What is Masculinity Anyway?

There is an interesting discussion on various blogs now and then about how the feminization of the church is destroying the males in it. Some (mostly) male bloggers are telling us that women have dominated the church too long and Jesus has been portrayed, in Mark Driscoll's words, "a long-haired … effeminate-looking dude" and ""latte-sipping Cabriolet driver(s)." He says, these "do not represent biblical masculinity..."

But, as an article in Christianity Today asks, are people like Driscoll and also John Eldredge presenting too narrow a view of what true Christian masculinity looks like? Brandon O'Brien, the author of the article, points out that Christ didn't especially come down incarnate to be a model of masculinty. He came down to become the model of God. I would add, since God is Spirit, he is neither masculine or feminine but has qualities of both.

Several thoughts come to my mind. Will this big emphasis on macho masculinity force all men to be either efeminate or super macho aggressive? Where then do other men (probably most) fit in? Will they be rejected by this "new men's movement?" Another question is how this will affect relations between men and women? Will women now be seen as "the enemy?" Is this the church that Christ died for?


Several years ago I read a book by non-Christian feminist author and professor Anne Douglas, entitled, The Feminization of American Culture. Douglas is an authority on the rise of the evangelical church in the early years of our country. She tells us how men were the head of the churches and their families until around 1830. That was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution here in America which began to take men away from the home during the day. Many swayed toward making money instead of the historic Puritan and Reformed balance between job, church and family. So, women began to take more and more roles in churches as men were losing interest. The seminaries were having trouble attracting the type of pastoral candidates they once had, many of their ministry students at that time being more "soft" than previous generations of ministry students. Popular books began to be written by women who portrayed men as decadent and the woman (women) in their life (wife, girlfriend, mother) as their "savior." Unfortunately some of this continued and has come down to the present day. But, is the answer to this dilemma the current "men's movement?" IMO, O'Brien gives a good picture of the result of churches if they trend into this hyper-masuclinity, when he writes,

Imposing qualities we consider masculine on an image of Jesus we consider feminine does not solve the problem. It only gives us a new problem—another culturally shaped Jesus, only masculine this time.

Most of the churches I've gone to in the past 40 years have had the look these men's movement leaders describe. It brought havok to my dating life. These poor guys, including seminary ones, had been very sheltered, and I emphasize sheltered by their fundamentalist churches in which they grew up. I felt bad for them but I had trouble respecting them. The dating didn't last long with these guys. I came from upper middle class liberal Protestant-land where the men were strong and very much in charge in the churches, but also allowing women to do their thing too. These men didn't feel they had to put women down to prop themselves up. But when I became a Christian and started to attend evangelical churches, I found a few male leaders that seemed very threatened by any woman doing anything of significance and the other males kind of passive. Obviously this wasn't healthy and I quite understand why people like Eldridge and Driscoll say the things they do. But I do agree with O'Brien's assessment as I believe we may be tempted to go to the other extreme. So what is the answer to this dilemma? I'll allow you to comment on that.

Before I end, here is a postscript. Sadly, the hippie movement brought some of the answer into the churches, so today you see a much healthier form of manhood in our younger men (50 and under). I say "sadly," because it's always sad to me when it takes secular influences in the church to straighten it out when we should be leading the way by allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us, not the world. But that aside, I see something very interesting in the upper 30-somethings and 40-somethings in my own church. These guys are very masculine but they have a sort of genteelness, especially toward children. When the children's choir sings in our church, guess who helps to bring the children in? Yes, lots of these macho fathers. And they don't sort of trail in looking uncomfortable. Oh no! They come in holding the children's hands and some even carrying the smaller ones on their shoulders. Some teach Sunday School. And on some Saturday evenings, they get together to smoke cigars and talk football. I realize that the cigar part may bother many and I don't particularly like the cigar thing either...from a health point of view. But, this IS a Presbyterian church after all. In other evangelical churches they could drink really, really strong Starbucks coffee instead of the cigars. Oh, and my church's young guys do that too. I keep asking why they can't have decaf in our adult Sunday School class on Sunday mornings. I'm told that decaf is sissy stuff....sigh.....

Revival - Not That Hard

From Awakening America,

*Only 17 percent of Americans attend church on any given Sunday.
*Moral failure among Christian leaders continues at a high level.
*The church’s influence on today’s culture is declining.
*The percentage of today’s youth who are committed to Christ remains relatively low.
*America has become the 3rd largest mission field in the world.

And from The Moral Collapse of America blog, Things That are Wrong with America. It lists 15 but I have chosen just some of them. You can read the entire list here.

*America is completely addicted to pornography:
*America has killed over 40 million babies through abortion
*America is now tolerating gay marriage
*America brutally tortures the prisoners it takes
*America's national debt is almost 10 TRILLION dollars
*Child abuse, especially child sexual abuse, has become a national epidemic in America:
*Divorce is at record levels, and it is as common in the church as it is in the broader society
*The greed of America is absolutely stunning
*Adultery and fornication are practically the national sports of America, and that has resulted in an explosion of STDs
*Murder is so common in the United States that it is a joke to the rest of the world
*False religions are exploding in America at a rate that is mind blowing:
*Meanwhile, the church in America is a complete mess and they don't even understand the basics of the Christian faith anymore


After reading all of this, we might need revival here in the good 'ole USA, da ya think?. I have heard in the past 30 years all sorts of ways to get it from all sorts of ministries and churches. But, it hasn't happened, despite the efforts of Charismatic (3rd wave) "revivals" and emergents "enlightenment" of what Jesus really meant and the Christian Right's attempts to pass all sorts of laws and rules.

But my friends, I have the answer. I've had the answer for 30 years. But I'm not trying to be arrogant. Many of you know the answer too.

