The Seven Mountain nonsense may be coming to your church

The people who support this non-sense have no biblical leg to stand on. The verse cited at the bottom is out of context.

One of perpetrators of this has been already sentenced to go to jail for misusing church funds.

Don't follow this teaching.

Where Did Rapture Theology Come From? Ben Witherington III

Christianity must change or die, but not like Gene Robinson suggested

I've been told that the church must change in order to continue as a living organism. But the people who tell me that, usually belong to churches that are dying, exactly for implementing the changes they suggest to me.

Ross Douthat, has written a good piece dealing with this issue in the New York Times, where he deals with this issue. Liberals have been telling us for years that the church must change in order to stay alive, but the churches lead by liberals are the ones dying because of their misguided change.

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States. 

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.

Spong was wrong then, and is wrong now. He wants to kill of Orthodox Christianity, so it doesn't stand in the way of his sinful life, but at the end, he seems to had inflicted a wound to his own type of christianity. The issue was then, and is now, that those who should have known better, did nothing, instead went on to dismantle the Episcopal Church in order to be in the good graces of today's society and culture.  So there's no interest in defending the truth of the Bible against a society that needs it so much, rather, picks up their political fights, which contradict the Gospel at its core.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

Well, there's nothing they can offer but the same thrush that the young people are facing outside the church. We don't see a great increase in the audience they intended to target. In Australia, the Uniting Church, is experiencing something similar. Yet, the churches it was meant to replace, seem to either thrive (the Methodist), or at least survive (the Presbyterians).

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital. 

Traditional believers, both Protestant and Catholic, have not necessarily thrived in this environment. The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message.

My sentiment as well. But I wouldn't call prosperity Gospel people "traditional believers". They are as far from the Gospel as the Mormons or Jehova Witnesses. They have a total different religion. These churches thrive, not because they are Gospel driven, rather, because they are money driven. People want money and wealth, so they go to these churches to get a hand of how to obtain it, or make it.

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves.

Not all Methodist, Lutheran or Presbyterians are going the way of the dinosaurs, but those denominations that have adopted the Episcopal way, are going the way of the Episcopal church.

Both religious and secular liberals have been loath to recognize this crisis. Leaders of liberal churches have alternated between a Monty Python-esque “it’s just a flesh wound!” bravado and a weird self-righteousness about their looming extinction. (In a 2006 interview, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop explained that her communion’s members valued “the stewardship of the earth” too highly to reproduce themselves.) 

Liberal commentators, meanwhile, consistently hail these forms of Christianity as a model for the future without reckoning with their decline. Few of the outraged critiques of the Vatican’s investigation of progressive nuns mentioned the fact that Rome had intervened because otherwise the orders in question were likely to disappear in a generation. Fewer still noted the consequences of this eclipse: Because progressive Catholicism has failed to inspire a new generation of sisters, Catholic hospitals across the country are passing into the hands of more bottom-line-focused administrators, with inevitable consequences for how they serve the poor. 

 Liberals don't want to accept their peril. As we see in the case of Katherine Jefferts Schori, she wants to window dress their declining numbers by passing it as a way of "stewardship of the earth". This type of denial would not be allowed in other quarters. And in the case of "progressive" Catholicism, it just won't get people inside their orders. If some progressives nuns wants to affirm somebody's homosexuality, why would, they in turn, would quit being a lesbian in order to turn into a life of celibacy?

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right.

May the Lord deliver us from the right to take the face of Christianity!!!!

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.” 

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.

I wonder then, how these "liberals" couldn't pass on their faith to the next generation. There's still much we have to learn. 

Is Israel the only nation allowed to assassinate its enemies, and kill civilians too

Haaretz has published a great article regarding the butched (alleged) assassination attempt by Iranians against Israeli diplomats in other countries.

The assassinations of the Iranian scientists were no less terrorist, let's admit it. Terror is terror, against diplomats exactly like against scientists, even if the latter are developing nuclear weapons. There is no great difference between an attempt to kill a representative of Israel's Defense Ministry and a strike on an Iranian nuclear physicist. There are nuclear physicists in Israel too and if, God forbid, someone tried to assassinate them, that would rightly be considered cruel terror. 

And so anyone who uses these deplorable assassination methods cannot be critical when someone else tries to emulate them. And why should the world denounce Iran's terrorist acts - as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday - and not denounce others? Are there special countries that are allowed to assassinate at will, and others who are not?

Terrorism is terrorism, period. It doesn't matter where it comes from, or who commits it. 

