“Rebellion” - Part 3

While apostasy at the individual level may be hard to spot, it is often the case that such un-noticed lack of discernment grows and grows and become a full fledged assault on Christ.  This is rarely in the apostate’s written or spoken theology, but in their supposed piety.  Instead of seeking the godly wisdom of friends who are well-grounded in Scripture and faithful to its sole sufficiency, authority, infallibility and inerrancy, these people seek instead human wisdom and only have conversations with those who hold the same beliefs.  These apostates do not want to have any confrontation with people who hold firm to historic, orthodox Christianity but are more than willing to have conversations with others who reject Christ and His teachings.

Thus when individuals who commit apostasy join together in friendship, we then have a more visible, more tangible apostate movement.  As these individuals as a group have a larger and larger voice within society’s religious communities, they speak and write more that their apostasy becomes a matter of public record.  No longer is their rejection of Christ in behavior only visible to the careful discerning eye, but now in platform / round-table talks and in written form.

If you look closely enough, such whole-sale apostasy has been present in our society since the early church and has now morphed itself into today’s postmodern culture.  To look back at the fallen states of Christ’s blood-bought church is a disappointing thing to do, but I feel that it is imperative that we call it what it was and still is: apostasy.  Let us remember & repent of the 4 areas of apostasy that have developed over the past two millennia:

Arianism

In the 4th century church, a presbyter name Arius began teaching that there was a time when Jesus did not exist and that he had been created by God–a view which we know as Arianism.  Athanasius of Alexandria, a Christian bishop, opposed this un-biblical view of the incarnation of Christ, and the matter was of such importance to the universal church that Athanasius brought the matter to the First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.).  The rejection of Christ’s deity by Arius and his followers required an outright declaration of the apostasy of Arian and such teaching.  The heart and effort of Athanasius will forever be acknowledged and remembered by Christians all over the world in one of the first historic creeds of the church: the Nicene Creed.

Roman Catholicism

While there was only one church in the early years after Christ, the apostasy of Roman Catholicism lived for over 1500 years until the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.  Martin Luther more-less officially kickstarted the protest against the the apostate Church of Rome when he published his 95 Theses which opposed the Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences.  Furthermore, church beliefs and practices attacked by Protestant reformers included purgatory, particular judgment, devotion to Mary, intercession of the saints, most of the sacraments, and authority of the Pope as the head of the church.  It caused much divide within Roman Catholicism, resulting in a split of the church into Reformed church traditions.

Reformation theology rejected Roman Catholicism in 3 major principles:

• Sola Scriptura–sole authority of Scripture,
• Sola Fide, Sola Gratia–justification by faith alone, by grace alone
• and the priesthood of all believers

As a result of these principles, the Reformers rejected the authority of the Pope, the merit of good works, indulgences, the mediation of Mary and the Saints, all but the two sacraments instituted by Christ (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper), the doctrine of transubstantiation, the mass as a sacrifice, purgatory, prayers for the dead, confessions to a priest, the use of Latin in the services, and all the paraphernalia that expressed these ideas. (Theopedia)

Seventh Day Adventism

More recently, the apostasy of the Seventh Day Adventist Church caused significant uproar by many Protestants during the 19th century.  You can read about the history of the movement here, but in short, the followers of SDA believe God’s Word, Trinity, Christ and saving grace, but they also believe many unbiblical teachings & deny many biblical doctrines.  I have found this to be a good summary of the apostasy of the SDA:

Aberrant

1. Our sins will ultimately be placed on Satan - The Great Controversy, p. 422, 485.
2. Jesus is Michael the Archangel.
3. Worship must be done on Saturday (the Sabbath).
4. On October 22, 1844 Jesus entered the second and last phase of his atoning work.
5. Investigative Judgment - the fate of all people will be decided based upon this event in the future.
6. The dead do not exist anymore — soul sleep.
7. The wicked are annihilated.
8. Ellen G. White, the “founder” of Seventh Day Adventism, was a messenger from God gifted with the spirit of prophecy.
9. There is a sanctuary in heaven where Jesus carries out his mediatorial work.

Denials

1. Denies the doctrine of predestination
2. Denies baptism by sprinkling
3. Denies infant baptism.
4. Denies the immortality of the soul.
5. Denies the eternality of hell fire.
6. Denies any use of alcohol (as a drink) or tobacco.

