Category Archives: emergent church
Gay marriage making it easier to identify false prophets
False prophets are so predictable. Its only a matter of time before they reveal themselves as enemies of the cross. And with the emergence of homosexual marriage, its making it much easier to identify them. Dr. Michael Brown’s latest Charisma oped pulls no punches with creepy looking false teacher Jim Wallis who now claims homosexual marriage is good.
As you will notice, Wallis makes his evolution after a the homosexual org Human Rights Campaign greases his hand with cash.
When it comes to Christian integrity, you disappointed us when you received funding from pro-abortion, pro-atheism billionaire George Soros and when you allowed the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the world’s largest gay activist organization, to take out paid advertising in your Sojourners magazine, even though the HRC would love to silence all religious opposition to homosexual practice.
It is true that in 2008, you expressed having “mixed feelings” about the HRC ads, stating that you “probably wouldn’t do it again.” But today, the HRC celebrates your defection from biblical values, announcing in headline news, “Leading Evangelical Christian Voice Announces Support For Marriage Equality.”
Rev. Wallis, you have brought reproach to the name of Jesus, to the Word of God and to evangelical Christianity.
You raised concerns for many of us when you argued in 2008 that justice requires Christians to support (and even bless) same-sex unions, but you also stated clearly in 2008, “I don’t think the sacrament of marriage should be changed. Some people say that Jesus didn’t talk about homosexuality, and that’s technically true. But marriage is all through the Bible, and it’s not gender-neutral.”
Now you have declared your support for the radical redefinition of marriage, explaining, “I think we have to talk about, now, how to include same-sex couples in that deeper understanding of marriage. I want a deeper commitment to marriage that is more and more inclusive, and that’s where I think the country is going.” More here
We told you in this post that money was the main motivation for the religious vultures like Wallis to declare his love and devotion to marriage perversion.
Wallis is from the emergent church camp, which we accurately predicted would begin merging ideology with the false gay christian movement.
Dead roses: the seduction of American Christianity
You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? says the Lord. Look up to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? By the waysides you have sat waiting for lovers, like a nomad in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness. Jeremiah 3: 1-2
Call it the 50 Shades of Gray, Religious Version. Or maybe it should be referred to as Church of the Living Dead. Either way, the American Church has fallen/jumped into the pit of immorality and is showing no signs of wanting to get out. Behaving more like a dog returning to its vomit instead of a bride waiting on her betrothed, the AC has left its first love. Like the foolish Galatians, the American Church has been bewitched and is under a heavy delusion.
Just one of the many lovers she is whoring with under the green trees of politics and compromise is the homosexual movement. Perhaps a sign of the steadily weakening resolve of the church to standfast is Charisma Magazine printing Canadian liberal theologian Ronald J. Siders oped with a deceptive headline attached. Christian media is in on the game as well. Sider is the president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which develops biblical solutions to social and economic problems. Actually, ESA is progay. And thats not a biblical solution to the sin of homosexuality.
Have parts of the church treacherously partnered with homosexuals to attempt to destroy God’s creative marriage design and rebuild it in their own image and likeness? Most certainly. But note the word attempt. Because despite their best efforts, they will miserably fail. Ask any of the people who attempted to build the tower of Babel.
Siders argues correctly that because of the partnership of deceived (aka inclusion) Christians with homosexuals, three key threats will materialize and directly impact the institutional church.
1. It would weaken the connection between marriage and procreation and the connection between biological parents and their biological children. Almost every court case supporting gay marriage explicitly downgrades the role of procreation in marriage. In the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s decision bringing in gay marriage, the court explicitly said the state was indifferent to family structure; that is, society has no preference for children growing up with both biological parents!
2. The embrace of gay marriage will almost certainly change what is taught in public schools. If in law gay marriages are equal to marriages of husbands and wives, then the schools will certainly begin to teach that to all our children as the proper view for every good citizen.
