$130 Million For A Church Building? Maybe The House Church Advocates Have A Point!: What would your church do w.. http://tinyurl.com/ybd3mqw4 hours ago
Oneness Pentecostals, as well as Christians who support and fellowship with oneness Pentecostals, here is a question of you.
The Bible declares God the Father, called the Ancient of Days (see Daniel 7, especially verses 9, 13, and 22) to be King in various places. The Bible declares God the Son, called the Angel of the Lord in His preincarnate form (see Joshua 5:14-15, also Exodus 3:4-6 cross referenced with Exodus 3:2, Acts 7:30, Acts 7:35) and the Word of God (John 1:1-18, Proverb 8 especially verse 30) and Jesus Christ to be King.
However, the Holy Spirit, called the Spirit of God the Father (Matthew 10:20, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18) and the Spirit of God the Son (Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:9, Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18) is never declared to be King by scripture at any time. Also, where both God the Father and God the Son are both spoken of as being glorified and exalted, to my knowledge God the Holy Spirit is never spoken of by scripture as being glorified or exalted at any time.
How is this possible? I welcome your replies. Thank you.
It fits, as belief in aliens is vital to some strands of New Age. New Age and Roman Catholic mysticism are vital components to the global religion of the anti – Christ. That is a topic that Justthebook.WordPress.com investigates deeply.
Driving to work this morning viewing the effects of the terrible thunderstorms that spared my neighborhood but hard hit the one right next to mine, I was listening to Christian radio. Out of the blue comes TD Jakes’ booming voice. In it, he first speaks of how much he loves America and so forth. I immediately thought of Jakes doing this to exploit anger over Barack Hussein Obama, Michelle Obama, and Jeremiah Wright’s considerably less than jingoistic statements and actions. Then he went into his exhortation spiel for people to register and get out to vote.
First, I see Lifeway Bookstores, owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, selling TD Jakes’ doctrinal error (oneness pentecostalism and the Word of Faith/prosperity doctrine are but a few of his MANY problems) and now the National Religious Broadcasters are using this guy. I had been using the NRB as a sort of a refuge from the blatant charismania that you will find on The Word Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Daystar, etc. So I just ignored the heavy Pat Robertson presence on the channel, as well as their “white Europeans are the descendants of the children of Israel … the Danube River is so named because of the tribe of Dan” show that comes on early in the morning. I also ignored their embrace of the Ellen White Seventh Day Adventist cult. So I suppose that I cannot cast NRB aside on Jakes’ account, since the ones that I just named are hardly better – if anything some might be worse – or else I would be reacting out of a personal dislike for Jakes rather than on principle. (On the other hand, Slice of Laodicea has criticized NRB, albeit for different reasons, such as this post stating that not one red cent of NRB’s $5 BILLION IN ASSETS is being used to defend the faith from Oprah Winfrey.)
Incidentally, speaking of TD Jakes and PR spots, he has another one out (I did not catch the sponsor!) promoting single sex education, saying that “boys need their own schools so that they will be able to, you know, romp and stuff (his choice of words not mine!) and that boys learn differently from girls and needed their own classrooms in order to be accommodated. So … it looks like Jakes is not that far removed from Jeremiah Wright’s separatist doctrines after all?
I have to be honest, back when I was part of the religious right and allowing my worldview to be shaped by the Washington Times and the National Review, I was in full agreement. But now … I just recall reading about this inner city public school that went all male. Sure, the discipline problems decreased and the test scores went up. But when they interviewed the boys that attended the school, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM WANTED THEM TO BRING THE GIRLS BACK! Why? Because, er … BOYS LIKE GIRLS! Or at least they are supposed to anyway. Perhaps now that T.D. Jakes is on board with the new world order’s gay rights agenda (and yes this is relevant … perhaps due to his son) he thinks it is OK. To me, the whole single sex education thing … who wants it? Certainly not the kids. Not the administrators or teachers. Parents go for it only because they are desperate for any hook or angle to improve the failing school systems that the government is ruining on purpose. Not even the old fashioned religious sorts – of which I am one – think that it is a good idea anymore, where you were supposed to keep boys and girls separate in their little boarding or finishing schools (where they were supposed to look OH SO CUTE in their little uniforms I guess) UNTIL GRADUATION DAY WHEN YOU MARRY THEM OFF.
Sorry people, but society has changed. Not all of the changes have been for the good, but methinks that one of the most important things for a boy to learn from school is how to treat a lady and how to behave yourself in their presence. For some of us guys, those things do not come naturally, and you only learn them through trial and error. Especially error. (If you don’t learn to handle competition and rejection in junior high and high school, how on earth are you supposed to handle being turned down for jobs, promotions, college choices, etc. later in life?) So … HOW ON EARTH ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO LEARN THOSE THINGS IF THERE ARE NO GIRLS AROUND TO LEARN THEM FROM?
Like I said, TD Jakes may have his own reasons for wanting to turn your local public school into Morehouse College or similar, and whatever they are I oppose them 100%. All the more reason why the Southern Baptist Convention should not be selling this guy’s books and NRB shouldn’t be using him for their get out the vote campaign. But I suppose that this oneness anti – Trinitarian heretic is just too good at making money and moving public opinion for these people to pass up. That is, unless they are actually along with Jakes, on his side. After all, the Southern Baptists refuse to do anything about the likes of New Age heretic Erwin McManus and Council on Foreign Relations worker Rick Warren (and Richard Land too?), and as stated earlier, Al Sharpton Al Gore global warming propagandist partner Pat Robertson is a major partner with the NRB.