Today, little is said or written against the SDA’s teachings as it is known fact that Reformed evangelicals do not consider Seventh Day Adventism to be a true church.  While individuals may be Christians as they put their faith in Christ as their Lord and Savior, the validity of the church is not even a question anymore.  (You know how far a church has fallen if John MacArthur doesn’t even thump his Bible anymore in disgust against SDAs!)

Which now brings us to the apostasy that many Reformers today, including John MacArthur, are thumping their Bibles over:

Postmodernism & the Emerging Church Movement

I have blogged extensively in the past about how scared I am to see followers of this movement fall away from historic Christian orthodoxy, and right now, I am just tired and sick to the stomach by the truth war that is raging before our eyes.  The rejection of Christ and His Word can be seen as a three-fold apostasy:

1. It fosters contempt for authority.
2. It breeds doubt about the perspicuity of Scripture.
3. It sows confusion about the mission of the church.

My friend and mentor, Pastor Ken Silva, has devoted most of his ministry to defending the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.  I join him in this fight for biblical truth in our piety and written/spoken theology: striving to reach out to our neighbors with the love of Christ without selling out, to contend for the faith and contextualize it so that our culture would come to know and worship Christ in spirit and in truth.

In closing, I want to share with you an excerpt from MacArthur’s new book that is coming out next year, titled “The Truth War”:

Many self-styled evangelicals today are openly questioning whether such a thing as truth even exists. Others suppose that even if truth does exist, we can’t be sure what it is, so it can’t really matter much. This type of thinking is epidemic, even among some of the evangelical movement’s most popular authors and spokespersons. Some flatly refuse to stand for anything because they have decided that even Scripture isn’t really clear enough to argue about.

Except for the massive scale on which such thinking has attained popularity today, and the way it is seeping into the church, such ideas themselves are really nothing new or particularly shocking. It is exactly the same attitude with which Pilate summarily dismissed Christ: “What is truth?” (John 18:38) 

Certain avant-garde evangelicals sometimes act as if the demise of certainty is a dramatic new intellectual development, rather than seeing it for what it actually is: an echo of the old unbelief. It is unbelief cloaked in a religious disguise and seeking legitimacy as if it were merely a humbler kind of faith. But it’s not faith at all. In reality, the contemporary refusal to regard any truth as sure and certain is the worst kind of infidelity.

The church’s duty has always been to confront such skepticism and answer it by clearly proclaiming the truth God has revealed in His Word. We have been given a clear message for the purpose of confronting the world’s unbelief. That is what we are called, commanded, and commissioned to do (1 Corinthians 1:17–31). Faithfulness to Christ demands it. The honor of God requires it. We cannot sit by and do nothing while worldly, revisionist, and skeptical attitudes about truth are infiltrating the church. We must not embrace such confusion in the name of charity, collegiality, or unity. We have to stand and fight for the truth—and be prepared to die for it—as faithful Christians always have.

In my next post of this series, I reflect upon Campus Challenge 2006 and how part of the worship ministry was abandoned by God.  Read over this post, and let us consider what Romans 1 really had to do with it all.

(Continued in Part 4, coming soon…)

“Rebellion”:
Part 1-Worshippers Rebel
Part 2-False Faith
Part 3-The Apostasy of Young and Old
Part 4-Abandoned by God
Part 5-Deprived of Restraining Grace

Pulpit Magazine recently has been posting a series on the Emerging Church Movement!  Many of these posts will come from John MacArthur’s upcoming book The Truth War (coming in Spring 2007).

They are currently upto part 7, and MacArthur’s posts can be currently found in part 1 and part 2, while Phil Johnson is the author of the other posts.  I’m sure MacArthur has lots more to say about the ECM, so be sure to check it out!

I read this and I lauged at the humour herein, and yet I was also saddened by a lot of the truth in each of the 5 points.

Unfortunately, a few of remarks are low-blows directly at Mark Driscoll.  It’s unfortunate that some dislike Driscoll so much and are so very critical of his vernacular, and yet it is still a sign that many still relate him to the emerging instead of Reformed.  I will side with John Piper: I like Mark!

