The News Beats

Members Recast: Judas Iscariots and No-Talents

Most Life Groups are not Christian fellowships.  They are groups of people managed for their resources by church leadership teams.  The unsaved are often encouraged to join these groups where salvation is secondary, if it is that high on the list at all.  The membership drives are conducted for any and all so long as they’ll be manageable for resources.  That is the impetus behind community outreach projects, and the reason an emphasis is on the surrounding community instead of focusing on the body of Christ, the Church, as a separate entity.  That sort of divisiveness would preclude growth as defined in corporate business models.

In Life Groups, members are confronted with Christianity-by-the-numbers, or with formulas for Christian living, designed by the leadership.  The leadership’s goals for growth and perpetuity of the organization are more attuned to self-preservation than they are to edification of the saints.  It follows for leaders to assess group members as potential capital. They are to be utilized for their labor, in volunteering; for their facilities, using homes; and for their money, collected in tithes, offerings, and sales for church products and productions.  There are several tactics employed to obtain these resources, and Life Groups provide an opportunity to work over members more personally in an intimate setting until they conform to the vision.

Many churches publish their Life Group resources online making it possible to obtain examples of human capital management in rather sordid detail.  Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch, California applies a particularly shameful example of coercion for raising finances from group members in its Life Group curriculum the “ABC’s of Financial Success.” In one lesson from the program Judas Iscariot is psychologically examined in such a way as to make it possible to negatively profile some members of the group.  After guided reading in the gospel of John, chapter twelve, group members are asked to share what they think went though Judas’ mind at the pouring of the ointment from the alabaster box onto Jesus.

We know what Judas said because it is recorded.  Judas protested that the ointment should have been sold, and the money given to the poor (John 12: 5).  The group members are prompted for their answer this way:

Often time [sic] we think of Judas just as an evil traitor but we must remember that he was not always thinking of betraying Jesus.  He left everything he had to follow Jesus and as far as we know he followed faithfully until his betrayal.  Based upon this information…share your answer.¹

The surface lesson might be that the love of money can cause one to miss sight of what is most important, but there is an obvious attempt at subliminal stimulation here that is atrocious.

The ulterior design of this prompting seems to be in persuading individuals to presume themselves candidates as likely as Judas to betray Christ.  The unraveling of their faith made possible by their retaining any reservation in turning over their finances in the percentages prescribed by the church, Satan was sure to enter into them effecting their eternal damnation.  The way in which these scriptures are handled in this exercise reveals both a gross manipulation of people, and the facts.

As far as we know, Judas was not faithfully following Jesus up until the betrayal.  The text tells us very plainly that Judas cared not for the poor, a fact others might have suspected and that John already knew, and an attitude opposite what one would expect from a person who had faith in Christ.  Furthermore, the same text reveals Judas was the one in the group who carried money purse, and it is clearly pointed out that “he was a thief” (John 12:6).  For how long Judas had been stealing we are not told, but he already had been stealing by this point, and had probably been doing so for a long time.   Contrary to what’s being implied, there was no sudden incident of a born-again Christian coveting a fortune affixed at his numerical breaking point and losing his salvation on account of it.

In another exercise, Life Group members are guided in reading the parable of the talents in Matthew, chapter twenty-five.   The facilitator is supplied with leader notes that correctly interpret what the parable represents, and the identities of the persons in the parable; except for one tragic error.  The leader notes bunch all the servants in the parable into one category, and instruct the facilitator to proclaim: “The servants represent us.”² A cursory examination of the details of the parable shows clearly that the one-talent servant was not one of us, that is he could not be considered a true Christian, but was in fact a professor only. In spite of this, group members are asked “Which one of the servants do you most relate to? Why?”³  Here again, the underlying motive for blurring the lines between the saved and the lost can be traced to raising capital.

The parable runs from verse 14 to verse 30, but the guided reading stops at verse 26, and this seems to be purposely guided so as to obscure, for the moment, the unsaved character of that one-talent servant, and his doom. The end of the parable reads:

Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mat 25:28-30)

The fact that the parable is short, and human nature is inquisitive, means that it is a safe bet to assume that many readers will, on their own, find out the fate of the one-talent servant.  By not covering it in the group, leaders can avoid fielding the salvation issue, and can instead let the implication stand that this fate awaits those who refuse to tithe to the church.

