Eccuminisism is Oppression in a Pretty Dress

Once upon a time, the word "eccuminical" might have had a good meaning, but no more.  Today, the word is code for making all religions equal and equally worthless. This is the job of the World Council on Churches. This is the same line of thought that preaches and practices moral relativity and is part of the New World Order. 

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is launching an attack on the U.S. Constitution.

The current issue of ISNA’s bi-monthly magazine Islamic Horizons carries an article about ISNA’s demand for gun control.
Nor is the Second Amendment the only constitutional freedom under assault by ISNA and its leaders.
As reported by Neil Munro at the Daily Caller back in October, a group of representatives from many of the Obama administration’s favored Islamist groups met with Tom Perez, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
During the meeting, the Muslim leaders, including those from ISNA, called for a redefinition of anti-discrimination laws to punish criticism of Islam
Magid asked Perez to change the federal government’s rules governing terror  investigations,  for more private meetings with top justice department officials, for the reeducation of FBI agents, and for more people to oppose criticism of Islam, which he labeled “religious bigotry and hate.”
In a related court order by the federal judge hearing the case later unsealed, Judge Jorge Solis ruled that there was “ample evidence” that ISNA and other U.S. Islamic groups had acted in support of Hamas.

As noted by The Truth About Guns in February 2011, ISNA was one of the original founding groups of the “Faiths United to Oppose Gun Violence” when it was rolled out by the Brady Center.

Obama and False Christianity

A recent conversation on another forum got me thinking. The discussion was about President Obama, and his supposed christianity, as well as his animosity towards Fundamentalist Christians.

As soon as a couple of videos of Obama's speeches were posted, some of his supporters began saying they were Photoshopped, so I presented evidence from one of Obama's own speeches, and posted by his own self.

As soon as I posted it I knew there would be a problem. The typical Christian, even if they kinda know what Christianity is, cannot discern true from fake Christians. Most, even if they have spent many years in Church and looked up the verses referred to in Sunday School and in the sermon, still have little overall knowledge of the Bible.

I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record on this. Constantly harping that Christians need to dig into the Bible, but how else are we to know the true Christians from the Counterfeit s? Especially if the Counterfeits are doing what many believe are good works?

To make thinks worse, the site I referenced was from the United Church of Christ (UCC). While the "Churchs of Christ" had a good reputation many years ago (though I have heard no news lately), UCC is a different organization. Wikipedia says the "United Church of Christ" is "less historically related" and that is an understatement. One is a separatist movement, separating themselves from the mainline churches that had fallen into apostasy, the UCC is an ecumenical organization.

Now, ecumenical was once a good thing. It meant that faithful, Bible believing churches would get along. Today it is a snake in the grass, teaching there is no difference between churches even if they have renounced the Bible as the central authority, and teach that there are many ways to get to heaven.

I also noticed, as I researched the various parts of this article, that the wording of the ecumenical movement is getting more subtle. This is disturbing, as it will make it more and more difficult to spot the counterfeits without actually being inside their organizations. In addition they have been embarking on their own versions of Bible dictionaries and their own interpretation guides. I suspect it will not be long before the truth will be completely indistinguishable to those who are not already saved. And I am certain this is one of the elements that will bring the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ.


The Bible is the Word of life. As such, studying the Bible is crucial to the life and growth of every believer. -- John MacArthur

Teaching Error, the issue of writing

I recently forgot myself and made a post to a humor thread about the origin of one of the Psalms. I was roundly criticized for doing so, as I should have been, since it was outside of the topic. (So I am also guilty of 2 Tim 4:2)


But that post revealed that some Churches are still teaching an error that was considered to be common knowledge in the 19th century, and later in the 20th century, mostly among those who lacked knowledge of the history of that period, and knew even less about the Bible. There are, of course, those who deliberately propagate this myth (as a heresy) with intent to undermine the foundations of Christianity, by saying the Bible is not the Word of God, but is merely a collection of stories made up and assembled by some mystical clerics only a few hundred years BC.


