Prosperity Pimps

It's abundantly clear that entire segments of the professing church are wholly outside the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints and are preaching an itching ears false gospel which is centered squarely upon filthy lucre. These covetous charlatans have abandoned the pursuit of God and His righteousness and exchanged it for the pursuit of worldly temporal riches. This "prosperity gospel", of course, is really no gospel at all.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)

"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Matthew 6:24).

This false gospel is known by many names, "Name it and claim it", "positive confession", "Blab it and grab it" but it is perhaps most commonly known as the prosperity doctrine.

Like every other deception spewed forth into the professing church from the pit of hell the prosperity procession has its own so-called "anointed leaders”. The prosperity pimps are always seen sumptuously arrayed in their finest suits and designer shoes, jetting about in their private aircraft, making a prey of widows and the fatherless, and otherwise generally behaving just like their father the devil.

"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." (2 Corinthians 11:14)

And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. (Matthew 21:13)

The short video below powerfully exposes the prosperity doctrine for what it is, a sham and a hoax being perpetrated upon the foolish that turn their backs on the weighty matters of the gospel and instead chase after temporal worldly riches in a vain effort to satisfy their carnal and evil appetites.



HAT TIP: Christian Research Net

Indonesian Ruminations

I just returned from Jakarta, Indonesia recently. Jakarta is a city of more than 12 million documented citizens, but it also contains an estimated 2-4 million additional undocumented "drifters". Indonesia is an island chain (technically an archipelago) whose denizens simply come and go from island to island without anything like "border control".

To put it in perspective Jakarta's population density is comparable to taking a city that's roughly the geographic size and population of Tokyo - without the well planned infrastructure - and then throwing the population of the city of Atlanta in on top of it.

To put it mildly I've never seen such a press of humanity in my life. I've also never seen such abject poverty and human suffering in the midst of such displays of fabulous wealth. There are the "haves" and there are the "have nots" and there's no middle ground; no middle class. The very rich and the very poor literally live side by side. Beautiful modern condominiums and skyscrapers rise from shanty towns surrounded by filth and filled with misery.

A constant, choking blue-grey smog hangs over everything - at all times of the day and night - and what might have been a scenic river flowing through the middle of town flows with trash and various unidentifiable forms of flotsam and jetsam. I believe it would have literally caught fire and burned if someone threw in a lit match.

I was shocked, amazed, and saddened. As you might be aware Indonesia is also home to the largest Muslim population on earth. Everywhere I looked I saw the star and crescent adorning the towering spires of mosques. Most of the women wore head coverings and on Friday night as I lay upon my bed I listened to the doleful din of Friday night prayer calls emanating from the giant loudspeakers adorning the dozens of mosques dotting the city's landscape.

It was surreal and gave me pause to seek the Lord of Glory with a truly broken heart. My heart was wrenched at the rampant deception and hopelessness gripping that country. I saw small children, no older than my own, sleeping alongside the roads or begging random passersby.

I was reminded of the pain of sin and the terrible toll it has taken upon mankind since the fall. I was also reminded that in and of myself I have nothing to offer; no peace, no solace, and no hope apart from the hope of glory which the King of Glory has placed within me. Yet this hope is more than enough and His grace is more than sufficient.

For me Indonesia served as an object lesson in the utter hopelessness of fallen man. An intense and pervasive sense of oppression hung in the air not unlike the ubiquitous smog. It was so thick I felt I could cut it with a knife. I can only describe it as demonic. Indonesia is a known hotbed of sex traffic and illegal drugs in Southeast Asia. It's a seedy, backwater part of the world where every base sin and corrupt impulse is available for depraved men to indulge in to their black heart's content.

To say I was appalled at the condition of Jakarta would be an understatement.

Oh, Father God help us to be salt and light in a sin sick and dying world. Oh, King of Glory may your light shine through those who are called by Your Holy Name as a flame shines forth from a lamp. May we be debased and may You be glorified, may we decrease and may You increase in all things and in every area of the life that You've given to each of us.

May all praise, and glory, and power, and honor, and strength, and wisdom, and riches be unto Your Holy Name forever and evermore. Amen.

Purpose-Driven Sex Ed--Coming to a Church Near You

A Slice of Laodicea Flashback

I've graciously received permission from Ingrid Schlueter to reproduce Slice archives here at Absolute Dominion, therefore from time to time I'll be devoting space to highlights from both the original Slice site, and the more recent effort which was sadly lost due to web hosting debacle.

So sit back and enjoy as Absolute Dominion humbly presents selected Slice posts from a who's who procession of Biblically sound Christian thinkers representing the Christian blogosphere including the likes of: Pastor Ken Silva of Apprising Ministries and Christian Research Net, Jim Bublitz of Old Truth, and Ingrid Schlueter of VCY America and Slice of Laodicea.

