The News Beats

Some of the scariest cult practices around the world actually contain Christian themes.  In San Fernando, Philippines, upwards of two dozen people have themselves nailed to cross on Good Friday to emulate the crucifixion of Christ.  Many more undergo self-flagellation where “scores of men pound their bleeding bare backs with bamboo sticks dangling from ropes in a flagellation rite meant to atone for sins.”¹ As atrocious and repulsive as these displays are, most in mainstream Protestantism would attribute these rituals to ignorant penitents of the Roman Catholic variety, and in far away jungles.  Welcome to the jungle.

The misapplication of Christ’s life as an example for Christian living has become a popular topic for leaders in large Protestant churches in America, and the results could get just as ugly. According to mega-church pastor Rick Warren, people should look back on Jesus life leading up to the crucifixion and emulate it to perfect good leadership skills. While at first it sounds like a pious exercise promising great benefits to perspective leaders,  even the great mega-leader himself exhibits the pitfalls of trying follow Jesus after His life in the flesh.  In one lesson Warren instructs: “You’ve got to learn not to care about the opinions of others.”²  Real leaders won’t “pay attention to those who cheer you or jeer you.”³    After all, leaders need to be like Jesus who “lived for an audience of One” in order to please their heavenly Father.⁴   It almost sounds like Warren is championing the priesthood of believers, and extolling the individuals’ relationship with God, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit.  Not so fast.

Warren is encouraging leadership, but not without the bounds of his own holy order, or outside of his organizational hierarchy.  Shortly after encouraging leaders to remain undeterred by either applause or rejection, he withdraws Christian liberty altogether.  “If God gives you a vision for your ministry,” Warren begins his about face, “he’s going to bring other people with the same idea together with you.  If nobody agrees on your idea, guess what?  It’s not from God.”⁵  Really? How do you know that you’re not just on a bad run of those ‘jeers’ you’re not supposed to pay attention to?  If you sense the Holy Spirit telling you to move, should you decline on Warren’s technicality of having at least one human witness to vouch for God’s credibility?

Aside from this being absurd, this denies the fact that there are ministry opportunities a saint will encounter that will be used to demonstrate God’s awesome power and His sufficiency; to both strengthen the individual believer, and glorify His name.

Of course, Warren is being deceptively duplicitous.  He is pretending to hold out some vaunted mantle of leadership while actually enticing the simple into leg irons for subservience to the Purpose Driven holy order.  That order is the Purpose Driven Church comprised of cloisters of small interdependent groups which are closely supervised and directed by the real leadership at the top.

In an effort to support the claim for his small group paradigm by pointing to the disciples, Warren claims that “Jesus modeled this kind of ministry.  He never did ministry alone.” This outright falsehood is parleyed in an attempt to suggest that the Lord instituted the collectivist’s “collaboration” of working in “a small group,”⁶ outside of which no Christian service was legitimate, and that Jesus was incompetent and utterly dependent upon His small group to redeem mankind.

There is a strong resemblance between Warren the collectivist, and a more famous one spoken of by historian Clinton Rossiter in 1960:

He was, on any large view, a collectivist, a thinker who had a thoroughly social view of the claim to personal liberty, who obliterated ruthlessly the distinction between public and private man, … and who insisted that the behavior of any individual was determined almost wholly by his membership in a class.⁷

This collectivist and avowed atheist, who Warren has molded his soviet-style control groups after, was none other than Karl Marx. Warren’s ruthless obliteration of aging or small congregations by sending PDL-trained infiltrators in among the sheep to take over church buildings is well documented.  His propagation of the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which establishes a ruling clergy over an ignorant laity, has reestablished the class system the Protestant Reformation once freed Christians from. Next stop, Rome.

Notes:

^1. Associated Press, “Philippine devotees nailed to the cross in Good Friday rites,” International Herald Tribune, March 21, 2008. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/21/news/Philippines-Crucifixions.php

^{2 - 6.} Rick Warren, “The Seven Foundations of Jesus’ Leadership,” Christian Post, April 23, 2008.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080423/32075_The_Seven_Foundations_of_Jesus%92_Leadership.htm

^7. Clinton Rossiter, “Marxism: The View from America” (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960), 119.

A debate is a conflict which clarifies a position. A dialogue is a conversation which compromises a position.

- John E. Ashbrook

Explaining his acceptance of an invitation to serve on the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships panel (FBNP), former Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page admitted to having concerns.  He noted that there are “very few conservatives on the council,” but he is requesting prayer: “I do ask Baptists to pray for me as I try to bring to the table what I believe is a conservative, biblical viewpoint.”¹

Reportedly, Page took assurances from former associate Pentecostal pastor Joshua DuBois, executive director of the White House Office of FBNP, that President Obama really wants to hear his views.  Where do these guys hide when the expos’es are coming out?

Obama and company want to vent Page like an air bag in a small group, pretend to incorporate his suggestions into policy by using facilitators expert at recasting his words to match predetermined outcomes, and obtain his support, for things he might ordinarily object to, by arriving at consensus.  He is being used, and many will likely suffer because of his succumbing to flattery.

Bible believing Christians will be the losers, and the White House Office of FBNP will gain either way Page falls.  If he remains, they will be able to claim conservative religious support for their agenda.  If he jumps ship, they can renounce all conservatives (Bible believing Christians) as obstructionists, and they will certainly hold that over his head as leverage to keep him onboard.

The White House Office of FBNP is another effort at conscripting churches into an army of federally mandated social workers for community service (something that used to be reserved for convicted felons), under federal laws that do away with free exercise of religion.  Financially struggling churches began falling into this trap by first accepting faith-based funding, and in tying on the federal feed-bag they tied on a muzzle.  Some thought that they could use government money to finance God’s work.  They might have been innocent enough, or coned by a wolf, but certainly naive and foolish.  In this age of deception, it has never been more important to keep separate the things that are Caesar’s from the things that are God’s

Notes:

^1. Baptist Press, “Page hopeful, cautious about faith council,” February 17, 2009. 

http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=29824

[More Articles on FBNP: for series click here]

There are too many big problems with no quick solutions for the new president to appear competent as he begins his first term.  Global warming is a perfect distraction.  Firstly, success on this non-existent crisis is guaranteed because results are measured solely by obedience.  If increasing numbers of people are towing the Green party line, then progress is being made in the war on global warming.  Actual figures can follow easily because climate models are notoriously flawed, and the numbers can be tweaked to produce any graph desired (e.g. the hockey stick graph).Secondly, as the cash strapped Federal government continues to nationalize businesses, the population will need to begin feeding on itself as it goes socialist prior to collapsing.  Here, global warming is set to become the largest tax ever levied on merely the condition of being alive (evidenced by producing carbon dioxide and methane gas).  It has already begun over at the Environmental Protection Agency.  The EPA is proposing to further the fight on greenhouse gasses by levying a tax on livestock.  For example, a dairy cow would be taxed $175, and beef cattle would be taxed $87.50 per head.¹

Of course, animals don’t pay taxes so we would suffer the new taxes in the increased cost of food.  In the beginning, the only thing the tax would do is act as propaganda for public consumption; another blow against global warming.  On the back end, the government raises revenue by the existence alone of bovine.

Here we see the make believe crisis is bad for industry and the consumer, but there is always much more danger in absurd theories when people in power act on them.  Ludicrous is not a strong enough word to describe the theory of man made global warming: tyranny is closer.  This is because the theories can never be separated from their zealots, and these same zealots (useful idiots) are relied upon to provide the arguments to serve as facts for the government to justify taking action.  The zealots must be hired as advisors, and even promoted to positions of power in order for the government to reap greater rewards.  Like the dawning of a socialist economy, however, dangerous theories embraced as opportunities by government implode with catastrophic consequences.  The zealots will have their rewards too, and the government will be unable to stop them after authenticating their views and codifying them into laws.

The politicians may only have wanted the revenue and the opportunity to claim a success.  The zealots want the results their theory calls for.  The only tangible ones they can obtain, next to models obtained from dial-a-climate, is the actual reduction of the threat.  Today, the United States Department of Agriculture is trying to put the voice of reason against the zealots at the EPA.  The USDA reports that the new all-encompassing livestock regulations would effectively shut down 1.9 million smaller farms.  “These operations,” the USDA explained to the EPA in a written report, “simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved.”²  The danger isn’t that the EPA is reckless; it’s that the EPA could figure that out with their own computers.

As the global warming charade continues, taxes will be increased with the goal of phasing out bovine completely, and the boot will be laced to stamp out the larger contributor of greenhouse gases, hominids.  By then, what’s left of rational government will be along for the ride, having no power to intervene.  The phase out of select humans could begin the same as the cattle tax.  It could start as a per person tax on greenhouse gasses; with more for athletes and meat eaters, and less for sedentary and compliant vegetarians.  It will increase until one could no longer afford to exhale, and the right to exist will be foreclosed upon.  The zealots and global warming faithful will at first be relatively safe from the green crusade as they will all be employed by then by the government (even if their employment is only informing on their neighbors).  Will it go that far?

