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CATHOLIC NEWSPAPER NAMED “THE LEAVEN” (Friday Church News Notes, August 31, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, is “The Leaven.” This reminds me that Roman Catholics simply don’t know the Bible, and any exception to that does not overthrow the rule. To name a church paper “the leaven” one would doubtless have to be ignorant of the fact that the Bible always uses the term leaven to describe sin and error. The statement “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” is used twice in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 5:6 it refers to sin in the church and in Galatians 5:9, to false teaching. In both cases the leaven was something undesirable to be rooted out. The term “leaven” first appears in the Bible in Exodus 12:15 in connection with Israel’s feast of unleavened bread. No leaven was to be allowed in the house for seven days, and this signified putting sin out of their lives. The offerings and sacrifices were to be made without leaven because they typified the sinless Christ (Ex. 34:25; Lev. 2:11; 6:17). The only exception was the offering on the feast of Pentecost, which pointed to the beginning of the church age in Acts 2. Since the churches are composed of sinners saved by grace, that offering was baked with leaven. But this does not change the fact that leaven always refers to sin or error in the Bible. The “leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” was false teaching (Mat. 16:6). Come to think of it, “The Leaven” is a perfect description of Rome’s heresies, so the title is fitting. I witnessed another example of this level of ignorance while attending the North American Congress on the Holy Spirit & World Evangelization in New Orleans in 1987. Catholic Priest Tom Forrest from Rome, the concluding speaker, said, “God has called us to be angels of light. We are angels of light.” Indeed. “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15).

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S CHEAP SHOT AT BIBLICAL WARNING MINISTRIES (Friday Church News Notes, August 31, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The August 2007 issue of Christianity Today contains a cheap shot aimed at Way of Life Literature and another ministry in particular and warning ministries in general. Titled “Attack Dogs of Christendom,” the Christianity Today article is hypocritical, shallow and unscholarly, slanderous, biblically and historically wrong, unreasonable, prideful, fearful of strong biblical language, and evidential of CT’s own error and spiritual blindness. (See our critique of it at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/christianity-todays-cheapshot.html.) The charges made against Way of Life are so untrue and seemingly vicious that they could be characterized as slanderous. CT says, for example, that Way of Life’s reports “differ little from the coarse vulgarity of cable TV.” See what I mean. To say, as CT does, that a preacher should not warn of error publicly (CT writes, “Lashing out in public at fellow Christians is objectionable”) flies in the face of Scripture as well as the example of church history. Scripture commands the preacher to reprove and rebuke (2 Tim. 4:2) and to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Paul instructed Titus, “These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee” (Titus 2:15). When we come to church history we have a continuous stream of plain spoken and sharp public warnings that have been issued against error and that helped to protect God’s people from the heresies of the day. Consider, for example, Martin Luther and William Tyndale and Charles Spurgeon. If New Evangelicals can promote their doctrine and philosophy freely on the Internet, we can critique it just as publicly. Way of Life is not an attack dog; it is a watch dog. We bark at heresy wherever it lifts its destructive head in these evil last days so that God’s people can be warned and beware and can stay on the straight and narrow path. The reason why this generation of “evangelicals” is so ignorant of the important issues facing God’s people in these end times is because their watchmen are blind and dumb. “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber” (Isaiah 56:10). The same spirit of slumber and dumbness is overcoming many fundamental Baptist preachers. Those who call themselves “young fundamentalists” are on the same road as that taken by Christianity Today. Take heed!

CANADA ANGLICANS SAY BLESSING HOMOSEXUAL UNIONS NOT IN CONFLICT WITH THEIR CORE DOCTRINES (Friday Church News Notes, August 31, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - At its General Synod in June, the Anglican Church of Canada voted that blessing homosexual unions does not conflict with the “core doctrines” of the church. If this is the case, this New Age Society masquerading as a church needs to get some better “core doctrines.” I would suggest the Bible, and blessing homosexual unions most definitely conflicts with the Bible. “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet” (Romans 1:26-27). (In typical liberal doublespeak the same Synod rejected a resolution that would have allowed dioceses to decide for themselves whether or not to “bless same-sex unions,” but that is another subject.)