Anyways, here it is, TULIP according to emerging/emergent beliefs (according to Steve Camp):

1. Total Ambiguity
• Methodology over message
• Truth is abstract; fluid, and liquid
• Conversation over gospel proclamation
• Ecumenism over doctrinal unity
• Contantly inventing a new spiritual meta-narrative
2. Unconditional Pragmaticism
• Seeker sensible and seeker sensitive
• Whatever works - do it
• Numbers justify everything
• Program enriched
• Felt need, culture-driven
3. Limited Theology
• Doctrine diminished and not primary; it is the afterthought
• Truth claims remain vague and undefined
• No definitive agreed upon statement of faith
• Very little biblical definition of ministry
• Recommended reading lists of their networks remain liberal and pragmatic
4. Irresistible Contextualization
• Truth must be adapted to and defined by culture
• The audience, not the message, is sovereign
• The focus is to be relevant and relativistic
• Being missional is marked by methodological inroads, conversation, and cultural discernment of the times - not the proclamation of the gospel
• Speak of the humanity of Christ in crude terms to make Jesus relatable over reverence of the transcendence of Christ
5. Postmodern Perverse Speech
• Being known as the cussing pastor is good
• Unwholesome talk is cultural not biblical
• Coarse scatological speech is a matter of personal taste
• It makes you cool to other Emerging/Emergents
• If you challenge it, you are labeled as Victorian and out of date

Here is the real 5 points of Calvinism, aka TULIP.

I just began reading a book that I bought earlier this year but had not had the time or religious-academic fervor to read. It is “Reclaiming the Center“, edited by Erickson, Helseth and Taylor, published by Crossway. As the subtitle reads, the book is a collection of scholarly articles about “confronting evangelical accommodation in postmodern times“.

For many of you reading my post here, you’re probably thinking–”what in the world are you talking about?” I’m talking about the confrontation between people within the church as we know it, and how there’s a significant shift taking place today in some segments of evangelicalism. These people within these segments of Christianity are trying to reach our postmodern culture with the the Message of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God–which is a good and Biblical mission that we should all have. However, in the process of doing so, they are accommodating (/changing/reforming) the entire message itself to suit the times and culture; they have tried to contextualize the Gospel message to be appealing to seekers but have gone so far as compromising truth itself.

My post here isn’t intended to be too in-depth, but just to tell you about the struggle I am facing as a Christian and as one who has been called on by God to “fight the good fight of the faith” and to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints“. I feel very alone in this fight here in Toronto where I live out my faith… I feel like very few people actually know what I am talking about, or even see the shift in the way church is being done; most brothers and sisters in Christ I know don’t even care about such issues (of ecclesiology, missiology, and epistemology). (As you can see, using big church words like I just did quickly puts people off! LOL)

Why do I care so much about this stuff? I don’t know exactly… but from what I can tell, it’s all the Holy Spirit’s working. Over the years from serving in church and fellowship, leading worship… I’ve developed an intensive and extensive passion for the glory of God, and how worship is the fuel for mission’s flame and the heart of its aim. I care because God cares, and He wants me to care… Christ suffered, and bled and died and gave Himself up for the church, and thus it is the most precious thing on this earth. As Christ loves the church and calls me to be an imitator of Him, so too I must love and care for it as He does.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound…” (Isaiah 61:1, ESV)

On most days, I wake up not wanting to care about all these issues… because it is such a huge burden to think and wrestle about. To just be a regular Joe who follows Christ and to deal with this stuff day in and day out is one thing; to be called to do something about it (& help others in this) is a complete massively mind numbing thing altogether.

Newayz, the fact is, things are changing… the goal is honourable, but what’s being done to get there is, quite frankly, apostasy. We can put many labels on these people who are pushing for change in the postmodern church: postconservatives, postfundamentalists, postfoundationalists, postpropositionalists, postevangelicals, post-everythings, reformists…or the more popularily known “emerging church“. Whatever the label, they all have some common characteristics about how to re-do church and become a new kind of Christian. Christianity is being seen as more a narrative rather than doctrines/principles or propositions of truth; tradition, culture and the contemporary experience is being seen as the source of theology rather than just the Bible itself. As Justin Taylor writes, these people are “self-professed evangelicals seeking to revision theology, renew the center, and transform the worshipping community of evangelicalism, cognizant of the postmodern global context within which we live.”

The pastor of this shift in evangelicalism, Brian McLaren, is pushing for freedom from the bondage of modern categories… advocating dialogue over debate, community over individualism, and experience over proof. As can be seen in his numerous books, McLaren argues that Christianity should be focused around Jesus’ message about God’s kingdom which relates to us in our place and time–not just about whether individual souls get to heaven when they die. Hence, this Emergent leader calls for this kingdom emphasis in the community not just individuality, and all of creation not just individual souls. Furthermore, the shift is towards an spirituality-based experience of God, instead of a creed-based one; and how this spiritual formation should be done is to look to Richard Foster and Dallas Willard for methods that stem from Roman Catholicism and eastern mysticism.