It has gone that far.  Nazism and social Darwinism came together under Hitler, and in order to have a more perfect union of citizen and the world millions had to be murdered.  First to go were the ones deemed unable, and those unwilling to contribute to the grand design.  Finally the sub-human, the people who had not evolved enough, had to be removed from the earth.  The similarities between problems that existed then and ones that exist now are remarkable, but what’s more astonishing is that the same level of gullibility exists in people to put their hope in a human leader to solve their problems for them.  It is the same which precedes fanatism. In the years surrounding the rise of Hitler, this level of fanatism was largely confined to Europe.  With America under the same sort of spell as the rest of the world there will be no forces to muster against a coming world leader who will be much more evil than Hitler was.  Whether this new administration is the one that presides over America’s demise is a small detail.  America’s disintegration is well under way, and explains why prophecy buffs cannot find her in end-time Bible prophecy, and also why the Antichrist’s rise to power is unopposed by something resembling a strong America.

Notes:

^1-2.  Jeff Poor, “EPA ‘Cow Tax’ Could Charge $175 per Dairy Cow to Curb Greenhouse Gases,” Business & Media Institute. December 30, 2008.   http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081230165231.aspx

Stephen Arterburn and Dr. David Stoop are hosts of the call-in talk radio show New Life Live! which is a nationally syndicated program on several Christian radio stations.  Both hosts are purveyors of Psychoheresy, the mingling of psychotherapy with God’s word in an attack on Biblical Christianity to the detriment of the saints, and others.  Arterburn is a prolific author of self-help books.  Dr. Stoop is a licensed clinical psychologist with a counseling practice in California.  Here a concession must be permitted: it is possible for a person to be a Christian and dispense the poison of Psychoheresy.  He just won’t be a mature Christian, and he will cause a great deal of harm to a lot of people.  The extent of that harm depends on the size of his audience, and the level of skill the practitioner has in plying the manipulative aspect of Psychoheresy.

Unlike mere psychotherapy with its psychology, Psychoheresy combines behavior modification, focused primarily on the physical constraints of the person and his attendant frailties, with the invocation of the authority of God to foster compliance, and reliance.  Unfortunately, because radio stations that identify themselves as Christian stations carry the New Life Live! program, many new and immature Christians listen to Arterburn and Stoop to hear what they think is good Christian doctrine applied to problems of living.  Often what is worse, the listeners, in turn, go on to harm other persons even more susceptible to deception.

Take for example the predicament of a guest caller to the radio show aired Tuesday, December 02, 2008 who sought advice on a matter concerning herself, her husband, and their thirteen year old son.  The caller’s husband’s sister is going to wed another woman some months from now.  She is concerned about how they might “have a godly approach to the wedding.”¹  In strategizing on this goal, they at first thought that they would not take their son to the ceremony, but came to believe that having him abstain from the celebration would “bring friction into the family.”²  Arterburn agreed.  His reasoned that abstinence would not only would bring friction, presumably something that, from a Psychoheresy perspective, should be avoided at all costs: “Plus it would also say ‘anytime you run into some one that is in a same-sex relationship you should avoid interaction with them at all costs’ kind of idea to your kids.”³  Here, Arterburn does not speak the truth, at least by recognizable standards.  Taking part in a ceremony that ridicules Christianity and attacks God’s word hardly qualifies as a happenstance meeting with one for whom the opportunity to present the gospel might or might not present.  Clearly, Psychoheresy has its own criterion for establishing truth.

Using Psychoheresy, Arterburn actually insisted that it was an obligatory Christian duty for the caller’s family to take part in the celebration of sin.  He implied that for them not to attend the wedding would be unconscionable as they would be: “limiting the speaking of truth into a person’s life, because you have a relationship, and if you destroy that you don’t have that right.”⁴ This is probably as convoluted as any proposition could be posited with a straight face and uncontorted limbs (something that the witness of radio can neither confirm nor deny).  To suggest that Christians are to be blamed for the degree of depravity sinners engage in if they don’t remain attendants-in-waiting, ever ready to endorse sin in ceremonial fashion, is ludicrous. Equally ridiculous is the contention that when sinners decide to go merrily down the broad way to destruction, it is the Christian who is the destroyer of relationships for not skipping along with them.  Further, the concept of the forfeiture of the right to speak the truth is also nothing more than a psychobabble con job.  It is one of the many fiat laws within Psychoheresy used to construct and maintain human relationships.

These codices are authored by man in his best effort to manage the temporal desires of generic man.  This generic man is described in the Bible as the creature made subject to vanity (Rom 8:20), and he is not to be placated, pampered, or propped up if so be that the spirit of God dwells in him (Rom 8:9).  These then are sons of God, and have the same spirit dwelling in them that raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 8:11).  Any problems encountered by the Christian are to be solved by this same power; to those who live after the spirit, and not after generic man.  “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom 8:13).  To say that turning to any form of psychotherapy for nourishment is a downgrade for the Christian is a gross understatement.  When the joint-heirs with Christ return to a hobby of grooming generic man, they deny their inheritance (Rom 8:17).  While it can be powdered and sprayed to smell and taste sweet, generic man is the bondage of corruption (Rom 8:21).

The departure from Christianity on New Life Live! was also evident in co-host’s Dr. Stoop’s counsel for the caller.  Stoop advised her to explain to her son that while they did not condone the behavior: “it’s a reality that you’re going to live with within the family, and you don’t want to lose the people, so, you know, this is what’s going to happen.”⁵ This is what the thirteen year old boy should be told by Christian parents; they will honor the ceremony they consider unholy, he will be forced to celebrate it, and they will live with it in full acceptation of the sin.  The way that this heresy is to be sold to the son is under threat that they will “lose the people” should they fail to compromise their beliefs or chose to stand for the faith.  Rather the opposite of training up a child in the way he should go so that when he is old he will not depart from it (Pro 22:6).  The fact that these people are already lost and stand daily in peril of death, hell, and the grave, beyond which is everlasting torment, is not a fact that Psychoheresy readily admits, if at all.  That is the truth that needs to be spoken in love to, and demonstrated by not being prostrated towards, a lost and dying world; and in Psychoheresy it’s not even on the table.

These Psychoheresy ministries of deception represent a parasitic blight on the Church.  To all that hear them, they inoculate against the gospel or cause to stumble.  In all that support them, they steal from saints in need.  By this comparison, however, I am too harsh; for I do the lowly parasite an injustice.  There is a benign quality to beings that are not sentient, that do not contrive, and that do not deliberately usurp the word of God.  The ministers of Psychoheresy do this by slighting the consequences of sin and ignoring the everlasting punishment of hell until death can find its mark; one by one, listener by listener.  Lulled into believing that they are receiving wisdom to bring order and purpose to their lives, and resolution to their problems, listeners are encouraged to earn the wages of sin while not being warned of them.  This is the ploy of Satan, and that is why on New Life Live!, death takes a holiday.

Notes:

^1-2. Peggy, New Life Live!, KATB Christian Radio, 89.3 FM, Anchorage Alaska, December 2. 2008.

http://www.katb.org/KATB/

^3-4. Stephen Arterburn, New Life Live!, December 2. 2008.

^5. Dr. David Stoop, New Life Live!, December 2. 2008.

I recently received a solicitation for a book endorsement from a writer who claimed to have familiarized himself with my work and implied that we held harmonious views on the subject of climate change.  After reading only a few pages of the work it was easy to see that the author was either unfamiliar with the concept of research, or was disingenuous.  I do not name the author or his work because I do not wish to promote it in any way, but can by its classification reveal all that there is of pertinence to know about it. It is another installment in the gospel of Green Evangelism, and I am prompted by it to identify some of the characteristics of this newest religious cult.  Foremost in their divergence form the faith is a singular characteristic that unites all the Green Evangelists.  It is this: they perceive the book of Revelation to be a book of warning; instead of the prophecy that it is. They have determined that the plagues, famines, wars, and catastrophic changes in the atmosphere, and on earth, that include those caused by meteorite impacts and violent upheavals of the sun, can be prevented.  They espouse nothing less than another gospel whose great commission is to preach environmentalism to all the world as a savior of mankind, and to baptize converts in the name of the earth, the wind, and the fire.

When these cultists represent them selves as Christians, they are found to play lose with the Holy Scriptures; using any two words they can find together to support their theories, and abounding in misapplications and anachronism.  Most will cite God’s command to mankind after He placed him in the garden of Eden to “dress it and to keep it” (Gen 2:15) and apply it as a standing stewardship obligation over the whole earth that is both his primary responsibility, and is still within his power to control.  By this contention they neglect the subsequent modifications to the original arrangement brought about by sin- mankind’s fall from his preeminent position of authority and power, the expulsion from the garden itself, and the resulting curse laid upon the remaining and forthcoming gardens everywhere.

The curse was not merely the inconvenient bother of weeding the newly created thorns and thistles from our plots that we now had to labor over to produce our food.  Because of the curse death entered into the world, and all of mankind has been dying and returning to the ground from whence he was taken ever since.

The only hope for the environment is the reconstitution of the earth to be made by the Lord Jesus Christ upon His return (Isa 65:17; Zec 14:4-7). Then “the wolf and the lamb will feed together” (Isa 65:25), a person of a hundred years will be reckoned as a child (Isa 65:20), the waters will be healed (Zec 14:8; Rev 22:1), and the trees will produce fruit that will heal the nations, and their leaves will be used to cure all disease (Rev 22:2; Eze 47:12).