Some things: pictures of Jesus Christ on the cross WITH GEORGE BUSH’S NAME ON THE NAILS! And this passage exposing Bush’s blasphemy:
Consider Bush’s speech at Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In his remarks, the president described the United States as the “hope of all mankind” and asserted that this “hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it.” Marsh bristles at this passage, which alludes to the prologue to the Gospel of John but modifies its message in a crucially important respect. Whereas the New Testament describes God as the light that will not be overcome by the darkness that surrounds it, Bush ascribed divine agency to America. For Marsh, this substitution is unforgivable–nothing less than the idolatrous “identification of the United States with Christian revelation.”
And how “Christian values” led to the Holocaust:
The most intellectually stimulating pages of Marsh’s book concern the theological antecedents of this troubling transformation. Relying heavily on Karl Barth’s classic workProtestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, Marsh tells the story of how German Protestant theologians responded to the skepticism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment by jettisoning much of Christian orthodoxy and refashioning a rump Christianity in which faith was based on subjective feeling instead of the objective truth of revelation and religious worship was defended in terms of its social utility. Before long, this “liberal” theology was all the rage, teaching modern men and women that they could continue to enjoy the psychological comfort of religion while embracing scientific discoveries that seemed to undermine the authority of the Bible, and that it was unnecessary for them to choose between political freedom and the political establishment of religion. In Europe the churches became, in effect, ministries for moral edification, administered and regulated by the state for the sake of inculcating virtues that contributed to the well-being of the nation. Marsh delights in the irony that, despite their boundless contempt for “liberalism” in all its forms, right-wing American evangelicals think about God in a way that marks them, in the decisive sense, as liberal Protestants. As Marsh mischievously puts it, “It strikes me as a noteworthy turn of events that our patriot preachers and court prophets remain our most zealous proponents of the liberal theological tradition.” Just as nineteenth-century German theologians tailored God to fit the psychological needs of the rising bourgeoisie and the political needs of the Rechtsstaat, so twenty-first-century American evangelicals take their theological cues not from the Bible or the Church Fathers but from Karl Rove and Michael Gerson.
Genuine Christian faith, by contrast, begins and ends with Jesus Christ, who “comes to us from a country far from our own.” In order to adopt the otherworldly standpoint of Christ, believers must lay their “values, traditions, and habits at the foot of the cross.” The Christian then begins his life anew as a citizen, first and foremost, of the city of God, with his “unholy nature … infused with God’s holiness.” From the perspective of this genuine follower of Christ, the profane faith of American evangelicals, which worships American power in the name of God, fails to confess “Christ as Lord” and ends up “incarcerating Christ in our own ideological gulags.”
Not a fan of Karl Barth, whose theology I find to be unorthodox and I regret far too influential on evangelicals, but check this out:
Which is not to say that Marsh adopts an explicitly anti-political position. Rather, he champions those who, in his judgment, bring the stringent moral teachings of Christ most fully to bear on political life. Once again Barth serves as an admirable example. Although Barth’s early formulation of neo- orthodoxy, in his various editions of the Letter to the Romans, appeared to counsel an abandonment of politics altogether, the triumph of National Socialism in Germany, and even more the collusion of the Protestant churches in Hitler’s rise to power, led him to reconsider his position. Less than a year after the Nazis seized control of the German state, Barth took a courageous stand in writing and disseminating the Barmen Declaration, which firmly rejected the Nazification of German Christianity, and in helping to organize the Confessing Church, which went on to play an important role in resisting Hitler. As punishment for his political activities–including his refusal to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler–Barth was first forced to resign his professorship at the University of Bonn and then was expelled from Germany.
How interesting that one of the issues that George H. W. Bush used to defeat Michael Dukakis was Dukakis’ refusal to sign a bill THAT WOULD HAVE FORCED PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN TO PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE AMERICAN FLAG!
“Even more dramatic is the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who organized and led the Confessing Church, joined the resistance movement against the Nazis, and even participated in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler–an act for which he was sent to a series of concentration camps and eventually executed by hanging in April 1945. Marsh discusses Bonhoeffer in the first paragraph of his book, and returns to him again and again in later chapters. In starkest contrast to the obsequiousness of American evangelicals, who eagerly prostrate themselves before political power, Bonhoeffer risked and ultimately gave his life rather than bow down before evil. Here, Marsh means us to conclude, is an example of authentic. Christian piety in action.”
Again, not a fan of Bonhoeffer, but still, so many evangelicals, to borrow from 1 Timothy 6, take godliness for gain, a prosperity doctrine of money and POWER. Scripture calls such people perverse rebellious reprobates.
And how about the many millions of evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2004–are they the moral equivalent of the “German Christians” who added a swastika to the cross, incorporated Nazi racism into Christian theology, and sought to form a unified German Protestant “Reich Church” under the leadership of the Fuhrer? The author of this piece says no, the Bible says YES. Ever hear of the anti – Christ, people?
Consider Marsh’s treatment of Daniel Coats, the former American ambassador to Germany. In the months prior to the invasion of Iraq, Coats was invited by the Lutheran bishop of Berlin-Brandenburg to read the Sermon on the Mount–including its admonition to “bless those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you”–at a commemorative service for (you guessed it) Bonhoeffer. Coats, an evangelical Protestant, turned down the invitation, according to Marsh, “out of respect for the evangelical president’s mission in Iraq.” Once again, an American Christian had placed his devotion to Bush ahead of his devotion to Christ. Or so it seems to Marsh, who tells us precisely how Coats should have responded to the invitation: “How I wish he had exclaimed, ‘Of course, I will read from the Sermon on the Mount. I have no other choice. The refusal to read would amount to a renunciation of my faith, and I can never allow my service to the nation to compromise my loyalty to Jesus Christ.’”
