Commentary, analysis and opinion.

Repentance and Learning to Hate Sin

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“Satan, the enemy of God and all of God’s people, wants you to believe his lie: “Confessing your sin brings shame upon you and you must hide it at all costs.” We’re also reluctant to confess and to repent because we understand that sin is a reproach to us, since we bear the image of God. Yet, the only way to true repentance is confession. Confession is honesty before God and people. Confession of sin is the beginning of repentance, and the beginning of confession is learning to hate sin.”

(Kent Butterfield – Table Talk Magazine)  Repentance—a strong word. Even many Bible believing pastors hesitate to use the word, thinking it will come across as abrasive and will make people immediately uncomfortable…. Continue reading →

Is the Pope on a Marxist Mission?

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In 2013, Pope Francis used this term accompanied by the phrase “dung of the devil.” In short, where the liberal socialists praised him for not mincing his words, others caught on to what he was up to: unfettered Marxism, coming straight out of his mouth. His 84-page apostolic exhortation calls for people to fight global inequality and poverty, and to counter this “new tyranny.”

(Search Berg – Reformation Charlotte)  In the latest news, the Pope donated a whopping $500,000 for the migrants who are stranded in Mexico. In 2018, he donated his car for search and rescue charity. He also donated $1000,000 to the victims of the earthquake in Indonesia. Continue reading →

Chicago Radio Host & a Former Bodyguard Say James MacDonald Asked Them to Arrange Murders

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“When I heard that (MacDonald) was crazy enough to ask someone else to basically do the same thing . . . I figured, okay, this guy’s unhinged. This is a problem. It’s a pattern here.” 

(Julie Roys)  Chicago radio personality, Mancow Muller, says disgraced megachurch pastor, James MacDonald, asked him to find a hitman to kill someone. MacDonald’s former bodyguard is making a similar claim.

Muller said MacDonald— a celebrity pastor who was fired from Harvest Bible Chapel in February—asked him at least twice in 2018 if Muller knew a hitman MacDonald could hire. Muller said he thought MacDonald was joking at first. But during a conversation in December, Muller said it became clear to him that MacDonald was “really serious.”

Similarly, Emmanuel “Manny” Bucur, a deacon at Harvest and former confidant and volunteer bodyguard of MacDonald’s, said MacDonald asked him in 2015 to kill MacDonald’s former son-in-law. Bucur added that MacDonald offered to help him dispose of the body.

Bucur said he was upset by the request but didn’t report it because he figured MacDonald had spoken in anger and simply had a momentary lapse in judgment. Plus, Bucur said he has four daughters and understood MacDonald’s rage toward a man who had allegedly hurt his daughter.

Bucur agreed to tell his story anonymously on a podcast of Muller’s, which was recorded on Thursday but has not yet aired. Bucur said during the recording session, he heard Muller’s story for the first time and hours later, decided to go on the record with me.  View article →

Related

Podcast (short) Mancow and the Harvest Scandal 

Research

James MacDonald

The Epidemic Of A Seared Conscience

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“How can a culture sustain moral uprightness from generation to generation when even the Church, that instrument of God meant to inform and when necessary, correct culture, begins to emulate the culture? When a society becomes seared in conscience, when a critical mass of people begin to think and advocate for evil under the guise of good, and exchange light for darkness, their minds become seared as with a branding iron and the resultant scar tissue renders them incapable of returning to correct thinking and behavior absent a radical surgery.”  

(Mike Spaulding – News With Views)   Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read. Continue reading →

Top 10 Ways to Amend the ‘Equality Act’

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Let’s see an amendment that upholds religious liberty– “Nothing in this act will infringe upon the First Amendment religious freedom rights of any citizen, nor bar RFRA (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) as a defense for a cause of action.” 

(Linda Harvey – Mission:America)  Well, they did it.

Nancy’s Pelosi’s rogue lawmakers passed the anti-Christian, anti-health, anti-morality, anti-child “Equality Act” ( H.R. 5). And so now it heads to the Senate.