Only then will the curse God leveled in the garden be lifted: “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it: and his servants shall serve him.” (Rev 22: 3).  Until that day “we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom 8:22).  That groaning will continue until after the prophecies concerning the catastrophic climate changes in the Revelation are fulfilled.  Why?  It is a period of time appointed for “the wrath of God” to be poured out upon the earth and all those who worship, among other things, demons (Rev 16:1; 9:20); and the gospel of Green Evangelism is a doctrine of demons who will seduce many in the latter times (1 Ti 4:1).  It will be the environmentalist’s nightmare come true as the seas, rivers, lakes, and streams are turned to blood as God pours out His judgment on those who spilt the blood of prophets, and saints, and gives them blood to drink in return (Rev 16:3-6).  The ungodly always hated the prophets, for it is they who testify of Jesus; and they particularly hate the last book of prophecy for it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Every religious cult, including this new cult of Green Evangelists, will have at least one of two things in common: they will deny the humanity of Christ, or deny the deity of Christ.  God said that, prior to the Lord establishing His Kingdom on earth, “the earth will wax old like a garment” (Isa 51:6). The earth is deteriorating; it is fading, wearing thin, fraying, developing holes, and ripping and tearing apart at the seams. Jesus Christ claimed to be God, saying: “I and my Father are one” (Joh 10:30).  The Jewish leaders, familiar with the scriptures, and the law, understood Jesus perfectly well, and were so impressed with His seriousness each time He made the claim that they attempted to stone Him for blasphemy at least four times on three different occasions (Joh 5:18; 8:59; 10:31,39).

The book of Revelation is “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John” (Rev 1:1; emphasis added). Simply put, anyone who denies the certainty of the prophecies of that book coming to pass is not only denying the word of God, they are denying the deity of Jesus Christ who gave it.

This is paramount because, just as the only hope for the environment is the work of Jesus Christ, so to is the work of Christ the only hope for mankind.  If you deny Christ, you deny His work: all of it.  This explains why the Green Evangelists do not preach the gospel of salvation. They will patronize it, give it an obligatory mention, and claim it as a supporting role in their larger work, but they are calling Christians away from “the grace of God unto another gospel” (Gal 1:6).  This other gospel is a perversion of the gospel of grace; adding to it works as a requirement of salvation.  First, they have equated the salvation of the planet with the salvation of man, and then they prescribe all the works that are necessary for the Christian to perform for this salvation. I won’t produce the litany here, but only a few that are high their altar.

In addition to going as agrarian as you can, there is the carbon sabbath the must be observed, a day in the week when you use no mechanization other than manpower.  There are dietary laws to be observed, or various degrees of vegetarianism.  Devotees must achieve as nearly as possible cohabitation with all faiths and persuasions in an effort to reduce travel to work, and size of living quarters. If elective travel is engaged in, or meat is consumed, the selling of indulgences has been revived so that these sins may be atoned for.  A tree can be planted, or a buy can be made in the fiat economy of carbon credits.  All of this religious ostentation to blot out the individual and collective sin of carbon footprint.  To the saints who are being troubled by these cultists and false brethren who are trying to impose their environmental circumcision on you, I echo Paul; I would that they were even cut off (Gal 5:12).  As it was then, so it is true today that in the near future: “he that troubleth you shall bear his judgment, whosoever he be” (Gal 5: 10).

A long and protracted debate over a city of ancient antiquity exists among students of the Bible. It wasn’t until the last few years of the twentieth century, however, that significant events transpired which would seem to forever settle the argument. These developments, in conjunction with other pertinent points already established, overwhelmingly favor the group that, for lack of a better term, might best be referred to as the reconstructionists. It is the little Arab Emirate Dubia, one of seven in the Untied Arab Emirates (UAE), that reopens the examination with a fresh perspective. The UAE were united in 1972 and are located along the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf. The climate of the area is desert, and the terrain is flat with sand dunes bordering a vast desert wasteland. While there is international attention on the area due to its strategic location along the Strait of Hormuz, there is another development taking place in the desert that attracts world interest. The small emirate of Dubai is rivaling New York and other Western cities when it comes to building new, innovative skyscrapers, and it’s not by their might alone.

With only four percent of its wealth coming from oil business, dry by petroleum standards, Dubai has become a real estate development giant in its own right “attacking billions in investment money that in the past would have gone to New York.”¹ While Western nations are scaling down their large architectural projects due to skittish investors, Dubai is swimming in real estate investment capital form surrounding oil-rich nations, and attracting talented architects form the economically depressed West. They are building entire cities comprised of sports complexes, stadiums, and indoor ski resorts. There is luxury on a grand scale, and an avenue for every pleasure pursuit. A Media City will include virtual reality technology, surface projections, and holographic imaging, and Dubai will also soon own the honor of building the world’s tallest building which is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.² There is no use in building the world’s newest and tallest empire, though, if no one can get there, so Dubai is acting to ensure travel to their booming empire from all around the world.

European aircraft manufacturer Airbus rivals aerospace giant Boeing for passenger jetliners. The new Airbus A380, with its 550 passenger seats spread over two decks, is 30 percent larger than Boeing’s 747. Dubai is currently Airbus’ largest customer for the new luxury superjumbo jet, and is adding Los Angeles and San Francisco to its nonstop service that already includes New York and Houston Texas.³ Etihad Airways, the national airline of the UAE, reported a 40 percent growth in July, 2008,⁴ and this at a time when US cities are fighting to keep airline service as carriers continue to downsize in response to rising fuel costs.⁵ The anecdotal aspect to Dubai’s mega growth that makes it practically interesting is that, other than the proximity to oil rich investors and a waterfront, it appears to be building for the sake of building. Motive, however, even ulterior ones, can always be found behind any course, and here even speculation is par for it.

There is a sort of Islamic nationalism coupled with secular Humanism operating almost as a combined effort to overtake Western Civilization and leave it behind in history. This does not mean a rejection of its technologies, but there is a palpable desire, evident even in some of the architecture, to expunge the residue of Christianity’s success that is seemingly emblematic in the once dominate skylines of the West. In a more general diagnosis of the human condition, there is an alluring power in the teaming construction of monumental edifices, with their polished surfaces and majestic cantilevers reaching towards the heavens, that naturally inspires the imagination, and attracts investors and tenants. Whatever the proportions are for the respective causes of this development, the phenomenon that is Dubai has implications in greater Arabia concerning Bible prophecy.

According to end time events foretold in the Bible, another emirate in the general area will also experience an explosion in unparalleled growth; surpassing even that of Dubai’s. On a plain in the land of Shinar, where the Tower of Babel was also constructed by a unified world populating seeking renown and divinity on their own terms, and then destroyed by God (Gen 10:10; 11:2-9); the great city of Babylon is prophesied to be rebuilt and become the world center for commerce and recreation. The Bible foretells that it will be a city trading in sensuality to the extent that “the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” (Rev 18:3c). It will also become one of the capitals for the Antichrist, and it is to be destroyed by God during the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jer 30:7), or the seven year tribulation period that is yet future.

The destruction of Babylon will be on the order as when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by raining fire and brimstone upon them (Isa 13:19; Jer 50:34-40), and the kings of the earth who were made rich by her will wail and morn over her demise:

For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! (Rev 18:17-18)

Skeptics have doubted in the past that such large scale construction could take place in such a short amount of time, holding to a traditional, though not necessarily scriptural, view of a seven year limit,⁶ and in so unlikely a place as ancient Babylon which is located in present day Iraq. Since that objection was raised, modern construction methods and materials have revolutionized the size of buildings and the time necessary to complete them,⁷ and until recently Dubai was just as unlikely to become a competing world class metropolis.

Some also doubt that the travel alluded to in Revelation could be accurate for a land-bound city. There are, however, both the Euphrates and Tigris rivers flowing nearby to Babylon, and as for the shipmasters in Revelation; airship captains are considered ship captains too. Further, all of ancient Babylonia extends to the Persian Gulf, a major shipping lane, and the city may be thus developed as the sea might also figure in its future destruction (Jer 51:13, 42). Indeed, an effort was made by Iraq in the last decade to expand their sea cost area on the Persian Gulf by forcefully annexing Kuwait. When Babylon does become the prestige of the modern world, force will not be necessary to subjugate admirers as surrounding countries vie for the honor of becoming a vassal of the world’s new affluent capital; probably comprised of several cities (Jer 50:32).

Another objection posed is that the prophecies concerning the destruction of Babylon (Jer 51:37; Rev 18: 21) have already been fulfilled by the Medo Persian empire conquering it during the Jewish captivity in 536 BC, and that it was then completed by the mechanism of gradually sliding into obscurity. This contention does not fit with the text on important points.

Firstly, Babylon is to be destroyed by an earthquake and then consumed in a blazing inferno (Rev 16:18-19; 18:8). Secondly, the destruction is to take place in one day; by a catastrophe witnessed by all the nations of the world (Rev 18:8), and thirdly it cannot be said thus far of Babylon that “Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby” (Jer 51:43). Babylon has been inhabited by various populations until this day.

