Thursday, May 26, 2016
United Methodists Step Back from Child Sacrifice… and That’s Not Good
*Editorial Note: Pulpit & Pen continues in unrepentant sin and enabling of the ongoing sin of Jordan Hall. While it is my understanding that P&P does not plan to take down the content I contributed, any role I can play in reducing their traffic until they repent, I will. Thus I migrate this article here.
It’s instinctive for us to look favorably upon a situation where a markedly messed up and apostate group such as the United Methodist Church takes a step ostensibly in the direction of a better position than what they held before. But let’s check out some reasons why this is not necessarily a great reason to celebrate.
First, let’s note that 310 delegates voted against the resolution to stop supporting Roe v Wade. Let that sink in. I’m no mathematician, but it sure looks like 40% of the people that United Methodist churches across the USA selected to represent them at this official gathering think that it’s fantastic that 1.2 million+ tiny human beings are dismembered by edged weapons and poisoned by chemical weaponry per year.
Let’s be honest – this is not a complicated matter. Roe v Wade is judicial tyranny over the population and is a total perversion of the US Constitution. Even worse, it simply ignores biblical teaching vis-à-vis the image of God in human beings. It just isn’t unclear whether it is justifiable to poison a baby to death or rip her limbs from her body after sucking out her brain. This is evidence of a major divide within this supposed body of supposed Christians in which barely half their delegates have even a modicum of love for their preborn neighbors.
What is the appropriate response to when one has endorsed a position that has contributed to many, many deaths of many, many innocent victims?
Repentance. And we are all to bear fruit in keeping with our repentance. But what does this resolution actually accomplish? What are they going to do about this? To what actions of love and intervention are they going to call their people that would represent fruit? Is this just talk and hot air? What evidence could anyone produce that would show it is anything but?
What do you do with a church member who is pro-abortion and pro-tyranny? Church discipline. Not in the UMC, though. It’s just a matter of votes in this little suit-and-tie convention. Nothing to see here. Thousands and thousands of lost people, who don’t love their preborn neighbors and endorse their systematic legalised massacre, are church members in good standing. That’s a problem.
Imagine a vote in a similar convention, split 400-250, to affirm the Trinity and the eternal divinity of Jesus Christ. Do we just vote, announce the results, then break for lunch?
This fake repentance will make United Methodist individuals and churches harder to agitate and evangelise. Any confrontation of the sin of their denomination will now be met with a response that is plausible in their mind – “we just denounced abortion! Leave me alone.” It’s easier to draw dividing lines when the distance between truth and falsehood is wider. The lines have been blurred in the minds of many at this point. That’s why repentance done right is a shattering of the soul made public, not a respectable vote after which everyone shakes hands and smiles.
It’s instinctive for us to look favorably upon a situation where a markedly messed up and apostate group such as the United Methodist Church takes a step ostensibly in the direction of a better position than what they held before. But let’s check out some reasons why this is not necessarily a great reason to celebrate.
First, let’s note that 310 delegates voted against the resolution to stop supporting Roe v Wade. Let that sink in. I’m no mathematician, but it sure looks like 40% of the people that United Methodist churches across the USA selected to represent them at this official gathering think that it’s fantastic that 1.2 million+ tiny human beings are dismembered by edged weapons and poisoned by chemical weaponry per year.
Let’s be honest – this is not a complicated matter. Roe v Wade is judicial tyranny over the population and is a total perversion of the US Constitution. Even worse, it simply ignores biblical teaching vis-à-vis the image of God in human beings. It just isn’t unclear whether it is justifiable to poison a baby to death or rip her limbs from her body after sucking out her brain. This is evidence of a major divide within this supposed body of supposed Christians in which barely half their delegates have even a modicum of love for their preborn neighbors.
What is the appropriate response to when one has endorsed a position that has contributed to many, many deaths of many, many innocent victims?
Repentance. And we are all to bear fruit in keeping with our repentance. But what does this resolution actually accomplish? What are they going to do about this? To what actions of love and intervention are they going to call their people that would represent fruit? Is this just talk and hot air? What evidence could anyone produce that would show it is anything but?
What do you do with a church member who is pro-abortion and pro-tyranny? Church discipline. Not in the UMC, though. It’s just a matter of votes in this little suit-and-tie convention. Nothing to see here. Thousands and thousands of lost people, who don’t love their preborn neighbors and endorse their systematic legalised massacre, are church members in good standing. That’s a problem.