Here it is:

Get a higher level of Bible study, the meaning of the substitutionary atonement (justification) and doctrine back into the church PLUS encouragement to allow the Holy Spirit to guide church members in how to live (sanctification) PLUS the social gospel being a natural outcome of individual Christians growth when they are ready (no emergent "manipulation") AND if the churches aren't going to do it then they need get out of the way and let us do it PLUS the power of the Holy Spirit in an unashamed (neo-)Pentecostalism that is neither inauthentic nor super-emotional garbage but rather is just a normative part of the worship service. Our relational witness (not hit and run evangelism) will speak volumes, HOWEVER, we need to CLEARLY explain the gospel to unbelievers. If we do this more people will be converted and we will have true revival.

Now see, it wasn't all that hard was it?..........

It's the Leaders

Yesterday I wrote a post about secular people at times being wiser about what is happening today than our so-called Christian prophets and Christian leaders.

I also promised you I would report on what has come down from Andrew Strom recently. I regard him as a more true prophet than many of the others we are seeing around. I want you to know I am in complete agreement with what he is saying as I have posted here often about how our leaders have sold us out, and how we need new leadership both in heads of our denominations and also heads of ministries. We also need the true prophets to come forth, in God's time of course. So then here is what Andrew has written lately....and it is a real shocker.....but also a gem.


Ten months ago in November 2007 while preaching in Wisconsin
USA, I felt a strong unction from the Holy Spirit to speak about
the future of the United States and the imminent Crash. As often
happens under that kind of anointing, a real boldness came over
me, and for the first time I found myself clearly putting a "date"
on the coming financial Depression - something I had never done
before - except in the vaguest of terms. I found myself predicting
that tragically within six months America would be in Recession,
and within 12 months the actual Depression would begin.
(-This audio is on our website - http://www.revivalschool.com )

So let us look at the evidence. It is now ten months later. Has the
Depression begun? Sadly the answer has to be "Yes". In the last
two weeks the two largest mortgage giants in the world (Fannie
Mae & Freddie Mac) failed, the largest Insurance Company on earth
crashed (all taken over by the US Government), Lehman Brothers
went bankrupt (almost taking the entire financial system with it),
Money Markets reeled, the two remaining giant Investment banks
sought protection as "holding banks" - which means the end of
Wall Street as we know it, etc, etc. Stocks are in turmoil, Oil leapt
on Monday by the most ever recorded, gold is volatile - and on it
goes. -The most shattering two weeks since the Great Depression.
Meanwhile the US Treasury is seeking 700 billion dollars in a
forlorn effort to put Humpty back together again - tragically too late.

THERE ARE "JONAHS" on THE BOAT

Why is this storm hitting America at this time? There are certainly
many reasons - most of which we have discussed before. But let
me put something else before you that I believe God spoke to me
not long ago:- There are "Jonahs" on the boat - and they are
sending the nation down.

Who are these Jonahs? I believe they are the "prophets" of America
who will not preach the truth - who sleep comfortably in the bowels
of the nation while chaos reigns all around them. Too afraid to
deliver God's word 'Repent', they run the other way - toward smooth
talk and pleasant sayings - "Peace peace" when there is no peace.
And the depths of this great crisis can be laid directly at their door.

Yes - that's right. A big reason why the ship of America is sinking
is because her prophets ran away from their God-given task and
message at the crucial moment.

If only these prophets had preached the TRUTH when the nation
so desperately needed to hear it. If only they had begun - way
back in the 1980's - to call the lukewarm church to repentance,
to rebuke the people for their love of money, their greed, their sin.
But no - the siren call of "popularity" was too strong. The call of
"grace, grace", of mass acceptance, of big reputations and even
bigger offerings. And so they sold out. And now they sleep bliss-
fully in the midst of the ship, while the storm whips to fury all
around. How do you sleep, O Jonahs, who would not cry "Repent"?

And it is not just the "prophets" either. It is the televangelists too.
Caught up in a world of fakery, hype and money-grubbing unseen
in the church since the Dark Ages, these hucksters are spreading
their garbage to every Third World Revival nation around the globe.
Greed, manipulation and pride on a scale that only America could
generate. Where is your shame, O charlatans of greed?

And so God is forced to act. And just like Jonah, the storm will
not abate until the wayward preachers are thrown overboard. Until
America is rid of these international thieves and prostitutes, she
is finished. And she will not recover until they are gone.

You see, it is not just the leaders who are at fault here. It is also
the people, who "love to have it so". And thus until the heart of the
people is scourged and purged they will accomodate the "Jonahs" -
even seeking more of their ear-tickling fables to comfort themselves
in this time of breaking.

Until the heart of American greed is shattered - until her people
act of their own volition to throw these Jonahs overboard - this
storm will go on and on. In fact, it is about to grow a whole lot worse.

Mark my words, America: Until you remove these Jonahs, your
nation cannot recover. They have held the whole world in thrall by
their apostasy. And God cannot have it so any more. How long will
it take you to realize? How long will it take you to act?

THROW THE JONAHS OVERBOARD and be done with them!!
Only then will this mother of all storms subside.

A BIG AMEN! to everything Strom has said.

"wiser than the children of light"

A few years ago I read a very interesting book by Barbara Ehrenreich entitled, Nickled and Dimed. Perhaps you've heard of it. It was a fascinating true story of how Ehrenreich, a college graduate and journalist, worked as a maid, waitress and Walmart clerk to show the rest of us how the working poor live. Ehrenreich is a feminist, socialist and political activist. She's also currently an honorary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. So, I doubt that her very favorite people are evangelicals. Yet, evangelicals despatrately need to listen to her all the way from Nickle and Dimed to her book Bait and Switch which is the "Nickle and Dimed" version of what is happening to the middle class (downsizing, temp jobs, part-time, etc.) to her current book, This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation which describes the economic disparity between the super rich (especially top executives) vs. the rest of us.