3. There will be a variety of pressures to silence people who believe homosexual practice is sin. Virtually all legal experts agree that if the law sanctions gay marriage, there will be a colossal confrontation between religious liberty and “gay rights.” Through licensure and government grants a wide variety of faith-based organizations will face growing pressure to abandon their stand on homosexual practice and gay marriage.
And he cites (as we have numerous times on GCMW) that homosexuals and their political allies are lying about exempting the church from gay marriage laws. Its just a deceptive shell game.
As Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress has warned, once the law recognizes gay marriage, there will be court cases against religious institutions (colleges, universities, camp grounds, hospitals, adoption agencies, and so on) that refuse to treat legally married same-sex couples the same as married heterosexuals.
Similarly, it’s likely that government will slowly withdraw benefits from faith-based organizations that believe they shouldn’t treat legally married same-sex partners the way they treat husbands and wives. Gay activists will undoubtedly argue in the courts that government dare not “subsidize discrimination” and therefore government funds must not flow to faith-based organizations that oppose gay marriage or refuse to hire persons engaged in homosexual actions.
The issue in Sider’s sleight of hand article is not his accurate description of the problem, but the unbiblical “solutions” he posits. For example, Sider’s wolf skin is exposed when he says the solution to the homosexual issue is redesignation.
“First, we can demonstrate our desire to respect and treat gay people fairly. One significant way to do that would be to support the legal recognition of civil unions. (This may actually reduce promiscuity as well.)”
Beware the brokers of seduction.
One commenter thankfully came right out and said it.
Ronald Sider is a far left-wind socialist who is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is about as “evangelical” as Jeremiah Wright — just more smooth and diplomatic, and deceptive, in the promotion of his agenda. This article is a good example of the smooth, slick way he promotes his left-wing agenda, posing as an “evangelical/charismatic.” I can see why someone who doesn’t know who Ronald Sider is or his past would be taken in. This typical ad hominem argument is typical of satan himself — “Because of your failures in this area, you have no right to speak in THAT area.” The enemy, the “accuser of the brethren,” constantly attempts to silence our voice and render us powerless by pointing out past failings or current weaknesses. There are a number of fallacies in the slick article above. Here are just a couple:
1. While the statistic is constantly presented — to beat Christians down — that Christians divorce at the same rate as non-Christians, this statistic is so misleading as to in actuality be used mostly as a lie.
2. Those who are on the frontlines defending our society against the onslaught of the influence of homosexual perversion and it’s attempt to justify itself by moral equivalence to normal marriage are NOT the ones committing adultery and getting divorced. Even if it were true that adultery abounds and half of all Christians who marry will eventually divorce — which it is NOT– that still does NOT characterize the lives of those who have been and continue to be true champions giving their very lives to defending the moral foundations of our nation for future generations. Of course, the likes of Ronald Sider and his comrades in the leftist media, love to expose the occasion leader caught in moral failure as yet another ad hominem argument against the whole Body of Christ.
False teacher Brian McLaren marries his gay son
Its been proven again and again. The main motivation for these false teachers approving homosexual conduct comes down to two things: their families or themselves.
It had just been a couple of years when McLaren shifted his thinking and abandoned the traditional view of homosexuality being a sin that he grew up with.
“I had gone through my change in this view before I ever guessed that any of my kids might be gay,” he said on the radio program.” [source]
How very convenient, Mr. McLaren. Either way, putting either one over the will of God is idolatrous but idolatry isn’t a big concern with false teachers.
We’ve reported on Brian McLaren and his emergent church loonies here, here and here. As a leader in the emergent church movement, GCM Watch was the first to tell you that a marriage of the two false ideologies was inevitable. Both are cut from the same doctrinal error cloth. The lies false teachers tell are always self-serving. Always. The ones who spit out the gay is not a sin lie are profiting and personally benefitting from the telling of lies.
McLaren was the co-performer of his son’s “wedding” to another man in Washington.
