Month: October 2013 (Page 1 of 3)

The problem today is not that people do not know what is going on, but that they do not care.  However, I see another equally disturbing problem.  It appears that people do not want to acquire knowledge if it takes time, thought, and the use of reason and logic.  They have been spoiled to television and the internet.  Unless they can get information in sound bytes or Internet snippets, they will shut down their senses, click the mouse or remote, and quickly move on.

Here is the danger of that paradigm.  If one does not acquire knowledge that is deep and sustaining, he or she will never recognize the approaching danger.  Instead of recognizing and dealing with it in the early stages of development, they will ignore it until they can no longer tolerate it.  The problem with that is when evil becomes intolerable, it is beyond critical mass and unstoppable.

I encourage people to read.  Reading increases ones brain activity better than anything else.  If you want a strong mind, get a book.  If you want to know what and who has besieged America, I recommend reading “Slouching towards Gomorrah” by Robert Bork.  For the next several days I am going to post excerpts from the book.  I hope that people will read at least the introduction and first 4 chapters.

Excerpts from Slouching towards Gomorrah:

“If society should reach a chaotic condition of warring groups and individual alienation, a condition in which even personal security is problematic for a majority of its people, authoritarian government may be accepted.”

The Durkheim Constant:

Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology, posited that there is a limit to the amount of deviant behavior any community can “afford to recognize.”  As behavior worsens, the community adjusts its standards so that conduct once thought reprehensible is no longer deemed so.  As behavior improves, the deviancy boundary moves up to encompass conduct previously thought normal.  Thus, a community of saints and felons would display very different behavior but about the same amount of recognized deviancy.

Defining Decency Down:

“So unrelenting is the assault on our sensibilities that many of us grow numb finding resignation to be the rational, adaptive response to an environment that is increasingly polluted and apparently beyond our control.”

Defining Deviancy Up:

While defining deviancy down with respect to crime, illegitimacy, drug use, and the like, our cultural elites are growing intensely moralistic and disapproving about what had always been thought normal behavior, thus accomplishing what Charles Krauthammer terms, “defining deviancy up.”  It is at least and apparent paradox that we are accomplishing both forms of refining, both down and up, simultaneously.  One would suppose that as once normal behavior became viewed as deviant, that would mean that there was less really bad conduct in the society.  But that is hardly our case.  Instead, we have redefined what we mean by such things as child abuse, rape, and racial or sexual discrimination so that behavior until recently thought quite normal, unremarkable, even benign, is now identified as blameworthy or even criminal.  Middle-class life is portrayed as oppressive and shot through with pathologies.  “As part of the vast social project of moral leveling,” Krauthammer wrote, “it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized.  The normal must be found to be deviant.”  This situation is thoroughly perverse.  Underclass values become increasingly acceptable to the middle class, especially their young, and middle-class values become increasingly contemptible to the cultural elites.

The Road to Cultural Disaster:

The fact that resistance to modern liberalism is weakening suggests that we are on the road to cultural disaster because, in their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism.  Those translate into a modern version of bread and circuses.  Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distributions of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion while people are coarsened and diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex.

Destroying America

As one of the apostles of violence put it, “The idea was not to create a perfect state operating by the clockwork principles of Marxist law, but to promote a chaos that would cripple America, and ultimately cast it into a receivership that would be administered by the morally superior third world…[P]eople shouldn’t expect the revolution to achieve a Kingdom of Freedom; more likely, it would produce a Dark Ages.”

Slouching towards Gomorrah (part two)

In this final period before the apocalypse, we must recognize insidious schemes at work in the religious and secular realms.  If we do not recognize these very clever schemes and wiles of Satan during this great deception, we could be lured into apostasy.  It will be difficult to discern them because they mimic a work of God and appeal to our common sense.  One of those diabolical schemes, ecumenism, is being promoted by influential leaders in Christianity.  We need to know exactly why they are involved in it and what they hope to achieve.

