Difference between a seeker-sensitive, vision-casting, purpose-driven Leader and a Christian Pastor

RC Sproul, Phil Johnson & John MacArthur take on the Pentacostal movement! Strange fire 2013!!!!!

Not Laughing Now

Monday, June 10, 2013

by Phil Johnson

Rodney Howard-Browne, self-styled “Holy Ghost Bartender,” has taken notice of the Strange Fire conference sponsored by Grace to You (October 16-18, 2013). He seems unnerved by the prospect that twenty-first-century charismatic phenomena are going to be examined in light of Scripture. Howard-Browne’s trademark giddiness has gone missing. Recently, he wrote this stream-of-consciousness rant on his Facebook page:

There is coming a massive attack on the Pentecostal/ Charismatic movement by a group of individuals that don’t believe in the power of the Holy Spirit today - these men do not believe in speaking in tongues or the gifts of the spirit - they think that because of excesses in the church that they have a right to write off the fastest growing sector of Christianity - over 800 million in the earth today - that would be as bad as writing Jesus off because of one of the 12 was Judas Iscariot - if these individuals just adopted Gamaliel’s advice of Acts 5:38-39 that would be fine however they have no fear of God and are in grave danger of blaspheming the Holy Ghost - they think that because the movement has had scandals that have been publicised that this gives them leeway to do what they are doing - however the only reason why it gets the attention is because these individuals are on TV - everywhere I travel I hear of scandals outside of the Pentecostal charismatic realm but these are never publicised because no one knows them - they are calling their exposé strange fire however you better have the alternative if you are going to criticise something as counterfeit you have to produce the real - or else you had better shut up! The only ones who have the right to bring correction are the ones inside the camp not outside!

All the standard charismatic arguments are summarized there: He says critics of modern charismatic claims are unspiritual people motivated only by rank unbelief. He insists the weight of sheer numbers validates the modern charismatic movement (yet the high percentage of scandalous frauds, philanderers, and false teachers spawned by the movement means nothing). He emphatically declares that those outside the movement are not entitled to criticize charismatic abuses. And of course he includes the killer argument: The critics are people who “have no fear of God and are in grave danger of blaspheming the Holy Ghost.”

In reality, those who tout false prophecies, obscene bodily gyrations, and drunken behavior as gifts of the Holy Spirit are the ones blaspheming Him. In fact, no one is more notorious for that than Rodney Howard-Browne himself. For him to decry blasphemy and pretend to know anything about the fear of God is the very height of arrogant irony.

If you think that sounds unduly harsh, watch this video of a typical Rodney Howard-Browne “ministry” binge:

VIDEO LINK HERE!

Strange Fire, indeed.

From Worldview weekend. Shame on you SBC for bending over for "leaders" like Warren and Stetzer!

WHEN SOUTHERN BAPTISTS MAINSTREAM ISLAM

by Jim Fletcher

May 30, 2013

Southern Baptist operative Ed Stetzer is a leader.

