MEGA-ANGLICAN ANGST: A family reunion that's not!

Quarter of world's Anglicans boycott conference - Yahoo! News

When 25% of a royal family's princes stay away from a once each century family reunion ... you've got a regal knot in your imperial breeches!

Church officials said that 230 of the 880 bishops in the Anglican worldwide communion were staying away from the Lambeth conference being staged in the English cathedral city of Canterbury, spiritual home of the deeply divided church.

Referring to Gene Robinson, the queer Bishop from New England, who was forced to stay away from Lambeth, and remains the catalytic issue for the boycott, Reuters said ...

Robinson, whose decision to be open about his homosexuality provoked so much Anglican angst, agreed it was time for the church to stop being so self-obsessed.

"With young men knifing each other in the streets of London [a reference to the "growing knife" culture of the capital city] and a billion or more people going through life on less than a dollar a day, what a shame , what a waste it is for the Anglican communion to be tearing itself apart over two men or two women who want to make a Christian family together," he told Reuters.

How magnanimous!

Your denomination has just certified you a heretic in the least offensive and most unofficial-official way possible (like a director of a corporation being excluded from the firm's annual meeting by the other directors) and you wax eloquent about their corporate failure to stop English violence and global poverty. Not a word about the cause of it all: your personal failure.

Simultaneously, you reveal an extremely low opinion of Scripture's infallibility and inspiration, dissing (by extension) the Creator of the Living Word, thus disparaging the nature and magnitude of it, and ignoring two thousand years of biblical scholarship, as-well-as the collective wisdom of the men and women who were motivated to that scholarship.

Wow! What arrogance!

Apparently Robinson and the Reuters reporter did combine to forecast one likely outcome ...

... it will end with a typically fudged Anglican consensus, [the Gay cleric] said "It will drive the press crazy. There will be no resolutions, no proclamations, no lines drawn in the sand."

And this is a once in a century conference ... ho-boy! Forgive us all sweet Jesus, Your heart must be heavy these days.

Anglican, Christianity, Heresy,
Gene Robinson, Lambeth, Religion

PENTECOSTALISM: Proof positive that being slain in the Spirit is not of God!

Man Sues Church for $2.5M After Being 'Felled by Holy Spirit' | FoxNews.Com

A man says he was so consumed by the spirit of God that he fell and hit his head while worshipping.

Now he wants Lakewind Church to pay $2.5 million for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.

How can being "slain" in the Spirit be of God with results like this? Maybe when the tower fell on the 18 at Siloam it was of God, but major injuries and a million dollar lawsuit ... come on?

Charismatics, Christianity,
Holy Spirit, Pentecostalism, Religion

CHARISMATICS: I see, since we fail at Spiritual War let's have Civil War!

Can We Avoid a Charismatic Civil War? - Fire In My Bones | J. Lee Grady - Charisma Magazine

Some leaders say the controversial Lakeland Revival is forcing us to choose sides. But I don’t believe God wants to split our movement.

Not too long ago I posted on a Charismatics meeting in Florida ... at the time I smelled a rat in the grain silo. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was clearly waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Charisma's Grady not only drops the other white buck but raises the curtain on the slain bearded lady, fills our teeth with genuine pyrite, stops the spin on Pentecostal unity, and pricks Elmer's bubble while he's at it.

Speaking of his personal experiences and convictions concerning false teachers and prophets (my terms), Grady reveals all is not well with the white patent leather crowd.

I was jolted into reality in May after I wrote an online column [CRIB link] in which I raised honest questions about some of Bentley’s teachings and techniques. Even though I celebrated his passion and zeal, and praised God for the healings that were reported in Lakeland, I was immediately branded a revival critic and banished to the [enemy] camp.

I became the bad guy because, by asking questions, I was “relying on my intellect.”

I think many of us have been in that frying pan ... yet Christ's experiences with truth-telling exceed ours by an infinite measure.

Surely, I imagined, my Christian brothers and sisters do not really think it is wrong for a Spirit-filled believer to test the spirits (which we are instructed to do in 1 John 4:1), discern truth (see 2 Pet. 3:17) or evaluate prophecies and angelic encounters (see 1 Cor. 14:29, Gal. 1:6-8).

But now I realize that some people really want a war.

Grady recommends both sides consider three alternatives to a war ...

1. Let’s accept one another. “so that there may be no division in the body” (1 Cor. 12:25, NASB).
2. Let’s admonish one another. Anything I say, even if it is corrective, must be said in love (see Eph. 4:15).
3. Let’s pray for one another (see James 5:16).