Notorious pastor of Saddleback Church, Rick Warren, has been pushing for ecumenism with Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Mormonism.  Although he will deny it with doublespeak, ecumenism is the correct description of his efforts and goal.  It appears that many leaders in Christianity have taken seriously the title “America’s Pastor” that the secular world has ascribed to him.  Dr. George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God, appears to be working closely with Warren on his Ecumenical efforts.  There are reports that the AoG leadership is intimidating pastors and entire churches within their denomination that oppose Warren’s heresy and ecumenism.  Wood recently spoke at a Mormon event.  Other leading evangelicals speaking at Mormon events include, R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, and Ravi Zacharias.

What’s wrong with ecumenism?  Primarily, it is an attempt to establish friendship or partnership with the unfruitful works of darkness.  We are told by the Apostle Paul to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather to expose them (Ephesians 5:11)  Rick Warren declares that he is just doing what Jesus would do, and that it is all about loving people.  Maybe the question is not to ask “what Jesus would do”, but to ask, “Would Jesus do what I am doing?”  No one had more love than Christ Jesus, and He did not do what Rick Warren is doing.  Christ was called a “friend of sinners”, but it was a pejorative statement that the Pharisees made about Him.

“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Matthew 11:19 NKJV)

It is obvious that He did not consider Himself to be a friend of sinners, but instead their Savior.

“You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” (John 15:14 NKJV)

Were the sinners to whom Christ preached obedient to God or Christ?  The truth is that Christ Jesus called the disciples who followed Him, friends.

“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:15 NKJV)

Further, Christ never established friendly relations with the Pharisees in order to “engender world peace and preserve religious freedom.”  Additionally, He did not fraternize with any of the pagan cults within Romanism, go about the land eating at their religious feasts, or playing games with them.  Rick Warren has done these deeds and wishes to use the example of Christ as his excuse.  There is no such example in the Scriptures.  Throughout His ministry on earth Christ Jesus remained Master, Lord, miracle worker, teacher, preacher of righteousness and repentance, dispenser of truth, and the Savior.  We should also remember that those very sinners (that Christ was declared to be a friend to) cried, “Crucify Him!”  They did not appear to be His friends. They and the religious leaders made certain that He was humiliated, tortured, and nailed to the cross.  History will repeat itself when persecution of true Christianity comes to America.  The world hates true Christians because they have what no other religion has, and that is light.

“For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” (John 3:20 NJKV)

There are some factors that we should consider before accepting this last days ecumenism.  First, we have to recognize some of the main organizers and promoters of ecumenism are also promoting contemplative spirituality and other dangerous heresies.  If this ecumenism were of God, then He would send upright and godly people to bring it about.  He would not send people who have been actively involved in polluting Christianity with pagan mysticism and other harmful practices and false doctrines.  Some of the ones drawn into the Mormon controversy appear to be upright, but then why are they involved in a diabolical scheme?  I have read their reasons for involvement and they are woefully lacking in discernment.  For example, Mohler stated, “The conflict of liberties we’re now experiencing is unprecedented and it’s ominous,” he said. “Forced to choose between erotic liberty and religious liberty, ‘many’ Americans would clearly sacrifice freedom of religion. How long before the ‘many’ becomes ‘most?’”

Mohler does not appear to realize that when he focused on the battle between erotic and religious liberty, he has ignored the battle between satanic bondage and spiritual liberty.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  (Ephesians 6:12 NKJV)

Uniting with the works of darkness to oppose the works of darkness is like jumping in the ocean to stop a tsunami.  The church has never needed satanic groups to help them win any battle.

“If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?”  (Matthew 12:26 NKJV)

Second, we have to consider the true purpose of ecumenism.  Warren and his associates declare that it is about world peace and preservation of religious freedom.  Obviously, there can be no communion of light with darkness unless the light is turned down low enough not to significantly affect the darkness.  It is impossible to “brighten” the darkness.  Light always overcomes darkness and it is never the opposite.  Warren’s ecumenism attempts to blend light with darkness will result in a compromise that will destroy the faith of many nominal Christians.  Someone recently informed me that the reason nominal Christians fall into apostasy is not the fault of the deceiver, but their own fault for being weak.  All I will say about that remark is I am glad that he is not my shepherd.