Delegates… voted… 425-268 to withdraw from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, whose pro-choice stance extends to late-term and sex-selective abortions.Note again how many delegates voted to stay in the RCRC, a wicked and horrible organisation if ever there were one. Note also the implicit bias in the article – that abortion in the case of late-term and sex-selective abortion is really really especially bad, whereas regular old abortion for the sake of convenience is not worth mentioning. I mean, sure it’s bad or something, but when babies are older, it’s much worse, right? It is terrible thinking, though of course this could just be the thoughts of the reporter slipping through.
Imagine a vote in a similar convention, split 400-250, to affirm the Trinity and the eternal divinity of Jesus Christ. Do we just vote, announce the results, then break for lunch?
This fake repentance will make United Methodist individuals and churches harder to agitate and evangelise. Any confrontation of the sin of their denomination will now be met with a response that is plausible in their mind – “we just denounced abortion! Leave me alone.” It’s easier to draw dividing lines when the distance between truth and falsehood is wider. The lines have been blurred in the minds of many at this point. That’s why repentance done right is a shattering of the soul made public, not a respectable vote after which everyone shakes hands and smiles.
“This is a necessary and good step towards affirming that the unborn are persons of sacred worth,” he said. “This also shows that the UMC is moving away from other liberal, declining, ‘mainline’ denominations to embrace a new faithful, global identity.”See? This is not repentance at all. You don’t take “steps” toward loving your neighbor and repenting of positions that are completely and horribly wrong. You repent and leave behind what you loved before. Again, this isn’t complex. You take up your cross. Follow Jesus. Love God. Love your neighbor. Stop playing church; people are dying and going to Hell. Don’t be fooled by fake contrition. Their very souls depend on it.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Major Charismatic Denomination Biffs It On LGBTQXYZ and Communion
*Editorial Note: Pulpit & Pen continues in unrepentant sin and enabling of the ongoing sin of Jordan Hall. While it is my understanding that P&P does not plan to take down the content I contributed, any role I can play in reducing their traffic until they repent, I will. Thus I migrate this article here.
If we can give some segments of the charismatic Christianoid world credit for anything, it’s their history of standing firm against the acceptance of the invasion of a militant homosexuality in our culture and the church. Dr. Michael Brown, a well-known figurehead of the charismatic movement, and popular author and writer at CharismaMag, has been very outspoken about this issue. Brown debated self-described “gay Christian” Matthew Vines, one of the leading false teachers of “gay Christian” theology, in which he stated:
This document, thus titled, was ostensibly intended to teach how to pastor people who choose to self-identify by their preferred sex partner(s) (rather than, say, as a follower of Jesus Christ). Already we have a problem – Vineyard USA is implicitly granting one of the premises of the gay agenda. Since the gay agenda has experienced such success in our culture as to make it common parlance, however, we shouldn’t make too much of this, though it represents a missed opportunity. There are bigger fish to fry, though.
Vineyard USA plays with fire as they explicitly endorse open communion, meaning that non-members can partake of the Lord’s Table whenever everyone has taken a break from
experiencing anointed worshiprolling around on the floor, making animal noises, and laughing uncontrollably. The Lord takes abuses of the Lord’s Table celebration pretty seriously, given His words in 1 Corinthians 11, but this position paper barely scratches the surface in giving proper warnings. Following a quote from John Wesley, the paper states:
Let’s grant hypothetically that God does not in fact bring down special wrath on those who take the Table and yet are in knowing and deliberate sin. When you know that someone is living in blatant rejection of the Word of God (for example, by living the gay lifestyle and identifying as such) but they want to come and take the Table anyway, that’s the problem – you are letting them pretend to be Christians, reconciled to God, in a very real and obvious way, when in fact they stand under His wrath and are not reconciled to God. You’re aiding and abetting their self-deception. Where is the call to repentance? Where is the sharing of the Gospel? How will they know they can be set free from this slavery, this captivity? The Lord’s Table is a spiritual reality that creates unity among the Body of Christ, and all Vineyard requires is a sense that one is a sinner? How about a hatred for sin that is an infallible product of the new birth?
Let me try to have some compassion here – I don’t want to pretend that it would necessarily be emotionally easy for a same-sex couple to break up. They have a twisted definition of love, yes, but their affections they have mistaken for love can doubtless be a strong emotional bond (though based on lies). The emotional angst produced in such a way would qualify as a trial and tribulation. What someone in a true biblical oversight role should do in this case would be to remind the person that such difficulties are meant to create perseverance and endurance: James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5. It’s meant to make them like Jesus and indeed serve as evidence of their salvation: Romans 6:11-18, 1 Peter 2:16, 2 Peter 1:10.