 We know this because he tells us so.
 In a USA Today piece from April 26, Stetzer, president of research at LifeWay, advances his agenda of mainstreaming Islam within the evangelical world. It is an agenda item that his friends like Rick Warren and Bob Roberts Jr. have been engaged with for some time.
 When self-identified leaders within evangelicalism are afforded spots on the biggest platforms, it appears they are speaking for the rest of us.
 Which is ironic, because that’s what Stetzer’s USA Today PR piece for Islam seems to warn against: understanding others through the lens of what a few say.
 Ed Stetzer doesn’t speak for me, and many, many other Christians. In fact, I want to be clear about my view of his view of Islam: he’s wrong.
 (By the way, as an interesting aside, readers should know that Brian McLaren links to Stetzer’s column on his own blog, thus giving McLaren legitimacy also in SBC circles—warmly, as McLaren himself might put it. Note to Stetzer: if Brian McLaren endorses you, it might be time to re-think those positions that garnered the endorsement.)
 In his attempt to appear as a tolerant, reasonable person, Stetzer makes the following point at USA Today:
 “For many Americans, their knowledge of Muslims is what they see on television news rather than what they know from experience. Yet, forming your view of any group based solely on what you see on the news is a bad idea.”
I disagree. “Many Americans,” as is painfully obvious, have accumulated their knowledge of Muslims from violent acts committed by Muslims since at least 9/11 (Steve Emerson has been reporting on the jihadist agenda much longer than that—www.investigativeproject.org).
In fact, we “know from experience” that Islam sanctions murder and mayhem in order to establish a new caliphate.
 Stetzer wishes to convince his readers that only a tiny, almost infinitesimal group of Muslims are committed to jihad. I would point out that people who study this full-time, such as Frank Gaffney and Steve Emerson, would say that no one really knows how many Muslims are committed to jihad, but a leading indicator that the rest of us are in deep trouble is borne out by the fact that almost all Muslims are silent on the issue.
 If most of them weren’t extreme in their views, wouldn’t we hear that on a large scale?
 And why are evangelical leaders falling all over themselves to mainstream Islam?
 I frankly think Ed Stetzer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. As Daniel Pipes put it recently in a column with the Middle East Forum:
 “The establishment denies that Islamism—a form of Islam that seeks to make Muslims dominant through an extreme, totalistic, and rigid application of Islamic law, the Shari'a—represents the leading global cause of terrorism when it so clearly does.”
 Here Pipes is discussing the wider establishment, specifically our nation’s leaders, but the point exactly fits certain current strains within American Christianity. In the case of the evangelical establishment, it is clear that a whitewashing of violent Islam—jihad—is the order of the day.
 Make no mistake, we are all reluctant volunteers in the War on Terror, which, to be precise, is the War on Islamic Terror. Sadly, perhaps tragically, there are those among evangelical leadership who seem to be lost in the fog of this war.
 Just after 9/11, I read an essay by a Middle East expert on Islam. The writer said that due to perceived Western weakness manifesting itself just after the turn of the century, Islam was now “standing up.”
 That is a chilling mental picture.
 It also forces one to wonder why key evangelical “leaders” are taking that lying down.

Being Taught the Gospel from U2 frontman, Bono!

"I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I'd be in deep s---. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity." - Bono

Hell and the Fathers

Survey of the Doctrine of Hell from the Church Fathers

What did the early Church Fathers believe regarding the eternal fate of the wicked? Did they believe in universalism (Rob Bell's "Love Wins" ) or in annihilationism (Conditionalism)? Nope. They believe in the long standing Biblical doctrine of Hell. They believed it was eternal, conscious punishment and clearly argued against both univeralism and annihilationism. The reason for this is simple. This is what God's Word clearly and unambiguously says awaits those who persist in sin and unrighteousness and do not repent and trust Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins.

Ignatius of Antioch

"Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil teaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire: and so will anyone who listens to him" (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1–2 [A.D. 110]). 

Second Clement

"If we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest; but if not, if we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment" (Second Clement 5:5 [A.D. 150]).


"But when they see how those who have sinned and who have denied Jesus by their words or by their deeds are punished with terrible torture in unquenchable fire, the righteous, who have done good, and who have endured tortures and have hated the luxuries of life, will give glory to their God saying, ‘There shall be hope for him that has served God with all his heart!’" (ibid., 17:7). 

Justin Martyr

"No more is it possible for the evildoer, the avaricious, and the treacherous to hide from God than it is for the virtuous. Every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve. Indeed, if all men recognized this, no one would choose evil even for a short time, knowing that he would incur the eternal sentence of fire. On the contrary, he would take every means to control himself and to adorn himself in virtue, so that he might obtain the good gifts of God and escape the punishments" (First Apology 12 [A.D. 151]).


"We have been taught that only they may aim at immortality who have lived a holy and virtuous life near to God. We believe that they who live wickedly and do not repent will be punished in everlasting fire" (ibid., 21).


"[Jesus] shall come from the heavens in glory with his angelic host, when he shall raise the bodies of all the men who ever lived. Then he will clothe the worthy in immortality; but the wicked, clothed in eternal sensibility, he will commit to the eternal fire, along with the evil demons" (ibid., 52). 


The Martyrdom of Polycarp (Who was a disciple of the Apostle John)

"Fixing their minds on the grace of Christ, [the martyrs] despised worldly tortures and purchased eternal life with but a single hour. To them, the fire of their cruel torturers was cold. They kept before their eyes their escape from the eternal and unquenchable fire" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 2:3 [A.D. 155]). 

Athenagoras (His quote rules out annihationism by name)
"[W]e [Christians] are persuaded that when we are removed from this present life we shall live another life, better than the present one. . . . Then we shall abide near God and with God, changeless and free from suffering in the soul . . . or if we fall with the rest [of mankind], a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere incidental work, that we should perish and be annihilated" (Plea for the Christians 31 [A.D. 177]). 