Jesus said in Luke 16:8 that "for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." So, while our pastors were presenting their usual Sunday positive thinking sermon, and watering down the gospel so few could even understand the primary elements of it; and while our "prophets" were telling us how God isn't going to judge our country and how wonderful things will be; the socialist, feminist (Ehrenrecih) was telling us the truth. Here are excerpts from Ehrenreich's column today (9/24/08) in the New York Times Op/Ed page,


GREED — and its crafty sibling, speculation — are the designated culprits for the financial crisis. But another, much admired, habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.
As promoted by Oprah Winfrey, scores of megachurch pastors and an endless flow of self-help best sellers, the idea is to firmly believe that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel better to do so, but because “visualizing” something — ardently and with concentration — actually makes it happen. You will be able to pay that adjustable-rate mortgage or, at the other end of the transaction, turn thousands of bad mortgages into giga-profits if only you believe that you can..

Later in the article she says,

Calvinists thought “negatively,” as we would say today, carrying a weight of guilt and foreboding that sometimes broke their spirits. It was in response to this harsh attitude that positive thinking arose — among mystics, lay healers and transcendentalists — in the 19th century, with its crowd-pleasing message that God, or the universe, is really on your side, that you can actually have whatever you want, if the wanting is focused enough.


How tragic that this lady has to tell us this instead of our prophets, pastors, teachers and other leaders. But I'm glad that we have her. And she isn't the only one. I've read many lately who have forecast (some even decades ago) what has happened this past week - specifically about when it would happen, and exactly what would happen. But they aren't necessarily Christians. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post where I will tell you the scathing assessment of what God has shown Andrew Strom about our current Christian leaders. And then I will tell you what we need to do about them.

Do Ya Think Maybe?

""I actually think that what is happening today is that you have a new amalgamation taking place between the older liberalism and parts of the evangelical world and it is coming together in what people are calling the 'emerging church,'"


Spoken by Dr. David Wells, Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.


Source: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070313/26301_Americans_Ready_for_Serious_Gospel_in_Postmodern_Era.htm

Secular Humanism Out/Pagan New Ageism In

I've discovered a guy named Peter Jones. He's the director of something called Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet. He also was professor of New Testament out here in my baliwick, Westminster Seminary. Jones writes fascinating articles that to me are very right on. One especially intrigues me. It's entitled, The Great Enemy of the Church and America Is Not Secular Humanism As Once Thought But it is Pagan Spirituality. I think the title says it all. And he really is correct. Secular humanism is very overated right now as it is going out and coming in is New Age paganism.

Jones gives us the reason secular humanism didn't quite last,

A generation ago no one was expecting pagan spirituality in America. Secular humanism, the belief in man's reason as the measure of all things, was the great enemy of the Church. What happened?

Predictions in the nineteenth and early twentieth century of the final victory of secularism and the disappearance of religion never took place. Freud's dismissal of religion as a pathology, from which the future utopian world would be healed, proved to be a false diagnosis. Freud would not have predicted the death of secular humanism......What has killed secular humanism? People are beginning to realize that, far from creating a humanistic utopia, secularism has produced two devastating world wars, a series of mounting ecological disasters, and a "disenchantment of the cosmos." The West has begun to lose its faith, not in religion, but in human reason.

Oddly, the death knell was sounded not by robust Christian witness, but by the "atheistic" postmodern children of secular humanism. The withering barrel of the postmodern laser gun has been aimed not so much at Christianity as at the ideology of Enlightenment secularism, at the belief that reason could deliver objective truth. This postmodern, relativizing of all truth has undermined the faith of modern man in his own rational abilities. This "postmodern" thinking is taught in the vast majority of philosophy departments throughout the world as "gospel truth.".

Jones sees the rise of atheism as an answer to the failure of humanism but says it is being replaced by pantheism. And since pantheism is what pagan religions are, essentially, we go back through the loop again.

Secular society is turning this way and that can probably be expected, but the really bad news for evangelcialism is that this pantheism is flooding into the church too.

To see other short articles written by Peter Jones, go to this site.

Source of the above article: http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/3232/Brannon-Howse/Peter-Jones

Welcome to the New America

How far has America come to be not only relevant, but also anti-absolute (in morality, truth, etc). Listen to this from Sarah Leslie, a psychologist, who tells us that in her college psychological studies she was taught that those who hold to any absolute ideas are suspect as being mentally ill. Mentally ill??? And I don't think this is an aberration. At least not where I reside. Come sometime to my old folks World Affairs discussion class on Tuesday mornings here in a suburb north of (and next to) Los Angeles. Come and hear their laughter as they relate that some people actually believe in creationism and are against abortion. And this isn't even the Westside (Of L.A. where the really left liberals live). My city is much more conservative. I guess Dylan was right. The times...they are a-changin'.



Source of Sarah Leslie comments: http://www.crosstalkamerica.com

Blue Like Huh?

For the past four months, after hearing from two fairly conservative theological 20-somethings that they just loved Donald Miller's book, Blue Like Jazz, I am vainly trying to figure out why.

Here is an excerpt from the book,

“When my friend Paul and I lived in the woods, we lived with hippies. Well, sort of hippies. They certainly smoked a lot of pot. They drank beer a lot. And man did they love each other, sometimes too much perhaps, too physically, you know, but nevertheless they loved; they accepted and cherished everybody, even the ones who judged them because they were hippies. It was odd living with hippies at first, but I enjoyed it after a while.”


“We would sit around and talk about literature and each other, and I couldn’t tell the difference between the books they were talking about and their lives, they were just that cool. I liked them very much because they were interested in me. When I was with hippies, I did not feel judged, I felt loved. To them I was an endless well of stories and perspectives and grand literary views. It felt so wonderful to be in their presence, like I was special.


and,


I have never experienced a group of people who loved each other more than my hippies in the woods. All of them are tucked so neatly into my memory now, and I recall our evenings at camp or in the meadow or in the caves in my mind like a favorite film. I pull them out when I need to be reminded about goodness, about purity and kindness.