What’s been happening in my little corner of Christianity was that we began to read more and more postmodern literature, as encouraged by my church & pastor. (I don’t wanna point fingers here; I’m just telling ya of how my thinkings came about). It started with my pastor being a crazy fan of Erwin McManus–which is for the most part fine, except that McManus is known to be quite emergent-esque; for a while sermons at church were laced with McManus quotations. We have also used Rob Bell’s Nooma videos for fellowship (and even Sunday Service once), the church having purchased many of them dvds, and thus supporting Bell’s ministry financially. Then we started reading McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy” in the young adults small group, for the most part without directly and purposely measuring the book against Scripture. And in more recent days, I hear quotes from Dallas Willard way too often during Sunday Service and even find them on the back our bulletins. If this isn’t enough, the push in our english congregation is towards MISSIONAL. Yes, there I’ve said it… what every emerging church is these days: missional. (I’m not against being missional, I’m all for it; it’s just the emerging/Emergent flavour that I find really sour and quite detrimental to evangelicalism.) And of course, you can also throw into this mix “authentic community“, and “holistic“–2 very popular concepts in the neo-liberal emerging church (again, both of which aren’t necessarily bad… just the emerging twist of it may not be Biblical sound).

All in all, “gulity by association” can very much be said to be occuring around me. (I should also mention that we also went through a “Purpose Driven Life” phase where we did go through the book; thankfully our eldership found the Purpose Driven Church model garbage & we don’t follow it).

As of late, the contemplative spirituality thing has been infiltrating the minds of some friends and my parents too. Richard Foster and the spiritual disciplines that this famous writer promotes is really seeping into the Christian circles. I am finding that sooner or later, many of the good’ ole Christian pastors/writers we read so much of could very well be contemplative too. Like recently, finding out that a book I got for Christmas from a friend, Max Lucado’s “Cure for the Common Life”, has been found to have very contemplative messages and theologies. I won’t say too much about this, except that if God really had a way for us to really experience Him better in life–don’t you think He would have mentioned it in the Bible? If we’re seeking to hear God speak to us through experience, personal revelation, and listen for it…. …. shhhhhhh…. SILENCE–is God’s Word given to us in the Holy Bible not enough for faith and life?

In essence, 3 big things are happening too close to home in this emerging kind of Christianity. This movement/conversation in the church is fostering contempt for authority, breeding doubt about the clarity of Scripture, and sowing confusion about the mission of the church. These trends are very much widespread: God’s word is thought to be profitable but not authoritative, these people who read it deny that they can know any truth there in with any certainty/assurance/strong conviction believing rather that they are too humble to be certain about anything–‘who am I to interpret what it really means? Everything can be interpreted differently by different people.‘ Scripture isn’t clear enough for us to believe any of it with confidence, these peeps think… which then leads us to change the missional missiology found in Scripture to one that aims to adapt church to our culture, with very little if any regard for our duty as the church and as Christians to proclaim the Gospel message of Christ’s substitutionary atonement and our need for repentance and faith.

With all that is happening, we evangelicals must fight to defend the Truth and reclaim the center of Christendom. Christ came to save sinners. If we leave out the message of salvation through Christ which includes both propitiation and expiation–we leave out the very thing that saves sinners. We can help people with getting food, shelter, a nicely run home and stable financial situation…but without the one thing that they really need (to be saved, by Jesus) they will still spend an eternity without God.

Taking a look at the Book of Jude, you can find that this is the only book in the New Testament that is strictly devoted to confronting apostasy… that is defection from true, Biblical faith. Reading through this short letter a few times and digging a bit deeper via the MacArthur Bible Commentary, I’ve found that Jude (Christ’s half-brother) wrote to condemn the apostates and to urge believers to fight for the faith against false teachers & false teachings. He called on the church for discernment and a rigorous defense of Biblical truth. Jude described the apostates in terms of their character and unconscionable activities, but he never specifically mentioned the content of the false teachings. We can, however, find that the degenerate personal lives and fruitless ministries showed that they were masquerading their teaching of error as if it were truth. What Jude emphasizes is the common theme of personal curruption within all false teachers, thus calling Christians to look beyond their false spiritual fronts of clever, subtle, deceptive, enticing methods & methodology… and to see the wicked truth of their lives that is behind the fake gospel they preach.