The Apostle Peter wrote his Epistle from Babylon in AD 60 while he was working amongst the Jews left there from the captivity (1Pet 5:13). At the end of the fifth century, the culminating work of several Jewish Babylonian Academies brought forth the Babylonian Talmud, and those flourished there until about AD 1040. Many populations have alternately ebbed and flowed through the city since, and more recently it was occupied by the United States military. This brings Babylon into contemporary focus with international attention on Iraq with a multi-national force working to establish a long term peaceful nation there. There is another point. Unlike Dubai, Iraq is “a nation with some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves,” and on June 30, 2008, they opened international bidding for development on several of their oil felids.⁸ These can be tapped for cultural development on a grand scale.

There is also a specific time determined for Babylon’s total destruction. It will be at the beginning of the day of the Lord (Isa 13:9), known as the Messianic Kingdom of one thousand years duration, or the millennial reign of Christ, or Millennium (Rev 20:4), and will be unmistakable by its attendance of natural phenomenon such as has never before been seen on earth. “For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine” (Isa 13:10). It will be a time of the outpouring of God’s wrath upon the earth to punish the world for their evil (Isa 13:11), and to bring about a national repentance of Israel (Isa 66:5-12; Zec 13); and so extreme will be His judgment that the earth may even be moved from its current axis, and perhaps its solar orbit (Jer 50:46). Then shall it come to pass what was prophesied; that, “Because of the wrath of the LORD it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate: every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues” (Jer 50:13).

Babylon is destined to become the financial and pleasure capital of the world. It will be the city of Antichrist who will control all commerce down to every purchase made by every individual (Rev 13:16-18). Just as Dubai is today building a residential city to house the thirty-two thousand full time construction workers it requires to serve the rich,⁹ so too Babylon will trade in the souls of men (Rev 18:13), and be the “hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (Rev 18:2d). Many of the Jewish remnant (Rom 11) who will reject claim of Antichrist as their Messiah will go once more into Babylonian captivity as servants and slaves (Zec 14: 1,2; Lk 21:24; Rev 18:13). It will be horrible as Jacob is forced to pass under the rod (Eze 20:33-44), but they will be miraculously delivered before God destroys the city (Jer 51:44-45).

At the darkest hour, with their fellow brethren (Rev 6:9-11), made up also of believing Gentiles (Rev 7:9-17), being martyred in Jerusalem and all over the world (Rev 20:4); a command will be issued from heaven: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Rev 18:4b). As Sodom could not be destroyed before righteous Lot was delivered out of it, so the remnant must be removed from Babylon in order for its destruction to take place (Jer 51:41-45). All of the world’s investors, the financiers, and the wealthy and the federation of rulers who have prostrated themselves before her will be devastated:

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. (Rev 18:9-10)

Its end will be like the sinking of a millstone in a lake of burning asphalt (Jer 51:62-64; Rev 18: 21, 8), it will be no more forever, and God will have rendered His vengeance on her (Jer 51:1-8). At that time God will also cleanse His holy city Jerusalem, and regather His redeemed there (Isa 11:11-12). “As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth. Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still: remember the LORD afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind” (Jer 51:49-50).

It will be a complete regathering comprised of all the twelve tribes in Israel, as expressed by the mention of the land the ten tribes were originally taken captive when the kingdom was rent under Solomon’s son Rehoboam:

And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the LORD in the holy mount at Jerusalem. (Isa 27:12-13)

This trumpet call assembling the tribes is not to be confused with the trump of God that calls the Church out to meet Christ in the air prior to these things unfolding (1Thess 4:16-17; 1Cor 15:51-58). It is the second of two trumpets foreshadowed in the book of Numbers 10: the first for the calling out of the assembly, the rapture; and the second for the journeying of the camps, the twelve tribes of Israel returning to worship Christ in Jerusalem (Mat 24:30-31). It will be no more trodden down by the Gentiles, by any such profane capital or edifice as the Dome of the Rock, as the times of the Gentiles will have been fulfilled (Luk 21:24). The Lord Jesus Christ, the son of David, will rule in Jerusalem (Isa 12; Zec 8:2-6; Zec 14:1-4).

The dry run for Babylon is almost over. Babylon is soon to follow. The Church of Jesus Christ, saved Jews and Gentiles who are the saints (Rom 8:27), will be gone, in a twinkling of an eye, probably before it is built or completed (1Cor 15:52; Rev 4:1-2). Then the elect of God (Rom 8:33; Mat 24:22), those of Israel who will have their blindness, that was in part,¹⁰ removed (Rom 11:25), will either be martyred for their faith in Messiah, or be preserved to the Revelation of Jesus Christ when they will look upon Him whom they have pierced (Rev 6:9-11; 7:3-8; 14:1-4; Jer 50:20; Zec 12:10). The Church is to be mindful of these events so that we can be ever conscious to redeem the time and to walk circumspectly, and that is why understanding Bible prophecy is so important. It is the light that shines forth into the dark place of future (2Pet 1:19). In the last book of prophecy the things that will take place just prior to, and which will accompany, the Lord’s return to earth are revealed. We are admonished by Him twice in its concluding chapter that His return is soon, and that “blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book” (Rev 22:7).¹¹ The tone of the passage implies that by taking account of the coming events surrounding the revelation of Jesus Christ one guards against loss and injury (1Cor 3:8-15; 2Cor 5:10), and can act on the opportunities remaining to serve Him in faith. For unlike Dubai, ours is not a dry run (1Cor 9:24).

Notes:

^1. Ulrike Knöfel, Frank Hornig and Bernhard Zand, “The Battle for the World’s Skyline,” Spiegel Online International, June 6, 2008. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,558217,00.html

^2. Breitbart.com, “‘Finishing touches’ delay world’s tallest building,” June 10, 2008.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080610094436.jmv7az8n&show_article=1

^3. Breitbart.com, “Emirates airline to launch first service to US with A380,” June9, 2008. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080609180003.ab3nayad&show_article=1

^4. Gulfnews.com, “Etihad Airways records 40 per cent growth in passengers,” July 1, 2008. http://www.gulfnews.com/BUSINESS/Aviation/10225200.html

^5. Micheline Maynar, “Deeper cuts to come in U.S. airline service,” Interational Herald Tribune, June 27, 2008. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/27/business/shrink.php

^6. Some prophecy students suppose that the tribulation period will begin immediately after the rapture of the Church, but there is no requirement in the related prophecy to preclude an intervening time period of several months or even years, and it seems more likely that an interlude takes place when we consider that the Antichrist is introduced in the Revelation in his rise to power (Rev 6:2) , conquering by diplomacy; and that the seven year clock dose not start until he makes a treaty with Israel, which he breaks in the middle of the term (Dan 9:27). This then removes the reconstruction of Babylon as an impediment to the rapture of the church which must be unhindered by any such development to meet its qualification of imminency (Mat 24:42-44), and as the next event the Church is to look for (Lk 21:34-36).

^7. The awesome speed and scale of the building in Dubai almost has to be seen to be comprehended. These video reports by Bruce Fenton, Entrepreneur, available on YouTube give the viewer an idea of the swiftness and grandeur of the construction: (1) “The Tallest Building in the World - Burj Dubai! Middle East,” YouTube Broadcast, directed by Bruce Fenton (June 8, 2007); ( 2) “Fenton Report Dubai: Fastest Growing City in the World! Middle East 2.0 - Dubai,” YouTube Broadcast, directed by Bruce Fenton (February 18, 2007). A stunning picture gallery of the growing pleasure metropolis as viewed from the air is available at: Gallery, Chopper Shoot Aerial Photography.

^9. AME, “Al Rayan Investments showcases innovative projects at Cityscape Abu Dhabi 2008,” May 8,m 2008.
http://www.ameinfo.com/156300.html

^10. This “blindness in part” (Rom 11:25) has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, or until all the Gentiles who are going to be saved are saved; and it also means that a part of Israel that the Lord reserves unto Himself as a remnant is kept by Him (1K 19:18; Acts 18:9-10), and that another part, as is probably expressed by the equations of sliver and dross in Zec 13: 8,9 covering the seven years preceding Christ’s return, are completely blind.

^11. The Thayer definition for the Greek word translated “keepeth” (G5083) here is: 1) to attend to carefully, take care of; 1a) to guard, b) metaphorically to keep, one in the state in which he is, 1c) to observe. The Strong’s definition is: to guard (from loss or injury, properly by keeping the eye upon. The parenthetical scripture reference supplied here is of the judgment of reward which will take place for every Christian at the Bema seat of Christ (1Cor 3:8-15; 2Cor 5:10). Those works of ours that are built on the foundation of Christ, sharing the gospel and edifying the body, etc., will endure as silver, gold, and precious stones. But those works such as social projects and programs conducted for cultural enrichment or the betterment of society will be revealed as only worthless wood, hey, and stubble, and the Christian who amasses these works will suffer loss, “but he himself shall be saved” (1Cor 3:15b). As for injury, is it not true that when we take our eyes off the Lord and change our expectation from His return to instead expectations for our provisions in this life that we open ourselves to occasions of experiencing harm? We need only look back to the church in Corinth for, admittedly server, examples of this (e.g. 1Cor 5).

