He Can't Handle the Truth

It seems that Frank Turk of "Team Pyro" fame can't handle the truth that by and large the professing church has fallen - or leapt - off a spiritual cliff.

After reading the account of Karolyn Caskey over at CR Online I sent the article in its entirety along with a brief series of questions to Frank Turk (a.k.a. Centuri0n) by e-mail in reference to a recent series of posts in which Frank takes the Biblically unprecedented position that Christians don't have the moral ability to decide to leave their local church.

As you can see for yourself in his sneering reply posted below Mr. Turk is a classic and sad example of the highly Pharisaical church legalist. In fact the only organizations I can think of who hold as firmly to Mr. Turk's "Roach Motel" position on the local church as he does himself (i.e. "you can check in, but you can't check out") are the RCC and the LDS.

Below is Mr. Turk's response to my e-mail along with portions of the original to which he specifically replied - assuming this indignant screeching screed can be called a reply as it reads more like the ranting of an unbalanced individual than a cogent, reasoned response.

After reading his message I replied to Mr. Turk by thanking him for responding, offering my prayers that the Lord would open his eyes to the truth, and wishing him a happy vacation (he's apparently taking some time off for the 4th of July).

Frank,
>
> Long time no speak (mostly due to being banned from
> both your blog & Pyro),
> but nonetheless I thought I'd share this one with
> you.

Wow. How nice of you to share. It's odd that you
don't remember being banned for giving lectures --
that you just say things and don't defend them, and
are unwilling to defend them, and what you say doesn't
lie up to any facts.

Just being banned. That says something -- about
-you-. Too bad you don't know what that is.

> I guess your pastor calling the police and having
> you dragged from church in
> handcuffs is grounds to leave your local church even
> in Frank Turk's world,
> right? Or maybe not?

Because you are a reactionary who doesn't read
anything thoroughly, you have apparently missed this
part of the story:

[QUOTE]
According to Mrs. Caskey, she contacted her lawyer and
asked her to represent her in the meeting at the
church. The meeting was not held, and through friends
in the small town of Allen, Caskey was told that “they
were going to try and dismiss me from the church.”
[/QUOTE]

Now, let me ask you -- where, in my recent series of
posts, have I ever advocated going back to a church
that you have been thrown out of? Anywhere? List one
post.

Yes: the meeting "was not held". The fact that they
were notified her they wanted to hold it would be
enough to tell me -- and any reasonable person -- that
they are not wanted there. However, she never
followed up as to why the meeting wasn't held. The
article doesn't say why it wasn't held. But she knew
that she was no longer welcome.

If you can point me to where I said, "go back until
they carry you out in cuffs," you can then have some
royal indignation. Until then, You are only
demonstrating to me that I did a really smart thing my
banning you. You're an ignoramus who thinks that he
has some moral high-ground from which to issue edicts.

> Perhaps this gray haired
> saint should just take it up
> with the elders after she's been sprung from the
> pokey? Oh, and how about
> the other members? Her children, grandchildren and
> other family, her
> brothers and sisters in the Lord beside whom she's
> faithfully served
> alongside for 50 years, I guess so long as they're
> not being arrested and
> dragged from service they ought to just stay put and
> remain under their
> loving pastor's authority and care, right?

No. She shouldn't have gone back. Do I think her
"pastor" did something despicable and vile? Why yes:
yes I do. I think he's the villain in this little
morality play. But he's a villain who has been
enabled by all those who left and so-called elders who
have no way to hold him accountable.

Mrs. Caskey is certainly one victim in this event.
But it seems rather stupid to go back when one is
being actively told they are not welcome, doesn't it?
You might paint this as her being persecuted -- and I
might find a way to agree with you about that. But
isn't that /what we should expect/ when we stand up
for Christ against the world?

When a worldly man takes over a church as pastor, it's
the Gospel against his slice of the world. We should
expect the world to hate us.

Shouldn't we?

> Coram

To save you some time, I'm going to post this e-mail
to my blog for people's summer reading. Then, when
you mis-represent me (again) you can link to that post
so people can see the whole conversation.

Happy 4th -- don't handle any lit fireworks.

in Christ,

Frank

Just Passing Through

A recent commenter dropped by and had a question about our country's political system and the act of voting: I will continue to obey the laws of the land, as they do not conflict with the word of God. But what do you think about not voting?

Now this isn't a political blog, but the question in the context of the entire comment is both valid and important since it touches on the Christian's civic responsibility as we pass onward through this strange land toward our eternal home. The question is also particularly relevant and timely since most Americans are being inundated daily by the various persons vying for attention leading up to the 2008 presidential election.

Here was my response:

...thanks for dropping by, sharing your encouragement, and for your inquiry about my views of our political process and voting in particular.

First I'd say it's important to understand what you've already pointed out, which is that the governmental powers of men are ordained by God. He alone raises kingdoms up and casts them down according to His perfect and sovereign will. But in the particular case of the United States, it’s my opinion that America's original system of a constitutional republic has long since withered and died on the vine.