The one-talent servant buried his talent in the ground thus showing that he did not have Christ.  Those who have not Christ will lose even the life that they have.  There is no defense for such scandalous mistreatment of persons and misapplication of scriptures.  Nowhere in the leader notes is there any instruction or caution for ensuring the salvation issue in a group member’s life who identifies himself as the one-talent man upon examining this parable.  So it cannot be said that by identifying all the servants as “us” in the parable the church was merely acknowledging the saved and unsaved mixture of their Life Groups; else it is horribly negligent in the care for souls, and in the proclamation of the gospel. The reason for the church identifying all the servants of the parable in the same group is to use fear of cursing to motivate group members to give money.

Notes:

^1. Shepherd of the Hills Church (Pastor: Dudley Rutherford), “Bondage,” ABC’s of Financial Success. (Leader Notes) http://www.4lifegroups.org/leaders/leader-notes/abc-s-of-financial-success-leader-notes/bondage. (accessed January 14, 2020).

^{2 -3.} Shepherd, “Funding,” ABC’s of Financial Success. (Leader Notes) http://www.4lifegroups.org/leaders/leader-notes/abc-s-of-financial-success-leader-notes/funding. (accessed January 14, 2020).

MORE ARTICLES ON LIFE GROUPS

The upcoming Radicalis conference scheduled to take place at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, February 9-12, will include speakers Rick Warren, his ministry team, and what is shaping up to be a line-up of, well, the usual suspects for apostasy. One headliner is Perry Noble, Senior Pastor of New Spring Church where there are 10,000 members.  The arduous chore of pastoring such a large crowd means that sacrifices must be made, but not by the pastor.  Noble explained some of the sacrifices members must be prepared to make in a video-clip retrieved from YouTube, in which Noble explained: “We have people coming to this church, going: ‘I want a church where I can know the pastor.’” Noble’s admonishment to those people was: “You need to leave.  I don’t have time.”¹  The factor of time in such a large church certainly plays a role in how often a pastor can meet with the sheep, but Noble has a larger problem with shepherding.

He went on to explain in the video: “I love my wife, and I love my kids, and I will not sacrifice my family on the ministry altar so I can come eat food that I won’t like, and hang out with people who make me feel uncomfortable.”²  Clearly, Noble does not like the sheep, and even finds them repugnant (and seems to possess a prejudice that Christians possess no culinary art).  Noble is simply not going to sacrifice as a pastor, or be troubled by ministry, and he is “dead serious” about it.³

To prove that point, Noble also informed members that they better be prepared to tough it on their own in sickness and disease.  Addressing the idea that he should visit members in the hospital, Noble clarified that his visits to the sick were strictly limited to a last-rites scenario of seeing a person just prior to them expiring, or as Noble delicately phrased it: “The guy behind me has the bag you’re leaving the room in.”⁴  Why Nobel would visit the sick at this juncture, and not in the intervening time for prayer and the laying on of hands for the sick to recover, might be further affirmation of how little he really cares about them; unless he somehow believes he really is empowered with special authority to ensure transition from earth to heaven for the dying.

A church of 10,000 is far too large for a pastor who can only find room in his heart to love his wife and kids, and not the sheep, but it is the perfect situation for a hireling, a stark contrast from a true shepherd:

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. (Joh 10:11-13)

This hireling is among several that will be merchandising the sheep at Radicalis, under Rick Warren. In order to get an idea of what Noble will be selling, a look into his own product line will be helpful, but first a key term must be defined.

In the nomenclature of compromise there is an important thing to understand about the stampede to be relevant by these men; it is not to reach the modern world with the gospel, it is to emulate the modern world for profit.  Consequently, they don’t build churches, or even houses of worship.  They construct civic auditoriums for the purpose of staging theatrical productions.  Admission prices vary, with usually a standing charge of ten percent of a person’s income paid for the regular Sunday matinee, and fixed ticket prices for special events. For example, Noble has been producing his “one day church conference for pastors, staff members and volunteers” since 2007, and this year the tickets for Unleash 2010 are selling $59 each.⁵  To create excitement and drive up sales, Noble warned readers at his blogsite that this “early bird rate” is only good till the end of the month, and stresses the price is “cheap” by placing the word in all capitals followed by three exclamation points.⁶  In comparison to other productions Noble markets, as we will see, here, at least, he is being honest.