 

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

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Every year more and more packages of small group curricula are marketed to churches under the pretense of helping pastors to do their job better. A popular theme this year is apologetics, and there are several products to choose from. Lee Strobel is broadcasting his “Investigation Faith” seminars, and his small group curriculum will be released this Fall. Strobel also endorses Garry Poole’s Seeker Small Groups (which is also endorsed by Nicky Gumbel, of The Alpha Course). Outreach Training’s Mark Mittelberg, who coauthored Becoming a Contagious Christian with Willow Creek’s Bill Hybels, encourages pastors to purchase their resources in order to get “key sharp lay leaders” to perform apologetics ministries, among other things.¹

It seems that nothing has been left to chance, or the Holy Spirit, at Outreach Training; they have even chiseled four “laws” of outreach ministry, with several codices for each. The first law, according to Outreach, requires churches to create an “identity” by using the marketing technique of “branding.”² Once the church designs a marketable image, they move on to work the sections in law number two which cover how to attract visitors. The first section in this law is titled “Doing Marketing God’s Way,” and it includes a particularly horrible take on the Pentecost, and advises that:

Churches and ministries should examine the communication channels (or media) available to them and strategize effective ways to use them for the Kingdom in their own communities.³

There seems, always, to be interspersed in these money making programs some talk about building something for the Kingdom, to lure the unlearned into thinking they are being extended an opportunity to construct an edifice to commemorate their meritorious sacrifices; if only to have it displayed as a small brick in the wall of the celestial city to come. All of this to be gained, claim the authors, by looking to the world’s method of marketing to know what to do. After all, this is the section on marketing, but it raises the critical point.

Are pastors allowing this shameless merchandising of the saints under their care because they really do need help doing their job; because they don’t know how to do it? What else to conclude but that too many young seminary graduates are actually psychology majors stopping over for the time being while they get up nerve to hang out their own shingles in practices elsewhere. Ambitious young men who are after more respectable and higher paying counseling jobs so that they can live in the houses they want to live in, and drive the cars they want to drive. Unless, of course, they could get the marketing right in one of these churches and build attendance into an income tsunami they could ride to prosperity on.

The authors of these programs counter that apologetics is some specialty ministry requiring their expertise and (well paid) assistance. They clamor that orchestrated attacks are mounting from the atheists, and time must be spent by pastors studying their arguments and crafting rebuttals. Yet, all atheism boils down to only one argument, and it is the easiest to rebut using only a book that pastors should already have in their possession.

The only thing that would establish atheism as the truth of the universe is the fact of Darwinian Evolution; and it is a theory that is almost effortlessly demolished, proved to be a universal lie, using only the first two chapters of Genesis. Are there not so many such men as are called pastors, who have faith in God and His word, who could teach from the first book in the Bible? Is it true that the best course for men in saving souls is that they should vex themselves by steeping their minds in the convoluted reasoning of reprobates and unregenerate men?

This is a digression of the worst sort. No such valuable time should be liberally applied to these pursuits, and especially not by pastors who admit, by their temptation to purchase these sordid professional development programs, that they lack familiarity with the Bible itself. Here is acquaintance on the subject of persuading those who would seek God, and what needs actually exists for supplementing the gospel. Open the book and read, even from the beginning. For our Lord spoke on this subject: “And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luk 16:31).⁴

Notes:

^1. Katherine T. Phan, “Apologists Ask Churches to Step Up Response to Militant Atheism,” Christian Post, February 13, 2008. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080213/31176

_Apologists_Ask_Churches_to_Step_Up_Response_to_Militant_Atheism.htm

^2. Resources, Outreach Training, http://www.outreachtraining.com/resources.html. (accessed February 20, 2008).

^3. “Doing Marketing God’s Way,” From Outreach, Inc. Products Division. http://www.outreachtraining.com

/documents/DoingMarketingGodsWay.pdf. (accessed February 20, 2008).

^4. This from our Lord’s account of two certain and particular men who died and received their separate and eternal reward, and here He quoth Abraham.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. (1Ki 18:21)

In the search for intermediate life forms to support the theory of evolution none have been discovered. New developments out of the science community, however, reveal that some scientists appear poised to identify an intermediate life form by creating it themselves. In what has become a long and protracted campaign to do just that, a new effort by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (NAS/IMO) has resulted in a 70-page book titled Science, Evolution, and Creationism. In the text they attempt to bolster the theory of evolution, and persuade religious people that they sacrifice nothing in joining their ranks. The effort is aimed not only at convincing religious people that science and religion are compatible, but that religious people can also embrace the theory of evolution without contradicting the biblical account of creation. The evidence already suggests similar efforts on their part have met with significant success, and that there is, in fact, a means to classify an emerging intermediate life form. To treat this new, emerging species, religious people will hereafter be referred to in this piece as religious-man.

According to NAS/IMO, their book “shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith.”¹ The catch for this compatibility is that religious-man needs to make a few adjustments, or concessions, in the way they interpret the Bible. The reward to be gained from the science community is the vaulted mantle of co-existence. The compromise to be granted by the religious-man is: everything.

Naturalists, those who put their faith in the theory of evolution for the genesis of life, flatly reject God’s explanation for the creation of mankind, and that does not mean that they co-exist as on equal planes with respective merit. It means that, between the two of them, at best, one of them is wrong, and at worst one of them is a liar. Because God is not a liar, the task of assigning error and uncovering deceit is made easier. While Naturalists in general are only wrong when they put their faith in spontaneous generation of life by some chance environmental conditions and unintelligent forces that, through a blind natural selection process, eventually produced mankind, the scientists at NAS/IMO are liars for at least false representation. They are representing religion as one of the two methods of human understanding that are of equal value. This, they do not genuinely mean.

The reality is that religious-man is held to be inferior to the naturalist, or scientific-man, and the actual offer being extended by the latter is for the former to submit to the authority of science. Practically, they are to submissively enter the box naturalists have prepared for them so that they may be placed on a shelf and marked as exhibits of intermediate life forms; not fully evolved to the extent that the naturalists are (representing no small victory in that it would be the first intermediate life form yet produced for their theory). Then, the naturalists will accept religious-man as their ignorant wards, and make all the pertinent decisions on their behalf, and at their expense.

Honest members of the evolutionary-faithful do not dispute this. Except for the way a few of these points are herein stated in so unsavory a fashion, this is what, by the mechanics of their theory, they’ve come to believe. It is only when the high priests of science go trolling for religious converts, and more advantageous footing, are the terms of surrender euphemistically referred to as co-existence. They continue to invest in this strategy because its tactics, exemplified in this new book, continue to pay huge dividends.

There are growing numbers of religious-man who have embraced the theory of evolution as an explanation for the biblical account of creation. Naturalists have approvingly thumbed the starched lapels of their lab coats at the obsequious fawning of converts who bring forth such offerings to their altar of faith as Theistic Evolution.

The methods approved by the scientists at NAS/IOM which produce these sorts of heresies were put on record by Alan Leshner, CEO of American Association for the Advancement of Science, in an interview on the book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, where he said:

Over and over, religions that see the Bible as an allegory, as a description of an overall process that isn’t tied to literal day by day, those religions seem to understand better how science can co-exist with a religious belief or even a biblical belief. It’s the literalist point that has tremendous problems.²

Notice what is advanced to tender this co-existence: a detailed list of the demands for surrender that are at issue; and the scientists at NAS/IMO and AAAS might be acknowledged for their honesty in that, but it is made more from the strength of their disdain than their cool resolve for objectivity.³

Certainly, the naturalists will accept, on limited terms, any who will recant that the Bible is the literal word of God. Surely, they will welcome, to a certain extent, those who will confess the Bible is nothing more than an allegory; a feeble attempt of primitive men to explain things that only scientists can be trusted to divulge, that only naturalists have evolved enough wisdom to understand, that only the result of blind chance and unintelligent forces could comprehend. Tremendous problems indeed.

Contrary to what NAS/IMO claim, this is by any definition conflict. Opposed are two narratives for the explanation of life and its purpose. At odds are two distinct groups of people; those who have a faith grounded in a theory, and those who have a faith grounded in theology, those who deny the existence of God,⁴ and those who take him at His word. Literally.

There is, however, a growing middle; an intermediate life form of religious-man, not fully Bible-believing, not fully naturalist. This foray into the realm of creationism by the NAS/IMO that includes overtures to this religious-man is not expected to topple Bible-believing men. That would be too much for them to hope for. On that score, they would gladly settle for intimidation. This is a continued effort, in part, to create more of these useful intermediates. By another part, the campaign is designed to mollify the already converted religious-man. It is a calculated effort to sooth him so he will pay no attention to rising chorus of challenge to the exclusivity of one failed theory barring all other discussions on the subject of origins; to the extent that naturalists will not even discuss the scientific evidence that disproves the theory of evolution, or confront the fraudulent portrayal of supporting fabrications still published in school textbooks.

This new book from NAS/IMO exemplifies a polished and well funded campaign being run against the Bible. In its face, it is hoped that some Bible-believing men might pause, and religious-man ought to be kept quiet while his children are stolen away from him and turned unto fables. What needs to be reiterated by Bible-believing man, as he presses the play, and learned by religious-man, is, again, there are no intermediate life forms. There are none to support the theory of evolution, and none to support an intermediate state of salvation. Nothing can save religious-man but complete faith in God, as is revealed in the Bible, and the same is true for naturalists. Literally.