Kevin DeYoung unravels homobabble
Conversations about homosexuality in contemporary culture and church seem to be hopelessly fragmented. On issues of application, identity, intent and the likes, groups both on the left and right are disjointed.
And although people and their opinions abound, the Bible speaks with clear, unanimous consent. The messaging from the bible has no variance whatsoever.
Generally, those who oppose the biblical perspective (a universally negative one) use subversive tactics to undermine Biblical authority. They do this by finding false parallels which appear to have conflicting supporting bible passages verses and immediately injecting them into any discussion on homosexuality. Women, slavery, seafood and mixed clothing seem to be the strawmen of choice.
What’s problematic with this approach is that it can’t breach the bible’s seamless condemnation line of homosexual acts. Incredibly, with all of the bible’s diversity, it is united in its opposition to homosexuality. The 40 writers of the bible’s 66 books hailed from all walks of life. They were shepherds, farmers, tent-makers, physicians, fishermen, priests, philosophers and kings. Some were wealthy, others poor. Some were aware of other authors, some were not. Their writings spanned out over a period of some 1,500 years. Yet, not one single author, regardless of chronology or life status (including Jesus) penned one single word in support of homosexual conduct.
Are we speaking a different language?
So why is that confusion reigns supreme in the opinions of people? Has God has put a “spirit of babel” on the issue of homosexuality, thus preventing differing constituencies from gaining a universal consensus? Kevin DeYoung attempts to sort out and categorize who’s who, what they may be thinking and how to best message to the different factions. DeYoung believe’s the church’s broken messaging on homosexuality can be fixed or perhaps become more coherent. Part of the solution, he argues is to first understand who you are talking to.
Seven affected categories and how to approach them:
If we are speaking to cultural elites who despise us and our beliefs, we want to be bold and courageous.
If we are speaking to strugglers who fight against same sex attraction, we want to be patient and sympathetic.
If we are speaking to sufferers who have been mistreated by the church, we want to be apologetic and humble.
If we are speaking to shaky Christians who seem ready to compromise the faith for society’s approval, we want to be persuasive and persistent.
If we are speaking to liberal [or gay] Christians who have deviated from the truth once delivered for the saints, we want to be serious and hortatory.
If we are speaking to gays and lesbians who live as the Scriptures would not have them live, we want to be winsome and straightforward.
If we are speaking to beligerent Christians who hate or fear homosexuals, we want to be upset and disappointed.
Ten principled committements to guide you in speaking to the affected groups:
1. We will preach through the Bible consecutively and expositionally that we might teach the whole counsel of God (even the unpopular parts) and to avoid riding hobby horses (even popular ones).
2. We will tell the truth about all sins, including homosexuality, but especially the sins most prevalent in our communities.
3. We will guard the truth of God’s word, protect God’s people from error, and confront the world when it tries to press us into its mold.
4. We will call all people to faith in Christ as the only way to the Father and the only way to have eternal life.
5. We will tell all people about the good news of the gospel, that Jesus died in our place and rose again so that we might be set free from the curse of the law and be saved from the wrath of God.
6. We will treat all Christians as new creations in Christ, reminding each other that our true identity is not based on sexuality or self-expression but on our union with Christ.
7. We will extend God’s forgiveness to all those who come in brokenhearted repentance, everyone from homosexual sinners to heterosexual sinners, from the proud to the greedy, from the people pleaser to the self-righteous.
8. We will ask for forgiveness when we are rude, thoughtless, or joke inappropriately about homosexuals.
9. We will strive to be a community that welcomes all those who hate their sin and struggle against it, even when that struggle involves failures and setbacks.
10. We will seek to love all in our midst, regardless of their particular vices or virtues, by preaching the Bible, recognizing evidences of God’s grace, pointing out behaviors that dishonor the Lord, taking church membership seriously, exercising church discipline, announcing the free offer of the gospel, striving for holiness together, and exulting in Christ above all things.
