Apprising Ministries has been warning you of the dangers associated with the spread of Counter Reformation contemplative spirituality within the mainstream of the visible church.
Just like the long apostate Roman Catholic Church, it leads one into religious superstitions. Here’s an important Biblical teaching to help you through one of the pious smokescreens you’ll often encounter today.
Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh speculates on how the Catholic Church became liberal. Thaddeus Baklinski of Lifesite News writes:
In the aftermath of the controversy stirred up by Rush Limbaugh’s comments on Georgetown University law student and pro-abortion activist Sandra Fluke, the talk show host speculated last week about how, in his view, the Catholic Church “got roped into the liberal socialist agenda.”
Apprising Ministries has been telling you about the sad results of mainstream evangelicalism seeking to find favor with the world rather then preaching the Gospel to it.
Here, as he often does, John MacArthur hits the target dead on. While we never seek to be offensive in our presentation, the Gospel is offensive to the unregenerate.
An upcoming event is being heavily promoted by New Apostolic Reformation/Dominionists. The Kingdom Economic Yearly Summit will be held on March 22-25 in Los Angeles. According to a promotional email sent on 16 March 2012 to The Elijah List:
It will be a global gathering of marketplace and ministry leaders who share an alignment with each other, the Kingdom of God, and the Order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7). Come join me and over 100 other leaders (king-priests) who are coming together in honor, humility and unity to help facilitate a “Kingdom Culture Quake” in the City of Angels, by ushering in God’s glory at the global gateway for arts, entertainment and media. This will be a powerful summit and God has some surprises in store.
As I read the email, three things jumped out: Continue reading
The Council for National Policy is a group of influential conservative leaders that get together to “cultivate ideas to help solve America’s growing problems.” The left-wing blog Politico asserts that political candidates turn to the CNP for money. According to Politico one conservative operative deemed the group “a self-validating echo chambers where they sit around four times a year and tell each other how great and important they are, and believe their own press.”
The Christian Post reports:
Two prominent theologians took opposite sides and debated the theological system of Calvinism, which is experiencing a resurgence in church culture, on “The Exchange” webshow this past week.
Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway Research, moderated the discussion between Roger Olson and Michael Horton, who both have recent books released on the topic of Calvinism, but taking opposing views on the system. Stetzer wrote in a Nov. 15, 2010 blog post that he thinks “there is a resurgence of Calvinism (particularly within evangelicalism),” and that it is among a younger population.
CNSNews reports:
All student health care plans covering female college students in the United States must include coverage for free voluntary sterilization surgery, the Department of Health and Human Services announced late Friday afternoon.
Women of college age who do not attend school will also get free sterilization coverage whether they are insured through an employer, their parents, or some form of government-subsidized plan.
Pastor Michael Youssef sheds light on how the Church has surrendered her birthright for a morsel of peace and acceptability. He writes:
The evangelical church is under constant threat to compromise its reliance on biblical truth. The human desire to be accepted, to not be seen as “outside the mainstream,” can be overwhelming. But that desire is our weakness, our downfall. It does not always immediately destroy the dam we build to protect the waters of truth, but instead it leads to tiny fissures that grow until destruction is inevitable.
David French of the National Review Online writes:
On a day when many evangelicals are perhaps flexing their political muscles in the aftermath of their decisive votes in Alabama and Mississippi, it’s worth pondering whether evangelicals’ actual cultural (rather than political) influence is waxing or waning. While reading Charles Murray’s new book, I came across insightful and disturbing discussions by Yuval Levin and Ross Douthat. Surveying the devastating decline in marriage and other critical social markers in the working class, Levin notes the failure of social conservatism outside the political sphere.
The bank branch is dead. Long live the bank branch?
…forget the teller windows and solid-wood desks of days gone by. Say hello to everything from banks that feature community rooms for free yoga classes to ones that feature video-conferencing stations. It’s all a matter of giving customers something more than a checking account with free checks – such pieces of paper are hardly necessary these days, anyhow — or a CD with a marginally higher rate.
