Forty years ago a special meeting was called at Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana, because the pastor of that congregation, Donald McKinney, had embraced the doctrine of God’s sovereign grace and began preaching those Biblical truths from the pulpit.

On Tuesday morning, March 3, 1970, with the district superintendant in attendance, Brother Don McKinney used the text of 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 to preach a sermon titled, “Particular Election.” After the message was preached, it was put to the congregation that all those who had believed what Brother Mac had preached to please stand. All those who stood were asked to leave the church.

That day marked the beginning of Heritage Baptist Church. With just a small group of 47 active members at that time, the church met in a judge’s office for a few weeks and later rented the old Chamber of Commerce building. God provided the congregation with a very nice building a few years later.

Although Brother McKinney has recently been called home to be with the Lord, Heritage Baptist Church has grown in grace, by God’s grace, and have been strengthened in faith these past forty years by Brother McKinney’s passionate exposition of God’s truth.

The leadership of Heritage Baptist Church has given me permission to make Brother McKinney’s sermon, “Particular Election,” available at Justification by Grace and at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church’s SermonAudio page on SermonAudio.com.

You can listent to the sermon by clicking the arrow on the imbedded link below, or CLICKING HERE to go directly to the SermonAudio page.

Witness the birth of a new Emerging Church 2.0 as it encourages the push of a new form of progressive/liberal theology within mainstream evangelicalism in the video here.

I do not receive Tweets from Mark Driscoll, but I have friends who do. I received the following from one of those friends today: “Done preaching in Africa & managed to not punch the guy who was sleeping w/5 women & claiming to be a XN as a competition for him but bewildered why I was in his face with my finger in his chest. Unreal.” Was what is “unreal” the fact that Mark was able to restrain himself or that this fellow was sleeping with 5 women and claiming to be an XN (tweet shorthand for Christian) as a competition for him or that the fellow was bewildered why Mark, “was in his face with my finger in his chest”? I meditated and prayed about how or even if I should respond to this. My initial response was to view both Mark and “the guy” from a pastoral perspective. However, this post-modern world is clueless about morality and personal holiness. In fact, its mindset is against all who attempt to point out sin or error in anyone. Their first response seems to be something along the lines of, “nobody is perfect!” I have even been condemned for doing this and the reason “I was being straightened out” was that everyone could be wrong so how can any of us judge anyone else?

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Process/progressive theologian Philip Clayton said some things concerning me in his latest post. So in this piece I set the record straight about his recently concluded Theology After Google conference, as well as his “big tent” Christianity.

Prior to Steve Lawson’s message at this year’s Shepherd’s Conference, Keith and Kristyn Getty led the worship. Steve was clearly moved in the Spirit when he took the stage. His message was titled: The Invisible War and was based on the book of Job as applied to the sanctifying work done by our Sovereign Lord in our lives to prepare us for eternity and, of course, for His glory. I have downloaded that message and have watched it again and again.

(click here to read this post)

Chris Gordon, WSC grad and pastor of United Reformed Church at Lynden, WA, has recently done some road-tripping in visiting a modern seeker sensitive/purpose driven church North County Christ the King Church in Lynden itself. As he begins:

It’s a challenge today to take a stand for anything. This is no less true in the church of Jesus Christ, especially as we think through the implications of the Biblical warning that in the latter times some will depart from the faith giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons (1 Tim. 4:1). Part of our responsibility as Christians is to defend the truth, and to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).

As as pastor, I recognize that one of my responsibilities is to protect those whom I serve from influences and practices that have a form of godliness but deny its power (2 Tim. 3:5). At times, this requires critical reflection of what others are doing and saying in the Christian world, especially when, as Paul said, there are savage wolves among us who do not spare the flock, but draw away disciples after themselves (Acts 20:29). There is just too much at stake if we remain silent, we are called to pull souls out of the fire (Jude 1:22).

Many well-meaning Christians, however, don’t take well to any kind of constructive criticism or warning against what particular churches are doing contrary to the received doctrine. We have come to a point in the Christian world that if we say anything by way of exposing error, we are labeled as unloving or schismatic. But such pressures, as strong as they are, do not remove our responsibility to expose error and false doctrines as we speak the truth in love.

With these things in mind, I have been challenged on more than one occasion that I do not have the right to critique any other local church if I have never attended the one in question. In the past, my answer has always been, “I don’t have to slam my hand in a trunk to know it’s going to hurt.” But, fair enough, although I think such a charge is a diversionary tactic, it is important to “know” exactly what you are critiquing. So, to honor the challenge of others, last Saturday night I decided to attend North County Christ the King Church here in Lynden.

