultural issues – worldly things – are such a draw, because they provide a structure, some sort of framework or interpretative filter, for all of these religious and doctrinal ideas that otherwise do not exist. (We may not be able to agree on sanctification or the atonement, but we can at least all agree to vote pro-family, because, hey, it is something that we can understand so that what really counts!)

Incidentally, many of our leading seminaries only add to this issue. So many are “interdenominational evangelical” by design. Still others profess denominational distinctives but think nothing of hiring faculty from other denominations (i.e. Albert Mohler’s Southern Baptist seminary hiring Presbyterians) or using the standard “evangelical” textbooks that are either shorn of doctrinal distinctives or present surface level summaries of all the “major and mainstream” evangelical viewpoints without endorsing one or the other. Result: the Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, Church of Christ etc. product of such a seminary will hardly be able to articulate why he adheres to a particular denominational tradition unless he was already firmly rooted in such convictions before he entered.

Now of course, no one denomination has a monopoly on the truth. So, my intent is not to promote my own particular tradition as the only true way and demand that all you heretics end your rebellious ways and join it lest you perish. Instead, I am forming the opinion that it is very important for a person to stick with a particular denomination or line of doctrinal thought and learn all the truth that he possibly can in the context of that one tradition. It is not that a person cannot learn truth from another tradition, but rather that if a person is not fully grounded in a single system, does not fully understand the great doctrines as presented in an organized coherent whole by one denomination or tradition, he won’t be so much as learning from another tradition as he is adding more layers to his religious patchwork hash. It is the equivalent of trying to teach French and Polish to a child that hasn’t mastered English yet.

And yes, there is a discernment angle, an apologetics angle, to this. With passing time I see more and more efforts by evangelicals to dialogue with and reach out to Roman Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses (ok, Jehovah’s Witnesses not so much) etc. Interfaith exchanges, ecumenism, and so forth are the passion of the day, especially when the goals of such exchanges are cooperation in doing good works (and of course fighting political and cultural battles). Is it because we are so hesitant to unequivocably state our differences with each other that we also lose the courage to state our differences with other faiths?

Honestly, I say no. I am not at all stating that because evangelical Presbyterian hesitates in boldly telling an evangelical Episcopalian, Methodist and Baptist why he is Presbyterian that he is similarly unwilling to demarcate himself from a Mormon, Jew or Catholic. Instead, I am proposing that because of the evangelical melting pot, the evangelical homogeneity, the evangelical confusion such a Presbyterian may not comprehend the distinctive depths of his own tradition – and thereby be hindered from using tradition to interpret the Biblical faith – well enough to know why pursuing such endeavors as “Evangelicals And Catholics Together” or “Christians United For Israel” is insanity. There is a distinction between Presbyterians, Baptists and Pentecostals worshiping the same Jesus Christ a different way and Christians and Roman Catholics worshiping a different Jesus Christ altogether. You can have real fellowship and communion with the former, but you should have nothing to do with the latter except evangelism. That is one of the many areas that so many evangelicals do not understand because they don’t know enough about their own tradition, which is a real barrier to a deep and wide knowledge of Biblical Christianity.

We cannot learn the faith piecemeal, with bits and snippets assembled here and there. The faith must be presented and understood orderly and systematically. The best way – perhaps the only way – may well be to get out of the evangelical melting pot and committing oneself to studying the faith in an organized, coherent manner.

This is not to be confused as a manifesto for denominationalism, for it does not promote a particular denomination. Instead, this merely advocates finding a particular tradition that trains people in Biblical Christianity and learning all that one can through it.

Christians Beware Of The FBI Muslim Terrorist Arrests!