Philip Yancey, the Christian mysticist
Against the backdrop of an epic failure by formerly mainline denominations to uphold biblical standards of sexual morality, a new religious iconography has arisen. Its the profile of the Christian mysticist, tailor made by satan for the homosexual religious movement.
Ken Silva at Apprising Ministries writes, “I remind you again that there is indeed a same-sex storm gathering hurricane force, which is right now, looming only slightly off the horizon of the mainstream evangelical community. Once again, I point out the reason why I believe the Lord moved me to begin covering the issue of a growing acceptance within evangelicalism that the deviant and sinful lifestyle of having sexual relations with another of the same sex, i.e homosexuality, is a viable one for the regenerated Christian. I’m using the issue of homosexuality as a flare to light up the sky with the Word of God in order to give you a chance to see the wide, and very rapid, advance of the pro-gay agenda of the EC [emergent church] within mainstream of the visible church.
I’ve also told you before that a primary goal of the EC, right from its evil inception has been to introduce the Counter Reformation spirituality of CSM; this is easily demonstrated as I showed you in The Emerging Church And The New Progressive Theology On Christ. There I informed you Living Spiritual Teacher and EC guru Brian McLaren wanted us to know that Richard Foster and Dallas Willard “with their emphasis on spiritual disciplines,” i.e. CSM, were “key mentors of the emerging church” as cited below from the 2004 article “The Emergent Mystique” in Christianity Today:
Meet Philip Yancey.
AM has the complete documentation of Christianity Today head editor Philip Yancey crossing over to the land of false teaching by embracing and promoting gay religious culture. Actually the homosexual religious world is where false teachers like Yancey must go for validation. False calleth unto false to paraphrase a verse from the Psalms.
“Do I believe that gay people can be committed Christians? Absolutely. I know far too many of them to doubt that. I also believe that alcoholics and prideful hypocrites can be committed Christians. In short, sinners can, and I’ve stepped back from ranking other people’s sins. I’ve attended a few gay and lesbian churches, and it saddens me that the evangelical church by and large finds no place for homosexuals. I’ve met wonderful, committed Christians who attend Metropolitan Community Churches, and I wish that the larger church had the benefit of their faith. At the same time, I think it’s unhealthy to have an entire denomination formed around this one particular issue—those people need exposure to and inclusion in the wider Body of Christ.”
By endorsing the Metropolitan Community Cult, Yancey has cosigned this bizarre organization’s bizarre leadership.
As we have reported on this blog numerous times, the MCC can hardly be classified as a Christian church. Its leader is perched atop a cesspool of abominations. The Dallas Observer found out that the denomination’s “code of conduct” for its clergy was “disarmingly simple and deliberately open to interpretation”. In short, there exists is no moral expectation (in the conventional sense) from individuals who are publicly sanctioned by the MCC. Its clergy leaders have openly talked about masturbating to images of Christ, invited people to deface the bible, allows members to make belief in Jesus optional, portray Jesus in books as a sexually promiscuous homosexual, and purchased a $55,000 ventriloquist version of Jesus to help spread their lies and denied the divinity of Christ. The latter alone the bible calls antichrist (1 John 4).
Red letter lies: How Tony Compolo colors the bible
Its possible you’ve heard of the “Red Letter Christian” theological conglomeration. Its a strange religious concoction which attempts to make the so-called red letter passages of scripture (the quote-unquote words of Jesus) more important than other passages in the bible. Not that the bible itself places this kind of emphasis on the quoted words of Jesus, but its a progressive postmodernism gimmick used by liberal religious leaders to counter what they see is too much emphasis on things like sin, sexual immorality, holiness, repentance and hell. Additionally, RLC have a political axe to grind with the social conservative movement which is opposed to homosexual rights and abortion. Thus, they attempt to leverage the socio-political playing field by narrowing what scriptures are applicable to the aforementioned issues.