In this light, Gordon has posted his interesting and revealing reports with regards to his road trip on his blog here, here and here. The last report especially was a good critique of the typical modern wishy-washy sermonettes that have a low view of God and a too high view of Man. In Gordon’s words:

There are two very serious errors here that were evident throughout the service, especially in the message itself—a wrong view of God and a wrong view of man. The first error, a wrong view of God, was a denial of the Creator/creature distinction. In this denial, God’s revelation of himself in his distinctness from his creatures is rejected as he is refashioned into those things that make us feel comfortable about him. Simply stated, if God created us his image, we have returned the favor and created him back into a fallen image that we feel comfortable with.

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If you take the subtitle of the sermon, Satisfaction Guaranteed, what is the assumption being made here? The basic assumption here is that if you try out God, he will work for you. Now I am used to this “guarantee” language when I buy a product at the grocery store and expect that the money I have invested in the product will earn me some positive result in my life. For instance, the other day I saw this very claim advertised on a teeth whitening product, satisfaction guaranteed. I was interested because prolonged coffee drinking has darkened my teeth. So the first thing I did was check the price. That stuff is expensive. If they really want to sell me the product, the prices have to be slashed; I’m looking for the Safeway card discount. Further, I expect it to work for what I have determined is my need. As a consumer, I reign sovereign over my need and my purchase.

Now since this marketing strategy is so common in the church, we should ask what happens when God himself is marketed this way? What are the consequences of this? And what does this presume is my greatest need? Think about the suggestion: you go off-roading with God, we guarantee satisfaction. How do you guarantee satisfaction? As the marketer, you have to please the customer. And if God and his church are being marketed like a product, you have to sell both. As stated above, you cannot identify them with any of those things that the consumer might find offensive or unattractive; both have to packaged for their use — because, well, that is how products sell.

…

So what happens? If the customer is sovereign over what he is “buying” with regard to God he certainly will not select a view of God that emphasizes His justice, holiness, or righteousness. The attribute(s) that is most pleasing to the customer will drown out all the rest, and in today’s church market, it is the single attribute of love by which God is defined to the demise of all the rest, especially his justice.

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So where does this lead us? If you have ridded God of those attributes that you dislike, what happens to your view of what you need and who you are? To be certain, we will never be in pursuit of the gospel. Why? Because the only way the Christian gospel has any real meaning is when there is a proper appreciation for God’s holiness and justice. The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and, therefore, are under his just wrath (Rom. 3:23). The only way anyone escapes the wrath to come is by faith alone in Christ, whose righteousness is freely imputed to all who heartily trust in him for salvation. But it is only when we are properly confronted with our misery in the face of God’s justice that we are prepared to submit ourselves to what he says is our greatest need.

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Do you see what has happened? There is no “life-giving” power in this because Christ as a savior from sin is absent. As Michael Horton has stated, “the cure is only as radical as the disease.” If our greatest problem is just getting derailed from life’s path, all we need is a new moral compass. But this does not reconcile needy sinners to God. I heard nothing of Christ and him crucified in the message, and yet this message is God’s expressed chosen power to save. The apostle was clear about this to the Corinthians when he said “that his speech and preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that their faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” Couldn’t we paraphrase this by saying, when I came to you I did not use Suzuki 4wds, love videos, espresso bars, dramas, bands, liturgical dances, et al; and I did not use these things purposely so that your faith should not be in the marketing of men, but in the power of God?

It is God who identifies for us in his Word who he is, who we are, and what we need. God is not product to be used, nor is his gospel. No one has ever been manipulated into the kingdom by gimmicks. As David Wells states, “the gospel calls us not to use it but submit to the God of the universe through his son…when we accept Christ he is not there for our use but we are there for his service.” It’s tragic to state that we are in desperate need of going back to the basics, understanding and submitting to what God has revealed of himself, and of us. As Hosea lamented in his day, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hos. 4:6).” Whose people? It’s my prayer that all Christians today would appeal to the Lord’s mercies and remember what he prayed: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

[HT: Heidelblog]

The visible church is overrun with false teachers and their doctrines. There is a mindset in the Church right now that is actually part of the problem in that it ostracizes and attempts to isolate and silence those who, in their obedience as watchmen, reveal the truth about certain false teachers and why their doctrines are unbiblical. Some of these wolves in sheep’s clothing are very popular in the visible church to the point that their supporters are more than willing to “give them a pass” when they err biblically because they have been ministered to by them in the past. However, this very thing simply promotes the environment for “tolerance” of error. This mindset contains a lie that those who discern these things, warn the body, and expose the false teachers and their doctrines, are the ones being divisive, unloving, and unChristlike. Thankfully, we still have God’s Word, and in it, we learn that we must always be on guard against false and deceptive teaching. One of the helpful things it teaches us in this battle is the knowledge of the believer’s new identity in Christ. This knowledge helps us resist the arguments of false teachers as we walk before the face of God for His glory alone.

