Month: July 2013 (Page 5 of 10)

Nonessential Truth?

The more it costs to stand for truth the fewer people there are who are willing to pay it. Some professing Christians have now determined that there are certain truths not worth fighting for. They claim that we ought to agree on core doctrine and just love one another when non-core doctrine is attacked. Thus, denominational leaders break out their statement of fundamental truths and declare they are unbendable when it comes to that list. But if heretics creep into Christianity to disseminate what they term as small heresies, they charge people who resist as causing strife and disunity over nothing. Therefore, as long as they are not required to deny Jesus Christ as Lord, they will roll with the flow of New Age heresies into Christianity.

Here is where the line of reasoning runs off into a ditch of flawed logic. George Wood, Assemblies of God General Superintendent, has declared that the controversy over contemplative prayer as an uproar over non-essential doctrine. He then characterizes the opposition as divisionary individuals obsessed with causing contention. Is this the truth? No. It is a huge mistake to come to that conclusion. I can easily prove that contemplative prayer is an attack on one of the most essential components of Christianity. As such, it ought to be opposed by every true Christian.

First, I have discovered over 35 years of Christian experience that there is one factor that I cannot do without. I cannot do without prayer. Prayer is the one thing that has helped me through the many storms, battles, and other very difficult trials I have encountered. I cannot tell you exactly why and how it works, but I can tell you from years of experience that it works. In fact, I can recognize professing Christians that do not pray as easily as I would recognize someone who is not saved. All of the great Christians have testified in one way or another that there is no substitute for prayer. True prayer involves cognition with words spoken or unspoken. It is the means by which one communicates between the temporal and eternal realm. Mighty miracles and works have been manifested because of believing prayer. If contemplative prayer is the means to draw nearer to God and know Him better, why is it that the major promoters of this practice are the main perpetrators of heresy in Christianity?

Contemplative prayer is a substitute for true prayer. In effect, the practice requires a person not to pray, or to even think about prayer or God. Instead, one uses self hypnosis to fall into a trace where the mind is emptied of all thoughts and no words are spoken. Subsequently, the term contemplative prayer is a misnomer. It is in fact vacuous silence. It cannot correctly be called keeping still or quiet before the Lord since one does not know during contemplative prayer if one is before the Lord or in the presence of demons. In fact, the definition of contemplative is “thoughtful” or “meditative.” The term prayer means communicating with God. Thus, contemplative prayer should mean thoughtful communication with God. Every “spiritual director” would deny that such is the definition of contemplative prayer. They would condemn every great praying Christian in the past and present.

Christians will be rendered prayerless by the means of contemplative prayer. Thus, one of the greatest gifts that God has given His people to protect, provide, to instruct, guide, and bring them into intimacy with Him, will be eradicated by contemplative prayer. Praying will be replaced by silence, and Christian leaders believe that is a good thing. Into the vacuum of silence will come great deception. The great deception will lead to a great apostasy. Although many professing Christians who support this decadence will not at the present deny that Jesus Christ is Lord, eventually they will deny Him. When they allow Satan to attack essential components of Christianity by reasoning that the cost is just too great to defend “non-essential truth”, they will one day deny Christ as Lord and Savior.

I’ve said it often but it bears repeating, error begets error and truth is all one stream. Asking me to keep quiet when “nonessential” truth is being attacked is like asking me to be passive while a part of my body is being removed. Are you going to complain if a stranger cuts of the tip of your little finger, or snips off one of your ear lobes? After all, they are nonessential parts of your body. I’m not going to remain passive while true prayer is torn from the Body of Christ and supplanted by a diabolical falsehood.

