I find it ironic and funny to see so many emerging/emergent types so freely and publicly proclaim their “humble” service to others, I guess as if to say, “Look, I’m doing my part to help the poor and disenfranchised, what about you?” Sounds like the very selfishness, self-righteousness, pride, and Phariseeism they hate in much of the Christian right.
These are two Post-Evangelical Chaos Posters that speak to this very issue:
This is a brief clip of one of Lance Secretan’s presentations to a group of corporate employees. Notice how at the beginning of this clip, he disregards anything Christianity had to offer in history as an explanation for natural and supernatural reality. He doesn’t even mention all of the thousands of Christian thinkers who have contributed greatly to the progress of “humanity” who believed Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. These voices are simply ignored. Sure, he mentions Jesus as a good moral teacher, and even quotes Him in the presentation. Yet Secretan cherry-picks what he wants from what Jesus said without dealing with the portions of Scripture where He claims to be God Himself, the only way to salvation, the greatest Person in all of history. This is ignored, for to deal with these texts simply denies his own worldview perspective of reality.
I found this on the front page of theopedia.org:
“The message of Christianity is that the God who created the heavens and the earth identified himself with the people of Israel and related to them in a way that pointed to the needed coming of the Messiah. This Messiah would atone for our transgressions, conquer the power of sin and death, empower us by the Spirit to obey from the heart, and gather his people unto everlasting joy. The Messiah came, was born of a virgin, lived and talked and worked in a way that identified him as the Only Begotten Son of God, and died on a cross. After three days Jesus triumphantly resurrected from the dead. He appeared to the apostles and over 500 other disciples. All who will turn in their hearts from sin and call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting in him for forgiveness and eternal life, will be saved from hell and enjoy personal fellowship with God and his people.”
As Carl Trueman on Reformation21.org and Al Mohler on almohler.com have pointed out recently, something is so fascinating with the recent wave of criticism by the left of Obama asking Rick Warren to perform the invocation at his inauguration (which I must give Obama credit on being a consistent relativist as opposed to others on the far-left): no matter how friendly, or nice, or palatable or seeker-friendly you make your message concerning what Scripture says about God’s Law or the Gospel itself, those who are unbelieving and God-hating, those who are adamantly opposed to what is said still view you as a crazy, fanatical nut.
Warren even goes so far as to be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy politically speaking, I’m guessing with the hope with bridging a cultural divide. Yet it seems to not matter to those who hate Scripture. Now Obama is receiving a backlash of criticism from the far-left gay rights community for asking Warren to do the prayer, as well as those who simply believe in the normalcy of homosexuality, because Warren believes it to be sin according to Scripture. And in doing so, they believe Warren to be a “fundeemeentaleest,” even though he has gone to great lengths to make his message more acceptable to a hostile, post-Christian (quickly becoming anti-Christian) culture.
News as entertainment dominates our culture. It has for quite a while. This can be clearly seen in the recent Caylee Anthony story, the little girl who was allegedly killed by her own mother. Of course this is an unbelievably sad story and the pain caused by such a tragic act is tremendous for all parties involved. It should break our own hearts that this kind of wickedness happens, because it breaks the Lord’s heart. I do not intend to minimize any of this with my comments. But I do intend to attack the obsession our culture has on this story and how as Christians we need to watch our own hearts that we not fall into such wicked fixation, intending to puff ourselves up in our own supposed righteousness that we are somehow better than Caylee’s mother.
For the past year or so, ever since it broke, there has been an incessant fixation of the media upon this story. In particular, Nancy Grace has “Breaking News!” every night on her program concerning this case. I can’t think of a time I haven’t flipped past CNN that she hasn’t been ranting on and on about this story. It’s just sickening to me. We make celebrities out of murderers and every shred of “new” information that comes out of this story is somehow the greatest and biggest show-stopper in our lives, like it’s a living and breathing soap opera that we are somehow attached to through TV viewing.