Third, we must realize that just as all the nations will merge into a global government, all religions (including apostate Christianity) will merge into a global religion.  The Antichrist will become the head of the global government and the False Prophet will lead the global religion.  We are witnessing the world racing toward a global union at the present.  If we are in the last days, then we must consider that ecumenism is a major step in forming a global religion.  An apathetic attitude toward end time’s events will result in many professing Christians being captured under the spell of the False Prophet and Antichrist.  Some of these apathetic ones have declared that it doesn’t matter; that they are going to heaven no matter what.  My response is that eternity is final, and there are no second chances.  It is a dangerous gamble to leave this earth as a subject of Satan and expect God to overlook the fact that your earthly king murdered and tortured millions of Christians.

“Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16 NKJV)

We must also consider eschatology (the doctrine of last things) in God’s word. One of the most troubling patterns I see developing in modern Christianity is ignoring or outright rejecting eschatology.  In my opinion, this diminishing of eschatology is preventing people from recognizing the work of Satan involved in this final deception and apostasy.  It cannot be a decree from God since we are warned to pay close attention to the signs of the end.  In Matthew 24:33-34, Christ said, “So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.”  I have read and heard misinterpretations of this passage.  The correct interpretation is that the generation that witnesses all the things that Christ taught in Matthew 24 will be the last generation.  When we see the things that Christ taught occurring, we must consider that we are that last generation.

All the end times prophesies have either been fulfilled, or are being fulfilled, or have the potential to be fulfilled very quickly.  In the secular realm, a gregarious and charismatic individual has ascended to the presidency and is leading our nation toward the global government.  In the religious realm, a gregarious and charismatic individual has ascended to the head of Christianity and is leading Christianity into a global religion.  Avoid ecumenism at all costs, even if it means separating from a denomination that supports it.  I am a witness of what it might cost one to separate from a denomination heading the wrong direction, but one priceless benefit is the preservation of one’s spiritual liberty, the liberty by which Christ has made us free (Galatians 5:1).  These are not normal times.  It is an extremely deceptive period.  Nominal Christians may not survive it.  Heed the warnings, guard your hearts and minds, pray, and focus on eternity.

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” (Proverbs 24:10 NKJV)

Christianity is under an unprecedented attack in this final period before the Coming of the Lord Jesus.  The enemy that opposed righteousness from the outside has now entered Christianity and is entrenched in positions of leadership.  It appears that each week brings news of further decadence and degradation in once doctrinally sound denominations.  Popular and influential Christian leaders are compromising and apostatizing.  What would have once been considered rank heresy is being accepted while biblical doctrine is being altered or rejected.  Pagans, witches, eastern gurus, and the like are being honored and given unprecedented access to pulpits and podiums at conferences.

To combat this great invasion of wickedness, a number of Christian organizations have focused their efforts on exposing the evil and warning the masses.  In that endeavor, they are united.  They share each others articles and news.  All though they were once at odds over doctrine, there appears to be very little contention between them.  However, that unity is fragile and most certainly is not organized into any true cohesiveness.  Visit any Christian forum, blog, or Facebook page where open discussion about doctrine is allowed and it’s a different story.  One will find much conflict.  It has been that way since the advent of internet chat.

The fact is that as long as they all perceive the greater danger to Christianity and are focused on opposing it, they will not attack each other.  Therefore, it is a tenuous peace at best.  One hint of difference in doctrine, and the attack mode will kick in.  The outflow will be the result of decades of finely honed skills at goading the opponent and making him or her appear wrong or foolish.

An example is a recent experience of trying to have an honest and cordial dialogue with an individual about his doctrine.  I was dismayed that he immediately chose ad hominem over a cordial and honest discourse.  He cleverly steered the conversation into an argument over semantics, and arrogantly concluded that I was somehow a deceived, mean-spirited, and unintelligent lesser saint.  As I prayed and reflected on the caustic and condescending nature of his responses, I realized that he was writing material for his website.  He had no intention of committing to honest dialogue.  I walked into his snare and he probably thanked God for the gift.  I could have answered his last email point by point, but it would not have accomplished anything good.  Everyone who read the exchange with an open mind would clearly recognize his motive.  However, the ones that follow his leadership would just become angry.  At some point, especially when it becomes obvious that contention lies ahead in the road, one must walk away to preserve peace.