And Satan came also Among Them
(Job 1:6)

For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 1:4 NKJV)

Judge Robert Bork’s book, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah—Modern Liberalism and American Decline” (1996), is an amazing detail of what would prove to be prophetically fulfilling in the 21st century. When the riots in streets and college campuses during the 60s and early 70s ceased, one of the leaders of the Marxist students who perpetrated this outrage was asked if they had failed. He replied, “It was never our intent to establish a line upon line Marxist government, but to cripple America, and bring it into receivership to morally superior third-world countries.” This they have almost completed. Our nation is nearly 17 trillion dollars in debt. We are approaching bankruptcy, which will bring us into receivership to third-world nations. Bork states that the leaders of the anti-America movement did not simply fade away. Instead, they realized that their goals could not be accomplished by rioting and taking over campus buildings. They went back to the colleges and universities and got their degrees. Then they became professors, deans, teachers, and wormed their way into leadership of various powerful organizations such as the news media, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the educational system, Hollywood, and of course the government. Presently, they are in near complete control of many power sectors including the Democratic Party. It is no coincidence that when it came time to launch the political career of the man that would become President, Barak Obama, the party was held at Bill Ayers home, a home-grown terrorist turned professor.

As a result, our nation is staggering from the wounds they have inflicted in almost every critical area of our society and government. They have not sought to make things better, but to destroy what they deem as harmful to the completion of their goal. Their goal is a godless, one-world system; a Christ-less, man-created, hedonistic, utopia, the culmination of Humanism, built upon the ruins of a fallen America. We ended Hitler’s disastrous experiment. We should have arrested and executed the diabolical minds that inspired him instead of inviting them into our nation to incite a generation to begin their ruinous work anew.

As I research the activities and doctrine of the Emergent Church, it occurred to me that the same thing has happened in the religious sector. One fact is inescapable, and it is that American Christianity has become infiltrated by New Age operatives. It is clear that the Emergent Church is nothing more than the New Age Movement repackaged and renamed. Further, there is no way that such a well-organized and multifaceted attack on truth could be merely the work of a few loose cannons with bad doctrine. Long ago they began worming their way inside, taking tenure at Christian colleges and universities, pastorates, and other positions of influence. They glad-handed, cajoled, and connived their way to the top levels of leadership. There is also the strong probability that some of the infiltrators are Jesuit operatives. They are ruthless in removing all obstacles to returning Protestantism to Roman Catholic control. Over two decades ago in the denomination I was involved with, I observed the leaders systematically marginalizing and excommunicating ministers who recognized the decadence of truth and gravitation toward liberal themes. In already corrupt colleges and seminaries, they were training young hirelings to take the place of those godly men. There were so many weak and uncommitted professing Christians, content to warm pews on Sunday morning and nothing more, that the take-over was mostly a cake walk. There is no doubt in my mind that both the takeover of the government and Christianity is a multi-pronged conspiracy of Satan to bring the world under his control.

One glaring questions is how bad is it? It is very bad. If one is a uninformed pew-warmer, he or she is probably already imbibing New Age doctrine. Such a one is either now in the vortex of deception or rapidly heading in that direction. Entire denominations face a complete reversal of direction. Traditional Christians beliefs and practices will either be completely dismissed or amalgamated with New Age doctrine to the extent they are unrecognizable and nonviable. The practice of Contemplative Prayer/Centering has already taken firm hold in most liturgical denominations and threatens to invade two of the largest evangelical denominations in America. The majority of professing Christians have only a casual relationship with God and that vicariously through a pastor. They actually do not want enough truth to challenge their autonomy. You cannot speak anything negative to them. They have buried their heads in fun, pleasure, food, entertainment, and the affairs of this life. They can receive and retain voluminous data and statistics about everything from NASCAR to PGA, but they have no taste for truth. Their fleshly nature is so powerful that when you begin informing them of the encroaching evil, their cognition will begin to close down and their eye lids will become heavy. Dull hearts, deaf ears, and blind eyes, they are perfect targets for deception.

The other big question is what are people who know the truth going to do about it? Sadly, most credentialed ministers are going to remain silent and do little or nothing. The reason is because they are afraid of being excommunicated, of losing their income and opportunity to minister. They realize that when the paradigm shift is complete, they will have to choose to accept a lie, or to walk away. But they are attempting to hang on a bit longer, hoping against all doubt that it will get better. They simply cannot find the courage now to stand up for the truth. The sad irony is that if these ministers were asked to join a cult, they would refuse. But if they are faced with the decision to leave one, most of them would again refuse.

On that day when all souls stand before the Righteous Judge, we will give an account of how we performed in this life. How did we respond when pressured to deny Christ to some degree or be persecuted, rejected, and suffer loss? We will not be asked to enumerate the cost of obedience to God, how much we suffered or lost. The only question will be if we did the right thing.