With the ongoing circus that has devolved with the release of an ongoing program within Saddleback Valley Baptist Church in Orange County, California, fully under the control of its pastor Rick Warren, of an attempt at multi-faith interaction with the Muslim community, those of us who care deeply about the Church, the glory of God, and Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is disturbing on many levels. However, what should really concern us about the actions of Rick Warren and his people both at Saddleback Valley and his public relations folks is their attempt at obfuscation in order to confuse and cover up the truth. In other words, this is simply another form of lying and that is sin.
What’s a good recipe for box office and DVD sales success? It seems in 2011, pro-America sentiment mixed with conservative values and faith-centered themes equaled a hit.
This according to an annual study conducted by the Christian-focused entertainment advocacy group Movieguide, which found that in 2011, American audiences preferred movies with strong conservative content and values over movies with liberal or left-leaning values by an almost six-to-one margin.
The 760-page report claims that films with a conservative or pro-American edge, such as “Captain America,” “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” “Soul Surfer,” “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and “Battle: Los Angeles” raked in significantly more box office green than more liberal films like “Red State,” “Super 8,” “J. Edgar,” “Glee” and “Ides of March.”
A good friend sent me a link to an article about an analysis of true Christian Unity that used Dr. Martyn-Lloyd Jones 1962 speech on that topic given to British Christian leaders and how it was received to show first how Dr. Jones got it right and second, how the emergent, Purpose Driven, Elephant Room 2 folks of our day are no different than the man-centered liberals of Dr. Jones day in their rejection of the clear teaching from God’s Word that genuine Christian Unity is found not in organizations or groups or people just getting along, but in the work of God himself. The sermon below is by Geoff Thomas, a Welsh Reformed Baptist who is in full agreement with Dr. Martyn-Lloyd Jones on this issue.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39, ESV
We are preparing to work our way through Romans 8:18-39. I listened to John MacArthur preach through these verses at the Shepherd’s Conference last week and from that I learned two things. It is vital for each Christian to grasp the truths therein in order to stand firm in the midst of every conceivable attack our enemy can use against them. The second thing I learned is how these truths in this passage are like a dividing line. Those who come down on the side of God’s Sovereignty and the security of the believer within it have it right, while there are many who call themselves Christians who ignore these truths and teach the opposite leaving those who follow them in the bondage of fear and doubt and even believing in the sovereignty of Satan and his demons. There is another group of course, that would be all in the liberal camp who take the name of Christian for whatever reason, but believe in no historical Christian doctrines. No, they only believe in their own man-made “god” and “jesus” made in their own image. These magnificent truths are meant only for genuine believers not those who have never bowed the knee to the Lordship of Christ and are now walking in repentance having been saved by grace through faith as a gift from God himself.
Persecution of Christians in the United Kingdom seems to be intensifying. The Telegraph reports:
In a highly significant move, ministers will fight a case at the European Court of Human Rights in which two British women will seek to establish their right to display the cross.
It is the first time that the Government has been forced to state whether it backs the right of Christians to wear the symbol at work.
A document seen by The Sunday Telegraph discloses that ministers will argue that because it is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, employers can ban the wearing of the cross and sack workers who insist on doing so.
16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. Romans 8:16–17, NASB
Even through as Christians we are justified and are under no condemnation (Romans 8:1) it is also clearly taught in God’s Word that Christians are to live lives of repentance from the works of the flesh. There are some, such as those who call themselves “New Calvinists” who take the Doctrines of Grace and separate them from the great teachings of the Puritans such as John Owen, John Bunyan, Thomas Watson, Jonathan Edwards, et cetera that made it clear that in this life Christians are required to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). No, these “New Calvinists” such as Mark Driscoll and those who emulate him are antinomians in that they teach those who follow them that if they are in Christ, what they do in the flesh is merely for their enjoyment and has no eternal consequences. Really? Is that what God’s Word says?