Here people are shocked by attempted assassinations by Arabs or Iranians, but divorce them completely from the context of Israeli assassinations. How did a columnist in Israel Hayom put it this week? "Attacking Israel is in their DNA." Theirs? And what about us? The writer forgot, and made us forget, our DNA. It, too, supports assassinations, including sometimes of the innocent.Assassinations of Palestinians have scaled down in recent years and have been carried out mainly in Gaza, and so the hit lists of the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Defense Forces are now shorter. That's a good thing.But according to the data of the human rights group B'Tselem, Israel targeted and killed no less than 232 Palestinians in the territories between the beginning of the second intifada and Operation Cast Lead, a period of about eight years. During those attacks,approximately 150 innocent bystanders were killed, including women and children.

So, how about those 150 bystanders? Is anybody going to say that they didn't deserve to die? Or only Israeli people count?  Some will tell me, "in war people die". Yes, but they don't take into account that people from both sides die. They only mourn those they like.

That's why I abhor Christian Zionism, and call it a heresy. They think that by supporting Israel, even in their terrorist acts, they are doing God's will. I guess that the second commandment is not in their Bibles, and the loving of enemies is not in their Bible either. But they would say, as they usually do, "you are confusion politics with religion". Well, tell that to the Zionists in Israel, and don't tell it to me. But then again, they are extremely selective at how they also apply that rule too.

Terrorism is terrorism, period.

Is Vegetarianism a Heresy? It might be as well!!!

By Sebastian Moll
Theological Faculty of the University of Mainz
Germany
January 2012

Modern vegetarians often refer to theological terminology such as “reverence for life” or “respecting creation” when defending their position. Ironically, in the Early Church the situation is exactly the other way around. Abstaining from meat is considered a sign of heresy. In the Canons of the Council of Ancyra (314), it is stated: “It is decreed that among the clergy, presbyters and deacons who abstain from meat shall taste of it, and afterwards, if they shall so please, may abstain. But if they disdain it, and will not even eat herbs served with meat, but disobey the canon, let them be removed from their order.” While never included into Church Law, this anathema is confirmed by several later councils, such as the Council of Braga (Portugal, 561), at which the anathema is expanded to include clergy and lay people alike.

Many heretical groups in early Christianity indeed practiced vegetarianism, for example the Marcionites and the Manicheans. Traditional scholarship attributes this behavior to just another form of asceticism. But if the councils wanted to condemn radical asceticism, why is there no anathema for people who abstain from alcohol, for example? What is the reason for the special concern with the question of eating meat? Are vegetarians really a threat to Christian orthodoxy?

As a matter of fact, the issue is already raised within the New Testament. In 1. Timotheus 4:1-5, we read:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

The irony is conspicuous: whereas today respecting creation implies above all leaving it “untouched,” for the early Christians, it was a sign of disrespect towards God not to make use of his creation and thus a definite sign of heresy. Remember the careful distinction: according to the above mentioned council decree, it is perfectly all right to abstain from meat if you simply don’t like it. After all, de gustibus non est disputandum. However, if you abstain from it because you consider it somehow impure, you sin against the Creator.

How did this shift of perception happen? Perhaps the answer lies within a little nuance: the Bible speaks of thankfulness towards the Creator; today one tends to speak of respecting creation. Towards an abstract entity the most one can offer is respect; thankfulness, however, is a feeling one can only have towards a person – and the presentee will always consider refusing the gift as insulting.

Christianity often has been reproached for the fixation on man and his exalted position within creation. It was above all Charles Darwin who caused this worldview to alter. Christian belief always assumed that animals were created for man’s sake and thus allowed for the above mentioned perception of treating them as gifts. By pointing out that many of these animals existed long before man, this form of thankfulness was shattered to the core.

Far be it from me to question the theory of evolution at this point! However, there is something true and beautiful in the Christian concept of thankfulness. For thankfulness has a fascinating double effect: it promotes self-confidence and humility at the same time – self-confidence, because I feel valued by the gift; humility, because I feel the dependence on somebody else. Thus, thankfulness is by far not the worst basis for modern food ethics.

It is the tragedy of life that our food consists of annihilated life, no matter if you are a meat eater, vegetarian, or vegan. This very tragedy, this brokenness of human existence, the condition between paradise and damnation – this is the great topic of the book of books. Man lives in this tragedy like any other creature on this planet, but he is the only one aware of it. That is the burden which he once took from the tree of knowledge and which he has been carrying until this very day.

Continuing with heresy, listen to the head of the episcopal church!!

Against the heretic Prosperity Gospel movement

I would like to hear such a sermon from Hill Song or Lake Wood. If Jesus came to make us better persons, and not mainly to save us from our sin, than we should follow somebody else.