Yeah, you got a problem with that? See, this article ultimately dislikes Marsh and his thesis. Which shows that even in the case of people that are too liberal for my liking such as Marsh, the world hates Jesus Christ and will always rejects someone who tries their best to forsake all and faithfully love and live for Him. In reviewing a book that criticizes conservative Christians for compromising their beliefs in the pursuit of worldly conservatism, Linker is moved to offense because Marsh leaves no room for Christians to compromise for LIBERALISM. Linker is fine with Marsh stating that evangelicals should have never made support for George W. Bush a part of their religious faith, but he opposes the notion that Jesus Christ cannot be profaned in order to make the case to support Barack Hussein Obama. Linker is fine with saying no to James Dobson and Pat Robertson and attributing it to Jesus Christ, but he wants to reserve the right for Michael Spong, Katharine Jefferts Schori, and Jeremiah Wright to co – opt him. This shows, Christians, why we cannot go aside to the left or to the right, for the way is narrow and the gate is strait!
When I first started this website, I enthusiastically endorsed Jesus camps, thinking that they were an excellent way to turn children into spiritual warriors – as it WAS initially a charismatic spiritual warfare site – from an early age. Well … WOW WAS I WRONG! Jesus camps use the evil combination of spiritually seductive charismatic slain in the spirit frenzy and dominion theology politics. Instead of teaching children to pray for their enemies, to show kindness to the poor and elderly people, to interpret the Bible and discern doctrines, to worship and praise the Lord in a dignified manner becoming His glory, and to exhibit the fruits of the Holy Spirit, these folks are feeding these children false Christian doctrines and fascist notions of merging church, state, culture, etc. that will makes any of them that internalize this spiritual evil easy pickings for the anti – Christ and moreover very willing workers in the plot to create the climate where the man of sin will take power. The more things like this come out, as well as things with the Jesus Seminar, Mike Huckabee, Jeremiah Wright … Bible believing Christians have to start speaking out. There is something seriously wrong with both the religious right and the religious left, and we have to start boldly opposing it with the Word of God.
Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Luke 17:26And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
A liberal Christian came by about a year ago to challenge me as to whether corporate industrial pollution was responsible for the increase in homosexuality – especially among children – by messing with their hormones (see link here). My response to him? COULD BE! Whether corporate greed drives sexual perversion, or whether sexual perversion drives corporate greed (pornography IS a multi – billion dollar business, and that does not even include the things that aren’t counted as pornography but should be, so where there is a demand mammon will meet it). But now here is the evidence that sexual perversion is deeply embedded into our culture and being normalized:
CHILDREN HAVE CUT themselves. In some cases, 9- or 10-year-old kids have staged suicide attempts. The little boys sob unless they’re allowed to wear dresses. The girls want to be called Luke, Ted, or James. Their parents, desperate to know what is wrong, go online and type “gender disorder.” And what they find is that, even now, decades after doctors performed the first sex changes in America, there’s little help for transgender children.
There is more.
IDEAS: When are children old enough to declare what gender they will be?
SPACK: All I know is that when I see preadolescents, they have been dressing in the underwear of the other sex for years. These kids are almost certainly transgendered.
And they say evil spirits are not real? We are not just talking about the evil spirits in the children, but rather from the ADULTS that accommodate this vile wickedness, this abuse of God’s creation. This is the key part: the article says that pre – adolescents have been exhibiting this behavior for years. Pre – adolescent means pre – teen, which equates to 10 – 12. So if a 10 year old has been doing this for years, it means since 6, or 4. That is before a child has had any meaningful exposure to the culture: schools, movies and television, etc. So then, how is it that these children have been turned so perverse so early? Child molestation is an easy answer, but too easy. You may want to blame parental neglect due to so many households in which women work – especially households led by single mothers – but that is a class based argument, not a spiritual one, for many of our lower income and minority communities have always seen high percentages of working mothers and single mothers without anything like these sorts of problems. And please realize that the article talks about how this fellow learned these techniques from the oh so progressive Dutch who lack some of our social problems (instead having entirely different ones that the American media rarely speaks of).
I think that an answer may be found in studying the state of Old Testament Israel. Regrettably I do not have a link at hand, but in one of his messages in The Minor Prophets series, Ronald Dart of Born To Win spoke of King Josiah’s efforts to spiritually rescue Israel, and gave the opinion that sometimes a nation’s apostasy has gone on so long and is so deeply embedded into the culture that it cannot be saved. Dart spoke of Israel then with their idolatry, sexual perversion (including child prostitution) and murder of the innocent (including child sacrifice) and compared it with the evils of contemporary America, making the conjecture that America had itself crossed its spiritual Rubicon into irrecoverable corruption and apostasy. So, God destroyed Israel, leaving it utterly desolate, so that the land could rest from the abominations of the people. Why? Well, God still had plans for the land … for His Son to be born into it. But Israel had so corrupted the land that God intended to be holy and set apart for the purposes of Jesus Christ that it had to be cleansed through desolation.