Since I am a Cartesian modernist - meaning 'A, not B'; or, 'B, not A'; it's difficult for me to understand how and why young theological conservatives love this book. But, once again, I realize it's an example of 'A and B'. And that is the explanation that eludes me. We old folks need help understanding this. We think it's called, compromising the Bible, your worldview and your ethics (not to mention your morals). But in 'A and B'-land, the former descriptions aren't true. But then in 'A and B'-land, nothing is true. So, maybe that is the explanation. Truth becomes what we like and what appeals to us. Is that what is going on here with our younger Christians? Or am I being snarky.

To continue this discussion, read this from someone who grew up in an atheistic Marxist family, became a San Francisco Haight-Asbury hippie, and then later received Christ. When he read Miller's book, he saw what was going on right away. It's a really great article. Then come back and give me some feedback, espeically if you are a 20-or early 30-something Christian. I really want to understand this so I can help other old folks understand it.

The BIG Problem

The BIG problem today in the evangelical churches is a lack of true discernment (of spirits). This seems to be due to centuries of teaching against the spiritual gifts including that of discernment (I Cor 12). So then, we don't hear the TRUE prophets or the TRUE discerners because they are not allowed to speak in our churches. If, and when we do hear them, it's usually in parachurch meetings of like-minded people. In other words, other Christians; and probably, most Christians, have never heard them nor heard of them. Here is a quote from one that addresses this sad situation. In htis case it concerns the Lakeland so-called "revivals."


Many believed Todd Bentley was the forerunner of this army of youth. With Bentley on the sidelines there appear to be others on the sidelines willing to pick up the torch. The extreme among them herald their own radicalness and seem to be elbowing their way to the front, the spotlights glistening off their tattoos and piercing. If you listen for their war cry you hear, "Down with religion and down with the religious spirit!"

The more they shout it the more I'm convinced that the "anti-religious spirit" is the new religious spirit in the church.

They stress extreme faith and can speak all the right Christianese, including a new street-wise Christianese, but they are adorned with "'tude" and many of them flaunt it.

Source: Storm-Harvest Ministries http://www.stormharvest.com.au

Quote of the Week

"Anything carried to an extreme defeats its original purpose."

Which Version is Really "Innocent Times?"

Bob at Onward, Forward, Toward has written a good post entitled The Cultural Hypocrisy. Here is a line in that post that really caught my eye,


Why are we always trying to ‘go back’ to a ‘time of innocence’ or go back to ’some enforced legalism’ when in those times of innocence and enforced legalism, the same sins were occurring but on a smaller scale thinking that by going back to the ‘time of innocence’ or ‘reinforcing the legalism’, the sins will be eliminated because ‘en mye day sunny, we never saw dem teenage pregnancies’ [but the girl was sent to a relative in the 'big city' to 'straighten her out' (aka, teenage pregnancies were more 'normalized' in that society but shamed and shunned ostracized in Southern Christian America)]

I think his point is that maybe those times weren't as innocent and wonderful as people think. Well, it depends on where you lived. If you lived in the South, we are told today that because of Bible reading and prayer and most people being evangelicals, it was what America is supposed to be like now. But if you lived in states like California...ugh!...you lived in pagansville. Really? Let's look further at the FACTS, not the fantasy, shall we?

Where I grew up, in a suburb of Los Angeles, there was little legalism in the evangelical churches here. Know why? We didn't have many. At least not in the middle class and up subrubs. To find one of those fundamentalist churches you pretty well had to go to a poor area, which many times was far away (remember - this is S. Cal where distances are greater than in other places).

I grew up in the "good old days"...the 1950's. And, they WERE good. We never had TV preachers here and we only had one Christian radio station way on the right extreme end of the radio dial. Mainly, only fundamentalists in poor areas knew about it. The suburbs, for the most part, had been taken over by liberal Protestant churches. It was difficult to find an evangelical church in a middle-class or above suburb here. In fact, I never heard the gospel until I met a Baptist girl in college who told me what it was (and it was then I received Christ). Although I attended and listened carefully in church during my chldhood and teens, we were never told how to be born again. We never even heard the words "born again" or "saved." You see, you don't hear the gospel in liberal Protestant churches. And that is why I have a beef with many of the emergents. There weren't a lot of Baptists here either, and certainly not Southern Baptists; mostly the Conservative, General or American conference churches, if you could find them.

And people here (this was before the invasion of the hippies and other "strange" people in the late 60's), were polite and helpful, and we didn't need to lock our doors.

Our schools also had no Bible reading or prayer and very few Christian schools. People I met as an adult who grew up here in the 1930's and '40's report the same thing. They had never heard of Bible reading or prayer in the schools either. And so did my mother who was born in Los Angeles and went to school during WWI and slightly afterwards. Yet, our schools were the best in the nation(by all statistics).

Meanwhile, in the South - the Bible Belt -where the schools were supposedly superior because of prayer and Bible reading in them, were had the worst schools in the nation. Here were the five worst:
Mississippi
Lousianna
Alabama
Georgia
Arkansas

These states and a few other Southern ones also had the highest rate of alcoholism and domestic abuse.

So much for the Christian Right arguments.

Another Reason I Have Problems with the Emergent

Here is another reason I have problemos with the emergent (conversation) village movement. It's bad enough that it has infiltrated our Christian colleges, seminaries and churches (most of the time through the church's youth group). Now it has reached overseas missions. Here is a good description from some missionaries as to how this works,

My wife and I have been missionaries in North Africa for 8 years. In the last year we have seen Emergent teaching creep into missions with Muslims. It is related with radical contextualization of the gospel. Basically, that Muslims can accept or like the teachings of Jesus and remain Muslims. Obviously you can see the influence of Brian McLaren in this. In fact some of the Wycliff missionaries that are involved in a new Bible translation are friends of McLaren’s.