It is that the Bible wasn't a written book until only a few hundred years BC. I don't know where this started, but I suspect it was by those who refused to believe, and therefore wanted to destroy the foundations of Christianity, since if the early Scriptures weren't that they say they were, and were not preserved as God promised in Isaiah, and as confirmed by Jesus, then they could say that all of the Bible is a lie.


That this should happen should be no surprise, since both Paul (verses 3 and 4) and Peter (verse 1) warned us of these false teachers. But to allow these false teachings to stand makes us a party to the lie, and allows the enemies of Christ to place a barrier between men and the understanding of God.

Encroachment of Liberalism

The encroachment of liberalism can have a subtle, but destructive, influence on a Church. Liberalism breeds greed, envy, strife, and idolatry. I noticed this from time to time among my more "liberal" christian (and even Christian) friends, and now have an example from a news paper.

Recently Mary Hunt of "The everyday cheapskate" column answered a letter from someone about "social obligations" (the two links are the same) that involved people having home based businesses disguised as a "jewelry or candle "party." (The fact that it was "disguised" as a party was not mentioned in the letter, or the answer)

To make things worse, these "friends" were from her Church in a small town. She felt a moral obligation to attend and buy things from these so called friends, and I suspect these "friends" were using their Church as a social network to get her, and others to come buy things from them.

Her advise was well intended, though a little naive. She said if the writer stood her ground based on the fact that she held to a budget, she would be admired, if only in secret.

Let me say, she will not be admired. She will be hated, if only in secret. These so called friends are using and exploiting her, and likely others, for their profit, and would not take kindly to being exposed for what they are doing.

In an almost perfect world, she would make her concerns known to her pastor, and he would provide corrective council to these people. But this world is far from perfect, and the Old Russian Proverb comes to mind: "speak the truth, then leave quickly."

Since this is a small town, if she does anything, she will risk being vilified and otherwise persecuted. But I still think she should tell her pastor about her concerns. If the problem is not quickly corrected, though, she should be looking for another Church.

I noticed, as I was channel surfing a couple days ago, that the History Channel was spending a great deal of time on the first of November, exploring ways to "debunk" the Bible, and undermine God's True Word. They showed three shows. First the Gates of Hell, describing the "myth" that Jesus rose from the Dead. Then some date setting in "Apocalypse Island" trying to prove 2012 is "the year." (It might be. Or Not.) Then some more date setting in the "Nostradamus Effect."

One thing that shouldn't have surprised me, but did, was that some preachers or teachers (not exactly sure what title they had) from the United Methodist Church Seminary in Claremont California were helping to undermine God's True Word.

I say that it shouldn't have surprised me, because I have heard talk that the United Methodists have "gone liberal." That is, lost the God given knowledge that the Bible is God's True Word.

So, I went and looked up Claremont Seminary, and sure enough, it didn't take long to find evidence that they have lost their Way. In an article from the Christian Post, I found:

A Southern California seminary affiliated with The United Methodist Church is opening its doors to Muslims and Jews and offering clerical training for those of other Abrahamic faiths, school officials announced Wednesday.

"The world is changing. And so is Claremont," states Claremont School of Theology on its website.

The unconventional move is part of the University Project, the school's effort to promote interreligious cooperation and to teach students to "recognize the legitimacy and integrity of the other religious traditions."

And in an article at Apologetics dot com,
I found:

"Christian ministers, Jewish rabbis and Muslim imams and eventually clerics from other religions will be educated side by side, each in their own traditions but also with classes in common so they learn to work together to address the problems that face humanity today and that can only be solved if religions work together across their boundaries," Campbell, Claremont School of Theology

What is this? It is Apostasy. The "legitimacy and integrity of other religious traditions" is an affront to God, and to teach such is heresy.

And from their own web site, I found:

THE WORLD IS CHANGING. AND SO IS CLAREMONT.