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma Magazine

This is admirable but falls horribly short of God's glory. Words like rebuke, repudiation, curse come to mind ... but then I'm a fallen man, just like them, who am I to point fingers.

Apart from a direct intervention of God, this can't end well.

Charismatics, Christianity,
Pentecostals, Religion

ANGLICAN ANGST: Somehow I knew this was coming!

The once late great Anglican Church takes another blow for its heresy, apostasy, and debauchery ... only this time it is from one of its own, one who is known as a mountain of theological righteousness ... J. I. Packer.

One of the world's most famous evangelical theologians quit the Anglican Church of Canada this week because he believes many of its bishops are "arguably heretical" for adhering to "poisonous liberalism."

James (J.I.) Packer, whom Time magazine recently named as one of the planet's 25 most influential evangelicals, said he hesitated before using the harsh terms to describe the Anglican bishops, but believed he must do so in the name of truth.

Vancouver-based Packer, who has sold more than four million copies of his many books, said he and 10 other B.C. Anglican clergy left the national denomination this week to operate under the authority of a South American Anglican archbishop because they felt they were being "starved out and worn down." [HT: Black Kettle]

I can only, and sadly, grieve over this event ... it truly marks a turning point for the coming split between conservative and heretical Anglicans.

One must read the Vancouver Sun blog post to see the true depth of the depravity of Canadian clergy. Another sad day for the Body of Christ.

Anglican, Canada, Christianity,
Heresy, Packer, Religion

EVIL: Must the Bride fall in order to rise again?

I write this post under a deep conviction that the Bride of Christ, as she is manifested in the West, is horribly ill and perhaps terminally so!

****

It is strange to realize you're a soul-brother with a man you don't know; especially on a controversial subject like evil. But that seems to be the case. Theodore Dalrymple admits to a fascination with books dealing with "evil." I too am fascinated with this subject ... even before becoming a believer.

Recently, Dalrymple read a book by Phillip Cole [a philosopher], The Myth of Evil, and was impressed with some, but not all, of Cole's arguments. The author's principle point is that the word evil is useless in a civilized society.

[Cole] uses as an example the notorious and brutal murder of the two year-old James Bulger by two ten year-old children, John Venables and Robert Thomson. Both of the culprits came from highly disturbed and indeed sordid backgrounds, in which there was a lot of violence, emotional instability, excessive drinking, etc. The statistical connection between such a background and violent criminal behaviour is clear; but what the two boys did was nevertheless exceptional (murder by children, even from the worst circumstances is very rare).

In Dalrymple's words ...

[Cole] argues for the uselessness, indeed the harmfulness ... , of the concept of evil. And I confess that, though I have sometimes had a strong sense of being in the presence of evil, I have had some slight difficulty with the meaning of the concept myself. What exactly does it mean? Can we, ought we, or must we, do without it, philosophically, ethically, psychologically and sociologically?

Notice the absence of the spiritual realm.

Cole argues that the concept is redundant both as a description and as an explanation of human conduct. In fact, he says, its main use or function, when stripped of its unsustainable pretensions to describe or explain anything, is to frighten populations into acquiescence to the extension of power over them by ruling elites whose legitimacy might otherwise be called into question. For it is not common values or characteristics that unite political entities such as states in the modern world, he says, but common enemies, who are either wholly imaginary or whose power and malevolence are much exaggerated.

It is true that fear, as a concept and a reality in Scripture is used to elicit our acquiescence to the person and power of God. Yet, only the fool would suggest He uses it to avoid questions concerning His legitimacy.

Indeed, [Cole] continues, the concept of evil is responsible for much harm ... in the world. The reason for this is clear. When we say of someone that he is evil, we are saying that he is a being of a quite distinct category from ourselves, such that normal ethical limits and restraints do not apply in the way that we must deal with him. For evil is the ultimate – well, evil, and must be destroyed by any means possible. Without the concept of evil, then, we would be much less likely to treat people evilly.

I detect a hint of Reagan and Bush bashing in Cole's argument above; remember the "evil empire" and "the axis of evil," respectively?

Of course authentic believers know the question of evil was answered by God Himself long ago:

Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. [Genesis 2:9]

After analyzing Cole's forensic weaknesses, Dalrymple offered the following penetrating thought ...

... on the larger point on [the Bulger] case, Dr Cole is surely right: to have dismissed them as irredeemably evil, or possessed by evil, would have been mistaken and cruel, as is proved by the fact that the children subsequently turned out well, much better in fact than they would have done had they never committed the murder, for they received intense and humane attention thereafter.

Herein is nurture and justification for the Age of Accountability doctrine.