Think back thousands of years earlier, Sodom and Gomorrah. The place was filled with sexual immorality and violence, so God overthrew it. And think back quite a time earlier, in the primordial period just before the flood. The whole world was filled with violence and other evils, including the giants in the land, the nephilim about which there has been so much speculation. But in all of these instances, the Word of God records that the very land itself had become corrupted with sin. Not just the people. Not just the cultural traditions, perverted religions, and public institutions of government, military, and commerce. And not just the animals (which the Bible makes clear can be corrupted, not only through God declaring everything that had breath of life corrupt and having to be destroyed in the flood and the evil spirits entering the swine when Jesus Christ cast them out of a man, but when God often warned the children of Israel not to keep or sacrifice to Him the cattle and sheep of pagan nations, but instead to destroy them all along with the people!), but the very land itself!
Now I will grant you, there is some ambiguity or flexibility as to what precisely the term “land” means in various contexts in the Bible, but in this instance we can be reasonably certain that it is strongly correlated with the geography of a nation itself. So if the land is polluted by what the people living in the land are doing, then in what manner is this pollution? If it is not a horde of evil spirits attracted to an area by repulsive sinful conduct of the worst manner, I do not know what is. And there is no worse sin than that of the person who has knowledge of God or professes God but rejects God. Yet that was what happened with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and mankind falling into sin and the entire creation being corrupted with it was the result. Romans 1:18-32 makes it clear that many in the world knew of God during the primordial period. And then you had the apostasy of Israel, God’s elect nation of stiff – necked people. Now I reject dominion and official theology, America is not the new Israel. But still, how can we not compare the wretched conduct of so many people who claim to believe in God to that of biblical Israel, of Sodom and Gomorrah, or of the cosmos before the flood? So if we are indeed a land corrupted by sin, with what is the resulting corruption? From my humble estimation, it can be nothing else but evil spirits that have such reign over the land that they can now enter into children of very young ages – ages before both Jewish and Christian doctrine claims that they can possess any responsibility for sin – and fill them with thoughts and provoke them to behaviors that are not convenient even without those children personally having been exposed to external sources of wickedness on that scale.
So we can suppose, then, that the effects of God ridding a corrupted land from its people so that it can rest as He did with Israel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the entire world with the flood can be viewed in terms of Matthew 12:43-45, which reads “When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.” Get rid of all the people, and there is nowhere for these unclean spirits walking through dry places to find rest, and nowhere for him to bring the seven spirits more wicked than he. It would honestly appear that with the grotesque abominations that are now not only commonplace and accepted but DEMANDED by our contemporary society that America as a nation is that wicked generation that is in that last state. The only question is whether it applies just to America, as it did to Israel in the time and place that Jesus Christ was speaking (as the nation of Israel was destroyed in 70 A.D.) or does it apply to the whole world? Is this the beginning of sorrows for the earth, or just for America? After all, nations have come and nations have gone! Remember the mighty civilization that the Aztecs built? Yet the conquistadors overthrew it all! So … time will tell.
I acknowledge that during the short time (a little over a year) since I started this website, I have gone from (disillusioned) Pentecostal to a more Reformed Christianity, but people, evil spirits are real, and Reformed Christians have to come up with a way to deal with these problems through evangelism and ministry programs so that we can redeem God’s children from the clutches of the enemy. That is one of the reasons why I have yet to remove the spiritual warfare materials from the top (also to the side) of the site: it is mostly from the charismatic perspective – with due respect to the Baptist Frank Hammond – but really what else is there?
From another perspective, this type of evil shows how perversion is taking over the world. Not only is it happening virtually unchecked, but it is the people that say that it is wrong that would face opposition. Suppose you and I were to go to Boston right now with picket signs and bullhorns in front of this fellow’s office, declaring to the world the abomination that it is. (Of course, some would propose that quietly talking to people and handing out gospel tracts would be a more effective and more Christian way of dealing with this evil than publicity – seeking grandstanding, but consider the question anyway.) The news media, the intellectuals (of which there is no shortage of in Boston) and even many clergy would denounce such an effort as hateful, bigoted, intolerant, etc. and before long there would be hate crimes legislation against it, with news footage of Christians yelling and swinging signs at crying confused children, it would be a political watershed moment for the gay rights community, their Selma. Yet a mere 40 years ago, such an establishment working this type of evil against children would have been burned to the ground!
It has to be spiritual. Satan knows that he has but a short time, so the forces of spiritual wickedness are being unleashed upon the earth in a way like never before, and it will build until the return of Jesus Christ. The moral climate, the economic climate, the wars and diseases, the apostasy of the church … it all adds up to one thing: the fulfillment of the things spoken of in Daniel, Ezekiel, the Olivet discourses of Jesus Christ in the gospels, Revelation, etc. And yes, the apostasy of the church is a clear indication. How can these things be going on in a nation that claims to be over 75% Christian (if not higher) without a single hint of righteous outrage? Without armies of Christians motivated to action? It is as if a spiritual cloud of fear, defeat, blindness, pacifism, and accommodation is hanging over the church. And so many are that are fighting are doing it the wrong way: through electoral politics and in the courts. Were John Edwards and George Whitefield about today, what would they say about us? And better yet: how come WE are not doing what John Edwards and George Whitefield did? And yes, I include myself among the number of those that really are not doing nearly enough for the gospel. I have to do more. We ALL have to do more!
Jesus Christ is coming back soon, Christians. And when He does, what will you say if He asks you why didn’t you do anything to help, defend, and advocate for His little children such as these?
Now do not mistake me for a supporter of La Raza or illegal immigration, but “American values” seems to be an open – ended term, don’t you think? See link below!