Notes:

^1. Institute of Medicine, Reports, “Science, Evolution, and Creationism,” January 3, 2008 (emphasis added).

http://www.iom.edu/CMS/28312/50460.aspx

^2. Katherine T. Phan, “Pro-Evolution Book Says Science and God Compatible,” Christian Post, January 09, 2008 (emphasis added).

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080109/30782

_Pro-Evolution_Book_Says_Science_and_God_Compatible.htm

^3. The radio interview may be heard WAMU 88.5 FM. I do not imply that there was any choler in Leshner’s voice. He was interviewed by Diane Rehm on WAMU 88.5FM, which is listener supported public radio station. I am indebted to Katherine T. Phan of The Christian Post for her reporting (see n. 2) that alerted me to this interview and made it possible for me to hear it.

^4.. If His claims are invalid, He fails the test for the definition of “God”.

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. (Isa 21:6)

Support for the Senate investigation into prosperity preachers’ financial dealings continues to grow. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine has gone on record welcoming a congressional-led “reformation,”¹ and now Michael Barrick of MinistryWatch.com has also joined the charge. Barrick has reportedly said of the investigation, led by Sen. Charles Grassley, that: “If the Church fails to hold its own accountable and if its most visible leaders fail to live by the very standards they purport to proclaim, then we should applaud when a leader with the standing of Grassley demands accountability.”² Yet, applause may be premature.

As members in Christian industry join the bandwagon of ministry watchdogs they may be overlooking a few key points regarding their brand of church accountability, and the means for achieving it. And these oversights raise some questions.

The prompting, in the first place, of congressional fishing expeditions into ministries that have satisfied IRS requirements calls into question the motives of those who initiate it. Are they really concerned with financial accountability, or is it because they find a particular religious teaching distasteful that they seek to punish by other means what they cannot censor?

By their use of the term “the church,” in the second place, do these watchdogs imply that these ministries they lead the charge on are congregations in the Church of Jesus Christ, the body of saints who are born again believers? Thirdly, do they also imply that they are in that body too?

The answers on these questions are important because they prescribe or explain courses of action, but no possible answer on any of of the first two questions should result in the action these watchdogs are taking.

If it is the case that these ministries’ religious teachings are the real reason behind the action of these watchdogs, that they are so distasteful to their doctrinal sensibilities, then it might have occurred to them that perhaps these are not Christian ministries. In which case, they have an obligation to expose them (Rom 16:17,18), but they have no justification to persecute them. And if any of them are Christian ministries, they have no doctrinal justification to go before the law.

These are points that Barrick neglected to take note of while applauding an onslaught of congressional oversight to ensure that those ministries follow their own catechisms. Another point he neglects is the need to abide by any instructions that would apply here to himself on this subject:

Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? (1Co 6:1)

Now, Barrick and Grady and Ole Anthony of Trinity Foundation, who initiated the investigation, may say that they have aired it out with these ministries for several years and have gotten nowhere. But did any one of them actually have a matter against them, other then a disagreement over doctrine? It hardly appears that it is anything else (they question their fidelity because of lavish lifestyles which by prosperity teaching is a sign of God’s blessing), and even if they had a matter they stand to be rebuked for their action, or endorsement of it:

I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. (1Co 6:5-6)

This is a key point to consider here in determining a legal action; that it should not set unbelievers to adjudicate the affairs of the saints. These are supposed to be spiritual in their reckoning amongst themselves and not carnal (Grassley not withstanding, the House of Representatives is a secular body). While Barrick is correct to observe that: “How these televangelists respond will reflect directly upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ,”³ which has already been made a casualty on many fronts due to scandalous behavior of professing Christians, in and out of the pulpit; his scrutiny appears to fail him in close quarters.

If he and the rest of these watchdogs are themselves Christians-in-watching, they should be able assess the negative impact their own actions would have on the gospel; affixing the seal of Christianity to these organizations in question, and whetting legislative appetites to attack real gospel preachers they find offensive. Moreover, in light of that concern, they should have acted out of the knowledge that it would be better for the Church if they would suffer a matter unresolved (if there be a matter), than to take it to the unsaved:

Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? (1Co 6:7)

It is one thing to be a watchman alerting the sheep to wolves in sheep’s clothing. Therein is plenty of work that will only cease when the Lord returns. Until then, the wolves, for the most part, are going to remain wolves, and sheep will be sheep; some of whom will be torn on occasion. That’s the reason for the watchman. He is to spend his time warning the sheep, not taking the wolves to court. Perhaps only two sorts of watchmen would fail to understand this. One would be too unlearned to be at his post.

Notes:

^1. Lillian Kwon, “More Questions Raised in Probe of Preachers,”The Christian Post, December 04, 2007.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071204/30344
_More_Questions_Raised_in_Probe_of_Preachers.htm

^2. Lillian Kwon, “Grassley Still Waiting on Preachers Under Financial Scrutiny,” The Christian Post, December 19, 2007

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071219/30563_Grassley_Still

_Waiting_on_Preachers_Under_Financial_Scrutiny.htm

^3. Ibid.

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).

Read the rest of this entry »

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).

And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.

(The Revelation 16:8-9)

Most scientists agree that the Earth is experiencing a warming trend, but many are sharply divided as to the causes and whether humans have a significant, or even measurable, effect on them. Some propose that human behavior is responsible for the onset of an apocalyptic catastrophe called global warming, and claim is can be diverted by all but discontinuing, or dramatically reducing, the use of most forms of energy and building new communities remarkable similar to agrarian subsistence in their simplicity. Others note that history shows that climate variations are cyclical, fluctuating between warming and cooling periods, and that it is both presumptuous and preposterous to suggest we can control them.

Environmentalists: Get Crossed, Federal Government Eyes New Christianity

Over the years, the ranks of the former camp have swelled with ideological factions having convictions resembling those of religious tenets. They have organized politically to enact laws, set restrictions, and entice by special privileges in order to force citizens to comply with behavioral changes that would save the world as we know it; according to their theory. Up until recently, the one thing that was missing from their religious fervor was the presence of a popular, main stream, religious arm.

That began to change in the nineties with the emergence of a new twist on Christian stewardship emphasizing environmentalism. It wasn’t long after that the entirely new gospel of Creation Care evolved which is centered on a faith in humanity to restore the earth to its garden of Eden purity, and usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. By 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency took note of this emerging trend towards Green Evangelism, and begun soliciting ways to include churches who promote environmental causes into the ranks of those eligible to receive federal, faith-based funding. The EPA was looking for ways to tie the original intention of faith-based funding designed to meet basic social needs to perceived climate needs as well.

At a symposium held in Washington D.C. by the Worldwatch Institute entitled “Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest of a Sustainable World,” Jerry Lawson, an EPA director, called for environmentalists to come up with ideas to expand church participation in faith-based programs to include green causes for which they could receive the federal funds.[i] Lawson claimed in an interview with CNSNews.com at the time: “What I am doing and other people at EPA are doing is looking at the programs we have available today that can benefit faith-based groups.”[ii] Lawson admitted, however, that the real relationship that would be created is one in which the government would “work through your faith-based group to achieve” EPA goals.[iii]

The prospect of the federal government nationalizing churches for environmental causes also appealed to Gary Gardner, director of research at Worldwatch, who at the time said: “There is a role for the government to bring religious groups and environmental groups together.”[iv] While Gardner neglected to cite which article of the Constitution supports his contention, the lure of federal funding held out by the EPA could be a reason why churches are lining up to enlist in Green Evangelism faster than anyone could recite the First Amendment’s clause prohibiting the federal government from establishing a religion. By 2005, the EPA’s division of Environmental Justice was administering the Environmental Justice Grant Programs to 501(c) (3) non-profit organizations,[v] and for which grants churches were trading volunteered service hours for cash in return.[vi]

Mankind In Control: Wrestling the Scriptures

Today, there are a plethora of Christian Green groups preaching the gospel of Creation Care, and prophesying doom caused by human induced global warming. Evangelical Environmental Network is one the larger organizations, and lists as their partners, among many, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, World Vision, and Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. The EEN is headed by Rev. Jim Ball who authored the “What would Jesus Drive” campaign intended to promote the selection of more fuel efficient automobiles “to protect our health and God’s creation from vehicle pollution.”[vii] While the EEN attempts to justify its radical environmentalism[viii] with the Bible by emphasizing a clean earth must exist for the future, they fail to be struck by the operative clauses in their references to the coming millennial and perfect ages.[ix]

The EEN reference the future Kingdom of Jesus Christ in which there will be a great restoration of the earth and its creatures, including harmonious living between man and beast (Isa.11; 65), but without seeming to notice that it is Jesus Christ who returns and sets up His kingdoms and makes those changes. They also point out that a new heaven and new earth are in the future (Rev. 21), but here they fail to likewise note that this completely renovated earth occurs at the conclusion of Christ’s millennial reign, and is accomplish by God setting fire to the entire globe (2 Pet. 3:10, 12). In none of these instances is the Father or the Son reliant upon mankind’s efforts or cooperation. In fact, the Bible says just the opposite: “But the heavens and earth which now are, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Pet. 3:7; emphasis added). One might expect that these important details would be beyond the powers of discernment of an apostate organization preaching a false gospel, but even learning institutions which claim Christian education as their mainstay are showing signs of this biblical illiteracy.