Affiliated with The United Methodist Church, Claremont School of Theology has a long history of educating religious leaders. Founded in 1885, the School embraced an ecumenical vision upon its move to Claremont, California, in 1957. Today, it is making a similar adjustment of vision, to meet the cultural and religious demands of a world in transition.

While maintaining a strong School of Theology to prepare Christian ministers, Claremont is developing other schools to prepare teachers, counselors, scholars and community leaders for the interreligious realities of the 21st Century. We call this plan the University Project.

This is proof from their own mouths, the United Methodist Church is no longer a Christian Church, and is merely teaching Theistic Moralistic Relativism. An affront to God, and an enemy of the Gospel, which is that salvation is through the blood of Jesus and that there is no other salvation.

As Paul the Apostle said in Galatians Chapter 1:

⁶I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel;

⁷which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

⁸But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!

⁹As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!

.

Prosperity and Unification Herasies

I noticed some years back, that there seemed to by an upswing in the "prosperity gospel" heresy. It seems to have caught on in the corporate world, where it led many down the path of destruction in both the very late 90's and again in the Economic Bubble (really bubbles on top of bubbles) of 2004 -2007.

Here is an article from Bloomberg Financial News that sheds a little light on the origins of how this heresy caught on in the corporate world.

Here is an excerpt (if you can't stand the messed up formatting,
see the original):

Lundborg: When did the business world adopt positive thinking?
Ehrenreich: It came into the corporations beginning in the late 1980s as a way of calming people down during layoffs.
You send the laid-off people to the out-placement firm, where they get pep talks on changing their attitude. The
survivors need motivational speakers so they can do the work of two people.
Lundborg: But it didn’t stop there?
Ehrenreich: No. I thought it was something brought in cynically, but I was surprised to learn it came to
be believed by the higher-up managers themselves.
There was an amazing change away from rational analysis, and toward an idea that leadership meant
having brilliant intuitions, charisma and almost mystical powers.
Lundborg: How did it turn toxic?
Fire Negative People
Ehrenreich: Positive thinking became the ideology of the business world in America. You could not raise
criticisms or doubts because there were policies to fire negative people, those who brought other
people down with their skeptical thoughts.

So, the upshot is that the corporate guys brought in this stupidity to cover themselves when they laid off their employees, then became infected with the same disease themselves.


Unification

Everybody remembers the "Moonies." Those guys who used to sell things and ask for donations at airports. They haven't gone away. Jesus, in Luke 21:8 (and other places) warned "See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he,' and 'The time has come.' 3 Do not follow them!" (New American Bible)

Well, successful cult leaders have to reinvent themselves from time to time. Now (and probably always) called the "Unification Church." Rev. Moon is reinventing himself, while trying to unite all of the various religions under one roof.

Excerpt:

Sun Myung Moon today seems more bent upon his quest to recasting himself in global public opinion than ever. As J. Isamu Yamamoto put it well in the mid-1990's: "Like any man in his late 70s who has tons of cash to throw away, who is obsessed with how people perceive him, and who still yearns to fulfill the glorious dreams of his youth, he is trying to purchase an exceedingly expensive face-lift. He wants to appear more culturally relevant and less religiously arcane by transforming the image of his movement from a church-oriented crusade into a family-affirming organization" (1). Unificationism has long hidden behind the veneer of respectability that its support of academic, political, industrial and conservative front groups has provided for it. But Moon's self-imposed mission of ecumenically-oriented values crusading has been openly seeking for years to create a base of interracial and interfaith support for his real agenda, the advancement of his antichristian Unification platform. This is perhaps the most disturbing development in the Unification Church's ambitious efforts in recent years.

Hasn't this been tried before? Ever heard of the Baha'i Faith?
Excerpt:

The Bahá'í Faith has been an active part of religious and social life in America since the late 1800s. We are a recognized advocate for spiritual solutions based on the Teachings of Bahá'u'lláh on issues such as the elimination of prejudice, the equality of women and men, the universal education of children, and the establishment of world peace.