The composition of Unleash 2010 is made up by eighteen different sessions with Noble only headlining one of them.  Titles for the productions include those that would be typical in a business-growth formula being marketed by a large successful production company to smaller, up and coming production companies.  Topics touch on those things vital to growing businesses such as “Hiring, Firing and Creating a Great Staff Culture,” and to maximize profits there is “The Magic Formula for Getting People to Volunteer.”⁷ That would be for keeping astronomically high salaries in the hands of that great staff culture they created.  It is tempting to dismiss this fare as the product of small enterprises attracting too few to be harmful, but these conferences (like the promoters, and much of the attendees) have been sell-outs every year.  Ticket sales exceeded 850 the first year the conference was offered.  The real money, however, is in Noble promoting himself.

One of Noble’s bigger productions is his Personal Coaching Network which he limits to “around” fifteen senior pastors.⁸  The restriction to a smaller audience is intended to imply an intimate presentation where Noble will share money making church-growth secrets, but it’s strictly marketing.  If orders kept coming in, Noble would almost certainly continue to sell tickets to fill his auditorium, and schedule additional performances if necessary.  By pretending to limit the number of ticket sales Noble is doing two things.  Firstly, he is demonstrating his knowledge of what the market will bear.  Secondly, he is manipulating one of the elements of value; in this case scarcity.  When a commodity or product appears to be scarce, people tend to assign a higher value to it.  Here specifically, Noble is looking for people “willing to do whatever it takes to grow,” and that includes agreeing that the tickets are worth the $1,500 he is charging for them.⁹   To date, Noble stages two of these networks per year. At face value, a pastor charging other pastors to discuss the ministry with them is scandalous.  As we are witnessing, though, this is not the ministry; this is apostasy.

Notes:

^1. Museum of Idolatry, A Purpose-Driven Scolding, Perry Noble (YouTube, January 31, 2009). Video-clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxkhs9×98w&feature=related. (accessed January 7, 2010).

^{3 - 4.} Ibid.

http://www.perrynoble.com/2010/01/11/unleash-6/. (accessed January 12, 2010).

7 New Springs Church, Unleash 2010, “What to Expect at Unleash,” http://www.newspring.cc/unleash/2010/. (accessed January 12, 2010).

8-9 Perry Noble, “Coaching Network Openings,” Perry Noble: Leadership, Vision, and Creativity, December 9, 2010.

http://www.perrynoble.com/category/coaching-network/. (accessed January 12, 2010).

The upcoming Radicalis conference scheduled to take place at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, February 9-12, will include speakers Rick Warren, his ministry team, and what is shaping up to be a line-up of, well, the usual suspects for apostasy.  One headliner is Brad Powell, Senior Pastor, Northridge Church.  Powell is slated to discuss his process of successfully transitioning congregations “from static to dynamic,” and to go from “irrelevance to relevance.”¹  It is important to understand that in the nomenclature of compromise the term irrelevance means small, but faithful congregation; and the term relevance means applying marketing schemes to attract more dues-paying customers by employing sensual lures in the areas of church lighting, music, and entertainment.

For a glimpse of the marketing program Powell will be promoting at Radicalis, a look back to his marketing ideas from 2007, as originally covered here at TheNewsBeats.com, will be insightful:

Brad Powell: Holy Spirit Hot Sauce, or Marketing Genie in a bottle?

December 30th, 2006 by David Dansker

Billed as the “Change Without Compromise 2007” conference, Brad Powell, Senior Pastor of Northridge Church, MI, is marketing his church transition workshops by comparing Church fervency to a bottle of hot sauce. Referencing Revelation 3:15-16, Powell contends the comparison “isn’t that far off,” and he claims that by purchasing his hot ideas your church can “move from static to dynamic, from cultural irrelevance to relevance, and from ineffective to effective.” Of course, “20% growth annually” might also be inside the bottle too. Workshops include Marketing and Communications (or, “What’s On Your Label?”); Volunteers (how to develop and maintain them); and Programming with a Purpose. “Your services can be ‘all killer, no filler’! Experience the process… from the pastor’s series thoughts… to the final walk-out music. Hands-on training that’ll rock your programming world” (workshop, deatails).

Upon successful completion of the Powell transition, it sounds like a pastor can process attendees through church services with all the efficiency and thrills of a major theme park ride. The cost for the conference and workshops is $179. While we didn’t see a workshop on holding them upside down long enough to shake the money out, it seems safe to deduce that the mechanism is built into the package.

The-if you will excuse the phrase-selling points for this tabasco-talk are Powell’s own numbers: 12,700 people for weekend services, and 2,100 “decisions for Christ” last year alone. When considering these, and Powell’s merchandising campaign, two things come to mind. One is 2Peter 2:3: “And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” The other thing is that Pilate got probably as many “decisions for Christ” in a single day; they decided to crucify him.