Posted by Ingrid on December 12, 2005 @ 10:42 AM

Rick Warren is ready to release Saddleback's new sex education curriculum for evangelical churches.

Apparently, Christians don't know enough about sex these days and simply preaching against fornication and adultery isn't enough. One has to wonder how preachers from the past like John Knox and John Bunyan, and John Donne and Charles Spurgeon ever managed to preach without giving detailed information on sex? Somehow, generations of believers have managed to procreate without one sex manual from Saddleback.

Generations of faithful believers have managed to stay faithful to spouses and stay pure without one sermon full of intimate detail. Faithful Bible preaching churches have no need to harp on sexuality because a full orbed preaching of the Word is going to convict of sin and address the heart issues behind these sins. And for the record, the move towards starting sex education for preschoolers is morally repugnant. Some evangelical churches are now offering classes for children who are barely out of diapers. The thinking is, "teaching them first, before the world gets to them." I would submit that if you have such a carnal home that the world is getting sexual information to your babies, taking your children to church for classes like this won't help you. The answer is committed, consecrated homes, where Christian fathers protect their children from the world by keeping it OUT of their homes.

Educating children about reproduction and God's plan for sexuality has its place, but not in babyhood and not before the time. Too many Christian parents are letting Sodom educate their children by letting TV and movies and music into their homes that reek of the world's philosophy.

Another One Bites the Dust

Sadly my favorite online Christian discernment resource has been shuttered. Ingrid Schlueter's website Slice of Laodicea experienced a catastrophic deletion event sometime last week on or around Thursday 9/6/07. Apparently the site went down, and as Ingrid later discovered - and describes in her own words below - Slice was not only down but was also "out".

Slice of Laodicea was the reason I began blogging my thoughts on Christian life in general and the state of the church in particular. I was exhorted and inspired to expound the unchanging truth of the Holy Writ and the unalterable sovereignty of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through reading the godly counsel at Slice. Furthermore I was introduced to giants of the faith such as Dr. Greg Bahnsen and Cornelius Van Til through the Slice meta, whose edifying manuscripts I have voraciously devoured.

It may seem strange to some of my readers - as it seems a bit strange to myself - but there are a few life altering, course changing events in our lives that act as signposts upon the paths the Lord has set before each of us. Most of us can probably point to a few of these significant moments in our life and identify them as having a profound effect on our future choices and decisions. Well, for me Slice was one of those "signpost moments", and I pray that it has affected my small sphere of influence for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in the same way it has affected my personal walk with Him.

In honor of Slice my sidebar link to that site will be changed to direct readers to the Internet Way Back Machine's Slice archives and I have requested permission to post old Slice articles here for the edification of the Christian blogosphere, and to serve as a witness to and bear testimony against the broader unbelieving world at large.

Solo Dei Gloria.

CD


A Statement from the publisher of SliceOfLaodicea.com

Last week I attempted to take a few days off, but Thursday morning I learned that Slice was inaccessible for some reason. After days of attempting to learn what the problem was from the hosting company, iPower, after hours on hold and even with the help of several people, we finally learned today that Slice's database was deleted by the company. There's nothing left of it. The countless hours of work I put into the writing on that site are lost. I would warn anyone who uses iPower as a hosting company that this could also happen to you. I owned the copyright on the material and they never even checked with me before taking the word of another person that the site was gone and deleting it. Worse still, I could not even get a straight answer on what had actually happened for days. Whatever you think of Slice, it is very difficult to lose the work that you spent so much time doing. I will not be starting over. I want to thank every single reader who added to the important discussions about the church.

The sole motivation I had in publishing Slice was to show readers why the church has gone off the rails and to point them back to the Scriptures. I know that something terrible has happened to the American church because I have witnessed all on a very personal level. I was never cynically writing about things, I believed with all my heart every word that I wrote. I don't believe that the old paths are right because they are old. The old paths spiritually are right because they were rooted in Holy Scripture. I long and yearn for more churches like this, where men of God stop pandering to the fleshly desires of carnal men and begin once again to preach with utter confidence in the Holy Spirit and His work through the Word. Publishing Slice has been a learning experience. I have never in my life had worse insults hurled at me at a personal level and from men who claim that they love Jesus. Women, as a rule, were respectful in their disagreement. The men were vicious. I will always remember one comment on a hate site. One of the contributors had dared to say something kind about a post I had put up. A commenter by the name of "Rick" wrote, "finding a good article on Slice is like finding a nickel in a spittoon." When you pour your heart and soul into something and this is the response from "fellow Christians", cheap shots that ignore the countless sermons, devotionals, hymns and encouragement posted, it can be devastating.

