http://www.wayoflife.org/index.htmlWay of Life Literature - Daily Articlesensupport@wayoflife.orgCopyright 2013 Way of Life Literature2013-06-19T06:03:38-04:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:20:56 -0400support@wayoflife.orgEvangelicalism2013-06-19T06:03:38-04:00http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/what_brought_evangelicalism.html#unique-entry-id-1266http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/what_brought_evangelicalism.html#unique-entry-id-1266The following is excerpted from The Emerging Church is Coming, a free eBook available from www.wayoflife.org.

Modern “evangelicalism” is a large house with many rooms. There are rooms that promote a female concept of God. Rooms that cast doubt upon the necessity of the blood atonement of Christ and eternal hellfire. Rooms where “same sex marriage” is acceptable. Rooms that promote the heresy of universalism. Rooms where Mary is an intercessor with God. Rooms that practice mind-emptying “meditation.” Rooms that are lined with books by ancient heretics. 

At times those in the more conservative rooms will issue mild “warnings” about those in the more liberal rooms, but in practice evangelicalism is one big family, because the “conservative” rooms aren’t walled off from the most liberal of rooms. 

There are many pathways that lead to all of the rooms, such as the pathway of contemporary praise music, the pathway of ecumenical evangelism, and the pathway of contemplative prayer.

What has brought evangelicalism to this terrible place and what must Bible-believing Baptists and fundamentalists watch out for?

The evangelical movement took a dramatic new turn in the mid-20th century, and we see the shocking fruit of it today. It is large, influential, wealthy, intellectually interesting, but it is also filled with worldly compromise and heresies. 

How did evangelicalism come to the place where some of its most prominent leaders accept a novel (“The Shack”) depicting God as a non-judgmental, rock & roll-loving woman? 

Following are some of the things that have brought evangelicalism to this place, and these are the very things that are sweeping into many fundamentalist Bible-believing churches. 

As for independent Baptists in particular, they are at the same place today that the New Evangelicals were just a few decades ago. 

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The older I get, the more wonderful God is in my eyes. At age 63, I am reminded of the teaching of John that the spiritual fathers “have known him that is from the beginning” (1 John 2:12-14). The characteristic of the older saint is that he or she knows God. 

What we know of God in this life, though, is but a glimpse. The saints will learn of God forever, as there is no end to His Person and Character. God is an infinite Being and every aspect of His Person is infinite. His riches are “unsearchable” (Eph. 3:8). His love “passeth knowledge” (Eph. 3:19). His peace “passeth all understanding” (Phil. 4:7).

The most delightful and attractive aspect of God for the sinner, of course, is His mercy and compassion and tender nearness, and this is a major theme of the Psalms.  God is the protector and help of His people. This theme begins in Psalm 3:2-3 -- “Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah. But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.”

Throughout the Psalms, as the saint is plunged into the afflictions that are a frequent part of this present life, he is reminded that God will not forsake him. This is true for the Jewish remnant as well as for the saints of all ages. 

These promises teach us about God’s character: First, He is compassionate and willing to help. He is not untouched with the feeling of our infirmities. Second, He is able to help. He is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immortal God who is well able to keep all of His promises. 

a. God is my shepherd (Psa. 23). This is one of the most famous and beloved passages of the Bible, but it is often wrongly applied to all people, whereas it rightly applies only to the believer who has put his faith in God’s redemption in Christ. The Psalm describes the Lord’s most intimate watch care over His people: feeding, leading, protecting, comforting, restoring their souls, preparing a table before them in the presence of their enemies. I have often been amazed in my Christian life at how the Lord restores our souls. Because of sin and affliction and spiritual warfare and the troubles of this life, the soul can become discouraged and downcast and filled with sin and self, but the Good Shepherd restores it.
The Psalmist described the troubles of his soul in Psalm 119. His soul cleaved to the dust (Psa. 119:25) and melted for heaviness (Psa. 119:28) and was like a bottle in the smoke (Psa. 119:83), which refers to a leather bottle that was dried out and lifeless because the moisture had been removed by the hot smoke from the fire. The soul of the child of God can go through a myriad of troubles in this sin-cursed world, but the Lord is faithful to restore it.