3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Jude 1:3-4, ESV

Reading this letter, I feel like God is speaking directly to me about what is happening in our churches today, and the spiritual warfare that is happening beyond what our human eyes can see. Jude lived in a time about 25 years before the full-blown Gnosticism that the apostle John wrote about in his epistles; Christianity in Jude’s time was under severe political attack from Rome and aggressive spiritual infiltration from apsostates and libertines who sowed lots of seed for a gigantic harvest of doctrinal error. Where Jude begged the church in this letter to fight for the truth in the midst of intense spiritual warfare, I feel the Spirit of God calling upon me to do the same, here and now, in my place and time in history. These false teachers of today–hollow men of what is known as the Ecumenical Church of Deceit–preach and live a counterfeit gospel, consequently misleading an unknowing, unsaved people, who need to hear the true gospel. Just like it was in Jude’s time before the 1st century A.D., God calls us to wage war against error in all forms and to fight strenuously for the truth, like a soldier who has been entrusted with the task of guarding a holy treasure.

This truth and message of faith & salvation that we are to defend is found in God’s Word: we must know the sound principles/doctrines within, to discern truth from error, and to confront and attack error. In our times, we must understand that the fight is being put on by so-called, self-proclaimed Christians against us who have a high view of the perspecuity, authority, and sufficiency of Scripture. (These emerging Christians aren’t waging war against those who deny Biblical truth but rather making friends with them, along with all the traditions of Christianity.) As soldiers who are dead to sin and alive to God, we have been given the responsibility to study God’s Word, to preach/share it with un/believers, and to fight for its preservation! This is what it means to contend for our faith.

And so the question remains, will we do it? Will I take up this responsibility, this massive task. The way I see it, I don’t have much of a choice; to not put up a fight is not an option. To give up and live in this garbage that is seeping into our churches is to die in the aftermath of open theism, universalism and paganism. It won’t get any better with time but only worse and worse. As Paul wrote in the chapter 3 of his 2nd letter to Timothy, this is the danger of the last days he mentions: people who have the appearance of godliness but deny its power, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim 3:7, ESV) The time has come when people don’t endure sound teaching, accumulating for themselves teachers to suit their own passions–because that’s what their itching ears want to hear… hence, wandering into myths and turn away from listening to the truth. Their unhealthy craving for controversy and quarelling about words produce nothing edifying to believers or glorifying to God, except godlessness. We must avoid irreverent bable, twisted and unbiblical authors and their books, flee youthful passions and instead pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

In this day, as in Jude and Timothy’s days… God calls us to confront evangelical accommodation, to live a humble orthodoxy. May we live a life worthy, then, of His calling.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

-SDG

*Though this is my missive about all that’s happening in the ECM, please know that the aim of my charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.*

The Emergent conversation is going nowhere.

Even in the Christian blogsphere where Emergent cult followers and Sola Scriptura believing Christians are in heavy-heated, screaming matches… the conversation still goes nowhere as Emergents say nothing with certainty and either support their arguments & beliefs with references to universalism, paganism, pantheism, Roman Catholicsm, and as always, social justice, feel good, prosperity, hedonism, which basically equates to simply self-centered-ism–all of which are not according to the Bible!  Whereas most if not all Emergents deny penal substituationary atonement (correct me if I’m wrong), it seems they’re simply denying Sola Scriptura–the foundation of the Christian faith.  And if this is not definite, I’m certain of their denial of the perspecuity of Scripture.  They don’t necessarily deny it in their writen or spoken theology, but this apostasy is very evident in their piety; I testify to experiencing this first hand in person at church.

As I commented on Slice of Laodicea….

It is indeed oh so hard to defend the Truth of God’s glorious Gospel in His Son… I wish I could somehow turn back time, to a time when I was younger and naive, not knowing what I do know now with certainty…it was just so much easier back then. Because when I found the truth in His word, I saw the sin and shame of not knowing the difference between darkness and light.

It sucks that so much of our efforts wasted in trying to open the eyes of brothers who have been deceived.  I honestly wish we spent more time & energy on sharing the AMAZING news of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone on the authority of Scripture alone to the glory of God alone… instead of sharing a feel good social justice prosperity Gospel that completely lacks Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins.