The Bahá'ís are part of a worldwide religious community united by the belief that there is one God, one human race, and one evolving religion.

Nothing New Under The Sun (or the Moon)

Book Review 2 - Christianity in Crisis

As a refresher, here is the same intro I used before, or you can skip down about
a half dozen lines or so to get to the new stuff.

This is a book review on a book that I more or less "stumbled across" in a Family Christian Bookstore catalog. The author, Hank Hanegraaff, has quite a few books to his name, but this is the only one I have read. A reviewer on Amazon made the statement: "... he correctly points out that no teacher has the free hand to have his teachings go unquestioned. We should never be in the habit of receiving a teaching or teacher without examining its biblical accuracy. This book correctly points this out."

My review of the beginning of this book is here.

Well, I finally got to the end of this book, and as I said before, it gets a little slow as you get towards the middle, but as you pass the middle Mr. Hangraaff begins showing both the theological errors promoted by the prosperity preachers (which he calls faith teachers), but also shows the contrasting theology of the Bible, when the Bible is read in context.

As you approach the end of the book, I found that I slowed down, so that I wouldn't miss any of the good stuff. He shows how to conduct your Christian studies to resist the heretics. Not just the prosperity preachers, but any other heretics that come your way.

From the Bible (read in context: Matt 7:13-29):

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."

He gets into quite a bit of detail, and while I do not agree with ALL of his theology, he and I agree on the major points. In addition, the last several chapters are devoted to methods of worship and prayer and study - to inoculate yourself against these heretics. One of the highlights of this part of the book is his use of "acrostics." These are like acronyms, but are used as learning tools. For instance he uses the acrostic "M-A-P-S" for Manuscripts, Archeology, Prophesy, and Scriptural Synergy. This is one of the facets of learning to defend the faith, when non-believers come calling.

Book Review 1 - Chrstianity in Crisis

This is a book review on a book that I more or less "stumbled across" in a Family Christian Bookstore catalog: CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY. The author, Hank Hanegraaff, has quite a few books to his name, but this is the only one I have seen.

A reviewer on Amazon made the statement: "... he correctly points out that no teacher has the free hand to have his teachings go unquestioned. We should never be in the habit of receiving a teaching or teacher without examining its biblical accuracy. This book correctly points this out."

And this reviewer is completely correct. Is it no wonder that we hear those in the congregation (and those who should be in the congregation) espousing points of view that are quasi-Biblical or just plain non-Biblical?

In the past, I didn't pay much attention to television preachers, as I was too lazy to spend the time examining their doctrine. Bringing these so called christian leaders to our attention, the author exposes the cult like teachings of Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Oral Roberts, Creflo Dollar, John Hagee, and many others. He also takes to task others like Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen, who I would consider (and I could be wrong) more of the "christianity lite" variety. All are, in one form or another, "prosperity preachers," espousing the view that we can tell God what to do.

I don't take the author's word for everything. "No teacher has a free hand to have his teachings go unquestioned" includes him. While I have not finished the book, some of what I read indicates he may have trouble interpreting Romans Chapter 8 among others.

The early chapters were hard for me to read, because I kept referring back to the "end notes" to see where he got such outrageous material. He supports each and every accusation of their heresy with citations on when and where the heretics made those statements. As the book progresses, it seems to get repetitive, but that is partially because each of the "cast of characters," as he calls them, espouses very similar viewpoints. He does, also, examine some of them from more than one angle. One irritant for me is that most of the more outrageous statements these prosperity preachers have made were in the 80's and 90's, giving them the opportunity to say that he is judging them unfairly because they have learned better since. I haven't heard any of them say that, but I do know that Jim Bakker later repented (although I don't know what he has been doing since).

Towards the middle of the book, which is where I am currently studying, he begins to compare their theology with the classical theology of the traditional Church. He supports his theological arguments well, and shows how, many times, even a shallow study of the context of the prosperity doctrine's biblical references reveals the absolute lunacy of their interpretation.

