Answers for Heretic Brian McLaren #3

3. The God Question: Is God violent? Yes. Read Eph 2: 1-3 By Nature all of Mankind are Children of God’s Wrath. He violently Hates all sin and will condemn all sinners to everlasting judgment – those whose sins have not been atoned for by Christ’s 100% perfect obedient life (propitiation – this makes you acceptable or now pleasing to God) and His death on the Cross (expiation – now the problem is solved as those sins have been punished and removed).

Does God make innocent people suffer? Never; Bible readers (Romans 3) unlike Sentimentality teach that NO ONE is Righteous, no not even one, no one does good in the sight of God, NO ONE seeks God. So all that are punished are receiving Just Judicial Punishment from a Righteous God.

Or is God purely just, kind, and compassionate? God is pure as in undefiled, not as in only Just or only Kind or only Compassionate.  He is all these attributes and many more: like Wrathful, Jealous, Merciful, and so on. So God is Just when He condemns sinners to Hell who think that they are righteous in themselves (people like the Pharisees, Sadducees, Legalistic Baptists, any religion that teaches works righteousness or mixes or blends faith & works for the forgiveness of sins, like Liberal Theologians). And at the same time He is Merciful to us who know that we fully deserve to burn in Hell forever but God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever Believes in Him will not perish but will have Eternal life. So God grants repentance and the forgiveness of sins won by Christ’s perfect life and sacrificial death on the Cross for us and we have faith (faith not in our own works nor is faith in our own faith) but faith in the faithfulness of Christ to do what He says He will.  What has He said? John 6: 37-40 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

If so, how do we deal with the passages in the Bible where God sanctions mass slaughter?

I already did – “So all that are punished are receiving Just Judicial Punishment from a Righteous God.”  It would be a sin for Israelites today to go on a rampage and genocide all the Philistines of the world – that’s would be a Sin (10 Commandments) – Don’t do it. But the ideas you’re alluding to in the Old Testament are not the sins of Israel but God’s just punishment on those wicked people that He sent Israel to kill. God is the Executioner He merely used Israel as the Axe or Sword. For example Gen 19:23-29 – This is God’s judgment on Sodom & Gomorrah. “Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” The Sulfur and Fire from Heaven did not sin, Brian, even though they killed thousands and thousands. The Sulfur and Fire was sent from God (our God!) as righteous judgment for the vile, perverse sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Let God’s righteous Wrath be what it is meant to be, a warning to the rest of us to watch our lives, our doctrine and our faith in Him who is able to save from the coming Wrath of God – Revelations 6, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 19. Hear the Word of our Lord and the song of the Saints that worship at the throne of God - Rev 11:17 - 18 “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your (Jesus’) wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”

Answers for Heretic Brian McLaren #2

 2. The Authority Question: What does it mean to say the Bible has authority? 

How can we more wisely understand and apply the Bible's authority in the future?

The Authority is of Scripture is that every single dot and dash, every word, every turn-of-phrase, every expression in the Original languages is the very Words of God (if you’re not aware of ancient manuscript studies – it is without any question that the Bible is THE best preserved ancient manuscript ever written, being protected by God Himself and it is at least 99.95% if not more absolutely correct in a Good English translation like the ESV (Elect Standard Version J) don’t buy paraphrases or application bibles as the very words themselves are raped of their meaning to change what the Bible actually says to what someone thinks the Bible should say – I’m surprised Heretic and Bible Rapist Extraordinaire Brian McLaren hasn’t written a Bible paraphrase yet.

To not follow or not believe Every single thing said is Scripture is to not follow or not believe God Himself, and therefore a sin. If this upsets you – I don’t care – it upsets God even more when we sin. If it humbles and grieves you that you don’t live up to God’s standards – great me to – and Jesus died to atone for our sins. So buck up and believe on Him, and His atoning work for your sure Salvation.