We have come to the end of the age and the choices await us whether to accept good and reject evil, or to do nothing. I am deeply grateful to God that I already made that choice and entered a period of suffering. I suffered denominational tribunals, rejection, and excommunication from churches. Ostracized from Christian fellowship, I ended up financially devastated, a broken man ostracized from institutional Christianity. However, I am filled with gratitude that I lost my home and vehicles, that I have no social prominence, that I am an insignificant peon with a blank resume pastoring a small house church. I have no position to fall from. It is a joy to me that I work at a physically demanding job that taxes my aging body to the breaking point because no religious heretic controls my income. I am grateful because I have already experienced a small taste of what it costs to stand for truth unflinching and without compromise. Over the past ten years my godly wife and I have to depend on God alone for our survival. I have learned things through this trial of brokenness that I would not trade for any amount of money or honor. I have learned that when one stands up for God, He will stand up for him or her.

This is no game. It is a battle for truth. As such, it is a battle for the souls of humanity. It is not about what we stand to lose materially, but what we stand to gain for eternity.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18 – NKJV)

Will True Christians Please Stand Up? (part one)

Thank you all for your encouraging comments, vows to stand, and to pray. I came to the realization that this battle will be lost if only a few people are opposing the incredible evil of the Emerging/Emergent Church, New Age Movement and its Contemplative Spirituality. I reduced the heresy to the term “Replacement Christianity” so that people can get a better grasp of what is occurring. It is clear that if there is not a grass roots opposition mounted against this evil, Christianity will be no more. You read me correctly. If everyone who loves the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ does not begin to educate and equip themselves, speak out, write, or otherwise resist this evil attack, it will completely destroy Christianity.

How much time do we have? About as much time as it will take to finish off America as a free and democratic nation. The same evil spirit is working in Christianity as in our government and the secular society. The difference is that factory workers, mechanics, house cleaners, waitresses, landscapers, painters, plumbers, etc., are rallying to the struggle against evil in our government and society. However, even though an equally destructive group is at work dismantling Christianity, there is a deathly silence from the same individuals.

Part of the problem is the Emerging/Emergent Church leaders have kept the conversation so loaded with theological and academic terms that the grass roots people cannot understand them. Only a few of the heretics have stated outright that they intend to destroy Christianity and replace it with a New Age model rife with pagan beliefs and practices. The rest just smile and speak loftily while the sheep blink and say nothing. Just to let everyone know how bad it is, I point to what is occurring in our government at the present. We are watching Americanism being destroyed right before our eyes. Christianity is undergoing the same degree of destruction. It is so bad in Christianity that I have no doubt that the day we wake up to newspaper headlines and breaking news on television that our nation is no longer a free society, on that day Christianity will also be non-existent.

The individuals involved in causing this destruction of Christianity read like a “Who’s Who in Christianity” list. One of them has been labeled the next Billy Graham, another one “America’s Pastor.” They speak to millions of Christians via television. Their books sell in the millions. Their conferences are sold out. And yet they utter blasphemy and spread paganism as if it were as common and accepted as hot butter on a hot roll. Once they finish their work, their intent is to drag the battered corpse of Christianity to Rome and lay it at the feet of the Pope. Nothing I have said here is an exaggeration as you can easily discover for yourself.

It will take more than Ray Yungen, Roger Oakland, Warren Smith, Lighthouse Trails, and the other ones who are making their stand. It will take the rank and file believers in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to rise up en masse and reject this evil. I am not even certain that we can win the battle. But is it certain that we can win the battle against the wicked ones who have gained control in our government and secular society? It does not stop us from speaking out, writing and posting information on FaceBook, and discussing the matter when we are with friends. It does not stop us from challenging people who believe everything is okay and  America is better than ever. We speak out when local issues arise threatening truth and righteousness. We cry out against homosexual marriage, against government oppression of Christianity, and against attempts to remove Christ from society. Why can we not cry out against a massive effort to remove Christ from Christianity and replace Him with a Cosmic Christ? Sometimes it is not about winning…it is about fighting the good fight of faith. Christ did not appear to have won when He went to the cross. His victory was in obeying God unto death. Please think and pray about what you have just read.