Theophilus of Antioch

"Give studious attention to the prophetic writings [the Bible] and they will lead you on a clearer path to escape the eternal punishments and to obtain the eternal good things of God. . . . [God] will examine everything and will judge justly, granting recompense to each according to merit. To those who seek immortality by the patient exercise of good works, he will give everlasting life, joy, peace, rest, and all good things. . . . For the unbelievers and for the contemptuous, and for those who do not submit to the truth but assent to iniquity, when they have been involved in adulteries, and fornications, and homosexualities, and avarice, and in lawless idolatries, there will be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish; and in the end, such men as these will be detained in everlasting fire" (To Autolycus 1:14 [A.D. 181]). 

Irenaeus

"[God will] send the spiritual forces of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, and the impious, unjust, lawless, and blasphemous among men into everlasting fire" (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).


"The penalty increases for those who do not believe the Word of God and despise his coming. . . . [I]t is not merely temporal, but eternal. To whomsoever the Lord shall say, ‘Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire,’ they will be damned forever" (ibid., 4:28:2). 

Tertullian

"After the present age is ended he will judge his worshipers for a reward of eternal life and the godless for a fire equally perpetual and unending" (Apology 18:3 [A.D. 197]). 


"Then will the entire race of men be restored to receive its just deserts according to what it has merited in this period of good and evil, and thereafter to have these paid out in an immeasurable and unending eternity. Then there will be neither death again nor resurrection again, but we shall be always the same as we are now, without changing. The worshipers of God shall always be with God, clothed in the proper substance of eternity. But the godless and those who have not turned wholly to God will be punished in fire equally unending, and they shall have from the very nature of this fire, divine as it were, a supply of incorruptibility" (ibid., 44:12–13). 

Hippolytus

"Standing before [Christ’s] judgment, all of them, men, angels, and demons, crying out in one voice, shall say: ‘Just is your judgment!’ And the righteousness of that cry will be apparent in the recompense made to each. To those who have done well, everlasting enjoyment shall be given; while to the lovers of evil shall be given eternal punishment. The unquenchable and unending fire awaits these latter, and a certain fiery worm which does not die and which does not waste the body but continually bursts forth from the body with unceasing pain. No sleep will give them rest; no night will soothe them; no death will deliver them from punishment; no appeal of interceding friends will profit them" (Against the Greeks 3 [A.D. 212]). 

Minucius Felix
"I am not ignorant of the fact that many, in the consciousness of what they deserve, would rather hope than actually believe that there is nothing for them after death. They would prefer to be annihilated rather than be restored for punishment. . . . Nor is there either measure nor end to these torments. That clever fire burns the limbs and restores them, wears them away and yet sustains them, just as fiery thunderbolts strike bodies but do not consume them" (Octavius 34:12–5:3 [A.D. 226]). 

Cyprian of Carthage
"An ever-burning Gehenna and the punishment of being devoured by living flames will consume the condemned; nor will there be any way in which the tormented can ever have respite or be at an end. Souls along with their bodies will be preserved for suffering in unlimited agonies. . . . The grief at punishment will then be without the fruit of repentance; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late will they believe in eternal punishment, who would not believe in eternal life" (To Demetrian 24 [A.D. 252]).

Cyril of Jerusalem

"We shall be raised therefore, all with our bodies eternal, but not all with bodies alike: for if a man is righteous, he will receive a heavenly body, that he may be able worthily to hold converse with angels; but if a man is a sinner, he shall receive an eternal body, fitted to endure the penalties of sins, that he may burn eternally in fire, nor ever be consumed. And righteously will God assign this portion to either company; for we do nothing without the body. We blaspheme with the mouth, and with the mouth we pray. With the body we commit fornication, and with the body we keep chastity. With the hand we rob, and by the hand we bestow alms; and the rest in like manner. Since then the body has been our minister in all things, it shall also share with us in the future the fruits of the past" (Catechetical Lectures 18:19 [A.D. 350]). 


The Steven Furtick Bible - God forbid!

Excerpts from the Furtick Audaciously Revised Translation of the Bible?

