truth – Page 3

discernment, Joyce Meyer, mommy bloggers, monkees, teaching, truth

Our roles as woman in the faith part 2: Be discerning about mommy bloggers. For example, Glennon Melton is not a Christian

Posted on April 23, 2014May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

This is a three part series about women in the faith. In part 1 I showed from scripture that women have particular vulnerabilities to satan. We looked at what those are and how to avoid being used by satan to bring shame on the family and slander to the faith.

In this second part I’m looking at where the modern woman is doing her dark work against Jesus: it’s not just inside the church anymore. Mommy bloggers and online amateur theologians have grown to be an enormous network outside the church and thus often operate outside their husband’s watchful eye and usually outside their pastor’s eye. Much mischief happens on mommy blogs and amateur online theologian platforms and satan uses these to filter back to the church, to our detriment. I myself am in the amateur online theologian category so definitely don’t take what I write at face value but test it.

Third, I’ll look at the most famous female false prophet, heretic, and worker of iniquity today: Joyce Meyer. Meyer is representative of the female false teacher doing very much harm to the women of the church. Under her umbrella are women like Beth Moore, Anne Voskamp, Kim Walker Smith, and other newcomers who are spiritual daughters of Meyer and Moore and are being used by satan in exploitation of the particular vulnerabilities I showed in part 1.

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As women, we are vulnerable to satan in specific ways. As I related in part 1, satan is crafty and he has a plan. He targets women. Satan doesn’t only target women, but he targets women because we are the weaker vessel. (1 Peter 3:7). The serpent deceived the woman, Eve.

and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:14)

“But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)

In part 1 we looked at the specific times in the bible that women either individually or in groups were chastised by either one of the Apostles or by Jesus. In general, the men or groups of men in the bible who were rebuked were false believers. In contrast, the female groups or individual women who were chastised were believers.

The issues with the women were that they become loaded down with sins and are vulnerable to flattering false teachers who come near to them, or as widows either old or young they tend toward slander, gossip, and idleness. Much mischief can happen in these cases. In part 1 I provided a list of the scriptural remedies for resisting satan’s deceit.

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Because women are vulnerable in specific ways to satan’s deceits, women are not allowed to lead, rule, or prophesy during church services. This may seem harsh, or seem outdated, but it is scriptural. God knows what He is doing. Jesus is building His church, and He knows the proclivities of human nature. He knows satan. He set up the church so that women would be submissive to husbands, just as husbands are to be submissive to Jesus, who is Head over all. Children are to obey their parents.

Women do have roles to play. Phillip had four prophesying daughters. Priscilla taught along with her husband. Tabitha helped the widows. Lydia opened her home and supported the men of the church with means and encouragement.

But the proclivities I mentioned are in us, as God said to Eve after the Fall. He took what happened in the Garden and extended it to a semi-permanent condition (semi-permanent because once we’re glorified we will be free from the Genesis 3 curse).

“Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16)

As Matthew Henry’s Exposition states,

“If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love; if the woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness. Adam laid the blame on his wife; but though it was her fault to persuade him to eat the forbidden fruit, it was his fault to hearken to her.“

So there will be this constant chafing of the woman to rule over her husband, to enter into his domain, to strive against his headship. This does not happen in only man-woman marriages but also in THE marriage, the church.

And outside the church, too…as in blogs, other social media, books, and television. Women ponder, write, speak, interpret, prophesy, and do all sorts of theological things, mostly away from the eyes of their husbands, pastors, or other accountability. I’m not talking about good interpretation, solid ponderings, and appropriate use of scripture, but women who twist scripture and shape Jesus into a god of their own making. One who is comfortable, where sin is just a mistake and being gay is OK. Where experience is equal to or trumps scripture, and where everyone goes to heaven and no one goes to hell, because that would be just so mean.

I’m talking about women like mommy blogger Glennon Doyle Melton, a HUGELY influential blogger and someone who claims to be a Christian but is far from Jesus as the east is from the west. Her blog is called Momastery.com, and she receives over 70,000 views per day. It’s important to remember that she dispenses both parenting advice and advice regarding the Christian faith, Jesus and the bible. She is a phenomenon, which occurred after one particular blog post went viral and the publishers lined up to make a book out of her blog, which has been called “classic Glennon: self-deprecating, sardonic, mildly insane, major-league wit.” She is a recovering bulimic, alcoholic, has rage issues because of which she has earned a permanent police record, was pregnant and had to get married, and refuses to live quietly but believes instead that the “authentic life” is one “lived out loud.”

To that end, Melton spills everything on her blog, despite the fact that “her parents and husband sometimes plead that she should take a few things to the grave, Melton rejects self-censorship. She believes that sharing everything — the ugliness, hole-iness and messiness of our lives — is the way to forge relationships dense with meaning.” (source)

No. No, it’s not. The bible calls women to live quietly (1 Thessalonians 4:11, 1 Peter 3:4) Characteristics of a meek and quiet spirit as posted on the Revive Our Hearts blog and adapted from Matthew Henry, “Meekness is calm confidence, settled assurance, and rest of the soul. It is the tranquil stillness of a heart that is at rest in Christ. It is the place of peace. Meekness springs from a heart of humility, radiating the fragrance of Christ.“

Yet Melton writes,

“Sex is really, really freaking confusing. No one talks about this, which is a shame. I’ve been married for eleven years and my husband and I are still trying to figure out how to make sex enjoyable for both of us.”

This is not meekness. This is not humility. This is ‘look at me, how authentic I can be, and so what if it freaks out my husband’ (who Melton was secretly separated from before she confessed to her readers. Some authenticity.) And we are supposed to use her as a model of a good, Christian wife? Or even a good wife? No thanks. Or this statement from Melton,

“Marriage is still the best chance we have to become evolved, loving people.”

And yet after her separation from her husband, she wrote that separating from him made her into a more well-rounded person. Which is it?

Isn’t the Holy Spirit in us really the best and only chance we have to become evolved loving people? And what about the never-married or the widowed? They can never evolve? Or do you have to be married then separated then reconcile to be well-rounded. Advice from a non-Christian person, no matter how funny and witty and ‘been through it all’ attitude they have, will never make sense. No thanks, I’ll take my advice from someone who is really a Christian and even better, from the bible.

Do you think that Apostle Paul would have commended Melton as Paul commended Timothy’s mother Eunice and grandmother Lois for being Christian women of great faith, raising Timothy so well that Paul reminded Timothy of where he learned it? Or have commended her like he did Lydia, who, despite being a busy businesswoman of means, independent and intelligent, worshipped God, and was baptized after God opened her heart. She hosted Paul in her home and was always hospitable, even after Paul and Silas were released from prison. Can we picture gracious and hospitable, faith filled and dignified yet independent Lydia loudly spilling her guts to the world about her sex life? Never let it be so!

