Thank You, John MacArthur

Please listen to these video clips. And thank God for Biblical teachers like John MacArthur, who instead of telling people what they want to hear...give them TRUTH.

Part #1



Part #2

A Very True and Alarming Picture of Today's Church

How Sad...

Is This What will Be Taught In Health Class?

I can't help but wonder if this is what will be taught to kids in a public school heath class. Since we as a society are accepting of this, heck we're down-right intrigued, should I now worry about what my son will be taught as 'normal' in a sex-ed class in public schools?

** WARNING: CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC LANGUAGE **



** WARNING: CONTAINS SOME GRAPHIC LANGUAGE **

Go and Make Disciples

You Won't Learn This in Public School.

A Bit of Wisdom, From the Mouths of our Atheist Forefathers...

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens....reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles."

-George Washington

A Bit Off the Wall...But the Question Remains

So Many Questions...So Few Answers....

Who is really spreading Hate?

Some Guys Know Everything...

* The following is an edited version of the Bill Maher & Larry King Interview on CNN

King: You recently issued one of your new rules decreeing that Obama must give comedians something to work with. Any suggestions?

Maher: No. It's very difficult. We have been spoiled, first with Bill Clinton and then George Bush. And here's a president now who -- he's not stupid. He's not angry. He's not a phony. He's not fat. He's not cheating on his wife.
Who needs a jerk like that around for the next four years? Come on.

(LAUGHTER)

But look, he's going to be the president and we're going to have to get over our nervousness about making fun of a black person. He's not a black person. He's the president.

King: So then you must want Gov. Palin to stay around, comedically.

Maher: I do and she will. I think what people did not understand about Gov. Palin was that she campaigned for that job. She wanted it. She lobbied for it. She's a very ambitious person. And, of course, she's a super religious person. So she believes that God chose her for this job. I guess -- I guess God had a bad night yesterday, because she didn't get it. But, you know, the Lord works mysterious ways, as we know. So maybe he's saving her for next election or the next after that. She's only 44 years old. I mean she could be on the public stage for the next 30 years.

I'm feeling a bit uneasy this week…

I recently had a conversation with someone near and dear to me and it didn't really go very well. 

 

First things first, this person has a wonderful heart, loves the Lord, and has a passion for non-believers that is unmatched by almost anyone.  The problem is however, that this person and I disagree [seemingly greatly] on what the role of "church" (the place) is. 

 

I've been struggling a lot lately because of how the church has transformed over the recent years from a place where the Word of God is preached and the children of God are challenged by its truth to make changes in their own lives so they can take that same truth into the world and make disciples of all nations.  To me church in America has turned into a place where people are no longer concerned about the sanctification and growth of the believer; or the teaching, rebuking and exhorting of true convert but are now instead more concerned about making it a "safe harbor" for those who don't claim Christ at all.

 

This troubles me greatly because I don't think this is a scriptural approach to the assembling of the church.  In order to make church a home for the unbeliever many things become watered down so as to "not offend" those who don't love God (yet).  From the music that is played to the clothes that are worn or even the messages that are taught from the pulpit...We are losing truth each and every Sunday.  My heart is broken by every man-made method that is used to try and attract non-believers into 'liking' church.  It's a shame that we have become so preoccupied with how the world "looks" at us that we are losing the souls of those who are earnestly seeking truth and are unable to find it.  I know that God is in control, and he will save those whom He has fore-ordained, but the state of the church today breaks my heart especially when the passion from so many Christians is in the right place, but they are seeking "worldly methods" to church growth instead of biblical ones.

 

But today I found this blurb about what church is in a blog post (team-pyro) and it reiterated a lot of my thoughts and feelings about what church (the place) is really for...

 

"[The Church], that local assembly of believers where pastors lead, the Word is preached, the ordinances are observed, and discipline is carried out. Christ loved it and gave Himself for it (Ephesians 5:25). He died for it."

 

 

What are your thoughts?  Am I just old fashioned or are we truly missing the mark?

--
Jason

 

GTR-Live Co-Host

www.godtalkradio.com
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John MacArthur on “Doing Church”

Source: Crosswalk.com - "The Paul Edwards Program," WLQV Detroit

Paul Edwards, host of "The Paul Edwards Program" on WLQV in Detroit, interviewed pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church John MacArthur about the emerging church movement in America. Paul begins the interview by asking Pastor John to respond to a radio interview with prominent emerging church leader Doug Pagitt. In the clip from October 22, 2007, Pagitt denied that there is a place of eternal conscious torment for persons who die apart from faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul Edwards: Help me with this—the emerging church prides itself on conversation, having a conversation, so let's have a conversation. How can you have a conversation with someone, when you're not even speaking the same language?

John MacArthur: Let me just cut to the chase on this one: [Doug] Pagitt is a Universalist. What he was saying is real simple. He was saying when you die your spirit goes to God and judgment means that whatever was not right about you, whatever was bad about you, whatever was substantially lacking about you, gets all resolved. It doesn't matter whether you're a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim—doesn't matter whether you're a Christian really; we're all going to end up in this wonderful, warm and fuzzy relationship with God. That's just classic universalism.

I think you know it's most helpful, Paul, to go back and kind of recast how we view these people. He's not a pastor; he's not a Christian; that's not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it's not, that's not a church and you're not a pastor and you're not even a Christian.

