When ‘discernment’ leads to disaster
“The historic First Baptist Church of Greenville, South Carolina, announced in May that it would declare itself be ‘open and welcoming’ to all people and that it would allow same-sex marriage and ordain openly homosexual ministers.
The move came after the church had undergone a ‘discernment’ process under the leadership of a ‘LGBT Discernment Team.’ That team brought a report to the church’s deacons, who then forwarded it to the congregation. The church then approved the statement by standing vote…
The lesson – once a church or denomination is untethered from the inerrancy of the Bible, there is no brake on the relativizing effects of cultural pressure.”
– Albert Mohler writes an important essay on the slide into liberalism of a historic US church.
Reading the Newspaper
“At Theological College it was suggested that we students read the newspaper, standing up, giving it a cursory reading. I have never followed that advice, I enjoy the daily paper in a comfortable chair, newsprint and all, no online version for me!
Last week, I was asked to speak to a group of men about ‘how Christians read the newspaper’.
The news is usually confronting: ISIS, travel entitlements, single gender marriage, human trafficking as well as the natural disasters of fire and drought.
The starting point for the believer is the sovereign rule of God over all things…”
– a very helpful comment from Presbyterian Moderator-General David Cook.
(Image: St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.)
Church Leaders’ views on Marriage
Presbyterian Moderator-General David Cook, along with Roman Catholic spokesman Brian Lucas, were interviewed today by Neil Johnson on Vision Christian Radio’s 20Twenty programme.
The topic: the proposed changes to Australian marriage laws.
The 47 minute segment can be downloaded here as a 19MB mp3 file.
The dangerous calling of Christian missions
“America’s evangelical Christians are facing a critical time of testing in the 21st century. Among the most important of the tests we now face is the future of missions and our faithfulness to the Great Commission. At a time of unprecedented opportunity, will our zeal for world missions slacken?
Just as doors of opportunity are opening around the world, the church seems to be losing its voice. A virtual re-paganization of Western culture is occurring around us at a velocity unprecedented in human history. At the same time, we are also witnessing the rise of militant Islam…”
– Albert Mohler reminds his readers that the dangerous nature of Christian missions is just as the Lord Jesus predicted.
‘I thought Planned Parenthood protected family values’
“Abortion steals praise from God by denying image-bearers the opportunity to live through and for him. Abortion despises and attacks and destroys the image of God…”
– Rosaria Butterfield asks how our worldview affects our view of humanity.
Planned Parenthood, Abortion, and the Conscience of a Nation
“Yesterday’s release of a video showing the senior medical director of Planned Parenthood casually discussing the sale of organs from aborted babies is a moral challenge thrown right in the face of all Americans…”
– Albert Mohler writes about the video which has exposed the depths of human depravity.
Russell Moore also writes about it, and Carl Trueman congratulates Planned Parenthood “for having so perfectly summarized the spirit of our age.”
‘Will the same-sex marriage push destroy the right of churches to dissent?’
“This raises the question about the real ideology of the same-sex marriage campaign. Is it merely to allow gays to marry? Or is its ultimate purpose to impose ‘marriage equality’ across the entire society, civil and religious. Ideologies do not normally stop at the halfway mark…”
– Andrew Bolt at The Herald-Sun quotes from an important article by Paul Kelly in The Australian (which requires a subscription to read in full).
How should we then live — in Babylon?
“Back in the late 1970’s when I was an undergrad at Stanford, our Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship chapter sponsored lectures by Dr. Francis Schaeffer to the whole university. In the wake of the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage, and its ramifications for the constraint of our religious freedoms, I am reminded of the question Dr. Schaeffer posed in those lectures (and in his book) How should we then live?
I’m a pastor by first calling (an attorney by second), and I’ve been prayerfully reflecting on the answer to Dr. Schaeffer’s most relevant question. So let me respectfully offer some thoughts as we look over the cultural, spiritual and legal landscape we know face…”
– Phil Ashey at the American Anglican Council, has some advice for US churches.
The success of the Left
“There are now fewer in our denomination who remember the way the church was pre 1977.
I began to teach Sunday School at Waverley Presbyterian in 1968. The curriculum consisted of situational ethics. There was no gospel being taught, indeed, in the wider church, those who refused to use the imposed Sunday School material were hounded out of the church. Liberalism in the majority is always thoroughly intolerant!
These were the days when our training institutions imposed a deadening liberalism by training clergy with no gospel to preach, no propitiatory sacrifice, no substitutionary atonement, no bodily resurrection, and no new life…”
– In one of his recent opinion pieces, Presbyterian Moderator-General David Cook reminds us of the ever-present danger of theological liberalism.
(Image: St. Helen’s Bishopsgate.)
Trouble ahead for U.S. Churches?
“The problem is that with this decision, the not-Supreme-and-not-a-court has set the stage for a monumental conflict between two constitutional rights: the right to exercise one’s religion under the First Amendment, and the right to marry (which soon will have to be extended to polygamy and polyandry, since there are no limiting principles to the new “right” just discovered).
And the worst part is that the only umpires for this impending conflict will be: you guessed it — unelected lawyers in black robes.
What may come as news to some is that the United States has been there before — and the results were not pretty…”
– Christian lawyer A S Haley comments.
Related: American Tragedy: Now Gird Up Your Loins.
“… this will turn out to be the greatest American tragedy for the civil liberties of persons of faith, for the cause of sexual purity… and for the lives of persons struggling with same-sex attraction…”
D A Carson on the US Supreme Court decision
On Desiring God’s Ask Pastor John podcast, Tony Reinke asked Prof. D. A. Carson for his response to the US Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision.
Runs for 18 minutes. Worth listening.
Responses to US Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision
“The threat to religious liberty represented by this decision is clear, present, and inevitable.
Assurances to the contrary, the majority in this decision has placed every religious institution in legal jeopardy if that institution intends to uphold its theological convictions limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman. This threat is extended to every religious citizen or congregation that would uphold the convictions held by believers for millennia.”
– Read it all – at the SBTS website.
Russell Moore also has wise words in this video. via Justin Taylor.
“This is not the time for Christians to panic. We have a God who is sovereign. The Supreme Court can do many things, but the Supreme Court cannot get Jesus Christ back into the grave.”
The Heresy of Racial Superiority
“In 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination publicly repented of its roots in the defense of slavery.
In 2015, far more is required of us. It is not enough to repent of slavery. We must repent and seek to confront and remove every strain of racial superiority that remains and seek with all our strength to be the kind of churches of which Jesus would be proud — the kind of churches that will look like the marriage supper of the Lamb…”
– Albert Mohler looks at the history of his own denomination – and college.
Welcome to Upsy Down Town
“Fifty years ago the Christian world view was accepted as the norm by most of the western world. Twenty years ago it was tolerated as the view of some.
Today, in Upsy Down Town, if you want to stand for the Christian way of thinking on almost any ethical issue, expect to be swimming against the tide…”
– Stephen Rockwell, who teaches at George Whitefield College in Cape Town, writes about how to live in Upsy Down Town.
Who counts as an extremist?
“Shortly after the last general election, prime minister David Cameron said that the UK had been a ‘passively tolerant society’ for too long. ‘Passively tolerant’, he says, is a society in which people were told ‘as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone’.
This is rather odd…”
– Oak Hill Principal Mike Ovey considers some ominous proposals in the UK.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…