Telling quote: “Biggs, however, conceded the language of what would be prohibited is “somewhat vague” and probably needs work. Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe, said it is more than vague. He questioned, for example, what it means to “overtly encourage dissent” from he values of American democracy and Western civilization.” Never forget that ACTUAL BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION. The religious right tricks you into thinking otherwise, by claiming that discussing the anti – Biblical events of our past amounts to “anti – American political correctness”, and then blaming modern things that political conservatives are allowed to be upset about on “liberal elites”, not the America that produces, supports, and more often than not makes money off it. Why? Because they want to do their best to convince you that “the real America” is spiritually and politically New Israel. Even if they do not call it that, such is what they want to transform America to be. It is amazing … all of the columns the past few days that talked about how we need to bring America’s politics and values in line with that of the Roman Catholic Church! And what is amazing is how there are so many Protestants that are consenting to this notion. It is purely spiritual, though many try to describe it in secular terms to make it palatable to the irreligious, that the state is this moral and pure thing that we must be indoctrinated into loving unconditionally. Why? So that people who agree to it will worship it in the place of Jesus Christ, and even be willing to aid and abet the hunting down and murdering people who wish to worship Christ first. To read more about this issue (and again keep in mind that I am NOT a supporter of La Raza) please go to http://immigrationbuzz.com/?p=2064
Now I was going to ignore Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to America. I believe in religious freedom and tolerance, and see nothing to be gained by unnecessarily provoking people concerning their deeply held beliefs. I opposed the re – publication of the Muhammad cartoons for the same reason. Not only does such behavior fail to advance the cause of Jesus Christ, but it actually impedes the spread of the gospel by producing a public witness of Christians as being fearful, dishonest, aggressive, and lacking in compassion, mercy, and respect. The best example of this is the revolting racist Ann Coulter, who uses the legitimate truth that Jesus Christ is superior as an excuse to vehemently trash (OVERWHELMINGLY NONWHITE!) Muslims while extending politically expedient pluralistic salvation to (OVERWHELMINGLY WHITE!) Jews and Mormons. So despite the incontrovertible error of the Roman Catholic Church, I was going to remain silent out of respect to members of that false religion, as many of them are good people, and I pray that they are brought out of their error into Biblical Christianity just as I was brought out of works – based prosperity/Word of Faith Pentecostal Holiness.
And then this happens. To the absolute glee of the religious right and warmongers everywhere (and regrettably to those deceived by them, for example the grieving father of a serviceman killed in Iraq that called into the Hugh Hewitt radio show last night – and yes Hewitt both continued his campaign to define religious faith in political/cultural terms and insist that Mormonism was a branch of Christianity based on it), George W. Bush plays “Battle Hymn Of The Republic” for the pontiff (whom Catholics call “the Shepherd”, not “a shepherd, which all pastors are, BUT THE SINGULAR ONE SHEPHERD). Listen, “Battle Hymn Of The Republic” IS NOT our national anthem. Now our national anthem is militaristic as well, but at least there would have been a REASON for playing it … it is our national anthem and therefore an entirely appropriate accompaniment to state ceremonies. Therefore, playing it would not have sent any religious and political messages (quite the contrary, one would be more likely to send a message by NOT playing it). But as for “Battle Hymn Of The Republic“, there is no ceremonial, traditional, etc. REASON to play that song unless you are trying to send a message, and with Bush the message was none other than the Iraq War and our national policy of warfare in general.
You would reply “So? Who did not know that George W. Bush and for that matter the Bush family is anything other than a bunch of warmongering globalists?” Well, THE POPE is what makes it an issue here. Now due to the nature of his position, the pope is SUPPOSED to be OFFICIALLY anti – war. But realize that state visits involving highly influential dignitaries are extremely sensitive matters with every detail agreed to and choreographed in advance in order to remove even the appearance of an insult by both the parties involved and the populations that they represent. And yes, a gigantic percentage of the national and global Roman Catholic Church, from laity to high ranking church officials, deeply oppose the Iraq War and what it represents: a major and global escalation of warfare and related tactics either directly (i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan) or by proxy (i.e. encouraging Ethiopia to invade Somalia). So the playing of this song – which would have been extraordinary even absent this context – would have not occurred without prior personal approval from Pope Benedict XVI himself. And Pope Benedict XVI would NEVER have given said approval unless he supported our military policy on some level, even if that support was not full or official.
Keep in mind: the pope is not under any obligation to make a public ceremony of meeting the president when visiting this country, and he certainly is not beholden to being subjected to conduct that he and his members find offensive and disagreeable while there. So had this not been acceptable to the pope, Bush would have asked to play the song, the pope would have said no, and that would have been it. Had Bush insisted, the pope would have simply refused to meet Bush in a public ceremony (or at all). Under those circumstances, NO ONE would have asked why the pope refused to meet with Bush, for the pope meets with virtually everybody. Instead, it would have been asked why Bush failed to receive the pope. And under those circumstances, an appropriate low level Vatican functionary would have been assigned the duty of “leaking” Bush’s completely unreasonable, inappropriate, and quite frankly INSANE demands to play A WAR SONG IN SUPPORT OF A WAR THAT THE VATICAN’S LONG AND WELL KNOWN POSITION IS TO OPPOSE during the visit to the (already hostile) foreign press, with the result being an international public relations firestorm. In short, on a matter such as this, the pope has all the leverage. He would not have exercised said leverage to consent to this highly unusual request – and in the process crossed the substantial portion of his church (possibly even a clear majority!) that oppose this war – had he not supported the politics, policy, and propaganda behind it on some level. Evidence of this is the absolute glee of the pro – war crowd.