What you have here is a form of false religion … A form of paganism that basically wants to be thought of as Christian because it gains a certain ground. But the underlying bottom line of this whole emerging movement is they don't believe in any doctrine, they don't believe in any theology. They don't want to be forced to interpret anything in scripture a certain way and the out is, "Well the Bible isn't clear anyway." In other words, we don't know what it means; we can't know what it means. 

Brian McLaren says nobody has ever gotten it right—we haven't got it right now—so let's not make an issue out of anything. Let's just be open to everything. Let's not take a position on theology, or for that matter, on morality or behavior because, hey, there's no judgment anyway so we're all going to end up in God in some ethereal, eternal relationship. And that's just non-Christian. It is blatantly, flagrantly non-Christian. It's as non-Christian as any false religion.

Edwards: [When "Emergents" and many seeker-sensitive church advocates say "We do church a certain way,"] it seems to me that they do it by totally ignoring the book of Acts and the Epistles.

MacArthur: I'm going to seem anachronistic if not an outright dinosaur at this point. I believe the church has one function, and that is to guard the truth, to proclaim the truth and to live the truth. So you take the Word of God, you teach it, you proclaim it, you protect it, you defend it, and you live it, and that's a church. The Word of God rightly divided, rightly understood.  

That's not the idea in a seeker church; that's not the idea certainly in an emerging church.  Everything becomes style and contextualization and everything is built around the manipulation of people's hot buttons as if we were selling a product like any other product in our culture. This fails to understand that the only real power in the spiritual realm is Divine and that God works His power through His truth, and that's all that matters. 

I think the illusion of success is created by crowds. You've probably heard recently that Bill Hybels, who is the guru of the seeker movement, has openly confessed that they did a big survey and found they've been doing it wrong.

Edwards: "We made a mistake," he said.

MacArthur: Yes, we made a mistake. And so, the solution is—one of the lines in the statement was—we gotta get a blank piece of paper and start all over again. That's exactly the problem. Why do you want a blank piece of paper when you have all kinds of paper full with the Word of God?

Edwards: Right.

MacArthur: If you want a biblical mandate and you want to do ministry biblically, you teach and preach the Word. I don't think it matters whether you have smoke and mirrors. I don't think it matters whether you wear a tie, or don't wear a tie, whether you wear a black T-shirt and holes in your knees or a blue suit. (I think there are reasons to go with the suit rather the grunge approach—of dignity, respect, sober mindedness, seriousness, loftiness, etc, etc.) 

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that we proclaim the Word of God.  Look, I've been doing this for so long, and I haven't changed anything. Contexts come, contexts go; fads come, fads go; styles come, styles go. I just keep doing the same thing.  We show up on Sunday morning, we sing a little bit, we pray, we open the Word of God and explain His meaning to the people. The people just keep coming and coming and what I say goes around the world, on radio, and then it gets transferred into 50 languages and books and commentaries because [the Word] knows no boundaries. It knows no cultural restraint, because the Word of God is transcendent.

Edwards: One of the things I get most frustrated about is whenever people like you who are standing for truth point out the error both in the emergent church and in the seeker movement people will immediately run to 1 Corinthians 9 and begin screaming, "You know Paul said, 'I became all things to all men,' which means to the grunge I become as grunge, to the Universalist I become as a Universalist." But in 1 Corinthians 9 Paul isn't saying that we compromise the message and we become whatever the audience needs us to be in order to make the gospel palatable.

MacArthur: Well, of course not. All he is saying is there's a foundation in the proclamation of the gospel with the Jew and there's a different starting point with the Gentile. If I'm going to evangelize a Jew, I'm going to start with the Old Testament because that's the substantial basis. So every time the Apostle Paul preached to the Jews he started with the Scripture—the Old Testament Scripture. Every time he evangelized Gentiles he started with creation. For example, in Acts 14 and Acts 17 he talks about the unknown God. Who is the unknown God? He's the God who made everything—that was the foundation. 

All he is saying in 1 Corinthians 9 is you must understand the starting point of your audience and here's the point: ideologically. In other words, how do they think ideologically, philosophically, religiously? What are the ideas, the theories, the viewpoints that they hold? It's not about identifying with their lifestyle; it's not about being able to converse about every episode of South Park, every R-rated movie and every Rap song—that's not it at all.

How do people think religiously, how do they perceive truth?—those are the starting points that Paul was establishing. That's a far cry from saying that to reach this generation we must do their music, we must dress the way they dress, we must live the way they live, we must be familiar with the baser components of their culture. That's a million miles from what the Apostle Paul had in mind. He was talking about those things that controlled their thought process and their worldview.

Paul Edwards is the host of The Paul Edwards Program, a columnist and pastor. His program is heard daily on WLQV in Detroit and on godandculture.com. Contact him at paul@godandculture.com.

Priceless

Racism vs. Sexism

If you vote McCain you're a racist...but if you vote for Obama, doesn't that make you a sexist?

From NYT's Article:

If Mr. McCain wins Pennsylvania, it would keep him alive and scramble the picture for Mr. Obama. And it would lead to grave pronouncements about racism and the so-called Bradley effect of whites not being honest about their preferences to pollsters. Surveys of voters leaving the polls in the April primary found that 19 percent said race played an important role in their decision (as they delivered the state to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by nine percentage points over Mr. Obama).

A Reminder of God’s Sovereignty: In This Election

A great reminder, this election season:

Some Things are Cutier Than Others