For the record ALL SCRIPTURE is given by inspiration of God (2 Tim 3:16). Nothing in the bible tells us or even implies that some scripture is more important that other parts —even the words of Jesus. That’s because the scripture is one, complete and harmonious system of doctrine and God-inspired logos. Scripture does not contradict scripture and one part doesn’t cancel out other parts without proper exegetical integrity in interpretation. But the Red Letter Christians have found a way around that.
Framers of the Red Letter movement include Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine; Richard Rohr, a well-known Catholic writer; Brian McLaren, an Emergent Church leader; and Tony Campolo, a popular speaker and author of Red Letter Christians: a Citizen’s Guide to Faith and Politics.
The group chose the name for a couple of reasons: first, to stress that its political philosophy is based on Jesus’ teachings—a “What Would Jesus Do?” approach to governmental policy. Second, to appear apolitical—the appellation “Red Letter Christians” avoids the political connotations of labels such as “liberal” and “progressive,” and it facilitates the group’s claim that it transcends politics.
Red Letter Christians resent what they see as the religious right’s fixation on abortion and homosexual rights. Since Jesus did not deal with those two issues, they say, we should not make them more urgent than other issues. Instead, Red Letter Christians focus on political policies affecting poverty, global warming, racial discrimination, the role of the military, capital punishment, foreign aid, and public education. [source]
Having a faulty premise to begin with can only lead one into further error and that’s exactly how lead framer Tony Campolo has devolved. In his quest to make things right politically for homosexuals, he realized there was a fundamental problem. Not only were so-called religious right against homosexuality but there existed a much more formidable enemy. Campolo had to chop up, dissect, diminish, disconnect and reorder the truth of scripture so that his political assertions would have some sort of theological support system. So he created the red letter lie manual.
We’ve reported on Campolo before. Like most gay affirming religious figures, the cover of youth is very convenient for them to seed their lies about sexuality. Campolo is nearing completion of his master’s degree in red letter deception. In an interview on his Red Letter Blog he immediately drops the youth issue as justification for his own errors.
“What’s happened overall in the last few years is that a younger generation is emerging with different values. Consider the homosexual issue. Recent studies indicate that older people tend to be opposed to gay marriage and younger people, while still conservative on the issue, do not consider it a defining issue for Christians. While conservative in their thinking, they put in an emphasis alongside of their concerns about the environment, their opposition to war, their concerns about human trafficking and, most of all, their concerns about poverty. I’m in the middle, closer to the younger.”
With a nonchalant shrug, Campolo goes on to say that he doesn’t “approve” of homosexuality. Does the bible really care that Tony Campolo approves of homosexuality or not? Hardly, especially when he circumvents the truth by insisting that talking about homosexuality isn’t something contemporary should be concerned about. After all, people are hungry, wearing second hand clothes and cant get the latest version of the Ipad. So what’s the big deal about homosexuality? What’s interesting is that false teachers almost always downplay serious issues like homosexuality, but then spend a majority of their time talking about it. They want YOU to be quiet so they can dominate the discussion with their lies.
Campolo is being disingenuous when he says he doesn’t approve of homosexuality. His attendance as a speaker at a gay christian conference is sufficient evidence to that regard. How could a person disapprove of something, but then voluntarily attend an event put on by people who engage in what you allegedly disapprove of? According to the gay christian network (see adherents) Campolo “does not support attempts to “convert” gays into straights; rather, he advises gay people to pursue celibacy.” Thats a political way of saying that homosexuals can’t change. That’s not biblical (reference 2 Cor 5:17) , but of course its a convenient caveat for the red letterers.
The red letter movement is closely associated with the emergent church movement. Both groups have cultivated a facade of being caring, tolerant and concerned but the reality is that they are part and parcel of those who teach doctrines of devils. False teachers come in all colors. Even red. For more information about Campolo’s emergent church heresy, check out Apprising Ministries writeup here.