Further, I have been observing John MacArthur’s “Strange Fire Conference” and the responses to it.  Although I might agree with MacArthur on some points, I have to disagree with the spirit of his presentation and broad-brush condemnation of a vast number of Christians.  I firmly disagree with his timing in launching an attack against the Charismatic/Pentecostal Movements.   From reading his responses, he believes that “shooting into the crowd” is a good approach to get the bad guys.  The consequence of collateral damage to innocent people appears to be okay with MacArthur, à la “Que Sera, Sera”.  He probably believes he was in God’s will, but the fruit indicates that he was probably in the flesh.

I came to the realization that Christianity is held together by a very thin and elastic bond.  Although at the present a number of professing Christians are united in defeating the enemy, they will not pass up the opportunity to again war with each other.  They pull away over a single point of doctrine and then snap back in unity to fight gay marriage.  Often they break the bond completely with bridge-burning rancor and contempt. Consequently, they only fight the darkness with people who completely agree with them.

I firmly believe that if somehow we were able to eject Contemplative Spirituality, the Emergent Church, the neo-paganism, New Age Movement, and all the other heresy and heretics thus involved, we would simply go back to arguing over what divides us.  After 35 years of ministry, pastoring and pioneering over a half dozen churches, and 20 years on the Internet, I have concluded that many Christians love conflict.  The adrenalin rush, with the sensation of being in a “crusade” from God, is most intoxicating.  The most amazing fact is that each person involved in conflict with another Christian believes that he or she can wash off the insidious nature of their actions by quoting a few verses to cover their behavior, and of course stating the tired old adage, “Just speaking the truth in love.”  Some of the most hateful emails I have received were signed, “with much love”.

Of course true Christians are going to disagree.  However, when our disagreement turns to cheap debate tricks, cheap shots, and disintegrates into a childish “tit-for-tat”, there is absolutely no chance of any fruitful and blessed conclusion.  One of the most insidious tricks is to parse the words of an opponent, take them out of context, and form straw man arguments around them.  Another trick is to presume a person’s intent when it is not clearly stated.  However, the most disgusting trick is that before one commits an offense, he or she accuses the opponent of the same offense.  A variation is the charlatan commits the offense, and their opponent complains and delineates what they did, and the charlatan accuses them of the same offense.  They may go a step further and accuse their opponent of pretending to be a victim.  This is the way trolls operate.  Many of us have experienced Internet trolls that visit our blogs and Facebook pages for the express purpose of creating conflict.  Trolls are very skilled at avoiding valid points and goading people into angry responses.  When those tactics occur in a discussion between two professing Christians, strife and division are the inevitable result.

The fact is that no matter what degree of truth that one may possess, he or she is not allowed to declare it without immediate attacks from other Christians who do not hold the same belief.  We cannot swallow our pride, deflate our large egos, and simply walk away from obvious hopelessly irresolvable conflicts.  We cannot approach with true agape love our fellow believers that hold opposite nonessential doctrinal views.  Instead of love, we approach them with ulterior motives or malice thinly disguised as “love” and verbal goads disguised as “correction sent from heaven”.  I’m not referring to discourse with diabolical and dangerous heretics, but Christians with whom we will unite to defeat heresy dangerous to the Body as a whole.  We simply cannot accept those heretics (Emergent, pagan, New Age, etc.) after they declare their belief systems because their heresy will condemn souls to eternal darkness.

Therefore, Christians are never going to become united in grace and love.  Instead, a multitude of satanically anointed deceivers will unite a huge section of professing Christians and merge them with pagans and the adherents of false religions into a global religion.  The rest of Christianity will languish in division and weakness as Satan roams about  unhindered to molest the weak and unlearned.

Presently, we are not united to defeat the satanic enemy because we cannot tolerate the “stench” of what divides us.  Perhaps, just perhaps, if we are imprisoned, or are facing a trip to the gallows together, maybe then we will chose another topic except if speaking in tongues is of the devil, or if disbelieving the pretribulation rapture qualifies one as a heretic unworthy to be caught up when Christ appears. If it takes the unity of a foxhole to make us fight like we are in the same army, then maybe we need persecution.