Notes:

Many civic minded individuals with religious convictions have joined together in the Manhattan Declaration to declare their opposition to abortion and support of marriage, among other socially redeeming values.  Except for other signers, it might be only the commendable exertion of civic duty on the part of the citizenry that could be praised much in the same way as their registering to vote, though garnering more of it from those who agree with their position.  What has turned this otherwise fair lesson in civics, however, into a debacle is the assortment of religious leaders who are now also in league together by their own declaration.

The religious signers of the Manhattan Declaration include many high-ranking officials of the Roman Catholic Church.  Present are the Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese; Most Rev. Robert J. Baker, S.T.D., Bishop of Birmingham Diocese;  Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, Archbishop, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver; Most Rev. Nicholas DiMarzio, Bishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn; Most Rev. Timothy Dolan, Archbishop, Roman Catholic Diocese of New York, etc., et al.¹  Had it ended there it would have remained only a Constitutionally protected expression of religious beliefs to be respected.

The trouble with the document is that an assortment of famous, Protestant religious leaders has also signed onto it.  This has caused many to declare openly their disappointment and disapproval, and to question the wisdom of such an act.

How can persons who conduct large ministries which include study in the scriptures be so very ignorant of the implications of their endorsements? When they sign the Manhattan Declaration they affix their seal of recognition that legitimizes the views and positions of other signatories.  This writer has yet to discover that heretofore Kay Arthur, of Precept Ministries International, and Chuck Colson, of Prison Fellowship; have renounced their view of salvation through Christ alone and have joined the Catholic Church to obtain it.

Certainly it is a logical step to take after joining with its representatives in religious pursuit of ideals based on a common understanding of the scriptures.  The Protestants who signed would do well to understand what the Roman Catholic Church understands about itself:

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour [sic], after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd…. This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church.²

This tenent of the Roman Catholic Church, found in the Dogmatic Constitution On The Church, simply means that if one is not in the Catholic Church, one is not in the body of Christ; as the Catholic Church is the only true Christian church.  It follows that the Catholic Church would conclude the obvious about those who left it, or remained outside of it, in regards to salvation.  What the Catholic Church still affirms as its position on salvation, “basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the [Catholic] Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation.”³

In light of these things, should we now expect future study programs from Arthur’s Precept Ministries instructing on how recant Protestantism to join the Catholic Church?  Will Colson’s Prison Fellowship be disturbing Bibles and rosaries to inmates?  While offerings that could be forthcoming from such popular ministries would probably not be so blatant, but of a more subtle nature; such a change in directions could have ill effects on many who subscribe to those ministries.  That makes the nature of these questions, if not their substance, serious; and among others that should be answered by the signatories:

Jack Graham - Will Dr. Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, perform the Mass when fellow signatories such as His Eminence Adam Cardinal Maida come to call on him?

Josh McDowell - Is author Josh McDowell, founder of the ministry by the same name, soon to release a book titled: New Evidence that Demands a PAPACY“?

Chuck Swindoll - More to the point, and at the foundation, can Chuck Swindoll, pastor and founder of Insight for living, lend any insight as to why he now accepts the organization which claims exclusive sacerdotal powers and that conversely finds his Pastoral Office illegitimate and ungodly?

That last question should also be answered many other signers, including:

Randy Brannon, Senior Pastor, Grace Community Church;

Rev. Jonathan Falwell, Senior Pastor, Thomas Road Baptist Church;

Dr. Jim Garlow, Senior Pastor, Skyline Church;

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary;

Dr. Michael Youssef, President, Leading Way;

Ravi Zacharias, Founder and Chairman of the board, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

(There are others of notoriety who signed the Manhattan Declaration, but who have already proved they cannot be taken seriously in the faith.) What say you?

Notes:

^1. List of Religious Leaders Signatories, “Manhattan Declaration,” Manhattan Declaration.org,  http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/sign/list-of-religious-leaders-signatories(accessed December 5, 2009).

^2. Pope Paul VI, Dogmatic Constitution On The Church, (Lumen Gentium) November 21, 1964. Ch 2, 14 (emphasis added).  http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html

^3. Ibid. Ch 1, 8 (emphasis added).