Sadly it's abundantly clear that "we the people" are mere inches away from tyranny in this nation, and as you indicated in your original post, there's not a whit of difference between the candidates who are perennially offered up by the bi-factional ruling party of this country. I call it a bi-factional ruling party because the concept of the "two-party" system is a charade and a sham. It's a red herring game of good-cop, bad-cop designed to keep the mindless sheeple believing that they actually have a voice in government, yet this is clearly not the case.

Certainly there are a few noble and godly public servants, but the system itself in anti-Christian. There's nothing that can be done from "the inside" to correct the dangerous course of our nation as it careens wildly toward the uncharted and rocky shores of a centralized governmental power that was once considered to be the stuff of nightmarish Orwellian fiction.

To utilize a familiar analogy Humpty Dumpty is broken, and there's simply no putting him back together again.

But we needn't lose heart or become weary in well doing! The key point for the believer is to maintain our focus on the eternal, and not become bogged down in or consumed with the temporal. We ought to live our lives in humble obedience to Christ with the full knowledge and blessed assurance that we are as strangers in a strange land, passing through this earthly realm and into a heavenly city not built with hands. God Almighty is unfolding history according to His own eternal plan and purpose, and nothing can stay His hand from accomplishing that which He wills to do.

Praise the Lord!

I believe that far too often otherwise well meaning Christians become ensnared in a social gospel that basically substitutes good works for the atoning blood of Christ. Please don't misunderstand my point here, good works will inevitably flow from the true Christian life because they are produced by the Spirit of God within the believer, but like faith without works, works without faith are spiritually dead and fit for nothing.

Sinners don't simply need food, clothing and clean drinking water, although these things are good and necessary for life. Rather they need the the bread of heaven, the robe of righteousness, and the spiritual water that is Christ Jesus since these are good and necessary for eternal life.

Unfortunately human government is generally so power mad and bent on total domination that it will absolutely refuse to relinquish any power it has obtained through legislation, public acquiescence, or plain old fashioned brute force. This is unsurprising in the light of scripture as we can easily see in the book of Daniel. In his nighttime visions King Nebuchadnezzar saw human government as a beautiful and impressive statue in the similitude of a kingly man which was comprised of various materials that represented various human governments. But as interpreted through Daniel, God's man on the scene, and as seen through God's eyes these various human governments were revealed as terrible instruments of continual destruction. It's also interesting at this point to note that the description of the "statue" of King Nebuchadnezzar's nighttime vision is consistent with the concept of a graven image or what is commonly known as an idol.

In essence and in practice human governments are in direct competition with God Almighty for the "hearts and minds" of mankind. Human governments seek to usurp God's authority by demanding loyalty that belongs only to the Infinite Creator and Judge of the universe. In other words they make idols of themselves and set themselves up to receive what amounts to a form of worship and obeisance.

For example, have you ever asked yourself why the flag of the United States is plastered all over practically every church in this nation? Have you ever wondered if it is appropriate? We don't typically think much about such things because "that's the way it's always been, right?" WRONG! Like any type of subterfuge many, if not most of what we consider to be "normal" is anything but. Consider the following:

The claim that we make an idol of our government is provocative and disconcerting; it is also almost impossible to deny. Idolatry occurs when we take anything within God's creation and elevate it above the boundary separating Creator from the creature, and make it a kind of God. Political philosopher David Koyzis has explored this concept in detail, examining how ideologies can become idols:

"If ideologies deify something within God's creation, they inevitably view this humanly made god as a source of salvation. Thus each of the ideologies is based on a specific soteriology, that is, on a worked-out theory promising deliverance to human beings from some fundamental evil that is viewed as the source of a broad range of human ills, including tyranny, oppression, anarchy, poverty and so forth."

Our view of governance has not only attained this level of ideological belief, but has become rather commonplace.

The prior quote was taken from a post over at the evangelical outpost shortly after hurricane Katrina entitled "Deliver Us From Evils: The Soteriology of Gnostic Governance".

Friends, it's indisputable that human government, while instituted by God Almighty, is the playground of the devil himself. There has been more death, torture and injustice perpetrated on mankind by his various governments than has ever been perpetrated by all other forms of human on human violence combined.

As Christians let's keep our focus on the eternal hope that lies before us and not subscribe to the false Dominion Theology (a.k.a. Kingdom Theology) that says we must prepare a kingdom fit for Jesus to return and claim. Rest assured, He will return again one day to claim His kingdom, but it will not be the result of the righteous works of men, which are as filthy rags before the Lord of Hosts.

Invitation to Pray

From the Spurgeon Archive:

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (Jeremiah 33:3)

God encourages us to pray. They tell us that prayer is a pious exercise which has no influence except upon the mind engaged in it. We know better. Our experience gives the lie a thousand times over to this infidel assertion. Here Jehovah, the living God, distinctly promises to answer the prayer of His servant. Let us call upon Him again and admit no doubt upon the question of His hearing us and answering us. He that made the ear, shall He not hear? He that gave parents a love to their children, will He not listen to the cries of His own sons and daughters!

