TAMPA - A pastor has a new challenge for his parishioners. It involves sex - a subject that may be taboo in many congregations. The Relevant Church in Tampa’s Ybor City has issued a 30-day sex challenge. “It’s going to be tempting and awkward at the same time for sure,” said parishioner Brent Cayson.
Single men and women can’t have sex for 30 days, and married couples are urged to have it every day. (First of all, if single people in your church are having sex, they need to be disciplined for the sin of fornication and put out if they refuse to repent and change. See 1 Corinthians 5:1-6. Second, preachers are not supposed to dictate the sex practices of married men and women in his congregation. That is what cults such as the one run by R.G. “Brother” Stair do see link and see link.)
“If you look at studies, studies say in 30 days you can develop a habit,” said Pastor Paul Wirth.” (Another guy who puts more faith in “psychological studies” than the Bible. Instead of trying to bewitch people with psychiatry to obey rules according to the flesh - legalism - how about preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ so that they may hear, repent of their sins, and experience rebirth so that the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit can enable them to resist sin? The latter is Godly living that God smiles upon as an acceptable sacrifice made through faith like Abel, the former is self - persecution of works that God frowns upon like Cain, see Hebrews 11:4!) It definitely caught wives in the church by surprise. “Our married people are far more fearful than our single people,” said Wirth. “Sex is about more than intercourse and that’s what we’re trying to tell people,” said church member Jarret Haas.
Wirth has found biblical references that he says suggest Jesus disapproved of pre-marital sex and promoted sex in marriage. (When? Yesterday? Last week?) So, he believes people connect to God through life-long commitment. (Jesus Christ and the gospel of Him crucified and resurrected is the only way to God. So your message of a lifelong commitment to God is either committing to a God other than the One of the Bible or is deeply flawed with doctrinal impurity.) That’s why he tells his single followers to abstain, and his married followers to indulge. Wirth is a former Baptist. He founded his non-denominational ministry three years ago. (Obviously three years before finding out what the Bible says about how to run a church. See When? Yesterday? Last week? above.) And he markets his church by tackling unusual or controversial topics. (It will get you more fame, money, and power than by giving people the gospel of Jesus Christ slain and risen, I have to admit that! But it will also take those who preach and follow it straight to gehenna, the lake of fire.)
This is an entry for A Little Leaven’s Graveyard of Relevance if there ever was one. Or then again, maybe it is an entry for their Christian Erotica section! Look people, the whole notion that the church has to become “relevant” on sexuality or anything else is just an excuse to get church people to approve of vulgarity and sin. The original “Christians need to start facing reality and talk about sex” came when God - hating groups in the late 1980s decided that they could exploit AIDS by using it to promote gay rights and sexual libertinism. Even this, however, was building on the decades - long strategy of exploiting the rising teen pregnancy - and sexually transmitted disease - rates of promoting sexual libertinism in public schools using sex education classes. So these people began demanding that churches offer sex education classes and do other things such as hand out condoms to 12 year olds as well. Of course, promoting and supporting fornication in that manner meant having to discard what the Bible said about sexual sin, first with heterosexual fornication, then with homosexuality. Then came along the notion that continuing to teach what the Bible said about sexual sin was “irrelevant” to the problems of the black community. The church had to stop preaching obedience to Jesus Christ in all matters and start promoting “safe fornication” to prevent AIDS and illegitimacy. If you recall, those were the first “faith - based programs”, politically conservative Christians. Or have you forgotten the Bill Clinton era, who co - opted the black church to push his socially liberal agenda long before John Ashcroft put the charitable choice provision in the 1996 welfare reform bill that Bill Clinton signed, the same charitable choice provision that has been expanded by President Bush and by Democratic and Republican governors all over this nation to give tax money - and along with it coercive government regulations! - to Christian organizations, most of them Roman Catholic? It will soon grow into a leviathan system that will crush Christian organizations that refuse to do business with the relationship between Vatican and state because they will not be able to compete financially with the resources of both Rome and the taxpayers. This is already happening with a lot of Christian daycares in my own state of Georgia that are having extreme difficulty competing with the lower prices and the state seal of approval offered by the state - funded daycare system (implemented by “conservative Democrat” Zell Miller and now presided over by evangelical conservative Republican Sonny Perdue) that will pave the way for the universal preschool system to be implemented either by Hillary Clinton or Barack HUSSEIN Obama (it really does not matter which).
