President Obama and Same-Sex Marriage — The Dance Continues, by Albert Mohler

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Some predictions are rather safe to make. 2012 is almost certain to be a determinative year on the issue of same-sex marriage. Multiple courts appear poised to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] and, even more urgently, the appeal on California’s Proposition 8 at the Ninth Circuit U. S. Court of Appeals will set up a certain appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court. Given the facts of this case and the significance of the nation’s most populous state, the Supreme Court is almost certain to take the case. This sets the stage for the courts to make some determinative statement on same-sex marriage within the next several months — a decision that will go a long way toward setting the direction of the larger culture.

At the same time, the same-sex marriage issue will play a part in the 2012 presidential campaign. The reason for this is quite simple. The issue of same-sex marriage is about far more than marriage as a legal institution and about more than sexuality and personal autonomy. It is the great inescapable issue, and we will know in fairly short order what all the candidates believe about the issue.

Then again, maybe not. Read more

The Discipline of God

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by Mike Ratliff

3 ἀναλογίσασθε γὰρ τὸν τοιαύτην ὑπομεμενηκότα ὑπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν εἰς ἑαυτὸν ἀντιλογίαν, ἵνα μὴ κάμητε ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν ἐκλυόμενοι. (Hebrews 12:3 NA27)

3 Consider him who endured from sinners such opposition against himself that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:3 Possessing the Treasure New Testament V1)

I invite you to look back on the last Presidential election in the U.S. in which Barak Obama was elected and how so many of us were devastated by that. When I was born the President of the United States was Harry Truman. Yes, that’s right, I’m getting old, but it also means that I remember what its like to be both a non-Christian living in a Christian home under a Government that is not liberal enough for me, but too liberal for my parents and at other times having a Government that my was too liberal even for me causing social change in such unbalanced and inequitable ways that could only be explained by our leaders being bent on changing us into a Communist state. Remember, I grew up during The Cold War and had the Draft and Vietnam waiting for me as I went through High School. All through that, I was convinced that it really did not matter who was in The White House or who was in Congress or the Senate. They were all inept with an agenda that made sense to no one but them.

(click here to read this post)

Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report: Got $487.4M in Tax Money, Did 329,445 Abortions

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CNS News reports:

According to its latest annual report, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) received $487.4 million in tax dollars over a twelve-month period and performed 329,455 abortions.

In addition, the number of adoption referrals made by the organization continued to decline.

The latest annual report covers the period from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010, the PPFA’s fiscal year. The report states that the organization received “government health services grants and reimbursements” totaling $487.4 million.  Read more

Salt of the Earth

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The following article is taken from the January 2012 issue of Tabletalk Magazine and is from the “For the Church” column. The author, Phil Johnson, is executive director of Grace to You in Panorama City, California, and he edits most of John MacArthur’s major books and has contributed to numerous books himself. He is also the owner of the Pyromanics blog and other very useful websites.

“You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world…Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matt. 5:13–16

That text is often cited as if it were a mandate for the church to engage in political activism — lobbying, rallying voters, organizing protests, and harnessing the evangelical movement for political clout. I recently heard a well-known evangelical leader say, “We need to make our voices heard in the voting booth, or we’re not being salt and light the way Jesus commanded.”

That view is pervasive. Say the phrase “salt and light,” and the typical evangelical starts talking politics as if by Pavlovian reflex.

View article →

Those Who Bury The Gospel With Trash

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Apprising Ministries brings you a sermon excerpt from Charles Spurgeon in this post. Though he’s addressing the original cult of liberalism, the Lord has him also speaking down the corridor of time about the postmodern liberalism obscuring the Gospel in the attractional and emerging camps of today.

Response to "An Evangelical Statement on the Trinity"

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Recently, an “Evangelical” theologian William David Spencer has come up with a supposed “Evangelical Statement on the Trinity”, which can be found here. When the Statement is analyzed however, it can be seen that the Statement actually compromises the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity as codified in the Athanasian Creed.

Historically, the two extremes in thinking about God has been either to collapse the three into one, or to deny the one in favor of three. The former is seen in Modalism or Sabellianism, the error of the heretic T.D. Jakes. The latter is seen in the error of Arianism and Subordinationism, where the distinction between the persons of the Trinity are so accentuated that they the three persons are not considered as three coequal and coeternal persons. The Athanasius Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Definition of Chalcedon forge a path through these twin peaks of error, and so they give the Church a firm foundation of the Doctrine of the Trinity.