Also, while it may be emotionally trying to break up with one’s partner (whether a partner in same-sex or in heterosexual immorality), it’s not actually that hard. It’s unambiguous – move out. Call them to repent as you have done. If they won’t repent and are a temptation, stop seeing them. Block them on phone, Facebook, etc if necessary. This is a one-time event that is then perpetuated by staying away from that person.
But this paper gives no mention of how to actually shepherd these folks, but rather it jumps straight into a discussion of Lord’s Table theology without getting into the real nitty-gritty. Glaring and obvious matters which were definitely visible in this culture of death by 2014 are conspicuous by their absence. What does repentance look like? How can the person kill their sin consistently? How should they self-identify to other people, since calling oneself by one’s sinful propensities is inappropriate and unbiblical? Must they stop going to bars, being promiscuous, having gay sex, etc? What if they have been living together and they need to find other living quarters because they want to start actively hating their sin? What about transgender stuff? What about transvestism? What about same-sex couples that have adopted children?
That sort of content would be really helpful for the folks who call themselves LTBQXYZ. It’s a shame that a so-called “position paper” mostly serves to lead astray on such an important matter, when they expend so much energy on making sure they have big fancy sound systems and stages so their “anointed” heroes can attract thousands to hear gibberish they mutter into the microphones without an interpreter present.
If we can give some segments of the charismatic Christianoid world credit for anything, it’s their history of standing firm against the acceptance of the invasion of a militant homosexuality in our culture and the church. Dr. Michael Brown, a well-known figurehead of the charismatic movement, and popular author and writer at CharismaMag, has been very outspoken about this issue. Brown debated self-described “gay Christian” Matthew Vines, one of the leading false teachers of “gay Christian” theology, in which he stated:
When Moses wrote that it is an abomination for a man to have sex with another man, he didn’t add, “unless they’re committed to each other long term.”Brown was a major leader in the Brownsville Revival, a counterfeit revival within the Assemblies of God. However, another major denomination, Vineyard USA, who broke away from the Calvary Chapel in the 80’s, has taken a very interesting position on sodomites in the Church. In a position paper, titled Pastoring LGBT Persons, put out by the denomination states the following regarding Communion:
Paul’s exhortation to the Vineyard today would be to discern the body, and to make sure to include everyone Christ includes. This means that drug addicts and alcoholics that haven’t kicked the habit, gays and lesbians that haven’t left the lifestyle, and divorced adulterers that are still with their mistresses are all welcome at the table if they sincerely desire to turn toward Jesus and place their lives under the faucet of God’s grace. What better place is there to go for someone trapped in sin and deceived by its sickness than the table of our Lord?I don’t know about you, but I can think of a better place to go for someone like that – flat on one’s face in humble repentance at the foot of the cross.
This document, thus titled, was ostensibly intended to teach how to pastor people who choose to self-identify by their preferred sex partner(s) (rather than, say, as a follower of Jesus Christ). Already we have a problem – Vineyard USA is implicitly granting one of the premises of the gay agenda. Since the gay agenda has experienced such success in our culture as to make it common parlance, however, we shouldn’t make too much of this, though it represents a missed opportunity. There are bigger fish to fry, though.
Vineyard USA plays with fire as they explicitly endorse open communion, meaning that non-members can partake of the Lord’s Table whenever everyone has taken a break from
The only fitness required is “…a sense of our utter sinfulness.” No other moral qualification is demanded before receiving communion.This is errant Lord’s Table theology, but it points to something more fundamental and damnably dangerous. This is a paper about how to pastor LGBTQXYZ people, in a segment designed to teach how to handle communion with such folks. We must ask: How would the leadership of the church know that so-and-so is gay and living the gay lifestyle? The only way to know would be that the person has made it known, right? If the leadership were unaware, then this section (and indeed, the whole paper) is unnecessary and inapplicable. If they don’t know, then they just allow anyone to approach the Table (and let his blood be on his own head) and that’s that. But we are talking about whether known gay people can approach the Table.