Dereliction of Duty: Christian Colleges and Universities

There is evidence that Christian Colleges and Universities are becoming seminaries for future Creation Care preachers by offering Creation Care study programs. Biola University in California explains the purpose for their overseas offering “is to provide Christian-based undergraduate education that is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, with a focus on the welfare of all God’s creation, both human and nonhuman, through the sustainable stewardship of the Earth’s interconnected systems.”[x] They go on to say that this new “mission” of the Christian University “is accomplished by the interconnected dimensions of ecology, theology, culture, and Christian discipleship.”[xi] In fact, if they become much more “interconnected” with the surrounding worldly cultures whose theology is ecology based, it will become impossible to distinguish Biola’s brand of Christian discipleship from Gaia (mother earth) worshiping environmentalism, or Baalism which was a combination of fertility cult and nature worship of rebellious Israelites.[xii]

This emphasis on interconnecting relationships embraced by Green Evangelicals, among others, is designed to foster the world’s view of communitarian equality with, and acceptance of, cultures diverse from Christianity. Young people who are in these programs are acquiring a new reverence for simple life forms in order for the cult of Gaia to promote acceptance of simpler, lowered standards of living in an interconnected world community collectively fighting global warming. Shadow boxing was never so sinister; for instead of being taught to resist the arch enemy of the Church, Christian students are being trained to fight one that does not exist.

The Mask: Who Christian Administratos are Selling Out To

For its creation care studies, Biola uses an organization called Creation Care Study Program, and they are only one of several Christian schools to do so. Azusa Pacific University, Bethel University, Wheaton College, and others, are also among Creation Care Study Program’s participating institutions.[xiii] Creation Care Study Program offers both a South Pacific Program, including Samoa and New Zealand (for which the New Zealand Tourist Board provides material and images for the CCSP website), and a Belize Program in Central America. The CCSP advertises with luring idyllic images on their website showing students petting lizards and fondling invertebrates in exotic getaways. Nevertheless, they assure prospective students that their course “is a high-caliber academic semester abroad connecting Christian faith with the most complex, urgent global issue of the coming decades.”[xiv] It is one thing to devote a semester of foreign study for cultural understand, but a four month emersion in new theology “learning about sustainable development and Christian creation care”[xv] in New Zealand and Samoa “to develop a theology of creation that understands humans as stewards of the earth” is conversion therapy for a new religion.[xvi]

Universities that utilize CCSP have gone far away from warning Christian students: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?” (2Cor. 6:14). Indeed, their emphasis on interconnecting them with heathen earth worshippers, subservient in their stewardship role to Gaia, deprives them of the admonishment: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2Cor. 6:17-18). While this may seem a harsh rebuke, a look at one of CCSP’s affiliations makes it easier to appreciate the similarity between the Gaia religion of Christian sponsored Creation Care and this neoBaalism.

The Face Behind The Mask: Defending the Indefensible

Creation Care Study Program promotes the religious group Restoring Eden, Christians for Environmental Stewardship, which also has local chapters on Christian University campuses nationwide. Members of Restoring Eden seemed happy to obtain Senator Barack Obama’s endorsement, and were smiling in a group picture with him which appears on their website. At least they rightly captioned the photograph “Inconvenient Christians,”[xvii] for there could be nothing more inconvenient then standing for both the defense of blunt-nosed lizard, and in favor of the murdering of human babies at the same time (the latter course also publicly endorsed by Obama). Such alliances add a new meaning to their admission that they make “hands dirtier” in the service of their mother earth.[xviii] Like the EEN, they also make misapplications of scripture to justify their religion.

Restoring Eden cites as biblical instruction for serving the earth Proverbs 31:8, which should be taken in conjunction with verse nine also, and from the King James reads: “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy” (Pro 31:8-9). Certainly it is a great day of deception and perversion when an admonishment from the word of God to defend and protect the disabled, the poor, the widows, and the children is used to justify turning a blind eye to their destruction. This is exactly what Restoring Eden’s twisted doctrine changes about this scripture by assigning it to plants and animals, and what Restoring Eden upholds by their liaison with Obama.

Vile Affections: The Result of Worshipping Creatures

These religious groups, and those organizations affiliated with, or endorsing them, are those who are deceiving and being deceived. In these apostate hours, their behavior and delusion is remarkable similar to the description found in Romans:

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. (Rom 1:22-25)

The pernicious gospel of Creation Care is much more antithetical to God’s word than might at first be realized. It is one part in a couplet of depravity; the extreme of which is exhibited after this paganism is allowed to progress unrestrained. Then, the second tendency of their sentiments manifests. This happens when, ultimately, God no longer restrains them and the creature worshippers plunge into gross immorality:

 

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; (Rom 1:26-28)

This record of vile affections is already evidenced in the organizations which have joined with the doctrine expressed by Restoring Eden, as promoted by CCSP, and endorsed by Christian Universities who participate by sending their students to CCSP for indoctrination. For example, the Episcopal Church is active in preaching the creation care doctrine of environmentalism,[xix] and also ordains homosexual bishops and is actively promoting same-sex unions.[xx] The United Methodist Church has struggled with defrocking lesbian ministers, not supporting their ministers who have taken a biblical stand on homosexuality,[xxi] and being sharply divided over same sex unions; and they also are active in preaching creation care environmentalism. The National Association of Evangelicals’ has vice president Richard Cizik who seems to preach creation care environmentalism exclusively for that organization. Cizik might be described as a global warming activists as he attends many green evangelism events; including leading the intercessory prayer for the environment at the Washington National Cathedral’s Earth Day Service last April.[xxii]

It will be interesting to watch Cizik’s activism in the future. It will be remembered that his predecessor, and former NEA president, Ted Haggard also came to support Green Evangelism, and was later forced to resign when news of his leaving the natural use of the women surfaced. History, however, is not on Cizik’s side. By the time revival occurred under King Josiah, the creature worshippers had also aligned themselves closely to a pretense of holiness. When Josiah put down the nature worshiping priests and break down the houses of their sodomites, they were right beside the house of God. The NEA claims 30 million members, and if they are not to be given up by God to vile affections also, they should be setting up and taking note of NEA’s continued global warming advocacy. They should be clear on exactly what is meant by global warming, what real scientific discoveries are pointing out in regards to climate change, and what the word of God says about coming climate changes.

Good Science: Looking at the Big Picture

The term global warming has become synonymous with anthropogenic causes (e.g. humans burning fossil fuels) for the increase in global temperatures for the last half of the 20^th century. Natural phenomenon for global warming, such as solar activity, has been largely discounted by the major scientific societies, but not all scientists agree with this theory. Indeed, top scientists have pointed out flaws in the popular climate models; some of which have been tweaked to show two-thirds of all warming in some instances caused by human activity.[xxiii] Other scientists have successfully performed experiments proving how natural influences from beyond our own solar system dramatically affect global temperatures on earth. According to Roy Spencer, former National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist and currently a principal research scientist at University of Alabama in Huntsville, existing climate models are not only too sensitive, they don’t accurately take into account the effect that precipitation systems have on temperature.[xxiv] Furthermore, Spencer contends that there is still too little known about the what happens in the earth’s atmosphere to stabilize climate,[xxv] and a discovery by Danish scientists supports Spencer’s claim that hitherto unknown natural causes of climate variation not only exist, but are far more influential than was previously imagined.

Another explanation for Earth’s climate variation, dubbed a “missing link in climate theory,” has been found: exploding stars.[xxvi] When stars in the in our Milky Way galaxy explode, they send out high-speed atomic particles that enter the Earth’s atmosphere. These particles, know as cosmic rays, react in our atmosphere by releasing free electrons which accelerate the formation of cloud nuclei, and have a significant effect on low-level could formation. Low altitude clouds play a substantial role in cooling the surface temperature of the Earth. Up until last year, the influence of these cosmic rays on the Earth’s climate was only a ten year old theory. Then in October, 2006, a team of Danish scientists at the Danish National Space Center’s Sun-Climate Research division performed an experiment that proved that these cosmic rays are a causal mechanism for producing certain molecules that assist in cloud condensation. The original theory was based “on data showing a strong correlation between variation in the intensity of cosmic radiation penetrating the atmosphere and the amount of low-altitude clouds.”[xxvii] The DNSC experiment yielded such dramatic results that director Henik Svensmark said they “were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei.”[xxviii]

The question naturally arises, if global temperature has been warming, what has caused a reduction in the cosmic rays entering our atmosphere? In reporting on the experiment’s results, the DNSC provides the answer to this question also:

Climate is subject to influences by both natural and human forces, including greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar activity, and land use change. The climate system is extremely complex and any estimate of the human contribution to climate change is very uncertain.