The problem is, her followers see Melton as a Christian, they believe she speaks for Christians and they avidly follow her (they even dub themselves her ‘monkees.’) I was not aware of Melton until a reader alerted me to her. In reading one of her posts, I saw the following and began to mourn the misplaced faith and perverted view she has of Jesus. And yet most who follow her see her as a true Christian. How warped. Read this. It is from Melton, in composing a hypothetical open letter to a hypothetical son who is hypothetically homosexual. What would we say to him if he came out to us, she wondered. Here is what she wrote.

“We’ve worried that since we are Christians, and since we love The Bible so much, that there might come a day when you feel unclear about our feelings about this. Because there are a few parts in The Bible that discuss homosexuality as a sin. So let us be clear about how we feel, because we have spent years of research and prayer and discussion deciding. Chase, we don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin. Your parents are Christians who believe that the Bible is inspired by God, just like people are. And since the Bible is a living thing, it is in its very nature to evolve toward becoming more loving.”

Significantly, you notice that Melton said they read the scriptures and decided. Not submitted. What they “decided” was to reject the word of God to suit their own personal tastes. And that is why she is not a Christian.

One does not have to read one moment more to understand that Glennon Doyle Melton’s version of Christianity is nowhere near the faith delivered once for all to the saints. It is clear that she HATES the bible. A careful read of that paragraph will tell you that she said that God said homosexuality is a sin, but she decided that it’s not. That she knows better because she can decide which parts to choose to obey and which parts not to. Because the bible is evolving, being alive and all, which obviously means that God is changing too, in order to keep up with the times and desires of Glennon Doyle Melton.

Anyone with an ounce of discernment knows that God never changes. His Holy Spirit inspired the word, and He never changes either. That God IS love and that He doesn’t evolve to become more loving (which would mean He was less loving before. In fact, God is immutable). A discerning person would know that humans have no right to decide what is sin and what is not, especially since the bible lists them plainly. How wrong it is to compare people to the Holy Spirit. Glennon Doyle Melton in no way is Christian. Avoid her, sisters! The chuckles she evokes in you are not worth the blasphemies and the insinuation of satan’s false doctrines into your heart!

She wrote that in the Huffington Post, to parents on a blog about bullying. You see how satan is using the woman to insinuate his blasphemy into the minds of the gullible via non-church avenues. Even 25 years ago, if a woman had said such a thing in church or in a bible study setting, she would have been corrected by a deacon, pastor, or elder woman. And there were no other outlets in which to speak blasphemies and perversions, unless she had a ditto machine and handed out pamphlets on the street corner.

But because social media is so prevalent and permeates everywhere now, and anyone can blog, and the men either don’t or won’t oversee what women write on them, women are saying these and other blasphemous things. Younger women are eating it up! And because Melton is witty, her false words go a long way. Because she resonates with mothers, she has an entry. And because she appeals to the rebellious side that is in all women who want to usurp male authority, (Genesis 3:16 again) the combination is too tempting not to absorb. A reviewer wrote on Melton’s Amazon review page, “She easily expresses what so many of us think but would not dare say aloud.” There is good reason not to say some things aloud. Biblical reasons.

But the monkees spread Melton’s seed of false doctrine and liberal post-modernism and a different Jesus of their own making everywhere they go. Just as Beth Moore’s groupies do and Meyer’s admirers do and so on as Revelation 2:23 shows, where there is a Jezebel there will be children of Jezebel. Melton is a problem of unparalleled proportions. You have no idea how popular Melton is. Unsupervised women spouting false Christianity are a problem, and undiscerning women lapping it up is even more of a problem. These are the times in which we live.

Godlessness in the Last Days : But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. (2 Timothy 3:1-7)

This has become long, and I don’t want to prevail upon your patience for much longer. There are grave problems with women like Sarah Young of Jesus Calling, Rachel Held Evans whose ‘Christianity’ is similar to Melton’s, of Joyce Meyer and other women who spout false doctrine. However, false teachers have always existed. But there’s graver problems with the way so many choose to follow these women. Women more often gravitate to a female teacher who has overcome addiction or abuse or having been through some sort of trauma such as grief. Women tend to choose bible teachers based on an emotional quality of being able to identify with them through their personality or a shared trauma, rather than the doctrine the women are saying.

And secondly, often as they come to appreciate the qualities of the female teacher in their shared identification (Glennon Doyle Melton is ‘authentic’, Beth Moore is ‘funny’, Joyce Meyer is ‘down to earth’) discernment of WHAT they are saying passes away and they focus solely on HOW these teachers are saying it. When I wrote about Beth Moore’s wild histrionics on stage and charged her with being undignified, I received more criticism for that than I did for my exploration of her illegitimate bible exposition. And that’s sad.

Women have become so undiscerning, and the fault is not all theirs. Their men have abdicated their responsibility to share in the bible teaching of their wives, and to monitor who their wives are listening to (or reading, or writing).

Women, Sisters, choose a person to admire and learn from who speaks truth, not because you were both bulimic at one time. Your bulimia (or rage or alcohol addiction or nymphomania or molestation) will be wiped from your memory in heaven, but the truth never will be. Any shared feeling you think you have with these women is ephemeral, while the shared reality of a solidly built sisterhood in truth with Jesus will remain for all eternity. Choose wisely. Remember, satan wants to make merchandise out of you.

source

So who IS good to read or listen to?

I enjoy the following women bloggers. I also enjoy blogs from John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Carl Trueman, Al Mohler, and Tim Challies. Please don’t make a decision to read or not read a person based on their gender, but instead focus on the truth of their doctrine.

Aimee Byrd, Housewife Theologian

Nancy Guthrie

Challies interview of Nancy Guthrie

Erin Benziger, Do Not Be Surprised

The Christian Pundit, a husband and wife team who write alternatingly. Rebecca VanDoodewaard (RVD) is the wife and William VanDoodewaard (WVD) is the husband.

easter, king, resurrection, triumph, truth

Resurrection Sunday

Posted on April 20, 2014May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

The Resurrection

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”

~Matthew 28:1-10

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,

John 11:25

bible, truth, worship

Is the God of the hills the same God of the valleys?

Posted on November 6, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

Ahab was facing a multitudinous enemy. Syria was encamped and ready to attack. The LORD told Ahab that he would give the victory to Ahab, and in such a way that all would know He is the LORD.