I think it was MacArthur who said in his lecture on the ECM at The Master’s Seminary…that any church’s success that is not because of the Word of God is a curse rather than a blessing.

My heart breaks as I read about the darkness that covers the eyes of these emergent believers… and I pray for them. I’ve been reading the SBTS journal article on preaching and Biblical theology, and I am in agony over what has happened to the church which Christ shed His own blood for.  Pray for me as I am seeking to find the right time to approach my pastor and elder about such issues of Bibliology, soteriology. I don’t have any formal training on any of these things, but my love for His body compels me to speak up.

As Phil Johnson mentioned last week, “some conversations simply aren’t worth joining. Sometimes we just need to contend earnestly for the faith. In fact, some people’s mouths really do need to be stopped.” (Titus 1:10-11).  All of this seems to apply to the Emergent conversation between themselves and us conservative Christians.  We need Spirit led discernment herein indeed to know what to do about false teachers & their teachings and followers.

As we seek to live all of life according to God’s Word in today’s postmodern culture, we must proclaim penal substitutionary atonement in Christ alone.  We cannot neglect it when we tell the “story” of God’s creation & redemption.  For this is the only way we can be saved: salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, on the authority of Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone! 

We do not need a new way to way seeing Scripture.  We should not be seeking to reinvent how we do church. We need to see ourselves in the LORD’s eyes:  as sinners who are completely deserving of God’s wrath, who do not have an ounce of good or redemption within us, except that God filled us with His Spirit while we were still sinners and enabled us to repent and come to faith.  Even in Almighty God’s Holiness AND lovingkindess according to HIS own gracious purposes–for some sovereign reason–chose to save a people… a people whose names were written in the Book of Life of the Lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world.  Indeed, it’s all by His grace.

We need to rediscover a humble orthodoxy.  We need humbly speak the truth in love, and reclaim the center of the Gospel in the midst of turbulent evangelical accomodation.  Because we indeed have been raised with Christ, we MUST seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. We MUST set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. ”For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Col. 3)

But then again, if you are following the postmodern/Emergent ways, you probably deny total depravity and don’t believe any of this at all.  Or maybe you do, but maybe you it still seems ambiguous to you & think that it’s just not a clear command from the Apostle Paul, that maybe applies to the Colossians in those times but not you in these times.

We MUST see to it that no one takes us or our brothers & sisters captive by earthly philosophies and empty deceits, according to human traditions, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.  “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (Col.2)

We must recommit ourselves to preaching the WHOLE counsel of God (Acts 20:27)–for this is where I think our missiology and ecclesiology have both failed.  More than just affirming correct doctrines of Scripture, we need to “read, understand and apply Scripture according to what it claims to be.” (Dr.Stephen Wellum of SBTS).  God’s inerrant, all-sufficient Word “…must be approached and read as a unified text, amongst all its diversity–a cannon which declares God’s unfailing purposes and plan.”  Bless you, if you are emergent and affirm Biblical theology! However, I think all of us evangelicals somehwere, somehow have missed the mark in living this out, all the while paying hypocritical lip service to its importance.  This is a call to return to our first and foremost calling and do so with the whole counsel of God–preach the Word (2 Tim 4:2)!

We stand in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and thus the weight of this responsibility is heavy.  If we are to have any relationship with Christ, we must deny ourselves, pickup our cross and follow Him.  If God calls us to do our best at presenting ourselves to Father as approved–we must not to be seeking the approval of man. (2 Tim 2:14-26)  If we are not ashamed of the the Gospel, let us rightly handle the word of truth and use it like it is–the power of God for the salvation of those who believe.  May we rid ourselves of irreverent babble that leads to more and more ungodliness, but may we instead seek the Spirit’s presence in our lives and realize that Christ’s hope of glory is inside of us–that we would be trained in godliness that holds promise for the present and eternal life to come.

For our war is not against flesh or blood, but gainst rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:10-20).  If we are to stand a chance at staying alive and not succumb to the Devil and his false teachings–we must put on the full Armor of God and take the Sword of the Spirit in the Word of God to defend the Gospel, to call the lost to repentance, that by His Spirit we may be used to save some.

Let us then be ready in season and out of season, and now more than ever: to fight the good fight of the faith, to strive anew to contend for the faith that was once for all delilvered to the saints.