Changes in the Sun contribute to climate change. Solar activity has been exceptionally high in the 20th century compared to the last 400 years and possibly compared to the past 8,000 years. When solar activity is high, the flux of galactic cosmic rays is reduced due to increased magnetic shielding by the Sun. The cosmic rays may influence Earths climate through formation of low lying clouds …

Climate models only include the effects of the small variations in the direct solar radiation (infrared, visible and UV). The effects of cosmic rays on clouds are not included in models and the models do a rather poor job of simulating clouds in the present climate. Since cloud feedbacks are a large source of uncertainty, this is a reason for concern when viewing climate model predictions.[xxix]

Once again a causal mechanism for climate change, this one actually causing global warming, is identified as a natural phenomenon, and popular climate models are called into question. The Sun’s magnetic field, which shields the earth from cloud forming cosmic rays, more than doubled in the 20^th century causing a sharp reduction in cosmic rays entering the earth’s atmosphere,[xxx] and hence a reduction in earth-cooling cloud cover. Far from managing the life-cycles of distant stars in the universe, the Creation Care environmentalists must at least be able to control the magnetic field of our own star the Sun if they are to have even a hope of affecting climate change. Yet they continue in the height of arrogance and conceit to assert that they can, and must, save the world from out of the feeble hands of God. This attitude has also been identified by a top official at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA administrator Michael Griffin doesn’t question that the “trend of global warming exists,” as in measurable climate change, but he questions the assertion that we should try and do something about it.[xxxi] “I am not sure that it is fair to say,” Griffin said in a NPR interview, “that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”[xxxii] To appreciate Griffin’s commentary, he must be quoted at length:

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”[xxxiii]

It is as arrogant a position as suggesting we control the Sun’s magnetic field to change the current warming trend.

The Truth About Warming: The Future of Climate Change

The fact that this real solution to climate change is completely unattainable does not, however, deter Creation Care disciples because it has nothing to do with the actual problem they are really seeking to solve. Creation Care, like its predecessor Baalism, is a manmade religion. As such, it is in conflict with God’s word and God’s people. For the high priests of that religion this means one thing: competition. To compete with Christianity, Creation Care offers alternatives. Their alternative to letting the Word of God speak for itself is to take it out of context, change the subject, and misapply it. They have an alternate plan of salvation based on good works which appeals to the flesh through pride and self esteem. To make disciples, they threaten with defective climate models and skewed data, and they force by legislation to alter human behavior. It is all for vanity. No one or anything shall be saved by environmentalism. The church of Creation Care is destined for destruction itself.

While there is no truth to global warming, there is truth to catastrophic climate change taking place in the future. A time known as The Day of the Lord is prophesized in the Bible as containing a period of seven years wherein judgments are poured out upon the earth and all its inhabitants (Joel 3:14-16; Isaiah 13:9-11). While these punishments take the form of wars, plagues, and famines (Rev. 6:3-8), they also include mega asteroid and comet impacts that will result in huge fire storms, noxious lethal gases released into the atmosphere, and tsunamis (Rev. 8:8-9). The impact on the earth’s environment will be so severe that thirty percent of all rivers and springs will become poisoned, but many will die from drinking the waters because they will be overcome with thirst (Rev. 8:10-11). The millions of tons of debris ejected into the atmosphere will block out a third of the Sun’s light (Rev. 8:12), but conversely there will be no long nuclear winter traditionally forecasted for such an effect. Instead, the Sun will go into a solar maximum and erupt with massive solar flares caused by exploding sunspots[xxxiv] that will shower the earth with intense coronal mass ejections which will not only reek havoc to any remaining technical infrastructure, but will also scorch men with great heat (Rev. 16:8). If this seven year period were to begin today, based on the formulas given in the Bible and a total population of six billion people, over three billion will perish under the combined plagues and judgments that will be unleashed. Much of the extinction will be due to climate change, but a very large portion of it will actually be brought about by obvious supernatural means and agents so that it will be clear that the judgments are from God (Rev 9:13-21).

As pronounced and prolifically described an event as The Day of The Lord is in the Bible, it need not overtake anyone unaware. For all who trust in Jesus Christ, who are born again (Joh 3:3; 1Pet. 1:23), they will meet Him as “the bright and morning star” (Rev. 22:16). If they be here on earth when that day dawn, to them the morning star will arise first with transformative power in their hearts, (2Pet. 1:19) bringing them forth to meet the Lord in the air by translating their mortal bodies in the time it takes the day star to twinkle in their eyes (1Cor. 15:51; 1Thess. 4:16-17). What follows for those who remain upon the earth is the wrath of God (Rev. 6:15-17), which the Church is not appointed to (1Thess. 5:9).[xxxv] When will this all happen? Two thousand years ago, Jesus said: “And behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give to every man according as his work shall be” (Rev. 22:12). Therefore, pay no heed to false teachers. Turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God; “And wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.” (1Thess. 1:10)

Notes:

---

 

[i] Marc Morano, “EPA Faith-Based Grants For Green Causes,” CNSNews.com, December 20, 2002.

 

[ii] Ibid.

 

[iii] Ibid.

 

[iv] Ibid.

 

[v] U.S Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Justice, “Grants,”

http://www.epa.gov/compliance/environmentaljustice/grants/index.html

 

[vi] Greg Peterson, “Clean Sweep for Mother Nature,” Episcopal Church, Environmental Stewardship, June 1, 2005.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/1829_62395_ENG_HTM.htm?menu=undefined

 

[vii] Evangelical Environmetal Network, “Campaigns/Projects,” WWJDrive, WWJDrive Tour, Press Room, FAQs,

http://whatwouldjesusdrive.org/tour/faq.php

 

[viii] Radical environmentalism being the sort that elevates all living things to the same value as mankind; thus making him subservient to them.

 

[ix] Evangelical Environmental Network and Creation Care Magazine, Scripture,

http://www.creationcare.org/resources/scripture.php

 

[x] Biola University, “Creation Care Study Program,” Biola off campus study programs,

http://www.biola.edu/offcampusprograms/programs/creation-care.cfm

 

[xi] Ibid.

 

[xii] Merrill F. Unger, Ungers’s Commentary on the Old Testament (Tennessee: AMG, 2002) 316, 1924.

 

[xiii] Creation Care Study Program, About the Creation Care Study Program,

http://www.creationcsp.org/about.html

 

[xiv] Ibid.

 

[xv] Creation Care Study Program, South Pacific Program.

http://www.creationcsp.org/programs.html

 

[xvi] Creation Care Study Program, Belize Courses, “God and Nature” (course description: 4 credit hours, 300 level course).

http://www.creationcsp.org/belize.html

 

[xvii] Restoring Eden, “Inconvenient Christians,” Welcome to Restoring Eden,

http://www.restoringeden.org/. (accessed April 22, 2007).

 

[xviii] Ibid.

 

[xix] The Episcopal Ecological Network (EpEN), “Caring for God’s Creation: Called to be Stewards,”

http://eenonline.org/about.htm

 

[xx] Lillian Kwon, “Episcopal ‘Desertion from Anglicanism’ Prompts Call for New Church.”

The Christian Post, March 26, 2007.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070326/26536_Episcopal_%27Desertion

_from_Anglicanism%27_Prompts_Call_for_New_Church.htm

 

[xxi] Alan Cooperman, “Lesbian Minister Defrocked By United Methodist Church,” Washingtonpost.com, November 1, 2005.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/31

/AR2005103100971.html

 

[xxii] Michelle Vu, “Churches Preach Creation Care on Earth Day,”

Christian Post,April 23, 2007.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070423/27037_Churches

_Preach_Creation_Care_on_Earth_Day.htm

 

[xxiii] MSNBC, “Climate models: Humans fueling hurricanes:

Tests show strong correlation between warming ocean, rising emissions,”

September 12, 2006.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14787234/

 

[xxiv] Wendy Reeves, “Scientist: Warming not caused by humans,” The Huntsville Times, al.com, April 19, 2007.

http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/

base/news/1176974192195090.xml&coll=1

 

[xxv] Ibid.

 

[xxvi] Space Daily, “Exploding Stars Influence Climate Of Earth,” October 6, 2006.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Exploding_Stars

_Influence_Climate_Of_Earth_999.html

 

[xxvii] Ibid.

 

[xxviii] Ibid.

 

[xxix] Danish National Space Center, “Climate change and cosmic rays,”

Research Areas & Projects. (emphasis added).

http://www.spacecenter.dk

/research/sun-climate/other/global-warming.

 

[xxx] Space Daily, “Exploding Stars”.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Exploding_Stars_Influence

_Climate_Of_Earth_999.html

 

[xxxi] Clayton Sandell, Bill Blakemore,”NASA’s Top Official Questions Global Warming:

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Questions Need to Combat Warming,”

ABC News, Technology & Science. May 31, 2007.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3229696&page=1

 

[xxxii] Ibid.

 

[xxxiii] Ibid.

 

[xxxiv] “Solar Superstorm,” Solar Physics, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/23oct_superstorm.htm

 

[xxxv] Church, ἐκκλησία, ekkleÌ„sia, ek-klay-see’-ah - called out ones, a calling out, that is, (concretely) a popular meeting, especially a religious congregation (Jewish synagogue, or Christian community of members on earth or saints in heaven or both): - assembly, church. (Strongs).