“And behold, a prophet came near to Ahab king of Israel and said, “Thus says the Lord, Have you seen all this great multitude? Behold, I will give it into your hand this day, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” (1 Kings 20:13).

And so He did. It came to pass exactly as he said it would via the prophet. The Syrians were upset, and mulled over their loss. They rationalized,

“And the servants of the king of Syria said to him, “Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they were stronger than we. But let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.” (1 Kings 20:23)

The “gods of the hills”.

And herein lies the point for us today. The Syrians knew that a higher power was at work. They understood there were supernatural events caused by powers which lived above and beyond. They did not understand the nature of this loss, however, and attributed it to them fighting the wrong gods. If this god is powerful on the hills, they reasoned, then let’s fight their gods of the valleys, who are probably weaker. Yeah, that’s it.

In our faith, there is only whole worship or there is no worship. There is no worshiping God but not Jesus. There is no worshiping Jesus but dismissing the Holy Spirit. There is no worship of God on Sunday and blaspheming Him the other 6 days. There is no faith being simply mental assent but failure to reach the heart. God is not a God of the mountains only. He is God over the whole earth and everything in it.

“A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein,” (Psalm 24:1)

All those who dwell in the earth are the Lord’s too. Even those who do not believe, He is king over. He demands proper worship and He demands whole worship- all our heart, mind, soul and strength. (Matthew 22:38)

No, God is God of the whole earth. There are no other gods. But people today “reason” the same way the Syrians did, albeit metaphorically. The attend a church and become convicted, but say ‘I don’t like this church of the mountains so I will seek another god of the valleys.’

Or they say ‘He is God of the New Testament but I don’t like the God of the Old Testament so I’ll just take those words with a grain of salt.’ They pick and choose a God of their own making by adhering to the words in the bible that speak of mountains and not the words that speak of valleys.

Thomas Jefferson did that. He liked Jesus of Nazareth but dismissed the Holy Spirit and declined to believe in God. Here, Smithsonian Magazine explains,

Thomas Jefferson cut verses from six copies of the New Testament
to create his own personal version. (Hugh Talman / NMAH, SI)

“At age 77, Thomas Jefferson, after two terms as president, turned to a project that had occupied his mind for at least two decades—the creation of a book of moral lessons drawn from the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, Mark and John. With painstaking precision, Jefferson cut verses from editions of the New Testament in English, French, Greek and Latin. He pasted these onto loose blank pages, which were then bound to make a book.”

You can read Jefferson’s bible online here, and see his actual cuts and pastes.

Today, people like the ancient Syrians seek a different god so as to conquer him. They forego traditional church for beer church. They eschew pastors who speak of sin and judgment for pastors who speak of our best life now. Or pastrixes. They go away from the battle and lick their wounds and reason and rationalize and they come back with a renewed philosophy of life that bears little to no resemblance to the revealed God of the bible.

God is God. There is no god of the mountains but not of the valleys. Partial recognition of “a god” of the mountains will only result is pain, loss, and gnashing of teeth. Jesus will say to them, “depart from me you evildoers. I never knew you.”

Our faith is a whole faith, requiring every cell of our body to come under submission to the God of the Universe. It requires acknowledgement of, submission to, and service under the Trinitarian God revealed to us via Has creation and His Son. He is glory upon glory, and a true worshiper would want to do no less.

Here, Linda Randle sings that the God of the Mountains is still God of the Valleys, and her intent is that He is God of our lives when we are at emotional high points and emotional low points. But He is in fact God of the mountains and God of the valleys, geographically, as well as emotionally, and in fact in every way one can possibly think of. Always worship the Ancient of Days in spirit and in truth, wholly and with no partiality. (James 1:8)

charismatic, doctrine, error, God in a box, personal revelation, truth

Help! God is in a box! We have to get Him out!

Posted on September 21, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

This week I read a book to the kids at school called “Not A Box” by Antoinette Portis. It is a book about imagination. An unseen narrator asks a rabbit, “Why are you sitting in that box?” The ensuing pages record the rabbit’s responses, insisting it is not a box, whilst the illustrations show indeed that in the rabbit’s mind, the box is indeed something else and the rabbit is busy outside of it.

I write frequently of the absolute integrity and truthfulness of scripture and that the only reason we can say the bible is absolutely true is because it is the revealed word from a living and holy God. His word is contained in the bible and nowhere else. To be sure, we can see His qualities in creation, which revealed His creative power and His divine nature (Romans 1:19-20). But His revealed will to humans? In the bible and the bible alone.

However, Charismatics rely on experience as a standard of what God is revealing to them. They put their experience as high or even higher than the Word as revealed in the bible. If something spiritual happened to them, they believe it is real, and it therefore really reveals something God is doing, or saying, or thinking, or whatever.

When I show that that charismatic experiences count as nothing, that they are unbiblical and unworthy of attention, I receive responses saying, “Don’t put God in a box!” Or, “Don’t limit God!”

Let’s take a look at what a person is really saying when they say those things.

The issue: IS God in a box?

First, God cannot ever be ‘put in a box’ nor can God ever be ‘limited’ by humans. The thought is simply absurd. However, as He has chosen to reveal Himself and His will, He is confined to pages of scripture. Secondly, experience never trumps scripture. Ever. You can have all the “passion” you want for God, to the point that at spiritual events you jerk around so much look you like bacon in a fry pan, but that is not truth, it’s not doctrine, and it’s not from God. That isn’t even passion. It’s only impulses, and you’re being led astray. (2 Timothy 3:6).

If a person has a dream or a vision that is especially vivid, they say it is from God, that God is talking directly to them (And I mean YOU, Beth Moore…Sarah Young…Kim Walker Smith…). They ascribe all due spiritual gravitas to their experience and go about replaying it for any and all who would listen (and many who would not). They make themselves the hero of the story.

If confronted with the fact that though the Spirit is alive and working in sanctified Christians, but that tongues and miracles and signs have ceased, that is when they trot out the charge that by our denying their experience as perfectly and uniquely sent to them by God, we are putting God in a box, and we are limiting Him.

We know He is limitless, that is not the issue. However He has said He will operate in certain ways. During this Church Age He has said that He will use the Spirit to grow us in sanctification and will illuminate the scriptures for us. (John 16:13-14 ). He won’t suddenly decide to sky-write the messages He wants us to know. He can. But He won’t.

He has said that He listens to prayer as a method of communication. (Philippians 4:6). However, He won’t suddenly put notes in our mailbox (like in The Shack) or call us personally. He can. But He won’t.

Though we know He is alive, He is in heaven and will not come back until the Day. (Matthew 26:64). He won’t appear in our bathroom while we are shaving and put His arm around us. He can. But He won’t.