A series on persecution and suffering by the Desert Pastor’s Wife got me thinking about all of these arrests of alleged terrorists by the federal government. Let me tell you something: these arrests are shams. As a matter of fact, the whole “war on terror” thing is a sham. For instance, how can we be involved in a war on terror when Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest sponsors of terrorism, is a key ally and trading partner? We have a base in Saudi Arabia, and we force our servicemen stationed there to obey shari’a law. Also, how can we be in a “war on terror” when we are pressuring Israel to give up half its land to terrorists, thereby rewarding the PLO, Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Iran, Syria and all those other entities for their decades of slaughtering Israelis and Americans? One does not have to be a “dispensational Christian Zionist” to recognize that madness, or to ask ourselves why a nation committed to a “war on terror” is so bent on creating a nation in such a strategically vital area that will be governed by either the P.L.O. or Hamas. And those are just a few examples.

And that brings us to these domestic “Muslim terrorist” arrests. The issue is that the people that they are arresting aren’t terrorists. Oh, of course, I am not denying that there aren’t violent Muslim terrorist sleeper cells in this country. It is that the government isn’t going after them. Instead, in order to make it LOOK like they are doing something about terrorism, they are scouring the prisons and the Internet for disaffected Muslims, sending undercover government agents to fill their heads with ideas of jihad, even supplying them with terror plots, plans, weapons and materials that these fellows would have never had the ability or initiative to come up with on their own, keep prodding and pulling them when these ne’er do wells lose interest or get cold feet, and then once these government-recruited guys take their government-provided weapons to carry out their government-provided plans, the government arrests them. And these are “investigations” that take years of planning, huge sums of money, and a boatload of manpower to carry out, all to catch people who would have never gotten anywhere near committing a terrorist act were it not for their being strung along by the government, and this does nothing but divert law enforcement (and the media and the citizenry) from real threats, which includes but is not limited to the actual trained terrorists filtering across the Mexican border. So it is not only entrapment, but politically motivated and pernicious entrapment.

The worst part is that nobody cares about our entrapping Muslims that are no threats while ignoring Muslims that are. One side, I guess you can call them conservatives, is simply glad that we are arresting Muslims. Their goal is deporting as many of the several million Muslims from this country as possible and going to war with as many of the 1 billion Muslims in the world as is necessary to preserve western civilization. So, even though they know that these arrests are sham ones that ignore actual terrorists, they figure that the media publicity generated by each arrest brings us that much closer to electing politicians willing to wage a global war against Islam. The other side is strange. Under normal circumstances, liberals would protest entrapping even people who are likely to commit crimes, but in this instance they are largely silent concerning people who lack the ability, means or motivation to become a terrorist. Perhaps their silence is due to feelings that the Obama administration’s arresting these people helps undermine the idea that Obama is a Muslim plant sent to take over our country. I do notice when I peruse the left-oriented news sites more than a little bit of “see right wingers, Obama IS dedicated to fighting the war on terror!” whenever these arrests take place. It makes one wonder:  if Obama were anything other than a Democratic president accused of being a Muslim traitor, would the left be more vocal about these “law enforcement” practices, especially those targeting (religious and racial) minorities? In any event, the result is both the right and the left being silent in the face of the pervasive misuse of government power to suit their own agendas.

An even more revealing fact is that the government is not denying that they are practicing entrapment. Now when the government does things that they shouldn’t – whether by accident or policy – they instinctively lie, obfuscate, stonewall and cover up. But in several of these cases, including this one in particular, the government all but admitted going after people not so much for their crimes as their thoughts.

Not even the prosecutors contend that Sadequee was close to committing a terrorist act or that he ever joined a terrorist organization. The trial — like that of co-defendant Syed Haris Ahmed, who was convicted in June — illustrates prosecutors are focusing on potential threats as well as real ones, lawyers said.

“The real issue in this case is where is the line between First Amendment speech, however disquieting, and real criminal activity,” said Jack Martin, who defended Ahmed and says the two cases are almost identical. “It is hard to say where that line is drawn. … There is always the issue in any conspiracy case of what is talk and what is an agreement to take action.”

U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said after Ahmed’s conviction that the case didn’t involve an imminent threat because the idea was to arrest terrorists before their attacks succeed.

