Slice of Laodicea

Apprising Ministries offers a bit more perspective in this post on a letter from RZIM Speaking Team/Associate Writer Margaret Manning and how it applies to Henri Nouwen and contemplative spirituality.

Herescope features an excerpt from Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs about the proper response when one’s church is heading into apostasy. Just as we deal with these things now, they had to be addressed back in his day. There is nothing new under the sun.

I came across this well-written article by Dr. Timothy Paul Jones. Having just posted at my Hope blog on this same topic, it was great to see a father addressing the issue. When I see a young girl displaying her sexual charms to the world at large, my first thought is, where is her father? Why is he endangering his daughter by allowing her to dress this way? There is little backbone today to stand up to the whims and desires of our children. When I read something like Dr. Jones’ post, it is highly encouraging. Our dress as women makes an external statement about our internal condition. It really is that important.

Do we seriously think God is impressed with these civil prayers offered up at the inauguration? Is he hearing the prayers of an audience comprised of every belief under the sun, including atheists? Will God be moved if Rick Warren mouths the name of Jesus while asking for the blessing on America’s radical, pro-death President? What a farce this is. America resembles old Rome with its Pantheon (temple to all the gods). Rick Warren will intone a prayer asking God to bless the mess, and evangelicals will act as though it was a wonderful thing. God isn’t about bless America where the blood of 50 million infants soaks the soil, and a President with blood on his hands is being sworn in. To do so would go against everything in His character as revealed in the Bible. God is judging America, and the spiritual confusion sown by Rick Warren is part of that.

They that forsake the law praise the wicked; But such as keep the law contend with them.

–Proverbs 28:4

A short piece over at Apprising Ministries showing this magazine for teens girls from Focus on the Family wants to be able to give away a ”Bible devotional [which] revolves around lectio divina.”

In this edition of the Fighting for the Faith radio program, Chris Rosebrough takes us through the highlights (maybe they should be called low lights) of the sad state of the apostate Christian church in America. This is a sobering look at Christianity in America, and at the end of the program, Rosebrough offers us the one solution that can turn things around. Please take the time to listen and share this important program.

Talk Show host Genn Beck, a baptized and practicing Mormon, recently had Focus on the Family pull a promotion piece they had initially run concerning Beck’s book. In this piece is an offer of hope for the new year for Beck.

In this interesting piece concerning proper Protestant spirituality, Daniel Chew, author of Driven Away by Purpose, begins:

I recently had my personal spiritual retreat on Monday afternoon (December 29th), in order to seek God especially for His direction for the new year (2009). I have been clearing leave during this season so I have had the free time to slow down and take stock of this passing year, and Monday afternoon was the time I had set aside to seek God exclusively for an extended period of time…

The idea for this post came about in the course of the retreat itself as I prayed over the terrible blight of spiritual poverty in the [Visible] Church. It must be admitted that modernist Evangelicalism, with all its positive thinking, 12-steps-to-this and 7-steps-to-that programs, is spiritually bankrupt and the thirst for true spiritual reality has swept many professing Evangelicals into the contemplative camp in search of spiritual satisfaction yet all they receive are counterfeit trinkets…

This column from Phyllis Schafly points out what should have been obvious to generations of parents. Putting your Christian kids in a hard core secularist environment for 35 hours a week in school is a bad idea. Another way to put it is, letting the Assyrians of humanism train your child’s thinking will produce more Assyrians of humanism.

Yesterday on Crosstalk, attorney Bruce Shortt of Exodus Mandate explained the “Call to Dunkirk” project designed to get Christian parents to wake up to the need for Christian education for their children. It’s the last call, I feel, for parents to reclaim their God-given responsibility to educate their children in a manner rooted and grounded in God’s Word.

As Schlafly points out, it’s little wonder huge percentages of evangelical young people voted for Barack Obama. Their ideology was laid out years before when they were put in schools that were at war with the teachings of God’s Word. Ideas have consequences.

Pastor Dustin Seegers wrote an open letter to Focus on the Family regarding their portrayal of Mormon Glenn Beck as a Christian in a recent Citizen Link article. The article has since been removed, but Pastor Seegers is still getting mail from Christians who view Mormonism as just another Christian denomination. Here is part one of his response regarding the real teachings of the Mormon church.

Since this topic is now entwined with the Presidency of the United States itself, it seems a good idea to revisit these two sermons, both found here at this link, from Dr. John MacArthur as to how God feels about abortion:

To kill that life is to “play God,” and as serious an affront as it is against the life itself, it is a more serious one against the God who is the Creator. That is why it is the ultimate, the ultimate decline in our culture. It is the ultimate evidence of the wretchedness of our culture. It is the ultimate proof of how deep our atheism runs, that we kill life that God creates.