You may wish to read the entire letter from these missionaries (it's not long) at Slice of Laodicea.

Big Bertha and the Philistines

On the eve of World War I, the Kaiser (King) of Germany sent a note to the King of Belgium asking him if he would mind if one million German soldiers could possibly come through Belgium to get to France in order to attack it. This military strategy was called the Shlieflen Plan after the General who devised it. The Germans thought the French would think they would come over the border from the east. The Schieflen Plan was meant to fool the French, having the bulk of the German army coming from the north via Belgium. The king of Belgium, whose name was Albert, made a wonderful reply to the German Kaiser. He wrote back to him, "Sir, Belgium is a country; not a road. No you cannot come through."

Sadly, wrong answer from the German point of view. The Germans attacked Belgium with it's good forts and decimated them within days. One of their weapons was the largest canon known at that time in the world named the 'Big Bertha.' It was named after Bertha Krupp, wife of the man who owned the Krupp company that made the cannon. It wasn't that Mrs. Krupp was fat; the cannon was. It was actually named in her honor. The cannon was so fierce that the Belgian soldiers who survived reported that it almost made them mad as they cowered within the forts. Anyway, to make a 4 1/2 year war on the Western Front short - the Germans tramped through Belgium practically decimating the country, and on into northern France, 50 miles from Paris, taking the French army commanders by surprise. The French commander had most of the French army on their eastern front waiting for the bulk of the German army that never came (although a small German army contingent did come that way later).

Can you imagine that many people tramping through a country to get to another one? One million men going through Belgium. Well, that did actually happen before in history. Only it was more than 3 million men, women, children and animals. We find this seldom-spoken-of-in-churches event in Exodus 13:17-18,


Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, "Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt." So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt.
(NKJV)


This is really interesting. God wanted the Israelites to go by way of the cool Mediterranean trade route along the coast. But if they did that, they would run into the Philistines. So God didn't take them that way. WHY? God actually tells us why. He couldn't. He couldn't?? That's right. He couldn't and He wouldn't. Why? They didn't have the faith to overcome the Philistines. So God had to lead them through the dry, hot Sinai Peninsula which was the really the L...O...N...G way around into the promised land, Israel.

Now read this passage from Matthew 13:54-58,

And when He had come to His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, "Where did this Man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this Man get all these things?" So they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house." Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. .

Remember it says that Jesus did NOT do might works in Nazareth, his hometown. Why not? The contextual meaning there implies "could not," not did not want to. . You mean God CAN'T do certain things because of our lack of faith? If you haven't read my previous post, do so to get where I am headed with this.


The link to the post I want you to consider along with this one (the Christian Carnival appeared between the two) is found here.

I rest my case.

Christian Carnival CCXLI

Welcome to this week's Christian Carnival.

*First up today is the Free Money Finance blog which presents The Plans of the Diligent where we are encouraged to start budgeting while young so when we are older it will just be a good habit. Very good idea!


*Jeff at Returning King posts Spiritual Realms (Introduction). This has to be one of the most unique posts I've ever read. I've always thought of the spiritual realm as what was going on in the heavenlies. But this post is an introduction to a series of various Biblical terms for the realms of heaven - New Jerusalem, and Hades/hell/Gehenna among others.


*Minister Mamie of the The Life I Now Live blog presents her post, A Love Story. That should grab our attention. Actually, it's an excellent presentation of the gospel from a very different perspective than we usually hear. Do be sure to read this one. It's a gem!


*Pastor WD Favour of WDFavour.com presents to us this week one of my favorite topics - Healing. To summarize Pastor WD's health, it was a disaster. Then he got born again and as he read his Bible, he realized he was now a new creature in Christ. Read the exciting conclusion of what happened next in his post, Supernatural Healing.

*What do you boast in? Your family? Your career? Yourself? Annette, of Fish and Cans presents her post, This Week's Sermon Passage. In this post she analyzes Jeremiah chapter 9:12-26 which tells us in what we really should be boasting.


*Steve at faithdoubt talks about two types of movies and books that show both the dark and the uplifting side of life. Should we go to the dark ones? Find out what Steve thinks about that in his post, The Speedy Knight, Fighting Rabbits, and what it all has to do with Art.


*At Brain Cramps for God the Fleetguy has really done his homework. Wonder what those earmarked funds were used for in Wasilla, Alaska - - you-know-who's hometown? Find out the real facts here instead of what the mainstream media is telling us in his post, False Testimony: The Wasilla Earmarks.


*The Rhymes With Right blog thinks Obama is missing it big time on the abortion question in a post entitled, Obama Still Doesn't Get it On Human Life.

*This week, elementary teacher's post at the Got Bible? blog is about the epidemic today of Christians being just too busy. Stress, anxiety and a constant state of fatigue are the results. Read Choosing Your Life for some insight as to how we can alleviate this problem.

*You need a little background for this one, so yours truly has researched it for all. Hector Avalos has written a book saying that Biblical studies are passe. Prof. Helmut Koester of Harvard Divinity School disputes this. OK...now into this wades blogger Drew at Notes From Off Center who writes a post entitled, Is the Bible Important for Christians?. In his post he tells us why he disagrees with Avalos' position. One of the things Drew tells us in this post is how the Bible intersects in an important way with American life.

Raffi at Parables of a Prodigal World shows us the cultural importance of what the Prodigal son was really asking his father in his post, "So he divided his property between them...".

*Who said this - "Spare the rod; spoil the child?" Many will answer, "The Bible." But actually, it was Benjamin Franklin who wrote that as one of his many pithy sayings. At the Tale of a Kansas Girl blog there are lots of these sayings (including the Franklin one) that people think are in the Bible but aren't. Ronnica comes to the conclusion that Biblical literacy might be lacking in her post, And Where's That in the Bible?.