We know He CAN do those things, but we have confidence that He won’t. Why? He speaks through His word, His Son, and His Spirit. (2 Timothy 3:16, Hebrews 1:1-2, John 14:17, 1 Corinthians 3:16). He has said how He will operate. He spoke through men to write down His inspired word. And He doesn’t break His promises.

“Inspiration is the doctrine that the Bible was written by the influence of God. It is, therefore, without error in the original documents. It is accurate and authoritatively represents God’s teachings (2 Tim. 3:16). As such it is a revelation from God which implies direct knowledge about God, creation, man, salvation, the future, etc. It is an illumination in that it shows us what we could not know apart from it. “

We cannot know apart from it. That includes knowing something of God because He supposedly rained gold dust down, or put a thought in your head or seemed to heal a guy at a faith crusade.

Yet the Charismatic will cite John 21:25, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” And they will say that “See? Jesus did many other things. We can’t limit Him!”

We are not limiting Him by acknowledging what scripture says, that He performed many other wondrous things during His incarnation. It’s just that we don’t know what they were. Any speculations on what those things were is just that: speculation, guesswork, and vaporous estimations. If God had wanted us to know them, He would have put them in scripture. That He didn’t is no excuse to make some up. He told us not to go beyond what is written. (1 Corinthians 4:6)

The truth of the matter:

The problem is, the people who take God out of the box are really people who want to make God into what they want Him to be. It sounds all humble and everything to claim that it is limiting God by sticking to who He says He is in pages of holy writ. But it is really not humility. It’s pride. It is pride in their vision, pride in their alleged special relationship to Christ, who, after all, gave them a second blessing when they asked to be ‘filled with the Spirit.

His sovereign will is different from His revealed will. He has hidden from us some things He intends to do. The most glaring examples of His inscrutability on some matters are:
–what He was doing before creation and also,
–what we will do in eternity.

His revealed will, however, is just that: revealed. He has set down in words through men via the Spirit what He wants us to know about Him and what He wants us to know about what He plans to do and what he wants us to know to do for Him.

Therefore God IS IN A BOX, at least, as far as the pages of scripture go. And there He will stay this side of the veil.

Because, you see, once we take God out of the box, we make Him into whatever we want Him to be in our imagination. Once you take Him out of the pages of scripture, you say, ‘It’s not a box. It’s a highrise. My God is a fireman.”

Erroll Hulse wrote in his book, “The Blessings, Main Problem and Dangers of the Charismatic Experience,” that many Charismatics have a “Preoccupation with experience.”

“During 1977 a believer described two revivals which he had witnessed in Borneo. The first was classical in the sense that it was typical of revivals down through the centuries. Preaching, conviction of sin, repentance and transformation of life were the predominating features. The second revival which followed a couple of years later was Charismatic in character. The speaker himself reflected the impact that the second revival had made upon him personally. He gave description after description of visions, exorcisms, healings, spirit baptisms and sensational events such as preservation in the jungle and the moving of lights in meetings. One felt while listening to this account that the Word of God had been supplanted by all the externals. It is possible to become so enamoured with the extraordinary and with excitements and sensational happenings that such matters become the daily diet of believers. Eventually it is all they can talk about which is the hallmark of most Charismatic books. Scripture is supplanted by the narration of events which goes on ad infinitum.“

When you take God out of the box (pages of scripture) then you can say “It’s not a box. My God is a robot. But that’s OK if your God is a fireman. It would be limiting God by making Him be a definite thing.”

Many Charismatics who want God out of that box claim that by us conservatives sticking to scripture, we are denying the powerful work of the Holy Spirit. Not so. The great theologian J. Gresham Machan wrote,

Meanwhile we have the Holy Spirit, and we have the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments that the Holy Spirit uses. Much mischief has been wrought in the church by false notions of ‘the witness of the Spirit’; it has sometimes been supposed that the Holy Spirit makes us independent of the Bible. Just the opposite is the case.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. He does not contradict in one generation what He has said in another. He does not contradict the Scriptures that He himself has given. On the contrary, what He really does is to make the words of Scripture glow with a heavenly light and burn in the hearts of men. Those Scriptures are placed in your hands. You may not say with the prophets of old: ‘God has spoken directly and independently to me; I appeal to no external authority; when I speak it is “Thus saith the Lord.”’ But you can do something else. You can mount your pulpit stairs; open reverently the Bible on the desk; pray to the gracious Spirit to make plain the words that He has spoken; and so unfold to needy people the Word of God.

Taking God out of the box (pages of scripture) opens one up to all sorts of mischief, as Machen wrote. We ascribe works to Him that He did not do. We ascribe attributes to Him He does not possess. We ascribe writings to Him He did not inspire. Taking God out of the box once too often, and you may find that it is satan you have loosed in your life, and not the Holy Spirit.

Hulse concludes,

Source

Jesus is Lord indeed. He has been exalted, crowned, celebrated and is adulated because he has procured our justification by the agonies on the cross. Any obscuring of that, his greatest achievement, is to defame his glory. If experience is permitted to gobble up doctrine, if love is allowed to devour principle, if sentiment is suffered to obscure justification by faith only — then how will the world’s multitudes be saved? How can Jesus be Lord for them? Satan will continue to have his dominion over them. Those who are ready to unite on the basis of love and common Charismatic experience at the expense of Justification should remember that in doing so they will be celebrating the lordship of Satan, not the Lordship of Christ.

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If Joel Osteen gave the sermon at Pentecost…

Posted on September 12, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

Joel Osteen: “Removing negative labels” speech was delivered to 43,500 attendees at Lakewood Arena on March 2013.

“I want to talk to you today about removing negative labels. Throughout life, people are constantly sticking labels on us, telling us what we can and cannot become. Sometimes this is good, people speak faith into us, they encourage us. But then there are times that people put negative labels on us. You cannot stop the negative comments. You can’t prevent the negative labels but you can choose to remove them.”

“As a teenager, Walt Disney was told by an art instructor that he wasn’t creative. That he didn’t have any imagination. Disney was smart enough to remove that label. He went on to do pretty good. Lucille Ball was told that she didn’t have any acting skills. She should try a different profession. She removed that label, and starred in I Love Lucy for many years.
…
“The common denominator of the success of these people is that they chose to remove negative labels. It’s the same way today. People put labels on us. My father went to be with the Lord in 1999, and I stepped up to pastor the church. I had never ministered before. One Sunday after the service, I overheard two ladies talking in the lobby. One said, ‘He’s not as good as his father. The other answered back, ‘Yes, I don’t think the church is going to last.’ I was already insecure, I already felt unqualified. And boom, another negative label. Not good enough…not up to par…inferior. That’s the way the enemy works. He would love to put labels on you to keep you from reaching your highest potential… He’ll try to intimidate you, fight you, make you feel inferior.”