But I have seen something else in publishing Slice--believers all over the world who truly care about truth. There are still so many who truly love Jesus Christ and who care about the purity of the Gospel. They don't want to be part of the lukewarm compromised evangelicalism that abounds today. This is what encourages me that all is not lost. There will always be those who spit at you. Look what they did to the Lord of glory! My advice to all who love truth is to persevere and don't give up because of the hatred that comes at you. Just carry on each day, doing what the Lord puts in front of you to do, however mundane or simple it is. The Lord rewards faithfulness. The Lord bless all of you, and may our love for Him be a shining light in the darkness. I will continue blogging at my personal site, A Quiet Place, for those who need respite and occasional encouragement. (www.ingridschlueter.wordpress.com.)

Ingrid Schlueter
Christos Kurios

What Happened?

The original shutdown of Slice occurred when the discovery was made that that Ipower was incorrectly billing Tim Challies, my former webmaster, for the hosting that began in March. Ipower did not establish new account information when Slice restarted in March of this year and instead began billing Challies again, who did not notice until last week. Challies incorrectly believed Slice was defunct as of January and told them the site was no longer in existence. Nobody checked. What destroyed Slice was what Ipower did, or did not do when they tried to bring Slice online. My current webmaster explains:

"Ipowerweb made a weak attempt to restore the website. However, the attempt failed because they did not properly install Wordpress and allowed the WordPress installation file (install.php) to be publicly available for any anonymous user to re-install WordPress. Thus, this allowed the database to be overwritten with new (empty) tables. The result of this careless mistake is that all the contents (articles, posts, comments) of the tables was lost. The original error of shutting down the site was compounded by a careless restoration attempt on the part of the host. It may still be possible to restore from a backup point prior to the shutdown of the site, however; after several phone calls and emails with Ipowerweb tech support I have not received an answer or any further help of any kind. The original shutdown was not their fault, but the poor support that followed is solely their responsibility."

- Core Web Solutions

Life and Death

It used to be hard for me to understand why so many who profess to be Christian were so comfortable with and in the world. Then I learned from scripture that there are two streams of Christianity that live and work side by side. One stream is the true body of Christ, God's children chosen before the foundations of the world, and the other stream are the pretenders, the tares sown by the enemy, the goats who profess Christ verbally and/or intellectually but deny him in their hearts and in their deeds.

Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Christians cannot serve God and mammon and we are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Certainly we are required to fellowship with those who profess Christ, but we are just as certainly required to rebuke and correct those selfsame individuals in love when they err from the precepts of God as revealed in His Holy Word.

This is true love. This is true fellowship. This is not the "I'm okay, you're okay" easy-believism of the liberal post-modernist's fevered high noon fantasies. It may "feel good" to intellectually embrace and kiss one another and pooh-pooh away our "petty differences" in order to attain a false temporal unity, but when those so-called petty differences besmirch and distort the words Christ Jesus and subvert the revealed truth of God then they are not so petty after all.

The natural man is God's enemy and apart from the enlightenment and salvation made available solely through the shed blood of Jesus Christ - the Son of God - men will burn in hellfire forever. Period. End of story.

This may seem like a strident message. This message might be construed by some as unloving or intolerant, but this is the true message of love; namely God has made a way, but He has also set the terms and sinful man must meet God on the terms He has set and not by some alternate arrangement created by sinful man.

Any other message, program, or philosophical invention that seeks to circumvent the clear admonition of scripture as touching how sinful man is to be reconciled to a Holy God is another gospel, a falsehood, a sham, and a hoax. There is but one narrow way for condemned and guilty man to be pardoned, and The Way, The Truth, and The Life is found nowhere except in The Name that's above every name, Jesus Christ the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Almighty and Everlasting God.

Your Best Life Now!

Or maybe not.

I wonder if Smilin' Joel's sickly sweet message that "Gawd luuuuuvs yew 'n has a wunnerful plah-yun fer yer life" might have soothed the angry Hindu mob that intended to murder Pastor Pabitra Kata in Bangalore, India?

I wonder if Pastor Kata had just promised prosperity, health, and the "abundant life" to his congregants and meticulously avoided all that messy sin, judgment, and hell nonsense if his message might have been better received by the locals?

I wonder if he'd just taken the time to conduct some basic market research in order to determine the felt needs of the surrounding villagers and then tailored his messages accordingly - you know, for "Bangalore Bob" and his kith and kin - if he would have still been beaten nearly to death?

I wonder...

"He was beaten with thick sticks, kicked on his jaw and face and dragged on the road," according to statements obtained by VOM from witnesses. "He was screaming because of the pain and praying out loud, asking God to forgive the attackers.

"He was bleeding profusely from his jaw and ear, and was unable to see. In spite of his painful cries, the attackers continued striking him until the police arrived and stopped the beating," the sources reported.

Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
(Luke 23:34)

Read the entire article here.

The Lego Church

By and large today's professing, visible churches are pale and pathetic shadows of the spiritually vigorous and virile early church. Today's church leadership - so called - and the congregants thereof are hollow shells that are all too happy to be filled with the emotionalism, materialism, and secular humanism which pervades today's post-modern culture.