Where timid, compromised Republicans wait to offer amendments they can hide behind. We can hope Mitch McConnell never brings this bill to the floor. Continue reading →

Dear Christian: STOP IT!!

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“If we Christians can speak things into existence, using the power of our words, why don’t we just do it? Why do we have so many “experts” who must go into elaborate detail to explain it? Why are there 90 million books, seminars and sermons that teach this — shouldn’t they just “speak it into existence?” When did Christians stop noticing that this is actually witchcraft? Does the phrase “casting spells” ring a bell?”

(Steven Kozar – Messed Up Church)  There are lots of things that Christians believe that are not in the Bible.  At all. Continue reading →

Dissecting Another Anti-Discernment Hit-Piece

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The fouls are against those who falsely teach God’s word. The rest of this point is yet another personal attack upon people you could not possibly know. You have no idea what the people you are maligning hunger for sir. I considered summarizing your drawn out points but it is important that people see the vitriol and hate you are trafficking in here. Unintended or not.

(Anthony Wade – 8:28 Ministries)  Beloved, we can expect as the end times deepen that the apostate church will lash out more and more at those who seek to speak the truth so that some of their followers may come out of the darkness before it is too late. We can also expect that even well intended believers will contribute to this as the devil wants to silence truth at all costs. The above piece is written by a pastor named Eric Davis from Wyoming, writing on a website called The Cripplegate. I have never dealt with this site but some of the cursory examination seems solid, which is why this article was so disappointing. Perhaps Pastor Davis experienced some uncalled for criticism or perhaps he is guilty of the armchair reactionary judgment he seems so hot to speak against…. Continue reading →

So, Who’s Really Anti-Science?

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“If the baby is just part of her body, why does her body know, when she becomes pregnant, to turn off a key pathway in her immune system, to make sure her body doesn’t attack the baby as foreign? Why would part of her body potentially be viewed as foreign?”

(Ken Ham – Answers In Genesis)  Christine Quinn, a board member of the National Institute for Reproductive Health and a former Democratic politician, recently appeared on a CNN TV show with host Chris Cuomo (brother to Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York who recently signed a bill into law that allows for abortion up until the time of a baby’s birth). She appeared opposite Rick Santorum, a former US senator, to discuss the “heartbeat bill” that recently passed in Georgia that makes abortion illegal after a baby’s heartbeat can be detected. During her heated exchanged with Santorum, she stated, Continue reading →

Women Should Be Silent in the Church Assembly

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“So, you know. We’re all sexist misogynists and stuff. Suddenly, Beth Moore’s bony, manicured finger is pointing at all of us with accusations of bigotry for holding to positions that up until 5 minutes ago we all held. The thing about the Great Awokening is that those who sleep in get beaten.”

(JD Hall – Pulpit & Pen)  We warned you for years that Beth Moore would not be content preaching to women. Yet, pastors – yes, men who should have known better – continued to lend her a platform to speak. It started small with Bible studies for women. Then, it became a Sunday School class for both men and women. Then, her influence grew to conferences where both genders were invited to attend. But most recently, Moore began to speak from the pulpit in once-conservative Southern Baptist churches. Continue reading →

Why was FBI so wrong in Trump-Russia wiretap warrant?

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“Large parts of the publicly-released version of the application are blacked out. (Trump is said to be considering releasing some of the currently redacted sections.) There are sentences with a word blacked out. There are entire sentences blacked out. There are entire paragraphs and entire pages blacked out. All of that makes the application difficult to read and fully understand.  Nevertheless, it is still possible to make out just how grossly wrong the FBI was.”

(Byron York – Washington Examiner)  A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI’s secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page….. Continue reading →

Journalism is Dead—Long Live the Media!

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“Fake news” is not just a Trump talking point or obsession. It is a factual account of what journalism has become—so often an arm of the progressive movement and an incestuous and inbred group of New York and Washington coastal elite mediocrities, or what former Obama official Ben Rhodes cynically wrote off as an “echo chamber” of greenhorn know-nothings.