As the writer of a book on the case, Blake Morrison, put it (I quote from memory), ‘It was a pity they had to murder James Bulger to get an education.’ I don’t think I have read a more succinct and damning indictment of a society and its educational system than that, and no doubt it does not apply only to Liverpool, England. [New English Review]

This is such an excellent metaphor for the Good News. I might paraphrase Morrison's words in this way: "It is a pity we had to murder Jesus of Nazareth to get understanding." But it is true ... isn't it? What would man have learned about evil had not the ultimate innocent died?

Like Dalrymple, I don’t think we can find "a more succinct and damning indictment" of man and his systems than that.

Likewise,

Dr Cole extends the lessons of [the Bulger] case to all human evil ... . Venables and Thompson were redeemable precisely because those who looked after them thought they were redeemable and did not consider them as evil by essence; by extension, everyone else who commits evil is redeemable, though perhaps with more difficulty.

Sinners all (Romans 3:23), we "were all redeemable precisely because [God made us] redeemable " and considered evil as "evil by essence." I believe Dalrymple inadvertently tells us an eternal truth: "by extension, everyone ... who commits evil is redeemable, though perhaps with more difficulty."

Is that not what God put in man at his creation ... His own image? Thus the concept of "evil by essence" must be mitigated with the Imago Dei.

Christianity, Church,
Evil, Redemption, Religion

CHURCH: The Late Great Body of Christ!

Recent survey results show a pitiful and putrefactive body of "christians" in the good ol' USA ... a kilometer wide and and a millimeter deep.

One thing is clear, as Billy Graham is given credit for saying,

"on Sunday mornings, the church is the richest mission field on earth."

Like Bambi, the people in our churches are some of the loveliest in the world, truly a joy to know. Yet again, like Bambi, when looking out of their darkness into the bright light of the Word of God, they stare, open-eyed, unblinking, not knowing whether to fight or flee.

Ironically, the pew people (plumbers, housewives, lawyers, mechanics, clerks, the unemployed, the dysfunctional, school teachers, and high-school dropouts) truly believe they know more about pastoring than pastors ... and they also believe it is their job in life to tell us.

How would it be if we dropped in on them, during the day, and waxed on about what they are doing and the way they are doing it?

Pastors were not to be their people's friends, they are to be their shepherds; they are to preach the Word, in season and out!

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew. Billy Graham

All these visitation and relational programs are nothing but worldly human waste. The clergy is not better than the laity but they sure as h___ weren't intended to be tied up in an interpersonal touchy-feely wasteland.

Face it my peers, bringing the mulch of the world into the garden of God has produce weeds, not fruit! On any given Sunday morning, over half the people listening to you are lost ... LOST!!! What good is your new series on parenting to them? What good does it do to proclaim a "green" series them? What good does it do to preach the Ten Commandments to them? They need to know the meaning of the bronze serpent on the staff before they can comprehend the Manna from heaven.

What they need, and are not getting, is a message concerning their being "sinners in the hands of an angry God." [For a sad commentary see Yale's intro to this great message.]

Apostates, Christianity,
Church, Religion, Sinners

LEADERSHIP: Which reminds me!

DECLARATION ONE: The CRIB has lost all respect for our national leadership and desires to move its CRIB HQ to another planet where we will see them again no more!

DECLARATION TWO: We are on the verge of losing all respect for global church leadership, except for Anglican leaders in Africa and Australia, only we can't expedite the Second Coming!

America, Anglican,
Christianity, Leadership

TALIBAN: Answering the unanswerable!

Today's article suggests the Taliban may be ready to release their Korean hostages (mostly women).

I've been personally frustrated by various complaints from Christians and Christian organizations about the silence from the Christian community and the Godblogosphere concerning these "Christian" aid workers. The complaints are warranted to a certain extent but let's face reality.

At this juncture, two male members of the Korean group have been murdered; there is no guarantee more won't suffer the same fate.

Most Western Christians are news savvy and know when they are dealing with ignorant unprincipled people; leaders who have no moral compunctions other than their wild allegiance to an aberrant idea.

This does have a tendency to dampen involvement.

And speaking for myself - I have 24 hours each day to minister for the Lord; I'm obligated to use those hours as a gift (no, I'm not always perfect in their use) and to prioritize my labors. Like Satan, I cannot be everywhere at once, all-knowing, and all-mighty. Most of us are doing the best we can.

And I would suggest that Darfur, the Iraqi Christian exodus, and Arab persecution of Christians in general trump the hostages ... and where pray tell is the UN, man's answer to all of this? What a waste!