This "Lego Church" is comprised of plastic Christians with plastic crosses who perfunctorily perform plastic rituals in order that they might be made righteous in their own eyes. As with the Pharisees these whited sepulchers look the part with respect to outward appearances, they tithe faithfully, they volunteer at the soup kitchen, they visit the invalid and serve in various capacities, but again like the Pharisees in truth they are filled with ravening and dead men's bones.


You see the true Christian isn't the individual who's intellectually assented to the truth claims of the gospel, nor is it the person who's said the sinner's prayer in response to an emotional appeal from a fiery pastor, or in order to salve his conscience from the burden of his pattern of unrepentant and unbroken sin. Neither is the true Christian necessarily to be found among those who dedicate their lives to the service of the church or to their fellow man.

Make no mistake, all the aforementioned activities are commendable and insofar as man measures goodness are noble, perhaps even meritorious. But the measure of the true Christian is nowhere to be found in his good deeds, good intentions, or noble aspirations. In fact all these activities in and of themselves, performed outside a radically and completely Christ-centered worldview, are in reality forms of idolatry.

The true Christian is found where the question is answered how is sinful man justified before a holy God? When this question is answered correctly - which is possible only via the enlightening and regeneration of a sinner's soul by the power of the Holy Spirit - then that answer, that truth, sets sinful man free from the bonds of sin and death and makes him a new creature in Christ; a Christian. Baptism can't do this. Sacraments can't do this. Empty words and repeating a formulaic prayer can't do this. Only by the power of God alone is sinful man reconciled to and saved by his Maker.

This is why the Lego Church is so averse to sound doctrine and adherence to the whole counsel of God as found in the Holy Bible. This is why they select certain "feel good" verses to expound to the itching ears of their plasticized congregants. This is why they focus on programs and skits, plays and musicals, dramas and hype; and this is why they sheepishly shy away from the meat of scripture in favor of curdled milk: they hate the light.


The Lego Church leadership and congregants want to maintain their pet sins and have their "best life now"! They want to keep one foot in the world and the other in heaven. This helps to explain why it's so very important for the spiritual fence-riders in the Lego Church to have the most rockin' "praise team", the hippest, coolest, most "relevant" pastoral staff, and the cushiest, plushest seats (no wooden pews here, thank you very much!) - and of course the requisite high-end laser light rock show audio-visual system. It's all about the sensory experience, the showmanship, the hook!

The Lego Church can have its cake and eat it too! After all it's the best of both worlds, the carnal and the heavenly! The Lego Church doesn't mind having a little Jesus drizzled on top of its wordly banana split just so long as He doesn't get in the way of their personal convenience and doesn't cramp their lifestyle choices. Just think, at the Lego Church you can have it all, everything the world has to offer plus a guaranteed one-way ticket to glory after you've drawn your last breath! Christianity; so easy a caveman can do it!


Or is it?

Is this the Christianity preached by Christ? Is this the reason he bore the shame and ignominy of the cross? Was this His message: "accept Me and then go about your business as usual"? God forbid!

Today's Lego Church has turned the gospel upside down and inside out and made heaven a virtual bona fide sure thing and made hell nearly impossible to stumble into. Again I ask, is this the Christianity preached by Christ? No friend, quite the opposite. In fact the Lord likened the way to heaven as narrow and said there be few who find it, and described the way that leads to destruction as broad and said there be many who are thereupon. Many.

Friend the truth of the matter is that the Lego Church is almost certainly the last days Laodician church of Revelation for which the Lord of hosts has zero commendations and numerous rebukes. The Lego Church is like a plastic tree, fake to the roots. Its Nerf theology aims to please, its loosely held doctrines are designed to soothe, and its watered down, bloodless, sinless, worthless gospel is meant to make men comfortable in their sin because, after all, "Gawd luuuuuuuvs yew and made yew jus' lack yew are; prayz the Lower'd!

Yet without true contrition (hatred of one's sin), true repentance (a turning away from sin), and a heart that is humbly and completely surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ in unwavering obedience, no man will see heaven. God has made the way and He has set the terms, and it's on His terms that men must deal with Him. Men in their fevered high-noon fantasies may convince themselves that they're good enough, or have worked hard enough, or that perhaps God has seen some good thing in them, but the fact is that all mankind stands guilty and helpless before an absolutely holy and perfect God Who is their infinite Creator and Judge, and all men will one day give an account to that God.

Thankfully God's ways are higher than our ways and He has provided sufficiently for men to enter into a saving relationship with Him through His revealed Word, by the shed blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who by His infinite sacrifice on an old rugged cross takes away the sins of the world and imputes His righteousness to His people, namely the true church, the church invisible, the true Body of Christ.

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5:21)