And then after the Bush reception of the pope (which incidentally was not only unprecedented, but would have been IMPOSSIBLE before Billy Graham’s evangelical – Roman Catholic ecumenism, IMPOSSIBLE before Ronald Reagan created white Roman Catholic and evangelical political ecumenism, and IMPOSSIBLE before Reagan established official diplomatic relations with the Vatican including the Roman Catholic Church’s own ambassador who must be appointed by the executive branch and confirmed by the legislative one … someone PLEASE explain to me how this DOES NOT VIOLATE the First Amendment’s ban on the government’s favoring any one religious view over another) there was a reception that included Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts at minimum. Robert Kennedy may have been there too, but Kathryn Jean Lopez, the token minority at the National Review, does not include him as a “favorite” of hers. This woman, who has lately taken to blatantly cheerleading for our nation’s institutions and culture to increasingly reflect – and be governed by – Roman Catholicism, actually claimed that the event “was a terrific celebration at the White House of the pontiff, religious freedom, and Catholicism“! And here is another entry from this loathsome enemy of Jesus Christ where she manages to A) claim that this nation is prosperous, virtuous, and free because it was founded on Roman Catholic principles (a notion which no doubt will soon be reflected in the religious right’s approved history books an curriculum), B) insult Protestants by comparing it to Mitt Romney’s “accept Mormons as Christians evangelicals just as Roman Catholics accepted you or be declared a bigot and the enemy” speech, and C) make a gratuitous “joking” slam against Protestants just for the fun of it. (This woman is still fuming over the evangelical refusal to bow to the notion that not being in the Roman Catholic Church places them on equal footing with Mormons, oneness pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists, or any other crackpot cult group that wants to lay claim to Jesus Christ.)
Now Christians, I know a lot of you view Islam as a global threat to our faith, freedom, prosperity, culture, and way of life, believe that this threat should be met militarily, and for that reason support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror in general in some form. I respect those views in the hearts of sincere and well – informed Christians that hold them; I just happen to disagree with them. Still, such Christians have to start investigating the history of the Bush family, their national and international political/business/social associations and activities, and also those of the globalist societies that they are members of or consort with (which now, let us face it, incontrovertibly includes the Roman Catholic Church … this may be gratuitous, but let me remind you that the meeting of Bush and Benedict was literally one between a member of the family that made a lot of money off the Nazi regime and a former member of the regime itself … Benedict was literally a Hitler youth).
Also, study the political, military, and FINANCIAL decisions made in pursuit of this war. It bears no resemblance to actually capturing and punishing the people that have been attacking us and our interests since the early 1990s (in response, let me remind you, to our long term threats, provocations, and military actions against THEM), neutralizing any future threats, or containing whatever threat to the west and its allies that Islam allegedly poses. I will say this: the full scale invasion of foreign nations strategy of Islam has been effectively abandoned ever since their defeat by Charles Martel at Tours. The reason is THEOLOGICAL: the Muslims sincerely believed that their moon god was fighting for them at the time, was responsible for all of their victories, and that global military conquest followed by their version of the endtimes was at hand. So, when they were defeated in such a decisive manner, that forced a change in their theological outlook. Thus, despite the presence of 1 billion Muslims in the world, no one can name the last time that there has been a full scale invasion and subjugation of a non – Muslim country. (By contrast, Muslim areas have been invaded and/or controlled by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, India, etc. in just the past 50 – 75 years!) Why is this the case?
Again, refer to the fact that THERE ARE NOW ONE BILLION MUSLIMS. Immigration, evangelism, and reproduction has proven to be a much more effective method of spreading their faith than the sword, and if anything going off and launching an invasion of any western nation (which would be technologically superior AND have the backing of other western allies) would not only be suicide, but it would lead to crackdowns of the very same liberal immigration policies that have allowed millions of Muslims to enter (and spread their faith to) western nations over the past few decades. As such, the Bosnia – Serbia – Kosovo mess is a perfect illustration of the current Islam strategy. And who did the United States back? Why the very Muslims that brazenly stole a large chunk of a Christian nation for themselves.
Which proves that the entire war on terror AND the basis for it is a sham. Were it real, we would have done two things.