(Victor Davis Hanson – American Greatness)   There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on. Continue reading →

An Open heaven – opening up oneself to a strong delusion at Bethel Redding

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“And it’s suddenly, like, clay or Play-Doh. And He starts molding it and shaping it, and I’m like, ‘Jesus, what is He doing? What’s He making? What is He making?’ And all of the sudden I see—He makes me! I’m there—on the table. And He reaches over; and He grabs this box and brings it over, and He sets me inside the box. And, you know those little jewelry boxes that little girls have; where you open it up and it plays music, and the little ballerina, like, twirls? Hello? Do you know what I’m talking about? (laughs) No? …”

(Mike Oppenheimer – Let US Reason)  We have seen these revivals over the last 25 plus years. It is more accurate to say it is revivalism – meaning, it hypes people up to think something spiritual is actually taking place when it is false doctrine and practices being introduced for them to believe and live by. Continue reading →

What churches should know about YWAM Part 1: A sketchy theological heritage

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“The heretical Moral Government teaching is largely in YWAM’s past. Yet Moral Government teaching morphed into another heterodox doctrine promoted within YWAM today, known as “open theism.” What is open theism? It entails the belief that God does not exhaustively know all of the future. Specifically, he doesn’t know what decisions human beings will choose to make acting out of their free wills. In other words, God’s knowledge is limited by humankind’s free moral choice. He cannot 100 percent predict what any free moral agent will do ahead of time.”

(Holly Pivec – Spirit of Error)  This post is the first in a series on the influential Christian missions organization Youth With a Mission (YWAM), with a focus on its relationship to the controversial New Apostolic Reformation movement. YWAM was founded in 1960 by Loren Cunningham as a way to deploy young people as missionaries throughout the world…. Continue reading →

Trend-Setting of the LGBTQ in Media

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“Let’s be real here – Drag Queen Vanessa Vanjie is not Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster, oh no, instead he is (the man under the woman’s clothing and make-up) actually a child’s worst nightmare, a monster dressed with the intent to decimate the soul of a child by perpetrating a lie.”

(Pulpit & Pen)  Anyone who knows me personally knows I am not a trend-setter by any stretch of the imagination. A close look in my clothes closet is evident of that fact. However, I do pay close attention to groups who are in the business of setting trends. Continue reading →

When Christians Hide Their Light

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“The glorious Creator of the universe has regenerated them, He has caused them to be made alive after they were dead, men and women walking for His glory and their good, and has called them to be His ambassadors to shine the light of Christ everywhere they go, and yet we tend to shy away and hide this incredible miracle God has done to us. We are literally walking miracles, having experienced the greatest miracle we could ever imagine, and sometimes we are tempted to keep that reality to ourselves.”

(Jordan Standridge – The Cripplegate)  “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.” Matthew 5:14-15 Continue reading →

Will political correctness kill classic movies?

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“What about James Bond’s early adventures, in which 007 treated female characters in a sexist fashion? Even a comedy classic such as 1959’s “Some Like It Hot,” featuring two men dressed in drag, could be insensitive given modern mores.”

(Christian Toto – The Hill)  The rise of political correctness can be seen across movie screens this weekend.

“The Hustle,” a gender-swap remake of 1988’s “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” rails against the patriarchy between sight gags. “Avengers: Endgame” shoehorns a minor gay character into the story as a super-virtue-signal. “Long Shot” shows Seth Rogen apologizing for the United States bombing Japan to help end World War II. Continue reading →

Female Pastors Are a Threat To The Church

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“The Church is organized for the purpose of proclaiming and defending the truth of the gospel. Paul calls the House of God the stylos and hedraiōma of the Church. These two words point to the fact that the Church is the support of the truth in the world. The people of God are the guardians of the gospel, protecting its truth from error. That is why God has organized his church to be led by male elders.”

 

(Rob Nelson – Reformation Charlotte)  “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”  2 Timothy 2:12

The Bible does not allow women to function in the role of eldership. Women are not permitted to be pastors or hold a role of authority over men in the Church. The bible is crystal clear on this issue. Continue reading →

As the SBC Falls Apart Before Our Eyes, Denomination Leaders Asleep

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“Beth Moore, in her usual fashion completely twists the Scripture and displays a profound lack of biblical comprehension as she suggests that those who hold the complementarian position must also affirm women wearing head coverings and disallow jewelry.”