(click here to read this post)

A discussion in this post about how Brian McLaren is not simply rehashing liberal theology. What he’s doing, along with the emerging church,  is trying to piece together virtually anything that has ever called itself Christian under what they’re calling “big tent” Christianity.

From The Times Online:
Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”

See the rest at Watcher’s Lamp.

Over at My Word Like Fire, John Lanagan writes about Shain Claiborne’s appearance at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon:

“…Claiborne had the crowd laughing and reminiscing with him as he recounted past adventures and experiences. During the time he spoke he emphasized again and again our Christian duty to help the poor and the oppressed.

“God is creating a holy counter-culture,” said Claiborne, author of Jesus For President, The Irresistable Revolution, and several others.”

At the end of the session, John approached Shain Claiborne with a gift:

As Shane Claiborne stood outside the auditorium, I said, “Shane, my name is John, and my mission is to give you this book.”

I told him goodbye, and prayed for him as I drove home.”

Read the rest of the story at My Word Like Fire.

Learn more about the growing contemplative spirituality movement and Castles In The Sand at Lighthouse Trails Publishing

Being a refugee from the SBC, I began this ministry with a great deal of spiritual baggage that stubbornly clung to me until God subjected me to the cleansing fires of His truth through dealing with tribulation, crises of dealing with bad doctrine within supposed brethren, and outright persecution from people I thought were friends. It was through these fires of tribulation that, even though very painful, I got my focus off of self and onto the Lord. His will became paramount in my heart. His glory became my focus. I am nothing; He is everything. He is my κύριος (Lord); I am His δοῦλος (slave, bondservant). I had a test today and I was not only surprised by my reaction to it, but I also rejoiced when it was over as I looked back on the journey God has thus far taken me as He has peeled away the heretical, self-focused, bad theology, and me-ism that was standard fare in the SBC churches from which I came.

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A lively discussion is already underway over this expose. More detail and the link here.

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:13-14 ESV)

Efficacious adj. producing the desired effect – from The Oxford New Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus Third Edition.

Christian faith has appeared to many an easy thing; nay, not a few even reckon it among the social virtues, as it were; and this they do because they have not made proof of it experimentally, and have never tasted of what efficacy it is. For it is not possible for any man to write well about it, or to understand well what is rightly written, who has not at some time tasted of its spirit, under the pressure of tribulation; while he who has tasted of it, even to a very small extent, can never write, speak, think, or hear about it sufficiently. For it is a living fountain, springing up into eternal life, as Christ calls it in John iv.¹

Saving or efficacious faith is not the same thing as the best faith man can muster through the exercise of the will. According to our Lord Jesus in John 4:13-14 (above), efficacious faith is that which is given to the believer by God and this same faith will become in the believer a spring of water welling up to eternal life. This is not belief that is the product of reason or intellectual assent. It is not a belief that the believer must generate and desperately hold onto lest it be diminished and be lost. In the excerpt from Martin Luther’s letter to Pope Leo X, Concerning Christian Liberty, we read that those who conceive of faith as something done by the believer count it as simply a social virtue and that is an easy thing. Luther says that those with this concept of faith believe as they do because they have not experienced efficacious faith and have never tasted the great strength there is in it. I contend that the purveyors of the Seeker-Sensitive, Emergent, and Missional forms of “Christianity” are of the same sort of faith Luther is contrasting in this letter with genuine believers who are so because they have drunk of the water given to them by the Lord that has become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. These of the New Type of Christianity have a faith consisting of works-righteousness. This is a man-made faith not the efficacious faith that is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:1-10).

¹Martin Luther, from Concerning Christian Liberty an open letter to Pope Leo X, September 6, 1520.