“Words are like seeds. If you dwell on them long enough, they will take root and become what was said. I tried to remove that negative label, but it wasn’t easy. Those thoughts would play in my mind again and again. It was like trying to peel a bumper sticker off of a car that’s been there a long time…you peel it and it tears, and you got to work and work… If I had made the mistake of wearing that wrong label, I don’t believe I’d be standing here today. Wrong labels can keep you from your destiny.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now here is Peter preaching the first sermon of the first day of the Church, at Pentecost, 2000 years ago. It was given in Jerusalem, and the crowds were enormous. It may have reached the same size as Osteen’s stadium attendance. We know that 3000 were saved that day.

“But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them: “Men of Judea and all who

Masolino da Panicale,
Peter Preaching at Pentecost, fresco,
Cappella Brancacci, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence

dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

“‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” (Acts 2:14-24, 34-35)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I transcribed the first 375 words of the Osteen speech, and of that first portion, it is about 95% complete. I posted the first 377 words of Peter’s sermon and it is about 95% complete.

You see the difference, I hope. In Joel Osteen’s sermon, Osteen talked about reaching career success and personal potential by our own works. Osteen lifted up himself as an example. He used two (in the sermon, three) cultural icons as successful examples of the career tips he was giving. He reiterated that it is by own own steam we achieve earthly success. He warned that our destiny is in our own hands. And last but not least, Jesus is not mentioned (except for one verse where he said that removing negative labels is hard but we can do all things by Christ who strengthens us). It is a speech filled with prosperity, legalism and blasphemy.

Peter opened with wrath. He referred to the Old Testament prophet Joel. He named Christ, Christ’s work, God and God’s work, the resurrection, and salvation. And that is a sermon full of conviction, glory, and truth.

Christ did not live on earth for 33 years and die an agonizing death on the cross, enduring all of God’s wrath, so that we could remove a negative label from our psyche like a worn out old bumper sticker.

John MacArthur said in his sermon this week, “Testimony to the Deity of Christ“,

“They were unwilling to glorify Christ. It’s about Christ. I wish the evangelical church would get this right, and quit selling the benefits and start selling the benefactor. It is so important that the issue is Christ. I was telling some seminary students last week, how many preachers I listen to who have all kinds of things to say, but never talk about Christ. They use His name…but it’s almost in vain.”

In the fresco above, it is reported that the “The scene refers to Peter’s sermon, as recounted in the Act of the Apostles, which he preaches in Jerusalem after the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost. The fresco actually illustrates the final part of the sermon, when Peter says: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”

Remove the negative label and be something or other; or repent, be saved, and receive the gift of God’s Spirit. It is the broad way or the narrow way. (Matthew 7:13-14).

bible, truth

The Commander of the Lord’s Army

Posted on March 18, 2013 by elizabethprata

Please consider this beautiful scene. It’s got it all-

The Commander of the Lord’s Army

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?” And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. (Joshua 5:13-15)

The Lord Jesus is the man who had the sword. How do we know? He received worship, and He said Joshua was standing on holy ground. We see that He is holy.

He said He is not for them nor for their adversaries because He was not there to help Joshua. He was there to take charge on behalf of the LORD God. His answer meant that Jesus was neither on one side or another but above all sides, and Joshua is meant to follow HIM. He is God.

Joshua’s answer, “What does my lord say to his servant?” and falling to his face is the perfect response- putting Jesus first and asking to how he, Joshua, could serve Him. He is worthy of praise. He is worthy of worship.

The answer to Joshua; that where Joshua was standing is holy ground, is proper, beautiful, and utter truth. Joshua did so, indicating his obedience. He is worthy to obey.

Jesus is so beautiful, I can hardly contain my joy at reading His word and learning more about Him. His pre-incarnate appearances, as when He appeared as a man to Abraham in sojourning to Sodom, appearing to Joshua here, speaking to Hagar in the desert, the man who wrestled with Jacob, and the man who appeared to Daniel…wonderful scenes of an involved and loving Jesus who is the image of God, guiding His people in the Father’s plan.

What a wonderful bible we have, the revealed God who loves us and who made a way for us to be forgiven of our sins. Read your bible and behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Start anywhere, the whole thing is pure gold 🙂

antinomianism, discernment, joel osteen, legalism, truth

Discernment: How two seemingly opposite doctrines can actually be the same

Posted on February 16, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

I think it’s interesting that Legalism and Gnosticism are really one and the same. A great lesson for me last year was learning how all the false religions and the false doctrines are drawing closer to one another. Those which seem like polar opposites are really the exact same thing, just a different flavor. Here is another example of how two opposing doctrines are really one and the same: Antinomianism and Legalism.

In the wonderful series, “Drive By Discernment“, short lectures on the topic of discernment edited by Todd Friel, Pastor RW Glenn is speaking of this exact thing. He is talking about how Antinomianism and Legalism are the same, and clearly shows how.

First, CARM.org defines Antinomianism:
“The word antinomianism comes from the Greek anti, against, and nomos, law. It is the unbiblical practice of living without regard to the righteousness of God, using God’s grace as a license to sin, and trusting grace to cleanse of sin.”

And CARM.org defines Legalism:
“In Christianity, legalism is the excessive and improper use of the law (10 commandments, holiness laws, etc). This legalism can take different forms. The first is where a person attempts to keep the Law in order to attain salvation. The second is where a person keeps the law in order to maintain his salvation. The third is when a Christian judges other Christians for not keeping certain codes of conduct that he thinks need to be observed.”

So how can living in excessive license and living in excessive restriction…be the same? Here is Pastor RW Glenn: [excerpts]

There are people who embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior and people who avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior. And what’s interesting is that you can avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior either by being bad, OR by being good. Religious moralists avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior by developing a system of moral righteousness to put God in their debt. In other words, my obedience and religious devotion is going to beef up my spiritual resume such that I don’t need Jesus to rescue me anymore. And where there are gaps in my resume I use Jesus to fill them in. By and large I don’t need rescue, all I need is a boost. They avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior by relying on their own righteousness. They avoid him by being “good”. … [Thus] Rule keepers and rule breakers are all identical because they avoid Jesus as Lord and Savior and are on the broad road to destruction.