*Zemanta at Journey Across the Sky has written a post about Sarah Palin entitled, Sarah Plain and Tall. In it she tells us why she feels Sarah is Plain Speaking and Standing Tall.

*Here is a great sentence from Claudia at the Standing Straight blog:

I need to keep remembering to set aside my flesh, listen to the Spirit, heed the Word of God, stand against the enemy and then wait on the Lord for the outcome.

Do read her entire post entitled, The Battle Is the Lord's.


*I think one of the most difficult things for me to do is to forgive those who don't even think they've done anything wrong against me. Jody takes up this difficult subject (at least it's difficult for me) in her post, Forgiveness Today at her blog, Jody's Devotionals .

*Minister Mamie at The Life I Now Live is surrounded at home by scads of males (husband and sons). And what do males do in the fall? Yes folks---it's It's Football Time (the name of her post)! And she points out that as her sons bond around the TV with their father, are we bonding like that with our Father in heaven?

*Henry at Participatory Bible Study Blog is this week Comparing Study Bible Introductions to Luke. He analyzes six study Bibles, most of them fairly mainstream. However there was one that caught my eye that I had never heard of - The Holy Spirit Encounter Bible.


*Rey at the Bible Archive blog gives us an extremely interesting and IMO important post, The Crippling of the Local Church. This post is part of a series. This week he presents 'Seven markers that outlined the boundaries of the church.' But what if some of the markers are missing? The reason this was an interesting post for me is because I am always interested in information about the early church, how it was organized and how we can get back to that today.


*Frankly folks, most of the time when people write the kind of thing Anthony has tackled, it's dry as a bone. However, IMO Anthony's post is far from dry and was very helpful, as well as informative to me. Anthony's blog is named Inquisitive and he does an excellent job at comparing our Christian lives to unleavened bread in his post, Celebrate the Unleavened Bread.

*Rodney at RodneyOlsen.net brings up a question that is being asked a lot today. If a person divorces because of abuse, adultery and desertion, can they remarry? After reading Rodney's introduction, you can then hear his interview with Barbara Roberts, author of Not Under Bondage. The post is entitled, Abuse, adultery and desertion.

*John gives us seven lessons we can all learn from the heart of Hannah in his post, Walking with God Through Adversity: Seven Lessons from the Heart of Hannah at his blog, Light Along the Journey. Here is one lesson as a tantalizer - Ask God to intervene. I really liked that one.


*Many people want the government to do a lot of things for them. But what was the federal government set up for in the first place way back in the late 18th century? Chris at Homeward Bound has a very informative post which includes answers to the nagging question, Why can't we just change things a little? Why should we still follow an 18th century document? Chris includes helpful links in his post to the items both in the Constitution and the Bible so it makes it very easy to follow his argument. Read his post entitled, The Case for Limited Government.

*Jeremy at Parableman refers in his post, AP Hit Piece On Palin, Focus on the Family about an AP article on Focus on the Family's Love Won Out conference regarding homosexuals and the church. Jeremy informs us that this AP article seriously misrepresents what the conference was all about. Sarah Palin is connected to it and Jeremey tells us about that too.

*Xinah at Livingx.net tells us in her post, Five Word Foundation that in the first chapter of Proverbs there are five key words that are very important to the Christian faith. Now aren't you curious as to what those five words are?

*Weekend Fisher at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength has an absolutely fantastic post of which I am in absolute agreement. She shows the organizational structure of the first century church and how it gave Christians their theological truth. But then what about today? Isn't God doing a "new thing" today? Can't we do what we think is right? Please do read Annie's post entitled, If I were a 2nd century Christian ... since I'm a 21st century Christian .

*Jeff at ReturningKing.com takes on Kenneth Copeland's definition of faith in his post, Word of Faith: Erroneous Faith Theology. Like most of you I would imagine, Jeff sees Copeland's "force of faith" definition as erroneous. He goes into a lot of good detail to present his case. So please do read this post and then.....stay tuned for the next post to see a different view.

*OK....I just couldn't let Jeff's post go by without a rebuttal. My entry this week is entitled, What Exactly Did Kennth Hagin teach About Faith?. The main difference between my post and Jeff's is he focuses on Copeland while I focus on the guy who started the modern faith movement - Hagin. I do realize that I probably will be in the minority here, but folks, I just had to try....:)

Thank you so very much for visiting the Christian Carnival today. Next week we will have another exciting version of the carnival at Ancient Hebrew Poetry.

What Exactly Did Kennth Hagin teach About Faith

At the Christian Carnival this week (right here at Crossroads this week), Jeff's post, Word of Faith: Erroneous Faith Theology, deals with what he considers the Faith teachers erroneous definition of faith. While he mainly quotes and discusses Kenneth Copeland, we might want to go further back one level to the founder of the present day faith movement, the late Kenneth Hagin Sr.

As I've written here before, I firmly believe that much of the Word of Faith teaching, especially Hagin's, should be brought into the church. Before some of you have a heart attack upon hearing me say this, let me assure you that I am very orthodox Protestant in my doctrine and slightly on the Reformational side. Everyone who knows me will testify that I am sound and not a nut case. If you read my blog regularly you know I am calling for A New Kind of Faith Teacher who will teach these things correctly and in balance. But I think Hagin gets a bad rap on most of his teaching. Some of the reason is his followers like Kenneth Copeland and Fred Price. The original faith teachers (not the present day ones like Joel Osteen or Paula White) have a high view of Scripture, resting on the spirit of the Reformational sola scriptura. But as Pentecostals (they are NOT Charismatics)they do add revelation of the Scrptures coming from the Holy Spirit. This is also in line with the Reformers but perhaps the faith teachers do it in a more Pentecostal way.

Hagin basically argues for the true heart faith that comes from God in the Scriptures. That is his constant theme. Copeland and other of Hagin's followers also have taken this up, but sadly, have added some other "stuff" which IMO pollutes Hagin's original thoughts.