We have usurped the sovereign throne and we are now God, and we will determine who lives and who dies. This is spilling over, my friends, into euthanasia which is coming, you better know, like a hurricane to wash away our whole old population because we are God now and we’ll decide. This kind of atheism will bring the wrath of God and we will see that tonight [in part Two]…

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. (Psalm 90:1-2)

Yet I do not advise that we end the year on a somber note. The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity. If we are good students in the school of life, there is much that the years have to teach us. But the Christian is more than a student, more than a philosopher. He is a believer, and the object of his faith makes the difference, the mighty difference.

Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation. TWS, 148

“Thank You, Father, for all You’ve taught me this past year. Thank You for the stretching experiences. Thank You for the privilege of serving You. Thank You for Your love and grace. Amen.”

(A.W. Tozer, Tozer on Christian Leadership, December 31)

As you’ll see in this post containing the latest response from RZIM they continue dismissing the results of study by Apprising Ministries into Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM) as well as that of others who belong to what RZIM calls “various ‘watch’ groups.”

Unfortunately RZIM is still equivocating with words as they go on defending Ravi Zacharias’ claim that Roman Catholic monk Henri Nouwen (1932-1996)—a superstar of CSM—was, “One of the greatest saints of recent memory.” But this does not involve a mere source quote because the statement clearly means Zacharias accepts Nouwen as a regenerated Christian.

Here’s a sad article about the teen virginity pledges that have been promoted so much in the last few years. Young people are not honoring them. Outside of the power of Christ in our lives, most of our vows against sin fall by the wayside. Our flesh is powerful and the culture around us is constantly parading around the supposed rewards of sin. Scripture tells us that the way that seems right to us, however, leads to death. Only when we are truly born again can we have the power of God in us to resist temptation.

There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that you may be able to bear it.

–I Corinthians 10:13

Apologist Ravi Zacharias continues to defend his praise of mystic Henri Nouwen as, “One of the greatest saints of recent memory.” And in addition RZIM is still spreading misinformation concerning the Contemplative/Centering Prayer Nouwen practiced and taught.

In this short post from Apprising Ministries are the facts as to where this antibiblical practice actually originated.

It is apparent that not all evangelicals  are onboard the steam train to Salt Lake City. Focus on the Family got so much flak for portraying Mormon Glenn Beck as a Christian believer in their latest Citizen Link, they were forced to pull the article. Maybe its time someone in the editorial department had some serious doctrinal questions posed to them.

“He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5)

Several times in the Scriptures the Lord hath said this. He has often repeated it to make our assurance doubly sure. Let us never harbor a doubt about it. In itself the promise is specially emphatic. In the Greek it has five negatives, each one definitely shutting out the possibility of the Lord’s ever leaving one of His people so that he can justly feel forsaken of his God. This priceless Scripture does not promise us exemption from trouble, but it does secure us against desertion. We may be called to traverse strange ways, but we shall always have our Lord’s company, assistance, and provision. We need not covet money, for we shall always have our God, and God is better than gold; His favor is better than fortune.

We ought surely to be content with such things as we have, for he who has God has more than all the world besides. What can we have beyond the Infinite? What more can we desire than almighty Goodness.

Come, my heart; if God says He will never leave thee nor forsake thee, be thou much in prayer for grace that thou mayest never leave thy Lord, nor even for a moment forsake His ways.

C.H. Spurgeon

The New York Times yesterday featured a church called Seabreeze in a story about debt-ridden churches now struggling to pay bills. Seabreeze is a Saddleback church plant that followed Rick Warren’s seeker plan for growth. The problem is, Warren-style circus church is not as lucrative as it once was, and now forclosures loom at Seabreeze and other big-mortgage churches nationwide.

While the church leadership decided to cancel church this Sunday, the 28th, so people could “spend time with their families”, the dance plans for New Year’s Eve are in full swing, pardon the pun. It will cost you, however. The church website says:

New Year’s Eve Dance

Wednesday, December 31, 8pm - 11pm. Join us for an evening of fun and fellowship at the Seabreeze Campus. A dance instructor will teach various dances including line dancing for an hour to get us going. Couples & singles welcome. Dress code is “Dressy”. Cost $25.00 per couple or $15.00 per person…

I can assure you that while the dancers will be “dressy” for shaking their fannies on the dance floor New Year’s Eve, the church members don’t bother with such niceties when it comes to the worship of the King of Kings on the Lord’s Day. That, people, would be legalism.

“I was trying to point out I’m not opposed to gays having their partnership. I’m opposed to gays using the term marriage for their relationship.” - Rick Warren

OneNewsNow reports that Rick Warren is not opposed to gay partnerships, only gay marriage. Mr. Warren, you see, is retooling his image and adding a shade of lavender in order to up his standing with the Obama Administration. His trip to the “Out of the Closet” thrift store in West Hollywood last week netted him some cheery press from TMZ.com that featured a photo of him cuddling close to a gay friend he met in the shop.

Next up: a Purpose-Driven Mardi Gras float come February 24, with Rick Warren tossing autographed copies of the Purpose-Driven Life to the transvestites screaming at the curbs. A. Larry Ross, are you taking notes?