See, Pastor Glenn explains that there is a demand of the Gospel, and there is a comfort of the Gospel. Legalism over-emphasizes its demand, while Antinomianism over-emphasizes its comfort. Over-emphasizing one or the other dilutes the Gospel. Paul said He had not hesitated to preach the whole counsel of God. (Acts 20:27). Of that important balance in keeping the Gospel whole, Barnes’ Notes says:

“I have not shunned – I have not kept back; I have not been deterred by fear, by the desire of popularity, by the fact that the doctrines of the gospel are unpalatable to people, from declaring them fully. The proper meaning of the word translated here, “I have not shunned”, is “to disguise any important truth; to withdraw it from public view; to decline publishing it from fear, or an apprehension of the consequences.” Paul means that he had not disguised any truth; he had not withdrawn or kept it from open view, by any apprehension of the effect which it might have on their minds. Truth may be disguised or kept back:

(1) By avoiding the subject altogether from timidity, or from an apprehension of giving offence if it is openly proclaimed; or,

(2) By giving it too little prominency, so that it shall be lost in the multitude of other truths; or,

(3) By presenting it amidst a web of metaphysical speculations, and entangling it with other subjects; or,

(4) By making use of other terms than the Bible does, for the purpose of involving it in a mist, so that it cannot be understood.”

How does one keep back one part of the Gospel at the expense of the other? Pastor Glenn finishes:

Legalism over-emphasizes the demand of the Gospel. Matthew 5:48 – Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. That is a gospel demand that legalism overemphasizes. Antinomianism overemphasizes the very real comfort of the Gospel. Matthew 6:26- You are more valuable than many sparrows. The challenge of the Gospel is that there needs to be an equal emphasis on both the demand of the Gospel and the comfort of the Gospel. As Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” Equal emphasis. I do not condemn you, go and sin no more. If you don’t eventually emphasize both of those you lose the Gospel.

Glenn said that there are three tests to determine if a teacher is false. The character and conduct of the teacher (Colossians 1:28, Titus 2:2, Matthew 5:1-12) the complexion of their followers (Luke 6:40, 2 Timothy 4:3), and the content of their teaching (Matthew 12:33, 2 Timothy 4:2-3).

With this information in mind, now think of pastors who preach one at the expense of another. Or perhaps, do you preach or teach one at the expense of the other?

Remember two things. First, all other doctrines except the Gospel are false, and thus are the same, no matter how different they look on the outside. And second, satan is the most subtle creature in the Garden (Genesis 3:1). It is not hard for him to come up with different flavors of the Gospel and lots of false doctrines. I mean, if Baskin Robbins can come up with 31 flavors of ice cream… the most crafty creature in all the garden can certainly come up with enough false doctrines!

This week the Christian Post (which increasingly should be called the Post-Christian) reported on Joel Osteen’s Night of Hope in Las Vegas. It is reported,

“Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, who along with wife, Victoria Osteen, will be leading “A Night of Hope” in Las Vegas, Friday night, has said that he avoids speaking on controversial issues because he doesn’t want anyone to feel excluded from his messages.”

However, Osteen’s definition of ‘controversial issue’ is really code for “sin.” Sin is always controversial. Preaching the whole counsel includes passages such as 1 Timothy 1:10. Yet Osteen declares that he avoids it. Avoid 1 Corinthians 6:9. Revelation 21:8? Avoid. Titus 1:16, Galatians 6:20, 2 Peter 2:6…the list is endless of ‘things to avoid’ so that ‘all will feel included.’ But we’re all sinners. If Osteen wants to preach so that all will feel comfortable, he either needs to preach to no one, because the flavors of sin are endless and odds are someone will feel ‘excluded’ (i.e. convicted), or Osteen needs to preach only the comfort of the Gospel, which is not the whole counsel. You see how devastating the imbalance is?

Osteen maintains that his style of preaching is consistent with the bible. Christian Post says, “His messages of hope and encouragement, as well as his trademark smile, also draw criticism among Christians who feel he fails to address sin and suffering, but Osteen shakes off such criticism. “I believe there needs to be more joy in the world…” But it is not true that this style is consistent with the bible.

Jesus spoke hard sayings. Not everyone felt included! On the contrary. However, Jesus did not alter the Father’s message in order to make it easier for fleshly ears to hear. In John 6:60-62, 66 we read,

“When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?” … After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”

So we see that false teachers are not true ambassadors (Ephesians 6:20, 2 Corinthians 5:20). In both those verses, the word ambassador means one who is authorized to speak as God’s emissary, representing His kingdom. Osteen takes it upon himself to alter the message of God. He cannot be a true ambassador, because he brings an unauthorized message. This is what all false teachers do. Jesus knew the hearts of men and He still preached a message that fell on hard hearts, in obedience to the Father. Osteen, and all false teachers, dare to disobey delivering the Father’s message and the example of Jesus in preaching it. This ‘daring’ will have terrible consequences:

Tim Challies dealt with this issue in his essay “Smilingly leading you to hell.”

In Drive By Discernment, Pastor Glenn did a good job of explaining how false teachers subvert the Gospel by preaching only half. As always, the most important thing is to check ourselves, first.

Do we preach all demand and no comfort? “Do more, be better, try harder”? Or maybe our Gospel is all comfort and no demand. “My sin isn’t a big deal…I’m forgiven anyway.” Or is your Gospel, “neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more?!” If you want to be an expert on false teachers, you need to be an expert in the Gospel. The more familiarity you have in the Gospel, the more familiarity you will have with the genuine article. When those counterfeits come your way – and they will – you will be able to say, ‘counterfeit!’ Why? because you’re resting in the Christ who says “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.” (John 8:11).

The Lord is Great, isn’t He?!?!

——————–
More on Osteen:

A true knowledge of the true God
Apostasy in the church: Angels of light
Can Christians live their best life now?

And here is an essay on the opposite problem,

Legalism, Cults, and abuse of authority

bible, discernment, john, truth

False teachers deceive, deny, and depart: Discernment from 1 John

Posted on January 30, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

In reading 1 John 2, the warnings about false teachers are so vividly clear. Isn’t the bible amazing, that the readers in our time would benefit just as much from this living document, as those in John’s time, 1,900 years ago, did?

It wasn’t long before false teachers were infecting the church with false doctrine, perverting the Apostles’ teaching. Actually, they came in right away.

We are no different today. False teachers sway the unwary and pollute the church with their man-made philosophies. Humans are human. Just as there were believers and liars then, there are believers and liars now.