1) We would have gone after specific groups with a history of violence against us and our allies AND the nations that supply them with money, weapons, and hiding places. America has done the opposite by not only maintaining diplomatic relations with known terror sponsors like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority (which is actually the closeted homosexual Yasser Arafat’s PLO, people!) to speak nothing of our “special relationship” with Pakistan (which we had with Iraq not too ago!), but we are increasing the pressure on Israel to negotiate with Hamas (just as we forced them to negotiate with the PLO, and see where THAT got Israel … less land, more intifadas, rocket attacks, a collapsing economy, and a deteriorating internal political situation). Excuse me, but what are we supposed to gain by declaring the domestic army of a sovereign nation (Iran’s Revolutionary Guard) to be a “terrorist group”? Even better: what justifies this action? The ABSOLUTE OUTRAGE that they are helping folks that share their religion FIGHT THE SUPERPOWER THAT INVADED THE NATION NEXT DOOR? Sure, like if the Soviet Union had invaded Canada and Mexico during the Cold War we would have just sat around twiddling our thumbs waiting to be next. We were willing to go to start a nuclear war over the Soviet Union putting missiles in Cuba, but Iran is supposed to just do nothing after we A) put them on our axis of evil list, B) attack the regime of the neighboring country that we put in power to attack THEM in the 1980s, C) attack the nearby Afghanistan regime that we put in power to drive out the Soviets in the 1980s, and D) spend YEARS leading an international chorus demanding economic sanctions against them after the manner that caused the deaths of from 500,000 to 1,000,000 people OF THE NATION NEXT DOOR, sanctions that were used to weaken THE NATION NEXT DOOR to prepare for an invasion of THE NATION NEXT DOOR. Why? BECAUSE IRAN IS STARTING THE VERY SAME NUCLEAR PROGRAM THAT WE ALLOWED PAKISTAN TO COMPLETE WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE? What makes it OK for Pakistan to have the potential for weapons of mass destruction but not Iran or Iraq, ESPECIALLY SINCE USAMA BIN LADEN IS HIDING IN PAKISTAN RIGHT NOW!?!? Oh well, ignore all of that information. Just repeat the right wing line: Iran hates us because we are prosperous and free and they are a bunch of backwards savages with a strange religion. We are such a peace – loving, fair nation that has never bothered or been a threat to anyone but instead has always tried to act in everyone’s best interests, so hatred, fear, resentment, etc. against us just HAS to be irrational, right? Well put it to you this way: we starved 1 million innocent Iraqis to death knowing full well that the people who ran that country would always have plenty of food to eat. Hmmm …
2. Much simpler (and shorter) than 1: practically end immigration from Muslim countries. But notice how anyone who proposes this gets condemned in the international press and by all of the “relevant” political and religious leaders as a dangerous far right xenophobe.
Since the Bush administration (and the administrations that preceded it and will follow it) are on record as vehemently opposing those steps – and anyone who advocates them! – what they are obviously engaging in is not a war on terror or on radical Islam. Instead, it is a policy of increased militarization for increased militarization’s sake. Even more concerning than the actual military action (again whether directly waged by us or by proxy) are the matters concerning intelligence, national security, and money. For the first time in world history, the various global powers have virtually carte blanche to monitor the personal and financial activities of any person or group. All it takes is an allegation of being a terrorist – a loosely defined term – and you can be detained indefinitely and without due process, including but not limited to being secretly whisked overseas to a nation where torture is legal. And where there are still (for now) limits to what they can do against people without sparking a public outcry, not so regarding assets: money and property. Keep in mind, they do not have to seize it, which would raise due process issues. All they have to do is freeze it to keep you from using it, and it has the same effect, and doing so to any individual’s or group’s (think church!) assets on a “temporary basis” requires virtually no evidence at all that needs to be made public. In the course of prosecuting this, the government has been quite prudent. They have gone after large numbers of people and groups that they know are probably guilty while at the same time going after people that they know are innocent. They are not after the guilty folks, because claiming that they are fighting terror by shutting down some charity that raises a few thousand dollars a year for Hamas when Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. are funneling them hundreds of millions in cash and weapons (again, something that we are doing nothing about) is ridiculous. Instead, they are seeing how far they can get away with detaining and freezing the assets of the innocent. The answer: pretty far indeed. It is only going to be a matter of time before what has been made acceptable to people and organizations with Arabic and Muslim names is going to be commonly accepted by these cultures to everyone, just as everyone now accepts being searched at airports (which the citizenry would have opposed tooth and nail less than a generation ago).
So make no mistake: Benedict’s allowing the Battle Hymn of the Republic to be played during a state visit (which, incidentally, was not given for the Dalai Lama, a fact which not a few Buddhists expressed chagrin over, leading the loathsome Michael Medved to dedicate a show to denigrating Buddhism and the Dalai Lama … hard to appreciate coming from a religious right type that will go to the mat defending Mormonism) was nothing less than an expression of support for the Bush regime – and the new world order globalists that he serves – policy of global military and economic aggression. It also signals that Pope Benedict XVI himself is part and parcel of and servant to this same group of global imperialists just like Bush. And most importantly of all, it signals that Bush and Benedict have become brazen and bold enough to publicly celebrate this fact, with no thought given to the notion that they have to hide their ties, beliefs, and intentions. They could care less about who knows, just as Bush could care less about his approval ratings.
I am honestly of the opinion that this event was one of triumphalism. They were announcing to America – and to the world – that the globalist takeover of this nation was complete, and that America is irrevocably signed, sealed, and delivered. I do not know how long it is going to take, but everything else is going to be just a matter of winding things down and allowing things to fall into place. It could take 5 years, it could take 100, but the global consolidation is going to happen. After all, it is no accident that Bush’s releasing proposals on global warming that endorse our moving ever closer to global economic and political integration was timed to so closely coincide with the pope’s visit. After all, the pope has been on board with the global warming agenda for some time now.
It is also a good time to point out how both sides of the political aisle have contributed to these developments. For instance, conservatism pulled off the merging of evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Jews to create the ecumenical pluralist religious right, and in doing so effectively muted the political voice of Protestant fundamentalists. Liberalism, meanwhile, contributed their part by allowing any criticism of this state of affairs to be called “anti – Catholic bigotry” (piggybacking on the black civil rights movement!). Indeed, such rhetoric was key to creating the climate where the Supreme Court could rule to legalize school vouchers: the religious right was successful to use the language of the left to convince the body politic that the only reason why no one had ever seen the obvious wisdom of sending low income inner city PROTESTANT black children to Roman Catholic schools en masse (after all, they provide SUCH GREAT DISCIPLINE for the boys and OUTSTANDING MORAL INSTRUCTION for the girls!) was because of the HORRIBLE discrimination and persecution against Catholics in our past. Hilarious that the very same conservatives that will go to their grave denying that this country was ever racist against blacks – or if it were that any legal remedy is required to address it – are perfectly willing to sit around and call virtually everyone living in this country 50 years ago of allowing their interpretation of the First Amendment to be motivated (or distorted) by their animus of Roman Catholics. If nothing else shows who is actually running this country now, that does.