(Jeff Maples – Reformation Charlotte) The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is no doubt in serious trouble. Faced with the onslaught of social justice, feminism, LGBT-inclusion, and other aberrant teachings and practices, the SBC is no longer a bastion of conservative and sound doctrine, but a hotbed of liberalism, Democrat politics, and a growing source for anti-Christian theology. Continue reading →

Colorado High School Shooting Suspect Railed Against Christians and Trump, Shared Leftist Content

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“In this Colorado case, we have a young man whose brain was apparently full of left-wing ideas, including the notion that Christians ‘hate’ gay people.  He then decided to team up with a classmate to shoot as many people he could at his high school.  Is it time for liberals to tone down their rhetoric and incitement?”  

(Guy Benson – Townhall)  Earlier this week, two teenagers perpetrated a premeditated mass shooting at their charter school in suburban Denver.  They murdered one of their classmates, a hero who rushed his killer in an effort to stop the slaughter, and wounded eight more…. Continue reading →

What Christians Face in a Neo-Marxist World

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Much of this underlying animus relates to sexual identity politics that seek to remake family norms and fashion a new, non-traditional culture. Progressives say Christianity has  caused suicides among LGBTQIA youths, without evidence or adequate controls for other social and emotional factors and cultural nuances. All such cases are tragic. Any persecution of people is un-Christian and abhorrent. But simplistically assigning blame to a particular belief system or culture merely reverses the hate.

(Alfred Kentigern Siewers – American Thinker)  Two weeks ago, an elderly abbot of a Russian Orthodox Monastery in the U.S. Pacific Northwest was punched in the head while pumping gas.

The assailant, unknown to him, reportedly zeroed in on the cross he was wearing and then said, “How’s Trump?” Continue reading →

Is James MacDonald Planning a Comeback?

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“Last week, Harvest’s elder board and church leadership team reported that Harvest’s mortgage lender had refused to allow the church to release any assets to MacDonald, including intellectual property, physical property, or cash. The board added that its lender’s decision nullified a previous separation agreement the church had signed with MacDonald.”

(Julie Roys)  Is recently-fired Harvest Bible Chapel founder, James MacDonald, planning a comeback? Continue reading →

Democrats Face a Bleak Post-Mueller Landscape

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“So what really explains the furor now directed at Barr?  One, progressives are terrified that a number of Trump’s critics — Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe — may soon be indicted. They apparently seek to preempt such indictments by attacking Barr, a seemingly no-nonsense prosecutor who will likely follow up on any criminal referrals from any inspector general that reach his desk.”

(Victor Davis Hanson – Real Clear Politics)  Democrats have grown infuriated by Attorney General William Barr’s indifference to their hysteria over the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

Barr recently released a brief summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusions that Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians to warp the 2016 election….. Continue reading →

Beth Moore Launches Tirade Against Biblical Womanhood

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“What exactly is she afraid of? Of course, the claim is absurd beyond any sane person’s mental capacity. Strachan tweeted something that the Church has historically and biblically held to since Christ instituted it — biblical complementarianism.”

(Jeff Maples – Reformation Charlotte)  Biblical womanhood is a rare commodity these days. In a #metoo age of feminism, women’s rights, and a crusade against masculinity, one place we’d expect to find adherence to God’s design for sexuality and gender roles is in the Church…. Continue reading →

Progressive Christianity: Rejecting The Bible But Clinging To The Title Of Christian

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“For some, it’s a strategy to destroy Christianity from within by infiltrating the church and replacing it with a counterfeit theology.”

(Triablogue)  Two recent events have drawn attention to progressive Christianity: the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg and the death of Rachel Held Evans. A fundamental problem with progressive Christianity is that it’s just plain dumb. So-called progressive Christians recite the same dog-earned script as atheists. They recycle all the same hackneyed objections to the Bible that they copied from atheists. In that respect, I have nothing to say to a progressive Christian that I haven’t said to their atheist mentors and soulmates.

Continue reading →