Christians today are largely unaware of the communists tactics for taking over individuals and controlling populations.  They should make themselves aware because these are now being used successfully in churches to take them over, change their mission, and steal their wealth.  For a complete expose on the communist process of brainwashing the reader is encouraged to read the seminal work on the subject by the author who first printed the term “brainwashing” in the English language.   In Edward Hunter’s Brainwashing: The story of men defied it, Hunter not only reveals the process, but what has proven to be the best and most effective strategies for surviving and defeating it.  Although the threat of communism is thought to be a relic of the past that has been largely discredited, and today nonexistent, it has never been more important to understand its powerful tools and its success in enslaving  men in a false religion.

The “communist theologians”¹ are at work today in American churches and have taken most of them over without firing a single shot. The mechanism used are small groups that can collectively be referred to as Life Groups.  Understanding how church Life Groups are being used to extinguish Christianity can be demonstrated by examining one aspect of Communist proselytizing.  This one is the process for producing confessed sinners who can receive absolution from their crimes by “reform” and “rebirth” into the Communist religion.²  It is a strategy for producing offenders though a process of forced self-criticism, and confessions of the supposed crimes that surface in them, in small group settings which are all facilitated, or led, to achieve the desired result.  With the exception of changes made herein of enumerating the clauses, some bolding, and elaboration in brackets; the following is a paragraph from Hunter:

The communists have made confession the medium for their principal propaganda drive among their own subject peoples.
1. They first determine the conclusion they wish to put across,
2. then they select the details which add up to this fake hypothesis.
3. Their problem then boils down to finding people with experience approximating these details as closely as possible.
4. By befogging the minds [by facilitators leading group members in individual response-confessions through mundane, vague, and trivial agenda points to fatigue mental acuity], they endeavor to convince them that they fill the bill!³

Number three is the reason why Life Groups are segregated by age and often by sex when enough congregants are available.  All these will have similar experiences, or conditions, and have approximating details, or circumstances, to draw from.  These can be capitalized on to more easily lead small groups to predetermined positions of agreement for obtaining desired, although undisclosed, results.  The results are the desired responses the leadership wants from the congregants on varying items that present in the life of maintaining the organization and the leadership, but these are secondary to the actual purpose of the Life Group programs.  The main purpose of the process is the process; it keeps the whole groups in submission and under control of the leadership. This is why a key component of Life Groups is individual confessions of failures and short comings; to confess means to submit. The tactic for instigating confessions takes on the form of a debriefing analysis under the guise of searching for a better way a member could have performed a task, or responded to an incident in their personal life.  Certainly, members must self-criticize themselves before they can suggest an improvement.

Usually, the targeted results revealed to the Life Group members are the completion of community service and beautification projects.  These are supposed to comprise some physical evangelistic witness of the church’s compassion for the community.  While the leadership does, indeed, hope to draw more members to feed off by these public relations exercises, the service projects are themselves part of the communist strategy of enforcing the concept of submission.  People are prodded into to ‘doing life together’ in such groups to achieve the eradication of the individual mind, development of the symbiotic thought process of conformity; and to deprive the individuals of as much of their leisure time as possible to preclude an individual mind from reemerging.

To ensure that the collective remains intact, Life Group facilitators at Real Life Church in Valencia California are instructed to focus on “application and accountability”  which fosters a tedious and time consuming process.⁴  Facilitators are to “fearlessly challenge the people” in their groups “to come up with specific ways they can act on what the group is focusing on,” and even to encourage them to “break into accountability partners for a few weeks at a time” to ensure they adhere to their tasks.⁵  Nothing is left to chance or the Spirit, or goes unmonitored.  Accountability partners are even assigned for prayer time during the week, and group members must use Bible verses to design and commit to action items  with the clear inference that their progress will be reported on to the leadership by the accountability partners.⁶ Ideally, a Life Group member will be too mentally and physically fatigued by the process to reflect and evaluate with outside information, such as the Bible, to ever get a thought or desire of breaking free from the organization. The leadership remains the leadership, with power, prestige, and salaries.

The name the Chinese Communists have for their service learning groups is the Daily Life Committee.⁷  Because the Communist government controls civil law, they can mandate daily attendance for maximum control.  All implementations of these control groups outside communists countries usually begins with weekly or even bi-monthly schedules before being ratcheted for more frequent attendance.  The Los Angeles Unified School District began their professional development meetings several years ago with approximately one meeting per month, and many sites utilized the control group model of facilitated small-group consensus. Today, those meetings are held weekly, and are mandatory.  Life Groups typically start out meeting once a week.  Part of the reason for the surge in megachurches developing satellite campuses is for the facilitation of more frequent Life Group meetings by making them logistically feasible.