APOSTATE DENOMINATIONS IN EUROPE HOPE TO RENEW CHRISTIANITY (Friday Church News Notes, August 31, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The same apostate denominations that have destroyed Christianity in Europe are holding another conference with the objective of renewing Christianity on that continent. The Third European Ecumenical Assembly, to be held in Romania in September, is jointly organized by the Roman Catholic bishops’ conference of Europe and the Conference of European Churches, which “groups Most Anglican, Protestant and Orthodox churches in Europe” (“Major Church Assembly Expected to Propel Christian Comeback in Europe,” Christian Post, Aug. 8, 2007). Charles Hill of the Anglican Council for Christian Unity said the conference will “give new impetus to the churches of Europe to raise their common profile and renew their mission to bring the light, hope and love of Jesus Christ to our continent.” In fact, it is these very denominations that have destroyed Christianity in Europe by their heresies and theological modernism and spiritual adultery and have thereby caused people to turn away from “church.” Take Anglicanism, for example. On one trip to England years ago I picked up a copy of the Sunday Times and was amazed to see an Easter interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury (Robert Runcie at the time) in which he said that he was an agnostic as to why Jesus died on the cross. On another visit to England I saw an ad in the newspaper for an Anglican church service featuring music by the Spice Girls. This is typical of the “Christianity” that exists throughout Europe. It’s either dead Catholicism or dead Orthodoxy or dead Protestantism, take your pick. It is these people that have made Christianity into the empty laughing stock that it is in dark Europe. On a research trip in 2003 Brian Snider and David Brown and I visited St. Peter’s Kirk, Leiden, Netherlands, where the Pilgrim’s worshipped before going to America. The church was hosting an art festival. In a video interview with a woman at festival, Brian asked her what has happened to all of the Christians who used to be there. In slightly broken English she replied, “I think there are no more Christians anymore.” That sad statement encapsulates what has happened to England and Europe. Indeed, the Bible-believing Christians are gone and paganism, in all of its sensuality, pomp and vainglory, has taken over. And the reason is the apostasy of the churches.

TUTU SAYS UNITY WITH HOMOSEXUALS MAKES GOD SMILE (Friday Church News Notes, August 31, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Desmond Tutu, the retired head of the Anglican Church in South Africa, recently wrote an open letter to Anglican leaders urging them to put unity above all their differences so that Jesus will smile at them. Tutu, who consistently comes up with cutting-edge heretical statements, particularly mentioned the issue of homosexuality, which is causing divisions in Anglicanism. Addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury and the upcoming Lambeth Conference, Tutu said, “Please invite ALL those in Episcopal orders who are not retired, even those irregularly consecrated or actively gay; please, now I appeal to you all, do not excommunicate one another seemingly so easily. Be welcoming and inclusive of one another” (“Be United and Let Jesus Smile Again,” Church Times, Aug. 24, 2007). Tutu concluded by saying: “Our Lord is weeping to see our Communion tearing itself apart on the issue of human sexuality, when the world for which he died is ravaged by poverty, disease, war and corruption. We are one of God’s agents to deal with these scourges. God has no one but us. Please, I beg you all in our Lord’s name, agree to disagree, argue, debate; disagree, but do all this as members of one family. Accept one another as God accepts us, however we are, in Christ.” This man is deeply confused. The Lord Jesus warned that without repentance there is no salvation (Luke 13:3, 5). Jesus accepts sinners as they are, but only on the basis of repentance and faith, and He then tells them what he told the blind man: “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee” (John 5:14), and the woman that was caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). The Tutu gospel is a cheap gospel of license rather than the biblical gospel of true conversion. The Tutu “church” is not a true New Testament church after the pattern of the first churches that required their members to exhibit new birth salvation (Acts 2:41-42) and exercised discipline toward those who persisted in sin (1 Corinthians 5). The Tutu Commission of changing the world is not the one that Jesus left us five times in Scripture (Mat. 28:18-20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:44-48; John 20:21; Acts 1:8). Nowhere do we see the Lord’s apostles going about to heal the world of poverty, disease, and war. Tutu’s Christianity is described in 2 Timothy 3. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, ... Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (2 Timothy 3:1-2, 5).

TRUTH WOULD NOT BE TRUTH IN THIS WORLD IF IT WERE NOT A WARRING THING (Friday Church News Notes, August 31, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is from Charles Spurgeon’s Sermons, vol. 5, #24: “Truth could not be truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once suspect it were not true if error were friends with it. The spotless purity of truth must always be at war with the blackness of heresy and lies. I say again, it would cast a suspicion upon its own nature; we should feel at once that it was not true, if it were not at enmity with the false. .... It is but a rule of nature that holiness must be at enmity with sin. That would be but a mock purity which could lie side by side with iniquity and claim its kinship. ‘Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee?’ ... If it were so. beloved, we might then not only suspect that the church was not the holy, universal and apostolic church; we might not only suspect it, but we might beyond suspicion pronounce a verdict upon her, ‘Thou art no more Christ’s bride; thou art an antichrist, an apostate, reprobate silver shall men call thee, because thou hast not learned to distinguish between the precious and the vile.’”

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? “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).