I remember when a Psychiatrist friend of mine told me that Hill Song was their little gold mine, since people cannot sustain the positivism that it is preached there. This guy was a retired minister, and told me that that sort of movement did more long term damage than the short term fix that they offered.

We are more than conquers in Christ, but conquers against sin. Many people who go to those sort of churches, yes, have better cars than me, or houses, whatever, but if they are counting those things as God's blessing, then Steve Jobs was way more blessed than then!!

Well, I leave you the very interesting video.

The heresy of the Prosperity Gospel movement

Lord, save us from it.

Luis A. Jovel

The true "christianity" of Anders Behring Breivik

So much for a "Christian Fundamentalist" that doesn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus!!!

But truly, I like that this guy at least is honest, and says that he is an "agnostic" or "atheist christian". I have a lecturer who doesn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and promotes gay marriage, in the name of Christ.

One, admits that he is done evil, but he doesn't take his cues from Jesus, although he believes in a christian culture. The other, upholds evil and heresy, in the name of the love of Jesus!!!!

Who do you think is really crazy, my lecturer or Breivik?

You can read more about the weird views of Breivik in the following link.

Norwegian murderer Anders Behring Breivik reveres Christendom, not Christ

When a Parent leaves God, the whole family follows.

I try not to download the Compass program from my national ABC. But sometimes, I tunes downloads it anyway. But this time, I was appalled at what I saw. Compass is a Catholic run program, but the programs are always either attacking christianity, or denigrating it. The last show, was no exception. It showed the life of an australian religious (I can't call him a christian, since he rejected the basis of Christianity as mentioned in the program) figure, Ted Noffs.

Noffs seem to have been a Bishop Spong of his time. He started saying that organised, hierarchical religion was something that must die, and as mentioned before, rejected cardinal doctrines such as original sin, and the deity of Jesus. And if you have the time and willingness to waist your download, you will see that he stopped baptizing in the name of Jesus, but started doing it in his own formula, "in the name of all faiths", (min. 22:10). He faced the opposition of the Methodist church in Australia, and was rightly called for a trial of heresy.

He was truly a person who cared for other human beings. He cared for those who were left behind by society, and he saw that as the crux of religion, helping others. He came with a new term, "the Family of Humanity", in which he said that he himself was

"I am Protestant but I am also a Catholic. I am a Muslim but I am also a Jew. I am a Hindu but I am also a Buddhist. Because first and foremost, I am a human being and no one in the world is a stranger to me.”

He wanted to be all things to all people, yet, losing his own identity as a christian.

Noffs set up The Wayside Chapel, that served as his base to serve his community, and cater for drug addicts, poor people, and those who were being ignored by society. Indeed, he put his faith in humanity, and he showed it. In that, he was truly consistent and admirable.

My issue with him is that he took God out of picture, and had more faith in humanity than in God. As can be heard in the Compass program, he rejected the divinity of Christ, which he saw as a later construct of the church. This rage against the bride of Christ clearly puts him against not only historic Christianity, but against the God of Jesus Christ. By baptising somebody in the name of all faiths, that would be not only a huge disregard for what Christianity stands for, but any observant Jew, Muslim, Hindu, etc. What this shows, far from being a pietistic person, Noffs wanted to impose his view of religion upon those religions, and actually, as one of his grandsons calls him,

Ted Noffs wasn’t human. He was some kind of divine spirit, a deity.

This shows how far Noffs wanted to become a god himself through his new doctrine of "the Family of Humanity".

His family have follow on the work started by Noffs, his social work, but no more with a religious overtone. His son, is agnostic, and his son's sons, one atheist, the other, gay. Noffs progeny totally rejected the God who the senior started serving, and at the end abandoned because he couldn't fit in his worldview.

From a Christian view, this is sad story, one that shows how somebody who gives God the shoulder, is not the only one who pays the spiritual price, but also his progeny may pay it, because there was no faithfulness to God in their father/grandfather in the first place. He taught them that God was not necessary in their lives, that humanity had it i them to better themselves. A total contrary message of that of Jesus Christ, who came to earth because that philosophy is not true.

Lastly, as with Bishop Spong, Noffs saw that organised religion was on the way of the dinosaur, and that Australians would ultimately reject all sorts of hierarchal religion. If he would see the Australian church landscape, he would be turning in his grave. Noffs, as Spong, and many others, are subjected to think that in order for the church to survive, it must die. I am sorry, but Jesus died for the church, and trying to kill of the church, in anyway, is the most clear rejection of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross on behalf of sinful humans. That, Noff rejected, so he rejected Jesus's entire mission.

They should do well in reading a bit more of Scripture, specially the following:

Matthew 16:18
And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Luis A. Jovel