]]>support@wayoflife.orgFriday Church News 20132013-06-14T06:03:03-04:00http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/friday_church_news_14_24.html#unique-entry-id-1264http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/friday_church_news_14_24.html#unique-entry-id-1264

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>> Graphical Edition

BRIAN MCLAREN’S ADVICE TO CONTEMPORARY SONGWRITERS (Friday Church News Notes, June 14, 2013, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Brian McLaren, one of the most influential voices of the most liberal side of the “emerging church,” has published an “Open Letter to Worship Leaders” in which he offers “a list of Biblical themes to explore in our lyrics.” Note the word “Biblical.” McLaren loves to use biblical terminology, but he defines it with a heretic’s dictionary. He has rejected the dispensational theology of his godly missionary grandfather, having launched his boat onto the waters of end-time apostasy. McLaren and his emerging pals are a fulfillment of 2 Timothy 3. They have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof (v. 5), which is the blood atonement of Christ and the infallible Scripture. They are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth (v. 7). Indeed, McLaren’s theology is never settled. He loves to cast doubt on “the old,” but he has few solid answers for the present, and the answers he does have are wrong. What themes does this man suggest for contemporary songwriters? He suggests that they sing about building the kingdom of God in the here and now rather than about “being evacuated to heaven with Jesus, leaving the earth to be destroyed.” McLaren wants to hear songs about smokestacks giving way to wind generators, about bullets being melted down and recast as plows, about polar bears making a comeback. He suggests singing about God as female, singing about the God who used billions of years of evolution to “create” the world. He urges songwriters to reject “a sinners’ prayer gospel” that focuses on forgiveness of sin and Jesus’ blood and to sing rather about a God “not needing appeasement.” Brian McLaren is very much a part of the confused waters of modern “evangelicalism.” The emerging church is a big house with many interconnecting rooms. For example, McLaren links from his blog to the Southern Baptist Ed Stetzer’s blog. They all link to Rick Warren. All evangelicals aren’t liberal in theology like McLaren, but almost all of them hold hands to various degrees. They don’t believe in or practice biblical separation, which is a fundamental error. Even “conservatives” like Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Seminary wholeheartedly support Billy Graham-style ecumenism. Dangerous bridges exist everywhere. The extremely liberal McLaren is welcome with open arms to forums such as the 2009 National Pastor’s Conference, which I covered with media credentials and where I personally interviewed McLaren. Other speakers included Andy Crouch, a senior editor of Christianity Today, Bill Hybels, Rob Bell, Leighton Ford, Gordon Fee, John Ortberg, Scot McKnight, and Paul Young, author of The Shack. Brian McLaren knows what he is doing. He is a change agent. He has openly stated that he is targeting the children and grandchildren of today’s fundamentalists. Today his very liberal thinking is in the minority within “evangelicalism,” but it will soon be the majority because of the spiritual carelessness and brazen disobedience of the “conservatives” and the foolishness of the “fundamentalists” who are messing around with evangelicalism and its contemporary worship rather than plainly and unequivocally rejecting it and separating from it. 

AN INORDINATE LOVE FOR MUSIC (Friday Church News Notes, June 14, 2013, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following testimony is by the late Evangelist Gordon Sears, who died in 2001. “Recently I talked with a Baptist church pastor in the state of Michigan who lost fifty members of his congregation over the subject of CCM. This pastor had refused to allow CCM to be a part of his church music program. The fifty people who left all went to another church where they could enjoy their contemporary music. The fact is that the music became more important to these people than their convictions and doctrinal beliefs. They were willing to give up their church, where they had attended for many years, to join a church of another denomination, where the teaching and standards would be entirely different. This, dear reader, is ‘a mark of apostasy’—personal preference becomes more important than biblical truth. Similar experiences like the one in Michigan are happening all over the nation. People who are addicted to contemporary music seem to gradually lose whatever love and appreciation they may have had for the great traditional hymns of the church. If the church they attend takes a stand against CCM, the reaction is to retaliate by moving to another church.” 

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In the following statements, rock musicians describe an outside power that has taken over them while writing and performing rock music. Since these are people who don’t know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, the source of their influence must be that which is described in Ephesians:

“Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:2-3).