In other words, where can my noise, my sweat, and my heart do the most good? And since when is this a problem of the American church only? And is the noise I hear from the Church in the North, South, and East not still "from the Church"? Why is so much guilt placed on the shoulders of the Church in the West? We are one body!

Bottom-line, Paul knew before going "to Caesar" that he might not come out alive; the same was said by Jesus on His entry into Jerusalem.

When we opt to go on mission for God, and opt for a dangerous mission field (the field of another), there is a certain awareness of the dangers involved. In some fields (like Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan) there is a tacit understanding that there are no clandestine black berets lurking in the shadows to extricate us if we get in trouble.

My feeling is the criticism is both warranted (in a qualified sense) and unwarranted (in an unqualified sense). Perhaps the critics should reexamine their criticism.

Chritianity, Criticism, Geopolitics,
Hostages, Korean, Missions, Taliban

CHARITY: How I envy this effort of love!

Dan Edelen of Cerulean Sanctum has linked to a neat Wall Street Journal story on philanthropy.

Marie Delahoussaye, a widow in Texas, asked for money to replace an obsolete hearing aid that “whistles.” In neat, black cursive script on green-lined memo paper she wrote, “Please consider helping me. I live very frugally. I don’t waste anything.”

Ms. Buffett paid for two hearing aids that cost about $1,800 total. Ms. Delahoussaye—who says she never expected to receive a response—says the devices have helped her reconnect with friends and her community. Before getting the hearing aids, “I couldn’t hear the phone ring,” she says. “I would go to church and couldn’t hear the sermon.” She says the experience has reaffirmed her faith in strangers. “This has made me realize there are still good people in the world,” she says.

Though the WSJ piece is worth reading in and of itself, its Dan's comments on the story that makes clicking over worth the trouble.

A story that makes the heartstrings sing, right?

But did anyone here catch the deeper issue? This elderly widow couldn’t hear the sermons at her church. She writes to Warren Buffett. Doris Buffett comes to her assistance. And this hearing-impaired widow gets her new hearing aids. She says it reaffirms her faith in strangers.

But at whose expense does that reaffirmation come?

You see it? I hope I’m not the only one asking, “Where was her church?” I hate to think that she mentioned this to people at her church and no one did anything. It seems that way, though, doesn’t it? [CRIB emphasis]

Back in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries the church abdicated her throne for social issues; relinquishing control of all sorts of Christian responsibilities to the government and the welfare state. We've paid a heavy price for doing that!

Paul taught this ...

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Philippians 2:3-4

BLOGGERS BLOGGING:

ePlay!

Benevolence, Body of Christ, Charity,
Christianity, Church, Sanctification

INDECENCY: When the Bride Fails

Today's appellate ruling reveals the failure of the Body of Christ. Follow my logic ...

1. Public indecency is a secular issue.
2. A citizen's freedom of speech, as we know it, is a political issue.
3. Both indecency and free speech fluctuate at the whim of the people.
4. Christians have freedom of speech and behavior [1 Corinthians 10:23] but moderate their speech [Ephesians 4:29] and actions [Romans 8:13] in obedience to God [Romans 12:1-2].
5. As Bob Carlise says in his powerful gospel song We Are the People, "We are the people, and the way we make a change is only by the way we live our lives; we are the people of the Light!"
6. If the public degenerates to the point of embarrassment, it's not the fault of sinners ... YOU CAN'T MAKE PIGS ACT LIKE SHEEP ...
7. It's the fault of the Bride of Christ; we are chartered with the responsibility to impact the general public "by the way we live our lives" [Matthew 5:13-14].
8. It's also prophetic of the approach of the last days [Romans 1:27; 2 Peter 3:3; Jude 1:18].
9. The finger of blame points directly at an apostate Church.
   

WaPo succinctly describes the decision ...

A federal appeals court tossed out an indecency ruling against Rupert Murdoch's Fox television network yesterday and broadly questioned whether the Federal Communications Commission has the right to police the airwaves for offensive language.

In a 2 to 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York ruled that the FCC went too far in issuing a 2006 decision against Fox Broadcasting for separate incidents in 2002 and 2003 after singer Cher and celebrity Nicole Richie each uttered an expletive on live television.

The reason for this decision is the people's moral demise; in God's administration of things [Romans 13:1-5] it falls to His people to keep a nation and her people in line by being salt and light.

BLOGGERS BLOGGING:

Chickaboomer
Cheat Seeking Missiles
FurdLog
Rob Hyndman
Huffington

Body of Christ, Bride of Christ, Christianity,
Courts, FCC, First Amendment, Free Speech, Indecency