The church Life Groups follow the basic pattern of the Chinese Daily Life Committees which have sign-ups for committees on recreation, sanitation, food, and study.⁸  The pretense of the concept of servant-leader, which leads Life Group members to imagine some autonomy, is maintained by giving Life Groups a predetermined list of likely community service projects as examples; with the encouragement of identifying their own community project.  In reality, this relives the leadership of duties by assigning more of the volunteer work onto the Life Groups.

Actual boundary conditions for Life Groups are tightly controlled and regulated.  For instance, in most of these Life Group programs conduct is strictly prescribed and includes pre-scripted answers to possible questions group members may encounter while performing their work, and almost always they are prohibited from any actual evangelizing.⁹  Christian evangelizing is not to be the goal of these groups because it is no longer the goal of the churches they belong to.  True evangelizing would require group members to learn more scripture and thus more doctrine, and those who were as yet unconverted would either convert, or depart, and the converted would grow stronger in the faith.  All of these results would be detrimental to the leadership.

If your church has instituted Life Groups and is encouraging you to join, they may only be innocent efforts to encourage fellowship and support. This case, however, would be one of the very few exceptions, and probably would soon succumb to the Communist paradigm.  One reason for this is that the curriculum which direct these groups is often turned to for resources, and these implement a program of brainwashing and control.  When the table is set for Satan, he usually shows up. We are warned that in the last days perilous times would come; times that would sap the strength from many.  The implementation of Life Groups is the utilization of a process to create a new organism having a form of godliness, but denying, that is disavowing by contradiction, the actual power thereof (2Tim 3:1-5).  We are also told this would be a device of traitors to the faith, and that from such we are to turn away.  What Christians need to understand is that Communism is not a philosophy or theory of government so much as it is diabolical process by which the Devil sets up his anti-church body. It has assisted him in ushering in the Apostasy.

Notes:

^1. Edward Hunter, Brainwashing: The story of men who defied it, (New York: Pyramid Books, 1958; San Francisco: American Libraries, 2006), 240. http://www.archive.org/details/brainwashingstor00huntrich/ (accessed August 8, 2009). Citations are to the American Libraries (online) edition.

^2. Ibid, 237.

^3. Ibid, 242 (bolding, enumerating, bracketed added).

^4. Real Life Church, “Session Guidelines For Facilitators And Co-Facilitators,”

http://www.reallifechurch.org/FAITHNETWORK_UserFileStore/fileCabinet/ministries/d34af287-7b8a-41d8-b4bf-84b420d6eaa7/SessionGuidelinesforFacilitatorsandCoF.pdf (accessed August 9, 2009).

^5. Real Life Church, “Session Guidelines for Facilitators and Co-Facilitators”

^6. Real Life Church, “What a Typical Life Group Looks Like,” http://www.reallifechurch.org/FAITHNETWORK_UserFileStore/fileCabinet/ministries/d34af287-7b8a-41d8-b4bf-84b420d6eaa7/WhataTypicalLGLooksLike.pdf (accessed August 9, 2009).

^7. Edward Hunter, Brainwashing, 179.

^8. Ibid, 179.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama hosted a private interview this week with several Christian leaders that some say was intended “to prompt a wide discussion”¹ on various topics such as abortion and homosexual rights. Such reaching out by politicians for the purpose of dialogue is notoriously aimed at courting endorsements from high profile personalities. Christian leaders, especially of the genuine verity, should take warning. These same leaders will find that they are expendable, and will be sheded faster than a burning shirt, should they later prove politically inconvenient. And they will be the ones worse for the wear. Just ask Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church, San Antonio Texas. Hagee endorsed Republican candidate John McCain only to be thrown under the bus by McCain when the press took Hagee out of context from sermon he preached back in the nineties on Israel. Hagee, who undoubtedly threw his support behind McCain in an effort to ward off the greater of two evils (and not on McCain’s substance), learned the hard way any compromise with reprobates is too much.In an effort to make their union work out, Hagee had been forced to write a letter of apology to the Catholic Church for his eschatological teaching which identifies it as the imitation, One World church to enjoy temporary reign and then suffer God’s wrath during the tribulation period. The letter was magnanimous enough not to retract the substance of the teaching, but Hagee’s integrity suffered damage by the appearance of a general retraction. They keep coming.