(click here to read this post)

It’s interesting to note that we learned of this video below when Oneness Pentecostal Tommy Tenny of “Godchasers” fame tweeted the following:

Wowser! @EdYoung in his robe with pillow hair! Takes a brave man to do a video blog like this. http://3.ly/vKcn

Also notice that at 1:25 in Southern Baptist pastor Ed Young, Jr. tells us he’ll be speaking at Hillsong, notorious for its Word Faith heresy, which he refers to as ”the great Hillsong church” that’s “one of the most exciting churches in the world.”

Another chance here to watch T.D Jakes, featured speaker at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit this year, in action with a special guest you do not want to miss.

We can see from this tweet it’s obviously quite difficult in the counter-culture world of emerging church leaders like Doug Pagitt while they fearlessly battle the consumerist mentality of this evil capatalistic empire:

Breakfast with O’Farrells & Michael Toy, then golf, then conference.

John Chisham, CRN correspondent and pastor of River of Life Alliance Church in MN, tells us in this post:

What is Monvee you ask? It is the newest program in the seeker sensitive/purpose driven spirituality that is marketed as the E-Harmony for your spiritual practices…

You have to see this exhibit over at A Little Leaven to believe it. Warning: Watching the video artifact in this exhibit could cause brain damage due to an inability to breath.

Thanks to the new liberalism Christianity of the emerging church we have a new breed of Christians, and the heavily tattooed pastrix Nadia Bolz-Weber, is a prime example of their emergent fruit.

She tweets today:

A pastoral letter to House for All Sinners and Saints –> http://tinyurl.com/ydt27pm

The link takes us to a post where pastrix Bolz-Weber tells the flock she loves “that people are so interested in our funky little church” HFASS, but doing “church tourism” does have its drawbacks.

Seems there’s “a youth group from Iowa who is also planning as part of their service trip” to HFASS. Since they number 28 Bolz-Weber tells the church “if that many people came we’d have to take down the prayer labyrinth.”

And then pastrix Nadia says:

then I thought s**t.  Is radical hospitality about saying “please join us…that is if we aren’t inconvenienced and we don’t have to change anything from the way we like it”?  

So I want you to know that I have repented from my original impulse to protect and preserve HFASS so that all the people who really belong there won’t feel uncomfortable or inconvenienced. It’s not our tent.  It’s God’s tent. (emphasis hers)

Well, it may be a tent, but it isn’t God’s tent; because we know from the Bible that He did not call such as her to pastor churches belonging to Jesus Christ.

As you’ll see for yourself in the video here Jakes speaks those very words himself.

Time Magazine takes a look at the embrace of Roman Catholicism’s model of the Virgin Mary by Protestants…

“…In a shift whose ideological breadth is unusual in the fragmented Protestant world, a long-standing wall around Mary appears to be eroding. It is not that Protestants are converting to Catholicism’s dramatic exaltation: the singing of Salve Regina, the Rosary’s Marian Mysteries, the entreaty to her in the Hail Mary to “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Rather, a growing number of Christian thinkers who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox (another branch of faith to which Mary is central) have concluded that their various traditions have shortchanged her in the very arena in which Protestantism most prides itself: the careful and full reading of Scripture.”

See the rest at Watcher’s Lamp.

Despite the fact that Jakes denies Who God is, as you’ll see here, he’s still to be a featured speaker for Bill Hybels.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 ESV)

Several of us are taking a closer look at John Ortberg’s The Me I Want to Be book and his “church program” Monvee. In our discussions, there inevitably comes a point where we must stop and ask, “How could these people believe and teach this stuff if they know their Bibles at all?” This stuff is chocked full of Pelagianism and mysticism. Ken Silva made the following comment today and I want to pass it on to you for it, I think, succinctly points us to the right way to address this stuff while shining God’s brilliant light of truth into the murkiness.

What’s going on is for years now these people read and quote from their own books. Add in the deception of a false unity received in the practice of CSM and what we see is people trying to please people.

They think they’ve come up with a Christianity that the world will want to embrace. People like us who insist upon Scripture are embarrassing to them. Bottom line: They think one can intellectually choose to be a Christian if we make it sound good enough to the unchurched. – Ken Silva

(click here to read this post)

More here.

With the takeover of the visible church by the “Innovation Cult” pragmatism is the rule. This pragmatic approach to ministry is lead by some men who have become blinded to the truth of what God requires of all those who are called by His name. They are blind because they, being in spiritual darkness with hardened hearts, are bent on their man-centered, man-made methodologies; i.e. doctrines of men. The fruit of this is well represented by Rick Warren’s “deeds not creeds” slogan for all this really consists of is works righteousness.

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