“O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem…” – Daniel 9:16
In light of God’s justice and righteousness in the Old Testament, how he poured out his wrath on the nations surrounding Israel and even on Israel herself, this verse is such a radical, seemingly contradictory statement. If you simply do a surface-level study of what justice and righteousness actually means in theological terms, and particularly what it means for us sinners, it is goosebump-frightening to consider its reality. It should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Seriously.
Think back to, or look up, Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1 and John’s response in Revelation to see what the reaction to God’s justice and holiness looks like. Or read this Jonathan Edwards sermon. It was one of His most famous. In it, Edwards expounds upon the awful wrath and fury of God we all deserve for our sin and how Christ is the only protector and shield from its horrors.
Original: The Gospel of Will Smith – Newsweek.com
Archived: The Gospel of Will Smith – Westerfunk.net
I love Will Smith. I think he’s such an awesome actor. But we part ways on issues concerning Jesus. We do not worship or speak of the same Jesus together. Al Mohler pointed this article out on his radio program the other day.
Of particular interest, Will Smith says,
“I love the nature of humanity’s search for meaning. For me I’m certain about my relationship with the model of perfection of human life that’s laid out with the life of Jesus Christ. I’m certain of that. So I’m at home and not fearful when I sit in a mosque or a synagogue or a Buddhist temple, the same way that I’m home in the Church of Scientology. I like anywhere people are searching for the truth, and I respect their path and I’m intrigued by their path. I think when you are certain in and of what you believe in, you can open your mind to seeing the ways of others. I’m not bothered when someone says “Allah” because they’re talking about God—we are talking about the same person. I was in India recently and my hotel was near the Taj Mahal. Five times a day there would be a call for prayer, and it was the most beautiful thing. I was lying in my bed thinking, no matter what your religion is, it would be great to have that reminder five times a day to remember your Lord and savior.”
http://www.christreformed.org/telling-p … uth-in-lo/ – Dr. Kim Riddlebarger
Some things in this article really spoke to me about my own sinful tendency toward cynicism concerning evangelicalism. I’m very discouraged with the movement and where things are headed. I made that clear in my recent post concerning Rick Warren. This discouragement isn’t bad in itself because it is rooted in a desire to have the Gospel be the thing for which we are known. It is what my heart does with that discouragement that is wrong. It can easily turn into bitterness.
Some people have totally left the evangelical movement, as the author of the article has, in favor of a confessionally Reformed church movement. At this point, I still consider myself an evangelical, and my desire is to stay within evangelicalisms’ circles in hopes the Lord will use any influence I might have (because of Him, not me) to help point people toward the Gospel, away from the pervasive self-helpism of our culture, and find their all in Christ alone, for both justification and sanctification. If anything I do is successful, this is to the Lord’s credit. If anything I do fails, this is my own wrong doing.
Everything may shift around us at extremely fast rates … and yet God and His Gospel remain constant. Plant yourself in Him and His grace to us in Christ, for, “the times, they are a-changin’,” really really quickly.
We in the Reformed community talk incessantly about the Five Points of Calvinism like there is no tomorrow (from here on referred to simply as the Five Points). I’m even doing that in this blog post in fact. This is not without good reason, but I believe the Five Points themselves, if not kept in proper focus upon the One for whom they are meant to exalt can themselves become a distraction from the end goal: the glory and exaltation of God through Christ in the Gospel of His grace to sinners.
If you want a good summary of the Five Points of Calvinism, here it is: the exaltation of the glory of God’s grace (hence why they have also been called the Doctrines of Grace). The Five Points are all Christocentric, that is Christ-centered, as John Hendryx has gone to great lengths to show in recent days in an article he’s written, and any one point that is denied breaks the entire cohesiveness of their final point collectively: the exaltation of the glory of God’s grace. If this is not kept in mind, we ourselves who claim the name Calvinist can become distracted by debating the finer points of a doctrine (for the sake of intellectual pride) without focusing one tidbit upon the One for whom they are meant to point: Christ and Him alone.
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