NEWS NOTES 10/22/2004

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EIGHTY-FOUR DENOMINATIONS PARTICIPATE IN GRAHAM CRUSADE. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Eighty-four denominations directly participated in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade in Kansas City recently. Let me say plainly and emphatically that it is not possible to find 84 different denominations that follow the Bible in this apostate time. The participating denominations include those that hold such heresies as baptismal regeneration, sacramentalism, sacradotalism, infant baptism, theological modernism, and charismaticism. Southern Baptists were prominent within this doctrinal hodge-podge. The ecumenical approach has been standard procedure for the Graham campaigns for five decades. In 1957 Graham said, “Anyone who makes a decision at our meetings is seen later and referred to a local clergyman, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish” (San Francisco News, Nov. 11, 1957). The vice-chairman of the Graham Crusade in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1984, testified, “If Catholics step forward there will be no attempt to convert them and their names will be given to the Catholic church nearest their homes” (David Stine, quoted in the Vancouver Sun, Oct. 5, 1984). One hundred priests and Catholic laity were trained to follow-up Graham’s crusade in Boston in 1982. A priest and a nun were among the supervisors of the counselors for the Denver crusade in 1987, and from one service alone the names of 500 seekers were referred to St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church. All of the 2,100 Catholics who came forward during the Graham crusade in London, England, in 1989 were referred back to Catholic churches. In 1999 Graham said, “My responsibility is to preach the Gospel to everyone and let them choose their own church, whether it is Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox or whatever it is” (Graham, interview with Patricia Rice, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 10, 1999). He is a deeply deceived man.

A QUESTION FOR SOUTHERN BAPTISTS UPON THEIR LEAVING THE BWA. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from “Theological Liberalism, Anti-Americanism Prominent in the Baptist World Alliance,” Foundation magazine, July-August 2004: “Although the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is certainly taking appropriate action by withdrawing its financial support of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and its membership in the organization, [a question] must still be asked of the SBC. [W]hy does the SBC claim to stand firm for the truth while continuing to unite with those of all denominations who embrace false doctrine and even preach a false gospel? ... SBC pastors and churches play a prominent part in ecumenical endeavors such as Promise Keepers, the Global Pastor’s Network, Campus Crusade for Christ, the Billy Graham crusades and many other such events and movements that unite those of all theological persuasions. Believers must beware of the BWA yet also realize that the SBC is still no place for a Biblical fundamentalist who desires to remain faithful to the whole counsel of God.” Amen and amen!

JESUS SEMINAR STILL ON ITS CRAZY MARCH TOWARD HELL. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Two scholars with the Jesus Seminar were scheduled to spew forth some of their damnable heresies at a conference Oct. 16-17 in Phoenix, Arizona. The two are Stephen Patterson of Eden Theological Seminary and Robert Miller of Juniata College. Patterson said, “Most people, not just conservative Christians, assume that what the Bible says happened actually happened,” but it is much better, he claims, to “take [the] blinders off” and not “assume the Bible is history” (“Jesus Seminar Raises Controversial Issues,” Arizona Republic, Oct. 9). The misnamed Jesus Seminar began meeting in 1985 with the object of discovering which words of the Gospels are allegedly authentic. In 1993 the Jesus Seminar published The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. The text of the Gospels was color coded to indicate the degree to which the various portions are considered authentic. Red for definitely authentic; pink for maybe; gray for probably; black for definitely not authentic. I can assure you that there is very little red ink in this volume! They deny the virgin birth, miracles, blood atonement, bodily resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Christ. In 1986, Jesus Seminar scholar Ron Cameron stated: “The death of Jesus was like a car wreck; it’s an accident of history. ... I’m not sure why the Romans killed Jesus, but the gospel stories are not historical in the modern sense of the word” (Christian News, April 7, 1986). Jesus Seminar “fellow” Marcus Borg pontificated, “It is a distortion of Scripture to read [the Bible] as a book of the future. It has a profoundly disturbing effect and leads to the image of God as judge and emphasizes us as getting ready for judgment. It takes us away from the world” (The Berean Call, April 1992). “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1).

GORBACHEV CALLS FOR NEW WORLD ORDER. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet leader, is calling for a “new world order.” Speaking at the 91st annual Insurance Leadership Forum, Gorbachev said a new world order would rely heavily on the United Nations and would be more stable, more just, and more humane. In fact, the Bible describes two “new world orders” that will arise in the future. First, there will be the order of the antichrist, the man of sin, and the world will be required to worship his image and no one will be able to buy or sell without his mark (2 Thess. 2:3-12; Rev. 13). This will be followed by the order of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Only under this Order will peace and true justice reign on earth.

PROPHETS DON’T HAVE TO BE RIGHT. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Many of the charismatic prophets today admit that they are wrong at least part of the time, but they claim that a New Testament prophet does not have to be correct in all of his prophecies. Mike Bickle of Kansas City helped promote the prophetic ministry among the Vineyard Churches when he joined John Wimber in 1990. I heard Bickle and Wimber speak at the Indianapolis ’90 ecumenical conference. Recently Bickle said, “The easy response is to discount a prophetic person who gets it wrong. That’s not the right response” (“Prophetic Movement Confronts Extremes,” Charisma Online, Oct. 7, 2004). He says we should not label it “false prophecy” but “soulish” or “humanly generated” prophesying. This is nonsense and heresy. If a man speaks by prophecy, he is to be judged as a prophet (Deut. 18:20-22; 1 Cor. 14:29). And one of the tests is accuracy. “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him” (Deut. 18:22).

PAUL AND JAN CROUCH’S OPULENT LIFESTYLE. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Paul and Jan Couch of Trinity Broadcasting Network fame are staunch believers in the “prosperity gospel” and they have the lifestyle to prove it. Their annual salary is $763,700. Their ministry owns a $7.2-million jet and 30 homes, one of which features a $10,000 wine cabinet. Two of the homes are multi-million dollar mansions in a gated community overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The ministry’s balance sheet for 2002, the most recent available, lists net assets of $583 million, including $238 million in Treasury bonds and $31 million in cash (“Pastor’s Empire Built on Acts of Faith, and Cash,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 19). The extravagant headquarters near Los Angeles features reflecting pools, sculptures, and neoclassical colonnades. TBN spreads a radical unscriptural charismatic message around the world. Recently it came to light that 1997 Paul Crouch paid a former employee $425,000 to keep silent about an alleged homosexual tryst.

THE COMPLEXITY OF MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM. Friday Church News Notes, October 22, 2004 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, fbns@wayoflife.org, http://www.wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The principles of modern textual criticism that underlie the modern Bible versions are very complicated. They involve such things as conflation, recension, inversion, eclecticism, conjectural emendation, intrinsic and transcriptional probability, interpolation, statistical probability, harmonistic assimilation, cognate groups, hypothesized intermediate archetypes, stemmatic reconstruction, and genealogical methods. It is impossible to reconcile this scholarly complexity with the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3) and with the scriptural fact that God has chosen the weak of this world to confound the mighty (Mat. 11:25; 1 Cor. 1:20-29). At its heart, the Bible text and version issue is as simple as God’s Character and His promise of preservation (1 Peter 1:23-25). A foundational principle of modern textual criticism is that the purest text of the New Testament was replaced in about the 4th century with a corrupted text and not “recovered” until the 19th century!

CONCLUSION: Friends in Christ, do not be discouraged by any of this. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. These things remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the coming of the Lord. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ day by day? Are you in the perfect will of God for your life and bearing fruit for His glory? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:11-14).