I love the preacher’s tendency to alliterate their bullet points from their sermon outline. Alliteration is a tactic often used by public speakers to help listeners remember the main points by making the first word of each point begin with the same letter. As a speech communication major and a rhetorician at heart, I love the alliterative device. (As long as it is not overdone). Phil Johnson is Executive Editor of John MacArthur’s Grace to You and a pastor himself. The two men were engaged in a Q&A recently and they had a loving and laughing exchange about alliteration. Phil begins:

In fact, my favorite, you did a sermon once from Matthew 27 on the miracles that occurred during the crucifixion. And you had…you had doubly alliterated every point. There were like six or seven points, I forget how many miracles there were, but I do remember your outline because it had to do with the tearing of the curtain in the tabernacle and you called that “sanctuary desecration,” and then there was the supernatural darkness and when you got to the earthquake you called it “soil disturbance.”

Well yeah, that’s the best I could with an S D for an earthquake.

If you guys use that, make it “seismic disturbance,” or something.

Yeah, well why didn’t I think of that? That’s why you edit my books.

I was reading 1 John chapter two this week. I keep going back to it. The Spirit has grabbed a-hold of my brain and grabbed a-hold of that chapter and is not letting go. So anyway I’m reading and the flow of the chapter floats to my mind in sort of a picture. A picture of a list. An alliterated list, lol.

John warns the flock that false teachers will engage in:

Deception.

“I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.” (1 John 2:26).

John uses the word planao for deceive. Planao means properly, “go astray, get off-course; to deviate from the correct path (circuit, course), roaming into error, wandering; (passive) be misled.”

Perhaps they go off-course like this, metaphorically speaking–

We get so involved with examining our bag of candy that we wander off the path before we know it. John was telling the flock that there were some who were trying to nudge them off the path, and they were using deception to do it. For some gullible ‘believers’, it is like giving candy to a baby.

At this stage of his life, John was quite advanced in age. He made oblique reference to this in his letter, calling the flock “little children” or “children” many times.

“Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.”

In speaking to them as children, John was being fatherly in his shepherd office. He was also reminding them that deception has one source: demons. The antichrist spirit is behind all false doctrine. All. Beware of their deceptions.

Denial

The second “D” that came to my mind as I read the chapter is Denial.

“Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” (1 John 2:22)

Deceivers deny the Christ. Now, some undoubtedly denied Christ outright, they still do that today. But remember, John is speaking of false teachers within the church, and who were successful in leading some away. If they deny Him outright, they are very easy to spot, no? So how does a false teacher deny Christ? Perhaps by denying He was born of a virgin. Perhaps by denying He lived a sinless life. Perhaps by saying He was a really good teacher but…that’s it. Perhaps by saying that He is truth but that there is more truth to be had in visions and dreams and personal revelations. In other words, that His truth is not authoritative as spoken in the bible.

So the false teachers deny His authority. They deny His attributes; such as His sinlessness, or His wrath or His deity. (“God is love, He won’t judge…”). False teachers deny, deny, deny. And this is important: they make you doubt what you know.

The scene below is from the 1960s movie A Guide for the Married Man. It is where we got the quote, “deny, deny, deny.”

Departure

False teachers do what they do to draw you away from the center point which is Jesus. Anything they can do to divert your focus, nudge you off the path, they will do it. If they go, it proves they were never of the faith.

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” (1 John 2:19).

Some will always find false doctrine a treat, a candy sweetness they wrongly assume is as sweet as Jesus. It is not, but they still seek after it, and false teachers know this and deceive in order to draw out those who are willing to be drawn. It is one way the Lord purges His flock. John 15:2 says that He cuts off the branch that bears no fruit- He prunes.

But it is still traumatic to lose congregants who follow after the false ones. It is heartbreaking. But go they will and it is one way the Lord makes something good from something bad. The branch always buds more flourishingly after the dead weight is cut off.

Not just the congregants depart. The false teachers depart too. They see each church as a field with assets and once they strip it of all riches, they move on. How many alien movies have we seen where the alien invaders’ plan is to strip-mine the earth for all its minerals, or humans, and leaving the planet a wasteland, move on.

It is the same with false teachers. They strip-mine the weak of their money or their time or their heart, and scooping up their booty, leave with spiritual devastation in their wake.

False teachers deceive, deny, and depart. Beware. The New Testament is full of warnings about false teachers. If you study the bible, you will read and heed the warnings, because you will be getting filled with the truth! The truth is the best and only barometer of falsity. It is the sure thing.

bible, scripture, truth

Scripture cannot be broken

Posted on January 19, 2013 by elizabethprata

I’m watching a sermon from John MacArthur from this week’s Master’s College conference. It is titled “The Word of God: The Divine Revelation to Man – Truth & Life Conference ’13”

In it, MacArthur spends some time describing Isaiah 53, an amazing chapter. Isaiah 53 describes the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He said, “This chapter is full of truth that dominates the New Testament: salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, eternal life; all provided by vicarious, substitutionary sacrificial death of a divinely chosen acceptable lamb who bears all the sins of His people by taking on himself willingly the full weight of divine punishment. It sounds like Romans in the NT. It looks like it is completely out of place.”

Now, get this. He said,

“Isaiah is 66 books. It is divided the same way the bible: 39 chapters and 27 chapters. The first 39 are about judgment. The next 27 are about salvation.”

“Of the last 27 about salvation, the first 9 have to do with the salvation of the nation Israel. The last 9 have to do with the salvation of the earth. The middle 9 have to do with the salvation of the soul.”

“If you go to the middle of the middle 9, you get to chapter 53, and if you go to the middle of 52:12-53 you come down to verses 4,5. and 6, “He was wounded for our transgressions.”

The bible is a wondrous book. John 10:35 says, “if he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—“

Scripture cannot be broken. It is uttered from the mouth of God through His Holy Spirit and His Son. It is easier for the world to pass away than for one jot or tittle of scripture to pass away (Matthew 5:18).

It is tightly woven tapestry that is perfect. The Law is perfect (James 1:25; Psalm 19:7). His works are perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4). Psalm 18:30 says His way is blameless. His way is perfect and His word is perfect! (2 Samuel 22:31).

Once someone said to me, “I just take a lot of the Old Testament with a grain of salt.” This bothered me then and it bothers me now. You cannot take one jot or tittle away from His word and expect that the tapestry will remain woven.

Revelation 22:18-19 says “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”

Woe to those who say “I have a word from the Lord and I am here to teach it to you.” No one can add to His word. Woe to those who take away from His word by claiming some part is untrue and it doesn’t mean what it says it means.

It is all perfect and true. If you start picking threads out that are true and not true, or to believe or not believe, and it becomes YOU who are broken, for the scripture cannot be broken. It is perfect!