Since the American piece has fallen into place (even if all of the details have yet to play out, but trust me they will in very short order to the point where this nation will be unrecognizable within 10 years, and no I am not talking about demographics), what – apart from getting even more involved in the third world, which by the way George W. Bush was a huge trailblazer on – is next? My conjecture: Israel is next.
RELIGION
Taking Christ out of Christianity
Avant garde pastor teaches a new Christianity where the way you live is more important than beliefs
MICHAEL VALPY
March 22, 2008
That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today – Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto’s West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country.
But at West Hill on the faith’s holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words “Jesus Christ” will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with “Glorious hope.”
Thus, it will be hope that is declared to be resurrected – an expression of renewal of optimism and the human spirit – but not Jesus, contrary to Christianity’s central tenet about the return to life on Easter morning of the crucified divine son of God.
Generally speaking, no divine anybody makes an appearance in West Hill’s Sunday service liturgy.
There is no authoritative Big-Godism, as Rev. Gretta Vosper, West Hill’s minister for the past 10 years, puts it. No petitionary prayers (“Dear God, step into the world and do good things about global warming and the poor”). No miracles-performing magic Jesus given birth by a virgin and coming back to life. No references to salvation, Christianity’s teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus’s death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god.
Ms. Vosper has written a book, published this week – With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe – in which she argues that the Christian church, in the form in which it exists today, has outlived its viability and either it sheds its no-longer credible myths, doctrines and dogmas, or it’s toast.
She is considered one of the bright, if unconventional, minds within the United Church, Canada’s largest Protestant Christian denomination. She holds a master of divinity degree from Queen’s University and was ordained in 1992. She founded and chairs the Toronto-based Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity.
Other Christian clergy and theologians have talked about the need to dramatically reform the doctrines of a faith that, with the exception of its vibrancy in the United States, has lost huge numbers of adherents throughout the Western world it once dominated as Christendom. In Canada, where 75 per cent of the population self-identifies as Christian, only about 16 per cent attend weekly services.
Addressing those statistics, what Ms. Vosper proposes is not so much reform as a scorched-earth approach.
A number of leading theologians in Britain – where the decline in adherents is more dramatic than in Canada – are on the same path, people like Richard Holloway, former bishop of Edinburgh and primate of the Scottish Episcopal (Anglican) Church, who has likened the Christian church to a self-service cafeteria stacked with messy trays of leftover food urgently in need of being thrown out.
Like Bishop Holloway, Ms. Vosper does not want to dress up the theological detritus – her words – of the past two millennia with new language in the hope of making it more palatable. She wants to get rid of it, and build on its ashes a new spiritual movement that will have relevance in a tight-knit global world under threat of human destruction.
She says there’s been virtually a consensus among scholars for the past 30 years that the Bible is not some divine emanation – or in Ms. Vosper acronym, TAWOGFAT, The Authoritative Word of God For All Time – but a human project filled with contradictions and the conflicting worldviews and political perspectives of its authors.
And yet, she says, the liberal Christian churches, including her own, won’t acknowledge that it is a human project, that it’s wrong in parts and that, in the 21st century, it’s no more useful as a spiritual and religious guide than a number of other books.
She says now that the work of biblical scholars has become publicly accessible, the churches and their clergy are caught living a lie that few people will buy much longer. “I just don’t think we can placate those in the pews long enough to transition into a kind of new community that doesn’t keep people away.”
She wants salvation redefined to mean new life through removing the causes of suffering in the world. She wants the church to define resurrection as “starting over,” “new chances.” She wants an end to the image of God as an intervening all-powerful authority who must be appeased to avoid divine wrath; rather she would have congregations work together as communities to define God – or god – according to their own worked-out definitions of what is holy and sacred. She wants the eucharist – the symbolic eating and drinking of Jesus’s body and blood to make the congregation part of Jesus’s body – to be instead a symbolic experience of community love.
Theologians asked to comment on her book said they wouldn’t until they’ve read it.
But one of her colleagues who knows her well, Rev. Rob Oliphant, the progressive pastor of Toronto’s Eglinton St. George’s United Church, said, “While I’m somewhat sympathetic to the aims of it all – getting rid of the nonsense and keeping the core faith – I think that there is something lacking in it all. Gone is metaphor, poetry, symbol, image, beauty, paradox.”
Ms. Vosper said she and her congregation have tried hard not to lose those elements in their search for the sacred and the transcendent in life.
She met with members of her congregation last Sunday to discuss what the impact might be of her book.
She said it would take only a single vote of a presbytery – a local governing body of the church – to bring her before the church courts if a complaint against her is made, and the courts could be interested in examining what it means to be in “essential agreement” with the church’s statement of faith.
“I can find myself in there [the statements of faith] but there’s whole parts of it where I go, ‘Oh my goodness, this is terrible.’ If someone says to me, ‘Do you believe in God?’ I can come up with an answer that would satisfy the courts of the United Church. But would it reflect what’s stated in their statement of faith? I don’t think so. But it wouldn’t be very far from what my colleague down the street, and what his colleague down the street from him, would say. That’s the problem.”