Ask Pastor Bob DeWaay of Twin City Fellowship, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He visited pastor-turned-politician Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven conference last month (at Warren’s all-expenses paid invitation) on the pretense of establishing dialogue. Dewaay has been critical of Warren’s departure from Christina doctrine and adoption of secular principals, and was solicited by Warren in an effort to woo him over. The effort failed, but ever the politician Warren tried to capitalize on the compromise visit by having his camp claim that DeWaay’s attendance at the conference evidenced his endorsement of Warren’s politics.

DeWaay was forced to spend time defending himself against Warren’s powerful PR machine, and reiterating his unchanged position with what meager resources he could avail himself of. While he probably salvaged the charge, always printed on the front page, with those who know him best; the correction, always printed on the back page, could barely be expected to reach the ones who had attended the conference and who noted DeWaay’s presence there. If nothing else, some damage was done if only in expended effort that could have been put to use elsewhere. Yet, the harder they learn, the harder they fall.

The next Christian leader in line to learn the lesson of compromise the hard way was lined up by Barack for his private interview. Franklin Graham revealed that he carries the shoehorn for his own slide by explaining why he attended the event. According to Graham’s spokesman, “He feels that dialogue with someone who may be president is useful whether or not you agree with them on everything or anything.”² Will they never learn? Couldn’t Graham take a cue form the other leaders who were present and realize that he was at Compromise Hall, and extricate himself with honor?

It was no surprise that T.D. Jakes, quoted above, was in attendance and in affirmation. Jakes has been fawning over Obama from the beginning of his campaign, and is already famous for his compromise of Christian doctrine in favor of splash and cash. Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals (also known as the Green Evangelicals), who also attended, would follow Obama anywhere so long as he continues to support the Green politics of eviscerating the American way of life and reintroducing serfdom so that the earth may be shown its proper reverence, and Gaia worship can be established as the state religion. That political plank works in fine with Obama’s Post Modern Marxism as was expressed by his wife who, while campaigning for his economic policies of, no surprise, universal distribution, said: “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”³ Every one except the ones in charge of the pie, that is. It will be their job to oversee the revolution (change we can believe in) until everyone is freed to become a poor starving, but green, Marxist. Attention Christian leaders: Marxists and apostates are atheists, compromise at you own risk.

Notes:

^1. Charles Babington, “Christian Leaders Meet Privately with Obama,” Christian Post, Jun 11, 2008.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080611/32771_

Christian_Leaders_Meet_Privately_with_Obama.htm

^2. Babington, “Christian Leaders Meet Privately with Obama.” (emphasis added).

^3. Charlotte.com, “Giving Hope a Comeback,” March 8, 2008. http://www.charlotte.com/112/story/572303.html

Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove California is set to host a Christian conference in January 2008 that will include a gathering of assorted cultural icons. The conference, titled “Rethink: new perspectives from global influencers,” is billed as a high-level strategy session where strategic briefings will be given on geo-political trends, and where “secrets for success”¹ will be shared. The object of the conference is to glean valuable insight for determining how to “stay on the cutting edge” in this fast paced world.² The practical strategies for this edge-clinging are to be discovered in post-briefing, facilitated, small group brainstorming sessions.

There are at least two serious problems with this Christian conference. Firstly, it is amazing to find the facilitated format still purported to be a process of shared discovery after so many have already discovered that this small group paradigm means that the conclusions have gone in before the facilitators come out.

Secondly, the criterion that was used for selecting speakers for this “Christian” event has nothing to do with Christian doctrine. The qualifier is that they be successful in a given market. That is what makes them influential. The line up of guest speakers includes entertainers, filmmakers, global media executives, and a former U.S president. Speakers will be professing Christian thinkers, and non-Christian Globalist thinkers such as Larry King and George H. Bush. The question naturally arises, why would this still be billed as a Christian conference? Here is the answer Rethink provides:

We’re purposely gathering a group of speakers you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear at a Christian conference. Our aim is to be immersed in the latest thoughts and perspectives of these respected cultural icons to tap into what’s happening in our world today and to grapple with how we respond.³

With the exception of the ignorant and the naïve, could any real Christian leaders be expected to attend this confabulation? Any Christians who are sent invitations should already know that what is happening in the world today is spiritual warfare, and that we are not to gather with the unsaved to grapple with flesh and blood for our strategies, but are instead to put on the whole amour of God (Eph 6:13-18):

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Eph 6:12)

Furthermore, Christians are not to be immersed in the vain philosophies of man’s wisdom, no matter how iconoclastic a particular philosopher has become by his or her success in the kingdoms of this world (Col. 2:8). Neither should we be yoked together with them in their pursuits, or adopt their methods of pursuing; whether that be for obtaining success, or gain, or for the sake of social causes (2 Cor. 6:14-18). These causes differ from faith causes in that they precede from the desires of the flesh to serve the flesh.