As we shall see however, this supposed “Evangelical Statement on the Trinity” in its promotion of egalitarianism compromises the historic orthodoxy doctrine of God. Without further to do, here is the full response. An excerpt:

Recently, William David Spencer, in consultation with many theologians, has drafted a document which he has called “An Evangelical Statement on the Trinity.” Is this document however what it proclaims to be? Is this statement truly Evangelical, in the historic sense of the term? More importantly, is it biblical?

In this article, I would like to analyze this statement as it is made available online. Is this a statement that Christians and especially Evangelicals should embrace, or should it be rejected?

The theological commentary of the Statement is arranged according to a few themes, and we will therefore in part one first address these themes in the order they are written, then give an apologetic for a more biblical view of the Trinity in part two.

[more]

Are Spiritual Disciplines the same as Spiritual Formation?

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by Mike Ratliff

[4] “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. [5] You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5 ESV)

The very last thing I want for my own Christian walk is to get off the narrow way and fall into some form of deception following after some sort of false teacher that promises a way to get closer to God if we only follow him (or her) only to find out that we are like the blind following after blind guides. Any who is truly born of God is in Christ. They are new creations. They were once dead in their trespasses and sins and now they have been made alive by God himself (Ephesians 2:1-9). All through the Bible we are commanded to draw close to God, to repent, to be holy even as our Heavenly Father is Holy, et cetera. This is for the mature in Christ, not the immature. How do we grow from new Christians into those who are those living sacrifices Paul spoke of in Romans 12:1?

(click here to read this post)

Rick Warren Tweets Trauma As The Root of Dogma?

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Rick Warren again casts stones at those who would judge and discern while maintaining the distinctives of faith…

“Psychological needs, not theological creeds, make people strident & judgmental.”

“Traumatic hurts create dogmatic hearts.”

Really?

Perhaps Rick Warren has it backwards…according to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, people who rightly judged false teachings were traumatized and murdered for being dogmatic about their Biblical faith.

See the rest at Watchers Lamp.

Normalizing Necromancy: Tempting the Church to Talk with the Dead

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Herescope reports:

Welcome to the year 2012—the much-publicized year of the Mayan writings that prophesy the End of the World as we know it. But what is our spiritual adversary really up to? And how does he attempt to accomplish his plan to infiltrate and overturn Biblical Christianity, replacing it with his “new” worldview—a worldview that will attempt to scientifically prove through quantum physics that “we are all God” because God is “in” everything—a new worldview that states that humanity is about to take a “quantum leap” into a newly evolved state of being (counterfeit of “born again”) that will usher in a “New Age” of world peace. The Devil’s “Christ” —Antichrist—will, of course, be the centerpiece of this counterfeit millennium—this New World Order.

Who would have believed even just a short time ago, that today’s professing evangelical Church would be buying into this New Age deception and exponentially imploding the way it is—literally catapulting a once biblical church into the heretical panentheistic teachings of the New Age? Read more

In Defense of the Gospel According to Jesus

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by Mike Ratliff

[35] Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. [36] But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. [37] All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. [38] For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. [39] And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. [40] For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:35-40 ESV)

I received a heads-up email from my friend Ken Silva today about this post. I read and reread the points on that page several times and, to be honest, I am convinced that the author has some basic theological problems. He does not understand God’s Sovereignty and because of this makes many category errors in his theological understanding, as you will see. The first and foremost one is that he takes verses like John 6:40 out of context to support his thesis, while ignoring the immediate context (which I gave you at the top of this post). As you can see, put back into context, John 6:40 is actually a subordinate clause of what Jesus was saying in that statement. The point of what Jesus was saying to those people who wanted to follow him, but he ran them off with hard preaching, was that those who are truly his disciples are those given to him by the Father and each and every one of them serve him as Lord in faith and each of them will be raised up on the last day.

(click here to read this post)

Martin Luther With The Reformation View Of The Roman Catholic Church

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We live in a time of timid tolerance and nauseating compromise with too many evangelical leaders scared of their own spiritual shadows. Influential pretending to be Protestants in the Southern Baptist Convention like Rick Warren and Beth Moore consider the Church of Rome as a Christian denomination.

I’ll look forward to them trying to prove their asinine assertion. Apprising Ministries now brings you the proper Christian perspective in this post concerning this despicable synagogue of Satan, which anathematized the Gospel of Jesus Christ.