Let’s grant hypothetically that God does not in fact bring down special wrath on those who take the Table and yet are in knowing and deliberate sin. When you know that someone is living in blatant rejection of the Word of God (for example, by living the gay lifestyle and identifying as such) but they want to come and take the Table anyway, that’s the problem – you are letting them pretend to be Christians, reconciled to God, in a very real and obvious way, when in fact they stand under His wrath and are not reconciled to God. You’re aiding and abetting their self-deception. Where is the call to repentance? Where is the sharing of the Gospel? How will they know they can be set free from this slavery, this captivity? The Lord’s Table is a spiritual reality that creates unity among the Body of Christ, and all Vineyard requires is a sense that one is a sinner? How about a hatred for sin that is an infallible product of the new birth?
Let me try to have some compassion here – I don’t want to pretend that it would necessarily be emotionally easy for a same-sex couple to break up. They have a twisted definition of love, yes, but their affections they have mistaken for love can doubtless be a strong emotional bond (though based on lies). The emotional angst produced in such a way would qualify as a trial and tribulation. What someone in a true biblical oversight role should do in this case would be to remind the person that such difficulties are meant to create perseverance and endurance: James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5. It’s meant to make them like Jesus and indeed serve as evidence of their salvation: Romans 6:11-18, 1 Peter 2:16, 2 Peter 1:10.
Also, while it may be emotionally trying to break up with one’s partner (whether a partner in same-sex or in heterosexual immorality), it’s not actually that hard. It’s unambiguous – move out. Call them to repent as you have done. If they won’t repent and are a temptation, stop seeing them. Block them on phone, Facebook, etc if necessary. This is a one-time event that is then perpetuated by staying away from that person.
But this paper gives no mention of how to actually shepherd these folks, but rather it jumps straight into a discussion of Lord’s Table theology without getting into the real nitty-gritty. Glaring and obvious matters which were definitely visible in this culture of death by 2014 are conspicuous by their absence. What does repentance look like? How can the person kill their sin consistently? How should they self-identify to other people, since calling oneself by one’s sinful propensities is inappropriate and unbiblical? Must they stop going to bars, being promiscuous, having gay sex, etc? What if they have been living together and they need to find other living quarters because they want to start actively hating their sin? What about transgender stuff? What about transvestism? What about same-sex couples that have adopted children?
That sort of content would be really helpful for the folks who call themselves LTBQXYZ. It’s a shame that a so-called “position paper” mostly serves to lead astray on such an important matter, when they expend so much energy on making sure they have big fancy sound systems and stages so their “anointed” heroes can attract thousands to hear gibberish they mutter into the microphones without an interpreter present.
Monday, May 23, 2016
The Pro-Life Governor Just Out-Pro-Lifed the Legislature
(SB1552) was a predictable, cute show that the two factions of the pro-choice anti-righteousness conglomerate — pro-abortion and pro-regulation (aka “pro-life”) — slapped together to distract everyone from the real problem and its real solution.
Read more...
Read more...
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
There Just Isn't Any Debate
Quite the fracas over at the Reformed Pub (note that it's a private group) over the last day or so. It's hard to imagine how they have time to discuss real things between all the posts about beards, beers, and Battlestar Galactica, but they get around to it now and then. Unfortunately, when they do and when errbody doesn't bend pretty much immediately to the whims and preferences of the admins, they get booted. This is a pattern with the RPub leadership, of which they ought to be ashamed.
But imagine my relief when, upon reviewing the thread, not a single accusation or question isn't answered if only one will take a little time to review all the information and documentation at www.churchrepent.com/blanchard
And that goes for the thread on Francis Turretin's wall as well.
Either people are misinformed, uninformed, or hopelessly biased. There's not an actual debate happening out there somehow.
But imagine my relief when, upon reviewing the thread, not a single accusation or question isn't answered if only one will take a little time to review all the information and documentation at www.churchrepent.com/blanchard
And that goes for the thread on Francis Turretin's wall as well.
Either people are misinformed, uninformed, or hopelessly biased. There's not an actual debate happening out there somehow.
Monday, May 09, 2016
Yarbrough & Sons and First Baptist Church of Blanchard, OK Must Repent
Abolitionists exhort Darren Yarbrough, owner of Yarbrough & Sons Heat and Air, as well as First Baptist Church of Blanchard, OK, to repent.
Here is the explanation of the events leading up to this call to repentance.
Here is the explanation of the aftermath.
Soli Deo Gloria
Here is the explanation of the events leading up to this call to repentance.
Here is the explanation of the aftermath.
Soli Deo Gloria