“In the post-9/11 world we will not wait to disrupt terrorism-related activity until a bomb is built and ready to explode,” Nahmias said then. “The fuse that leads to an explosion of violence may be long but once it is lit — once individuals unlawfully agree to support terrorist acts at home or abroad — we will prosecute them to snuff that fuse out.”

That really is not much more than saying that this fellow was arrested for thought crimes, of having radical, violent views and inclinations. Because of the “war on terror”, it is now acceptable to bait people based solely on what they  believe – not because they pose any actual threat – and then arrest them. So what is going on here?

Realize that in this country, radical changes in government policy, including law enforcement, cannot happen quickly. (Or at least they cannot change quickly right now.) You have to spend years, decades even, laying the groundwork. So law enforcement has to be allowed to engage in a particular practice over a long period of time before it becomes accepted law enforcement procedure, and the courts similarly have to go along to establish precedents. However, the police and courts can’t do this uniformly against the general population, because A) it would cause a massive public outcry and B) the tactics would not withstand a legal challenge. Instead, the government has to use a tiny segment of the population to make certain police tactics acceptable and to establish precedents in the courts. Once that is done, they are basically free to use those tactics on the general population.

A good, recent example? Government seizure of private property. It was almost unheard of a mere few decades ago, now it is routine and goes on unchallenged. What happened? “The war on drugs.” After it became acceptable for law enforcement to routinely confiscate the private property of “suspected drug dealers” and the courts let them get away with it, now the government has wide latitude to grab or freeze land and assets. Now it is basically unconstitutional, but the crisis of drugs and drug crimes made it acceptable to set the constitution aside in order to fight the drug war, and after it was set aside with respect to suspected drug traffickers and the precedent established, it was set aside for everyone. As a result, the government can now seize or freeze mostly anyone’s property or assets at any time, and in many cases the person has no real recourse.

Now that the government has largely eliminated the existence of private property, private speech and thought are now on the agenda. We are now a few years into investigating and arresting Muslims who express hostility towards our government and its policies, and have also gotten the first batch of successful convictions. So, the “thought crime entrapment” law enforcement practices are already on their way to becoming accepted, and the successful convictions establish the precedent that despite the bill of rights,  it is acceptable to go after people solely based on their views. It will only take about a dozen or so of these convictions to be upheld on appeal for the legal and law enforcement precedents to be ironclad, and since the federal government is handling these cases from the beginning, that will make the appeals process even faster (as the cases won’t have to go from state court to federal court).

Again, once the precedents are set the targets will be no more limited to Muslims than government property and asset seizures are to drug kingpins. Instead, people with views that the government doesn’t like can easily be labeled “dangerous”, “radical”, “extremist”, “subversive”, “fundamentalist” etc. and prosecuted. How long would it take before Christians are viewed this way by the government? In order to answer that question, one only need to look at the Huffington Post’s article on the recent arrest and killing of a “suspected terrorist“:

Exactly. Anyone who thinks this behavior is limited to Muslims hasn’t looked at a newspaper lately. In our country we bend over backwards to “respect the Faith” of Evangelical Christians from the South who do precisely the same thing.

Now, if this had been a white Christian evangelist militia, would the FBI gone in, guns blazing? Have they done anything like that recently, despite the proliferation of such groups?

This guy if not identified as ” a radical black extremist Muslim” one might think he was part of the gun toting, separatist, white wing nuts who would impose a Biblical theocracy in the USA and celebrate it all at tea parties.

And those were just the comments on the first page. And this is WITHOUT the government, media and schools bombarding the nation with propaganda on how Christian ideas are evil and Christians are untrustworthy, unpatriotic, violent, a threat to national security and our freedoms etc. Personally, I don’t think that it is going to happen anytime soon. However, I am certain that it will happen. And please, no partisan/ideological nonsense. Both parties support this just like they do everything else, because both parties are part of the worldly system that rejects Jesus Christ and similarly hates the church.