I can neither confirm nor rule out the rumors that Steven Furtick is working on his own version of the Bible. The inability to get definitive answers is, after all, part of the elusive nature of rumors. That being said, I've come to be in possession of what may or may not be excerpts of Biblical passages from the forthcoming, Furtick Audaciously Revised Translation of the Bible.
I've reproduced the excerpts below.
Matthew 5:20 - “For I tell you, unless your audacity exceeds that of the bloggers and haters, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 7:21 - “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one whose audacity changed the world”
Matthew 7:22–23 - “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not burn our plows in your name, and dig ditches in your name, and pray for the sun to stand still?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘That wasn't nearly audacious enough; depart from me, you workers of mediocrity.”
Luke 17:6 - “And the Jesus said, “If you had audacity like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to the sun, 'stand still,' and it would obey you.”
Luke 18:9–14 - “Jesus also told this parable to some bloggers who trusted in sound doctrine, and hated on those who were making a difference in the world: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a blogger and the other a vision casting leader. The Blogger, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you for your Holy and inerrant word and that you've saved me, a sinner, by your grace through the shed blood of your beloved Son. Please, in your mercy send faithful servants into your harvest field who rightly handle your word and faithfully proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in your name to all nations. Men who will both feed your sheep and protect them from the ravenous wolves who twist your word and pervert the gospel.’ But the vision casting leader, looked in his handy dandy pocket mirror and declared how wonderful he was and showered himself with affirmations of his own greatness. Jesus then said, "I tell you, this man, the vision casting leader, went down to his house inspired to audaciously make a difference in the world, rather than the other. For everyone who humbles himself will be irrelevant, but the one who exalts himself will be exalted even more."”
John 21:15–17 - “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tell those whiny sheep who always complain that the sermon isn't deep enough to grow up and feed themselves.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Beat my sheep and tell them that church isn't for them its for the goats.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tell those lazy sheep of mine to get busy. I've given you a vision and its their job to make it a reality.”
Ephesians 5:6 - “Let no one bore you with irrelevant and traditional church services, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of inaudacity .”
2 Timothy 3:16–17 - “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for inspiration, applause lines, self-affirmation and for training in audacity, that the man of God may be complete, equipped to change the world.”
2 Timothy 4:3–4 - “For the time is coming when people will not endure creativity and inspirational life changing relevance, but having bloggers ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers who will boringly exegete the Bible, and will turn away from listening to audacity and wander off into irrelevant church services that waste all their time worshipping the Lord and hearing God's word rather than selflessly entertaining the goats by letting the praise band rock out to the latest secular hits.”
Revelation 3:1–3 - “And to the angel of the church in (Insert Your Church's Name Here) write: ‘The words of him whose audacity inspired a global movement. “I know your works. You have the reputation for being inspirational, but you are boring and irrelevant. Get with program, and slap the Jordan, for I have found your creativity to be lackluster in the sight of God. Remember, then, Pastor Furtick's audacity which you've witnessed and heard. Strive to be like him. If you will not be audacious enough to inspire the next generation to be greater, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.”
---
Although, I can neither confirm nor deny that these excerpts were authored by Steven Furtick, one thing is certain, they sure do sound like he authored them.
What do you think?
χάρις ἔλεος εἰρήνη σοι,

BUY THIS BOOK !!!!!

Book of the Week

Posted by Carl Trueman

Sadly, at my church we cannot offer the kind of culturally transforming ministry that is available elsewhere (as an aside, it is not the ink of the gentleman on the right which worries me; it is his earlobes.  What on earth has happened to them?  Did it, like some of the later music of The Clash, seem like a good idea at the time?).  Instead, prosaic and passe as it sounds, we just try to teach the Bible.  I trust that the Alliance employee who told the Puppetmaster that the clip reminded her of my views on church and ministry has been appropriately dispatched. 

And that brings me in a purely random and contrived sort of way to an excellent new book from Christian Focus, 66 Books One Bible by Paul Reynolds.  It is essentially a biblical theology for children.   Story Bibles have their place; but, of course, such books are always rather selective in the way they present the biblical story.  Jesus, Paul, David and Goliath usually feature, along with Noah, Samson and Gideon and others.  But many books of the Bible are ignored completely.   Where this work therefore makes a real contribution is that it presents the basic theme and significance of every single book of the Bible.  It will not substitute for a good children's story Bible or -- of course -- for the actual Bible; but it will help give children at a young age that great 'big picture' of the biblical story which will help them grow in their knowledge of God's word.

The book has good illustrations, very readable text and no pictures of Jesus.  Each book is introduced, summarised and set within the context of salvation as a whole.  Key lessons are also highlighted.  There is a glossary at the end.

It will make a good tool for parents and Sunday school teachers.   And if, like me, you sometimes just like to be reminded of the most simple basics of the Bible and the faith, you might find as an adult that you benefit from it as well.