What is the point here? Read your bible. It is really good!

bangor, jesus, media bias, truth

News Bias getting more overt: two news anchors quit on-air

Posted on November 21, 2012May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

Bangor Daily News publishes the following genteel headline:

Take this job and shove it: Fed-up Bangor TV anchors quit on air
“Citing a longstanding battle with upper management over journalistic practices at their Bangor TV stations, news co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced their resignations at the end of Tuesday’s 6 p.m. newscast. … “I just wanted to know that I was doing the best job I could and was being honest and ethical as a journalist, and I thought there were times when I wasn’t able to do that,” said Consiglio, a northeastern Connecticut native who broke in with WVII as a sports reporter in April 2006. … [S]he explained, “It’s a little complicated, but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news, politically, in general.” Neither Michaels nor Consiglio would say what specific political leaning they were expected to adopt. Consiglio, who also was executive producer, said the balanced journalistic approach they use for all their stories was sometimes frowned upon.”

So two veteran and apparently ethical journalists resigned because being ethical and balanced and unbiased was allegedly not the preferred approach to news. The following is my editorial opinion regarding the state of the media and the coming quest for truth in the antichrist regime.

I grew up with Huntley and Brinkley and the Huntley-Brinkley Report. Theirs was the NBC television network’s flagship evening news program from October 29, 1956, until July 31, 1970. Each newscast ended with “Good night, Chet. Good night, David. And good night, for NBC News.” I was born in 1960 so the first ten years of my life involved absorbing their sonorous voices. As a matter of fact, critics considered Huntley to possess one of the best broadcast voices ever heard. The duo was filled with gravitas, and I was caught up in watching my parents’ absorbed attention to them. So I paid attention too. They looked like newscasters, they sounded like newscasters. They were newscasters.

In their final broadcast, Chet Huntley said, “I might also remind you that American journalism, all of it, is the best anywhere in the world.” And at that time, it was still true. After them came Walter Cronkite, dubbed ‘the most trusted man in America.’As Howard Kurtz said of early Cronkite, “I watched his image flickering on a small black-and-white set, the voice of authority in an age when we still revered, without a trace of cynicism, those who spoon-fed us the news.”

Huntley could say in all truth that American journalism was the best, and we could listen to him say that without laughing. Cronkite’s liberal bias and questionable ethics didn’t come to the fore until many years later. The 1950s and 60s and even the 70s era Watergate of Woodward & Bernstein and aggressive investigative journalism of 60 minutes were golden years for many in America of eagerly waiting to hear truthful news without bias.

In Huntley’s final broadcast, Huntley went on to say, “But you have bolstered my conviction that this land contains incredible quality and quantity of good, common sense, and it’s in no danger of being led down a primrose path by a journalist” but that statement unfortunately has not held up. Look where we are today.

The nature of sin and the nature of greed in politics has wound us down to the recent election and status we now endure- a grasping American public reliant on handouts and voting for the one who will subsidize them the most, a craven political system spawning politicians only to happy to comply as long as it lines their own pockets too, and a colluding Fourth Estate eager to get in on the action.

I think there would be little disagreement if I said there is a severe lack of common sense in society today and that we have gone far down the primrose path.

The Fourth Estate, or journalism, is important because a truthfully informed electorate can make the best decisions, and the best decisions benefit us all. Journalism also reflects us back to ourselves and if we do not like what we see we can take steps to change it. Journalism is both the mirror and the means to a healthy civilization within the confines of a vigorous democracy.

America’s national face has become a horror to many.

There was an old Twilight Zone episode called The Masks. A millionaire in New Orleans is about to die, and he summons his buffoonish, narcissistic, cowardly and miserly family members to be with him as he does. He tells them they get all his money if they do one final thing: put on the Mardi Gras masks ‘made special by an old Cajun’, and wear them until midnight. He sarcastically tells them that the personalities depicted on the mask are the opposite of their true personality. They are reluctant, but they are eager to get the money so in the end they don the masks.

As the hours tick by, the kindly patriarch bristles at having to be with his worm-like family members and he insults them. The family members are in pain as the masks, they tell him, are unbearable. At midnight the old feller makes one final tirade and expires. The family, caring less for their grandfather and more for themselves, take off the masks, but to their horror they discover that their faces have transformed to the personality depicted on their on unique mask: narcissist, coward, sadistic buffoon, and miser. Their outward personality is now seen plainly on their faces. They are no longer hidden by the mask they once wore of outward moral righteousness. The inward cravenness and the outward face presented to the world now match. Finally, they wore no mask.

This could be an allegory for America. It’s sort of like the chicken and the egg question- did the media’s constant portrayal of us as craven greedy gimme culture spark the culture, or is the media’s portrayal of us as such simply the drawing out of what had long been there, whereupon we finally wear no mask?

I’m not speaking literally of course, because not every single person in America is a wastrel. Jesus’s bride is spotless and shining, a moral example of HIS righteousness. However, with the recent election, it is clear that the media’s reflection of ourselves back to us has stripped off any semblance of moral righteousness or even political courage, and shown us that what the majority prefers is homosexual perversion, child murder, adultery, moral relativism, greed, and no accountability for any of it. Pardon me, but our inward horror is showing.

In leaving off the Fourth Estate for a moment and turning to the general media, I am daily getting more sick at watching television. Just the sheer number of commercials is outrageous, but the subject of them is atrocious. In attempting to watch even the most innocuous of shows, a quiet cooking show called Chopped, the ads in between the show segments made me sick. In successive turn, I saw an ad for vaginal mesh, male enhancement for more fun in the bedroom, and a housewife pole dancing around an upright vacuum. I turned the TV off.

It is nice to read that there are heroes, still. The two newscasters who resigned on the basis of desiring to present the news pure and unadulterated without management bias or political leanings are to be commended. Neither of them have a job lined up. Their stand is acknowledged and appreciated.

But the mask is set. We are a craven nation, who, even if given an unbiased newscast, would flee, because the truth is not to be found in hearts so laden with sin. In the near future, when the antichrist reigns, his ability to seduce by counterfeit miracles and the readiness of the already-prepared media to embrace untruth will only serve to advance his agenda. The truth can no longer be found in the media, almost universally.

Just as God is stripping Israel of her stability to the point at the outset of the Gog Magog war Israel finds when she cannot even rely on her own vaunted military- and they appeal to Him, He is stripping away reliance on man’s truth for decision-making. The media is not to be trusted, anywhere, even in a small northern city like Bangor. No place is unadulterated.

Our God is so great, that the antichrist and most of the people on earth will not even realize that it is GOD who is allowing this lying agenda to advance. It is His will and design to show us that as John said of Jesus in the beginning,

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).

The truth cannot be found on earth. Jesus is the only truth and it can be found in His word. It contains all that we need to reflect ourselves back to ourselves: we are sinners in need of a Savior, and being perfectly holy, He has the answers.

“and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).