In his book The Real Faith, Hagin goes into detail about the difference betwen faith and unbelief as being between head faith and heart faith. He understands, as the Reformers did, that only heart faith will save and sanctify. But Hagin goes where a lot of Reformed churches don't - he doesn't stop with merely teaching about saving faith, but points out that we live the Christian life with the exactly same type of heart faith that saved us. This faith must be based on the Word of God; it cannot be based on our feelings or thoughts. His examples of the two kinds of faith, head and heart, are the Thomas kind of faith - head; and the Abraham kind of faith -heart. He correctly teaches, IMO, that this heart faith MUST come from the Bible through the Holy Spirit. It cannot be "reasoned out."

In the last chapter of his book he lists some enemies to our faith. I am always amazed at how closely Hagin, a Pentecostal, is to the Reformed idea of justification and sanctification. One of the enemies he lists is our feelings of unworthiness. He correctly states that faith also must be built on our sense of our adoption by God into His family through Christ. He writes on p. 24,

Our worthiness is Christ Jesus. In the next paragraph he says, "

Your worthiness is Christ Jesus the righteous. He is the righteous one, and you are the righteousness of God in Him, "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (II Cor. 5:21). Because we are in him, we have become the righteousness of God." Therefore, a sense of unworthiness is a denial of the substituitonary sacrifice of Jesus Christ, of our standing in Christ and of Christ's righteousness before God the Father which has been granted unto us.

So then, Hagin gives us the two-fold foundation of faith -it comes out of Christ's work at the cross, and it comes from God's Word given to us through His Apostles and prophets (the Old and New Testaments).

Well then, what about Copeland and other Hagin followers? What about this "force of faith?" Believe it or not, Copeland also has a very high view of the work of Christ on the cross and the Scriptures but at times he goes down abberant bunny trails (like his extreme prosperuty teaching which I never found in Hagin). When I heard Copeland teach this in person, what I understood was that he was separating this type of faith for Christian salvation and living from other types of head faith. He understands God's type of faith to be a powerful force. I find at times the Word of Faith teachers say things in a way that can sound confusing and misleading. But, if you listen and read them, you begin to understand what they mean. The misunderstanding then often comes from not having a background of their complete doctrinal basis. But at other times, the "followers" like Copeland do go off of this basis. That is why I prefer to stick with Hagin. So, if this "force of faith" still bothers you, then I do hope you will go back to Kenneth Hagin more to understand where this all came from and how it began to get "off" in his followers.

By the way, just a note before commenters bring up the prosperity message (which they always do, even if I don't talk about it). A few years before he died Hagin was so distraught (according to some of his friends) over this horrible prosperity teaching from his followers that he wrote a book entitled, The Midas Touch in which he refutes things like the 100-fold teaching and the seed-faith teaching. I have the book and find it to be excellent. I don't think anybody reading this post would disagree with almost anything he says in it.

OK....now I am ready for comments. I am ready to be pilloried....:)...LOL.

Around the Blogosphere

There are some very good blog posts out there this week First, do check out this week's Christian Carnival CCXL. The Christian Carnival is simply Christian bloggers who submit their best posts of the last week. It comes out every Wednesday. Oh by the way, it will arrive here at Crossroads next Wednesday.

Dan at Cerulean Sanctum has an excellent (and short) post entitled The Missing Virtue. Be sure to read this one.


This is a good post on the place of God's Law for the Christian -
God's Law: What to Make of Condemnation

And, last but not least, it's Sarah Palin time. First read blogger Tim Challies' take on her in his post, Good Saint Sarah.

And then, watch this video of Sarah speaking at a commissioning of young people for ministry at the Assembly of God church in which she grew up in Wasilla, Alaska. I have dial up and this is probably the only video that played that I could understand. So, if you have a slow connection like me, don't fret - try it.

The video is found here.

Those Against Lakeland--What Are The Real Reasons?

There are two groups against "revivals" like the one in Lakeland, Florida. One group is what I term, "legitimate", the Pentecostals and Charismatics. Sadly, we have very few of them speaking out. Brave are the ones that do speak as the revivalists can be vicious. I learned this the hard way in the last revival go-around ten years ago - in Brownsville, Florida.

But most of the critiques I've read about Lakeland are from those who don't believe in half the gifts of the Spirit, if any of them. And many of those are from the Young Calvinist camp. So what I am saying is, their reason for cticising it isn't one of discernment, as much as a doctrinal difference (although a few of them are throwing in discernment too). What I want from these critics is more honesty. I would like to read something sounding like this,

"I don't believe in any Charismatic or Pentecostal revival; or any Charismatic or Pentecostal anytning for that matter. Therefore, it isn't just Lakeland I'm against - it's anything that is connected to Charismania."

To me that would be more honest than just pretending to be against Lakeland because of the aberrant things going on there.

Just a thought I wanted to throw out here.

Hypocrisy -- on the Right and on the Left

I am tired of the hypocrisy. But unlike most bloggers and news folks, I am tired of the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. In other words, I'm fed up with the hypocrisy of the Christian Right as well as the secular Left. But we evangelicals on the Right should be doing a lot better than this.

First, the Left
On the Left we are hearing something brand new, especially from the feminists. Ever since the late 1960's all we've heard from them is how women should be able to work outside the home AND have children (in day care or cared by nannies or househusbands who stay home). But now, alas, in the past few days, we are hearing something different. How dare Sarah Palin work outside the home with five children and one of them developmentally disabled! Well, which is it liberal people? What hypocrisy!

Now, the Right
Ever since the late 1970's we've heard from the Christian Right how women should stay home, taking care of children and husband. Never mind that many Christian families could no longer live on one person's paycheck while the leaders who were telling them this were earning well over $100,000 from "contributions" from these very same people.