JIMI HENDRIX’S girlfriend, Fayne Pridgon, said: “He used to always talk about some devil or something was in him, you know. He didn’t know what made him act the way he acted and what made him say the things he said, and the songs and different things like that … just came out of him. It seems to me he was so tormented and just torn apart and like he really was obsessed, you know, with something really evil” (sound track from film Jimi Hendrix, interview with Fayne Pridgon, side 4, cited by Heartbeat of the Dragon, p. 50).

ROBERT PLANT and JIMMY PAGE of LED ZEPPELIN both claim that they don’t know who wrote their occultic song Stairway to Heaven. Plant testified: “Pagey had written the chords and played them for me. I was holding the paper and pencil, and for some reason, I was in a very bad mood. Then all of a sudden my hand was writing out words. … I just sat there and looked at the words and then I almost leaped out of my seat” (Robert Plant, quoted by Stephen Davis, Hammer of the Gods, p. 164).

PETE TOWNSHEND of The Who says that he began acting as a medium for music when he learned to play the harmonica as a boy. “I got lost in the sound of the mouth organ, and then had the most extraordinary, life-changing experience. Suddenly I was hearing music within the music--rich, complex harmonic beauty that had been locked in the sounds I’d been making. The next day I went fly fishing, and this time the murmuring sound of the river opened up a wellspring of music so enormous that I fell in and out of a trance. It was the beginning of my lifelong connection to ... what might be described as the music of the spheres. ... One day I found some chords that made me lightheaded. As I played them my body buzzed all over, and my head filled with the most complex, disturbing orchestral music. ... I had the ability to create alpha-state music in my head, go into a creative trance, have musical visions... Since so much of this music bubbled up urgently from my subconscious mind, I’m left to interpret it much like anyone else” (Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir, HarperCollins, 2012, pp. 41, 46, 62, 145).

]]>support@wayoflife.orgLancaster/West Coast2013-06-17T06:03:45-04:00http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/challenges_to_lancaster_supporters.html#unique-entry-id-1260http://www.wayoflife.org/index_files/challenges_to_lancaster_supporters.html#unique-entry-id-1260

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This report also appears under the titles "God's People Being Mistreated by Lancaster Supporters" and "Independent Baptist Music Wars."

Since 2011 I have been hearing from church members who are being mistreated by their pastors because they don’t agree with what Lancaster Baptist Church in Lancaster, California, (home of West Coast Baptist College) is doing in regard to the adaptation of contemporary worship music.

Consider an example.

A pastor has taken to “blasting” me from the pulpit because he has a family who is resisting the church’s contemporary direction in music. This family has refused to sing contemporary worship songs by Getty/Townend and others. They have done this quietly without talking around to try to cause trouble among the members, but they cannot in good conscience sing these songs. They told the music director personally, and that was all. The husband said, “I told my wife that, since I did not want to cause divisions, we would not talk to anyone about the reasons for my decision, and we didn't.”

Even so, the pastor has made this family feel very uncomfortable by saying that questioning the pastor is evidence of a critical spirit and that being concerned about things such as “beat anticipation” is to “waste time about minor things while souls are dying and going to hell.”

Last year this pastor had seemed to agree with my warnings, but after he attended a conference at Lancaster he developed a bad attitude toward me personally and toward my ministry and toward those who listen to me. He is now treating me as an enemy of good churches and an underminer of pastoral authority.

The pastor preached a sermon that appeared to be directed toward that faithful family. The husband testified as follows of how he felt when his own pastor treated him like some sort of enemy of the truth:

“I don't think I have ever felt so despised and worthless as I did at the end of that sermon. Just as he never mentioned your name when blasting away at you, he never mentioned my name when blasting away at me. But it was obvious to everyone involved in the music ministry, and perhaps to some others as well, EXACTLY who he was talking about. He stood up there and mocked me for ‘taking a stand’ on such a supposedly trivial issue. He accused me of being more loyal to an ‘Internet pastor’ than to himself.  He accused me of being unsubmissive to pastoral authority and causing divisions. He accused me of thinking that I'm ‘more spiritual’ than everyone else. He even implied that my actions were somehow preventing people from being saved.”

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