But before the right began to use this idea to promote evangelical churches being turned into government social welfare offices, Bill Clinton was using inner city black churches for midnight basketball, and yes to pass out condoms and drug needles in pilot programs administered by the likes of David Satcher and Jocelyn Elders. See where the demand for Purpose Driven apostate churches “relevant” to the world that has rejected Jesus Christ is going to lead, people? That is why it is better to have churches that are relevant to God by teaching its people to obey the Bible.
Back to the universal preschool thing, I can predict how it is going to go. Hillary (or B. Hussein Obama) are going to promote it as a complete government entity, an extension of Head Start as part of public schools. “Conservatives” are going to demand that it be a “public - private” affair. The result will be a universal voucher system for preschools, most of whom will be run by church groups, and most of those will be Roman Catholic. That will then give the political impetus to remove the Blaine amendments enacted to protect us from merging church and state. Yes, they were enacted after large numbers of Roman Catholics moved to America, BUT THAT IS BECAUSE BEFORE THE LARGE SCALE ROMAN CATHOLIC IMMIGRATION THEY WEREN’T NEEDED BECAUSE THE OVERWHELMINGLY PROTESTANT NATION AT THE TIME HAD NO INTEREST IN MERGING CHURCH AND STATE! WHY? BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO FOUNDED THIS NATION IN THE FIRST PLACE WERE FLEEING PERSECUTION AT THE HANDS OF THE STATE CHURCHES! You may have heard George W. Bush, who is not a Christian, speak of “Pell grants for K - 12″ in his state of the union address (the previous “school voucher” and “opportunity scholarship” language having failed). The Roman Catholics on the neoconservative blogs and websites were loving that one, as were the not a few Jews (not all of whom are conservative) who want to use taxpayer money to financially support their own day schools. Again, if you want a “relevant” church, this is what it leads to … everything else but the gospel and mission of Jesus Christ.
1Cor. 2:1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I first saw this here but it was confirmed in this devotional as well. Man oh man, I love this election season. So many prominent Christian leaders in the limelight are being exposed for what they are. From the people backing Huckabee despite knowing his connections to the Council on Foreign Relations and to apostates like Kenneth Copeland and John Hagee to Pat Robertson backing Giuliani to the MANY evangelicals and even some fundamentalists backing Mormon Mitt Romney to Donnie McClurkin and many other leading black Christians backing Barack HUSSEIN Obama (here, here, here, here, here, here) well the Lord is exposing for the whole world to see what these prominent Christians are really about and after - the things of this world.Christians, is this the falling away of the American church? If so, make sure that you are not part of that falling away. In a sense, things have been this bad for quite awhile, because the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. was no better than a Mormon because he did not believe in the deity or resurrection of Jesus Christ despite it being commonly reported … so many people do not know because they do not care to know. And never forget: King’s rise was due to so many alleged Christians, many of them evangelicals and fundamentalists, supporting segregation and racism! Still, I regularly ask some older (than me) Christians have things always been this bad, and even the ones that personally experienced segregation and poverty say without hesitation “No, it wasn’t.”
***DR. DOBSON AND RUSH LIMBAUGH ARE THE LATEST TO JOIN THE “JUDAS GALLERY” !!! WWW.VOTINGFORSATAN.COM IS ONLINE!!! I’ve launched this new website — www.votingforsatan.com — not to tell people who to or not to vote for, but to help educate people on what Mormon’s really believe and hold accountable high-profile Christians who have endorsed cult member Romney’s bid for
the Presidency. The new site features an interactive section with
polls and a great message board where you can post your thoughts and
comments, news notes on the race for the White House, my numerous
Devotionals on Romney and the Mormon church, in-depth writings by an
ex-Mormon that clearly lay out the beliefs and theology of Mormonism,
as well as special videos including the TV program I did in the magical
Mormon underwear worn 24/7 by high level Mormons. Please check it out
and help me by telling everyone you know about this new site, and post
it on every message board and chat room you can find, especially the
sites that cater to politics.
“The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the
shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign
LORD says: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves!
Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe
yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not
take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the
sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or
searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they
were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered
they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the
mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth,
and no one searched or looked for them.” Ezekiel 34:1-6
A sad commentary on so many pastors and Christian leaders right from God’s
Word. Last week I was doing some study in the Book of Ezekiel. In reading
through some passages, I came across these first 6 verses in Ezekiel 34. As
I read these words, I could only think that this was the sad description of
so many pastors and Christian leaders today. 50 years ago, you could sit in
the pew of most any church of any denomination and hear the Truth of God’s
Word. Those pastors and the men and women God raised up on the national
scene were men and women who would never compromise the Truth of the Bible
and understood their only mission was to bring the lost to Christ.
Fast forward to the year 2008 and you have entire denominations of pastors
who don’t even preach, teach or believe the Bible. It is questionable if
many pastors were ever “called” and are even saved. Those who have risen up
into national prominence are more worried about selling books, having the
newest private jet, building bigger buildings, and living like the rulers of
small nations rather than preaching the unadulterated Truth of the Bible and
leading the lost to faith in Jesus Christ. My goodness, you now have
so-called Christian leaders who are endorsing and working for the member of
a satanic cult to become our next President!!!
When these are the men and women leading the people, why are we surprised
that many who sit in the pews of the nations churches on Sunday aren’t even
saved, don’t accept the Bible as Absolute Truth and our only authority, and
the majority of the ones who do lead weak and ineffective lives. That is
why I encourage people all the time to seek out a pastor who is a true
shepherd. That is increasingly difficult today, but there are still many
men of God who have not bowed their knee to Baal and are not the shepherds
described in Ezekiel 34. Sunday is the day most Christians go to church. It
is the only time most of you ever see your pastor, and that is usually from
your seat in the sanctuary as he leads the worship service and preaches the
message.
Having preached in over 500 churches of every denomination nationwide, I can
honestly tell you that for most pastors, Sunday morning is their favorite
day of the week and the one day they usually feel their work for God really
has some meaning. You can never know the pressure most pastors are under. If
it was only getting up on Sunday morning and being the “man of God” it would
be wonderful, but that is not reality. It is a 7-day a week, 24-hour a day
calling. Many have outside jobs. There is the constant pressures of raising
the budget, dealing with the interpersonal problems that always exist when
you have a group of people, overseeing the political infighting that often
occurs, on top of the spiritual requirements of shepherding the flock,
having an anointed word each week for the various services, and other
requirements the office of pastor carries with it.
My prayer for you today is to support your pastor. Pray for your pastor each
day. John 10 gives us the picture of the ideal pastor. Pray that your pastor
will be able to tear away from the distractions of this world to be the
shepherd described in John 10. God has placed that pastor in your life to
guide you, spiritually nurture you, and have spiritual leadership over your
life. Do all you can to show your love and appreciation for all your pastor
does for you, most of which you may not even recognize. Also, God has placed
your pastor in your life for spiritual leadership. When you come into times
of crisis, don’t hesitate to go to your pastor. That is ultimately why they
are there, to help you and guide you through those difficult times in your
life.
I love you and care about you so much. I pray for you daily. Sadly, today
there are too many pastors and Christian leaders who fall into the
description found in Ezekiel 34. It makes the work that much more difficult
when you have people running around calling themselves Christians, but
supporting sins like abortion, homosexuality, the destruction of God’s plan
fo the family. You have others who think there is nothing wrong with
belonging to a cult or false religions and they have bought the
universalistic lie from hell that everyone will get to Heaven.
Let this message today be a remember to lift up your pastor in prayer and
recognize him for all he does for your life. God has called His sheep to be
obedient and obey those in spiritual authority. Take inventory and see if
you are fulfilling this admonition, and ask God to help you. He loves you so
much, that he has placed your pastor in your life to shepherd you and guide
you in your spiritual journey. Show your love for Him today by praying for
and supporting your pastor.
In His love and service,
Your friend and brother in Christ,
Bill Keller bkeller@liveprayer.com
***ARE YOU 100% CERTAIN WHERE YOU WILL SPEND ETERNITY? The fact is you will
die one day. At that moment, you will either spend eternity with the Lord or
be cast into everlasting darkness forever separated from God your creator.
To know for certain you will be forever with Jesus, go to: http://www.liveprayer.com/bdy_salvatn.cfm
***I am excited to let you know that the Liveprayer Daily Devotional is now
available via AUDIO each day. Simply go to http://www.liveprayer.com/Audio.cfm
Also, you can now listen to the Daily Devotional by phone by calling 1-727-342-5673
(C) Copyright 2008, Bill Keller Ministries. All rights reserved.