The very definition of Heretic Liberalism in Theology is expressed in 2 concepts that Brian and his flunkies bandy about – First, the Church must change or die. The truth is we are required to defend the faith once and for all delivered to the Saints (early church). If we change the Church, Methods of the Church or Message of the Church those are all sins that you will be held accountable for, possibly for eternity. We must always say it is Christ’s church not ours, so we wont do it our way but the way His word says to – Proclaim Repentance and the forgiveness of sins won by Christ to everyone – especially Brian McLaren, Baptize (even if we disagree on the degrees of Baptism denominationally), Preach the Word of God in when its popular and when its not popular and will bring you persecution, and teach All that the Lord commanded not just give money to the poor, not just liberate those in literal or theoretical prisons of their own making, but Limited atonement (John 10:11, John 6:37 - 47), Effectual Grace (John 6:37), Predestination, Election or being Chosen by God (John 15:16 & Matthew 24), Creation, the Fall, the Flood, Cain and Able, Jonah and the Big Fish (it doesn’t say whale – just letting you know). We must teach everything that Jesus taught not just our pet doctrines. Secondly, the Bible is full of errors or can be made to say whatever you want. It is not true that Bible is full or errors – the Bible however is full of things that you don’t want to hear: you’re a sinner, you did not assist in Salvation (except providing the sin that needed atoning), you are or were a slave to Sin, Satan, your fleshly desires, and this wicked world, God will reveal His wrath on all those who are not Saved by the blood of the Lamb, those whose names were not written in the Slain Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world, there is only 1 mediator between God and Man His name is the Christ Jesus, He is the only Way, the only Truth and the only Life all are Lost, Liars and Dead without Him. Also it is true that Heretics misuse, misapply or manipulate the Scriptures to say what they want and then they pass over the rest they don’t want you to know – that’s many American Churches today – I left one recently. A real Pastor however reduces or prevents this error by expounding verse by verse through books of the Bible. When your “pastor” writes the sermon he wants to give then goes looking for 1 out of context verse that kinda says that or that he can make say that – leave his self-help, pop-psychology group-hug he calls a church, repent, then find and join a Church. FYI - 99%of all Bible twisting or Bible raping can be found out by actually reading the whole chapter or sometimes couple of chapters that your “pastor” started in the middle of so he could steal the 1 half verse he wanted to manipulate.  Be a Barean, see if the doctrines and theology he teaches cords with the Bible if it doesn’t call him to repentance, if he still won’t then leave. 

Answers for Heretic Brian McLaren #1

1. The Narrative Question: What is the shape - or storyline or plotline - of the biblical narrative? What is the Bible about? What problem is it trying to solve? What are the essential conflicts and projects that move the story along?

The Storyline of the Bible is and has always been Creation – Fall – Everyone based on their fallen nature and level of obedience to God deserve to be tortured and punished in Hell forever – But God in His vast mercy (& because He doesn’t want everyone to go to Hell) has sent His Son to atone for the evil of our sins and to pick us up and carry us back to God, via God-granted Faith and Repentance of our former Idolatry (our focus on anything – even ourselves – rather than God).

Essentials are that we are by nature Children of God’s wrath, not free but enslaved by sin, Satan, our fleshly desires, this wicked world – We cannot (mark me, its not that we don’t, but cannot) in any way Save ourselves or even help God get us saved – We are entirely dependent on God, as lost sheep, to find us, pick us up, place us on His shoulders and bring us back to the flock of God – Then He goes even farther and adopts us as sons and daughters and gifts us with Eternity that we might have unlimited time to know Him and be known by Him.

The Reformer Martin Luther taught Limited atonement.

The Reformer Martin Luther taught Limited atonement.
Regarding Romans 9:20-21, Luther wrote:

“God will have all men to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4), and he gave his Son for us men, and he created man for the sake of eternal life. And likewise: Everything is there for man’s sake and he is there for God’s sake in order that he may enjoy him, etc. But this objection [to God's sovereignty in salvation] and others like it can just as easily be refuted as the first one: because all these sayings must be understood only with respect to the elect [emphasis in original], as the apostle says in 2 Timothy 2:10, “All for the elect.” Christ did not die for absolutely all, for he says: “This is my blood which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20) and “for many” (Mark 14:24)- he did not say: for all- “to the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

[...from Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, translated and edited by Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961), 252.]

Westminster Confession of Faith (3.5)

Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.

Augustine from Treatise On The Predestination of the Saints (Ch. 38)

God elected believers; but He chose them that they might be so, not because they were already so...Neither are we called because we believed, but that we may believe; and by that calling which is without repentance it is effected and carried through that we should believe.

Jonathan Edwards

" ...the conversion of a sinner being not owing to a man's self determination, but to God's determination, and eternal election, which is absolute, and depending on the sovereign Will of God, and not on the free will of man; as is evident from what has been said : and it being very evident from the Scriptures, that the eternal election of saints to the faith and holiness, is also an election of them to eternal salvation; hence their appointment to salvation must also be absolute, and not depending on their contingent, self-determining Will."