Campaigns to address poverty and hunger emerge to sustain a cheap source of labor to furnish goods and services to the comfortable, to circumvent epidemics before pandemics reach the them, and to gain subservience from dependent classes (they would put a labtop in their hands to get instructions to them faster). Programs to distribute medical supplies naturally follow poverty campaigns for the same reasoning. The world fight against AIDS is a fight of the flesh in response to the sinner’s desire to engage in all manner of fornication at all times despite clear and present danger to themselves and others.

Africa is the magnet for these appeals to the churches because it is the mesh where the pictures of innocent starving children can be applied to all these issues while at the point of a bayonet in a war-torn dirt land far enough from pews to invite easy meritorious sainthood and preclude the responsibilities of the priesthood of every believer. Churches like Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral and Rick Warren’s Saddleback feed on this Christian irresponsibility as much as they are the cause of it.

The Rethink conference will be about adopting key programs for influencing the world. To do this they will have to adopt the causes that feed the world’s flesh in order to win their praise, and they will have to ignore their souls in order to gain acceptance. These new programs will be carried back to churches everywhere and billed as new ways of doing church for the new century. They will be portrayed as required adaptations churches must make in order to adjust to the culture and obtain relevance. The message will play well to congregations who have for too long be fed the empty calories of whip cream in place of sound doctrine, and the tide will continue towards apostasy.

Notes:

^1. Rethink: New Perspectives From Global Influencers, Why Rethink?

http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com

_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=2 (accessed October 10, 2007).

^2. Ibid.

^3. Rethink: New Perspectives From Global Influencers, Speakers

(conference scheduled for January 17-19, 2008), http://www.rethinkconference.com

/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=14.

(accessed October 8, 2007).

Probably the single most powerful force plunging the Protestant church into apostasy is psychotherapy. With its pretense of science, aura of state licensing, and seductive dichotomy of body, spirit, and mind as equal parts in holistic health care; the pursuit of mental health, with its manufactured aliments and theoretical cures, has eclipsed the quest for spiritual growth and discernment.

For an example of how ludicrous these psychotherapy theories have become, and how brazen their attacks on the Christian faith, consider Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, by Stephen Arterburn. The book description alone sounds an alarm:

Everyone needs a way to break free from the pain of their past. By explaining and illuminating a psychological technique known as ‘reframing,’ bestselling author Stephen Arterburn puts readers on the path to freedom from old wounds….

Reframe Your Life instructs readers on how to view hurtful events through a more informed frame of reference, allowing them to look at dark moments from a broader perspective than the events themselves and empowering them to step into a brighter future.¹

But is this architectural exercise of creating a museum in the imagination where exhibits are constructed of past sins in order to dress them up in decorative framing “the path to freedom from old wounds,” or a menagerie created by psychotherapy which locks the wayward into a curatorial obligation of servitude to the past? Moreover, the pertinent question here is, should a Christian obtain this book to seek help?

Steve Arterburn is the founder of New Life Ministries, a counseling and treatment ministry, and the host of the nationally syndicated radio show “New Life Live.” Although Arterburn describes his ministry as “faith-based” on his website, a call to his counseling network revealed that the great majority of the counselors used by New Life are state licensed psychologists.

It should also be noted that the term faith-based does not mean exclusively Christian, or based on Christian doctrines. In fact, the most that Publishers Weekly could say in their review regarding any biblical principals to be found in Reframe Your Life was that “a gentle faith perspective is woven through the book, with a special section on Reframing Your God to help readers get their spiritual lives in harmony.”²

The sad truth is that for the person without God this psychobabble is the best the world has to offer: reinventing the past and flirtations with a customizable God concept. More tragically, it functions much like an inoculation to the real thing. For the Christian, this is psychoheresy: the mingling of psychological theories with biblical principals to compromise or contradict biblical Christianity. Indeed, a treatment in such a work devoted to reframing your God raises the question as to whether or not blasphemy is committed. Christians should not consult this work; much less support it by purchasing it.

Notes:

1. New Life Ministries, product description of Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, By Stephen Arterburn (July 2007).

2. Publishers Weekly, review of Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, By Stephen Arterburn (July 2007).