Well the book is about 400 pages, and I am only halfway through, so I should write more in the future.

Crisis in the Church

This is a combination of an initial book report, and a call to action.

There is a crisis in Christian Churches in America. Actually, it has been going on for decades, and is epidemic in many countries. Many people think this crisis is some unconfessed sin of pastors or may blame the bingo parlor, night club, strip joint, or tavern down the street. Some may think it is the stinginess of the congregants not putting their full tithe in the offering plate. All of these things may be a slight problem for your neighborhood Church, but there is a bigger crisis.

The problem comes into your home on television. No, it isn't MTV or VH1. It isn't PBS or National Geographic. It isn't the late night soft porn on many cable channels. It isn't the ever increasing sex, drugs and profanity on prime time, or the references both hidden and overt to the occult on those same shows, or on saturday morning cartoons. All of these things are bad enough, but they are the things of the world, and do not present a crisis inside the Church.

The crisis is brought into your home through the so called christian networks, and the many so called christian programs that air on sunday morning, purporting to bring the Church into your home, but are really wolves in sheep's clothing, teaching a form of new age metaphysical deism, wrapped in christian jargon, plucked at will from the Bible.

In the past, I didn't pay much attention to these television preachers, because I have learned over the years to inspect what men tell me is true, and in the area of religion, I must inspect all they tell me against the standard of the Bible. This is a lot of work, and I am somewhat lazy, so I never paid attention to them because I didn't want to have to go to all of the work to verify what they were teaching.

These so called christian leaders were brought to my attention through a book I have begun reading - a book that I more or less "stumbled across" in a Family Christian Bookstore catalog:
CHRISTIANITY IN CRISIS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The author, Hank Hanegraaff, has quite a few books to his name, including an earlier edition of this book.

A reviewer on Amazon made the statement: "... he correctly points out that no teacher has the free hand to have his teachings go unquestioned. We should never be in the habit of receiving a teaching or teacher without examining its biblical accuracy. This book correctly points this out."

And this reviewer is completely correct. Is it no wonder that we hear those in the congregation (and those who should be in the congregation) espousing points of view that are quasi-Biblical or just plain non-Biblical? Catchy sayings and country music lyrics and the teachings of pseudo christian religions are more likely to be taken as Gospel than the Gospel itself. This is a complete disaster for the Christian Church, and needs to be dealt with in every truly Christian Church.

The Bible and Heresy

I have been neglecting Bible study for the past few months. It happens from time to time for one reason or another, coupled with my work schedule - which rotates, so that it is hard for me to attend Church regularly.

I guess God wanted to get my attention in such a way that I would want to get back on track, and I am fortunate that he decided to do it in a somewhat pleasant way. Books. First, a catalog arrived with a somewhat intriguing title. Christianity in Crisis in the 21st Century. Well, I will admit that even then, I didn't really jump up and grab on. But it caught my eye with its description of preaching that undermines true biblical teaching.

Then came a second book. I order books from time to time, so from time to time Amazon sends me lists of books I might be interested in. "Jesus Interrupted." I won't link to it, since it appears from the description to be Complete Heresy. What is worse, I noticed that in May it made it to the top of the best seller list in the category: Bible and Other Sacred Texts, subcategory "Bible Study." Ok, so it is a small category and they didn't have to sell many to get to the top. But it shouldn't get anywhere close at all.

Then, a third book. "The Evolution of God." More Complete Heresy.
Again at the top of a list:
Christianity - Theology - Philosophy
"What is this coming to?," I thought.

And then I knew. I got complacent about the fight because I didn't know what I was fighting. I needed focus, so I ordered Christianity in Crisis, and opened it up. It wasn't talking about the Heresy I thought it would, after the 2nd and 3rd books that God sent my way, but it was about one I have been trying to deal with from time to time for the past couple of years.

There Will be More on this later.
----
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read -- Groucho Marx