Now, suddenly....Oh! It's alright for Palin to have 5 children, one being developmentally disabled and her working as governor of a state and now perhaps even VP of the United States. Not a word from anyone I've heard from the evangelical camp decrying this. The only social conservative I've heard is Jewish Dr. Laura Schlesinger. On her blog yesterday (Sept. 2) she wrote,


I am extremely disappointed in the choice of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican Party.......I’m frankly and sadly caught in the dilemma of having to balance policy versus example in touting a candidate for the office of the First Family....Role models are very important. Children and young adults look to those who are visible and successful as a road map of what is acceptable behavior and emulate those actions over the morals and values their parents and churches have taught and tried to reinforce. It’s a tough go these days, when the “bad that men or women do” is used for entertainment purposes without judgment, or is excused because of political or financial considerations........I’m stunned - couldn’t the Republican Party find one competent female with adult children to run for Vice President with McCain? I realize his advisors probably didn’t want a “mature” woman, as the Democrats keep harping on his age. But really, what kind of role model is a woman whose fifth child was recently born with a serious issue, Down Syndrome, and then goes back to the job of Governor within days of the birth?....I am haunted by the family pictures of the Palins during political photo-ops, showing the eldest daughter, now pregnant with her own child, cuddling the family’s newborn. When Mom and Dad both work full-time (no matter how many folks get involved with the children), it becomes a somewhat chaotic situation. Certainly, if a child becomes ill and is rushed to the hospital, and you’re on the hotline with both Israel and Iran as nuclear tempers are flaring, where’s your attention going to be? Where should your attention be? Well, once you put your hand on the Bible and make that oath, your attention has to be with the government of the United States of America.

I've only included excerpts of her blog here but please do read the entire thing (it's not too long) here.


So, why are the evangelical women (and men) leaders so quiet? When things don't make sense, I say always follow the money and power trail. Our leaders should have said what Dr. Laura said to remain consistent with the position they've taken all of these years. But they haven't. Frankly, I'm neutral on whether she should be home with the kids. But that isn't my point. My POINT IS - - - The Hypocrisy!!

Then there are the political sudden turnabouts. Palin says she was against th "bridge to nowhere" to that Alaska island but that isn't what happened. She was happy about it. Palin says she is against all the pork. But she lobbied to get alot of it for her state, even things that could be termed in no other way than pork. As usual our evangelical leaders are silent because they are desparate. The Chrisian Right is falling apart because some of their followers are catching on that they've been used. And the young evangelicals aren't interested--they are joining the New Christian Left. So, the Christian Right's last gasp is Sarah Palin.

On a personal note, I would like her to be the VP....but I have a lot of questions and I am not afraid to ask them out loud--unlike our "Christian leaders."

I found a very interesting gentleman's articles online. His name is Peter Jones.

Here is a quote from one of his articles and it's what I've been saying for a long time here - that the emergent conversation is just rehashed liberal Protestantism. I really like the way he put it. Here is a snippet but do read the entire article (it is short) at the link below the snippet.


"Liberal Protestants no longer wave the banner of secular humanism or of atheistic Marxism. They are now spiritually progressive, combining evolutionary theory, geo-politics, medieval mysticism (The Cloud of Unknowing) and ancient Gnosticism (The Gospel of Thomas).


Much of what Progressive Christians believe fits with the principles of the radical Emergent Village, emerging from Evangelicalism. Indeed, Liberal Progressives intentionally include “the more progressive evangelicals” in their ranks. In their descriptions of a “generous way” of “following Jesus” (not Christ, for Christ is far too “Christian”), the “progressives” echo Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy, in which he calls himself “a Jesus follower.” They focus on Jesus as a mystical human being for all the religions. This is not Jesus, the God/man and Savior, for their “progressive” religion denies sin, claims no unique means of salvation, and, like McLaren, accepts all: “believers, agnostics, atheists and all sexual orientations and gender identities.”



Here is the entire article.

An Apostle

This is written by someone named Grover.

Much ado is being made about modern day apostles and prophets.
We hear of new "apostolic" networks and ministries, with their
"impartation meetings" and "apostolic anointings." Everybody who
is somebody in the body of Christ is now an apostle. Even the
prophets are becoming apostles. Maybe the pastors are becoming
prophets to fill the vacuum? Apostles are people who are sent by
God to a specific people or for a specific mission. We've often
used the word "missionary" in place of "apostle" because of the
connotation. By definition, an apostle is a "sent one."

I essentially agree with this. But I would like to add more. The term missionary is a confused term. First of all, it isn't in the Bible so we don't know what it is. Formerly, it was used to define evangelists but also a few apostles. Today it can mean anything you want it to mean - medical missionaries, building missionaries, discipleship missionaries, and so forth. That is why I am such a stickler for keeping Bible terms, especially when they are defined in the Bible. We see what an evangelist does in the book of Acts. But we don't know what a missionary does because the Bible doesn't mention that term and therefore does not define it. If this isn't confusing enough, in the past centuries we've been told in the Protestant churches that there are no apostles today. Au contraire - there certainly are. But they aren't the apostles the Third Wave reival Charismatics present to us. Apostles are those who have all of the gifts described in Eph. 4:11 -prophet, evangelist and pastor-teacher. So, as you can see, there are very few. And, they don't go around trying to get over already established churches like the false ones today. They basically are in areas that have no churches and that is precisely why they are apostles.

Speaking of terminology, there is no such thing as a "church planter" in the Bible either. Church planters are either churches or apostles, not evangelists or pastors. This why we see a plethora of control in churches and movements today - many of them are started by pastors out there by themselves.

Who are some famous apostles after the original first century one? I think St. Patrick in the 5th century is one of the most outstanding examples. He was an evangelist, prophet and pastor-teacher and brought miracles into his ministry to the Irish. It's fairly accepted by church historians that he did heal people. However, it has been handed down narratively that he raised a few from the dead too. But that hasn't been well-documented.