God will answer His pleading people in their anguish. He has wonders in store for them. What they have never seen, heard of, or dreamed of, He will do for them. He will invent new blessings if needful. He will ransack sea and land to feed them: He will send every angel out of heaven to succor them if their distress requires it. He will astound us with His grace and make us feel that it was never before done in this fashion. All He asks of us is that we will call upon Him. He cannot ask less of us. Let us cheerfully render Him our prayers at once.

C.H. Spurgeon

The Circus Church

I certainly don’t lay any claim to knowing the secret things of God, but it seems to me that the days of sweeping corporate revival are long past because the patient is surely dead. Sadly modern church-ianity is a hollow spiritual shell with no life. It’s but empty pomp and circumstance puffed up with religious sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The soaring Christ-centered, God honoring preaching of days gone by has been largely replaced with the man-centered false gospel of the Protestant Pope, “America’s Pastor”, Rick Warren and the cotton candy, bloodless Nerf theology of “Gawd has a wonderful plan for Your Best Life Now”, Smilin' Joel Osteen.

The stark and disturbing truth is that professing church is Biblically illiterate and spiritually bankrupt and has traded its spiritual birthright for a worthless bowl of worldly pottage.

Men, if you are hoping that your church’s Info-tainment style Sunday service is going to give you and your family a solid knowledge of the Bible, then you hope in vain. It’s your responsibility as spiritual head of the household to do the job. It's time to repent for the wholesale abdication of our God given responsibility to "train up our children up in the way they should go", and to "bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord". It's time to stop relying on others to do our job for us. The family starts in the home, and as with our hearts Christ must rule and reign there also. In fact He must have the preeminence and occupy the throne in each and every area of life; our heart, our mind, our spirit, our home, our family, our occupation, our very being.

Oh, how far we have fallen! I’m amazed each and every day by the apparently desperate race to the very bottom of the pit in which today’s Circus Church is engaged. All the stops have been pulled as pernicious pastors continually attempt to outdo one another with increasingly hellish shock tactics, marketing ploys, and downright deviant advertising in the continuing "pornification" of the church for what amounts to nothing more than a shameless numbers game. Modern church-ianity is what happens when 21st century capitalism meets a (false) gospel for sale. These deceitful charletans will go to any lengths and do whatever it takes to herd the sheeple into the pews, but not with the hope that they might hear the gospel and repent, but rather with the hope that the church can hit its numbers and obtain a bit more filthy lucre in the offering plate.

Were it not for the eternal Word of God it would be hard to understand an apostate church leadership that is so morally corrupted and so spiritually bankrupt that it would gladly pay for the opportunity prostitute itself, but as the scriptures clearly show, these disobedient children are of their father the devil and have no part in the Lord:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. (John 2:19)

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; (2 Tim. 4:3)

They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus 1:16)

God help us!

American Idol

Slice of Laodicea asks a loaded question: Is Flag Waving Appropriate in Worship Services?

Jim Bublitz at OldTruth.com posts about American evangelical churches doing 4th of July extravaganzas in worship services near the 4th of July. A couple of years ago, I turned on the TV station that our ministry runs and they were airing a Baptist church service from some huge southern church. My husband and I sat there agape at what we saw. They had dancers that would have done well on Broadway, they had celebrity singers, they had Abe Lincoln, they had Uncle Sam on stilts, they had red, white and blue balloons dropping from the ceiling, they had jugglers and confetti and the people screamed and waved, and a thumping good time was had by all. I’m not opposed to patriotic shows and flags, but does this belong in Christian worship of our holy God? I don’t think it does. What we were witnessing was a circus, not a worship service. Problem was, it was video from the church’s Sunday morning service. I believe that upholding our nation’s leaders in the prayer of the church is biblical. Staging a patriotic show in a “worship” service is not. What do you say?

This was my response:

I for one can’t understand what place the American flag or the teaching of the pledge of allegiance to Christian children has in Christ’s church. One question, to whom and to what alone do Christians owe their whole and singular allegiance?

It would seem that the high places are still not taken away.

After posting my initial comment I considered the matter further and fired off a second volley:

Okay, I'm probably setting myself for some lumps here, but this same question equally applies to the so-called "Christian flag". What is that abomination doing in Christ's church alongside the "stars and stripes"?

Or how about this, what if those familiar and innocuous flags were replaced with icons? What if your pastor asked you to solemnly pledge allegiance to the icons? What if the icons were paraded around the room in a procession set to a joyful chorus of praise? God forbid!

Now before your blood pressure gets out of kilter and your ears start getting hot please understand that I'm not somehow ignoring the fact that thousands of Americans (and pre-Americans) have given their lives to protect the freedoms I enjoy today. The thing to remember is this, it is GOD who gives us those freedoms. The Christian can honor the sacrifice of his countrymen, if appropriate, but in Church we ought to honor God, and not man!

Physician, Heal Thyself

From Slice of Laodicea:

Robert Parham Update

I learned more today about the author of the guest editorial at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that blasted Southwestern Baptist Seminary’s Christian homemaking emphasis in their undergraduate program. It was written by none other than a liberal Baptist of the Jimmy Carter ilk. Not just any liberal Baptist either, but Robert Parham, Executive Director of the Baptist Center for Ethics. I had to smile when I read the sanctimonious statements on his website, EthicsDaily.com. He, unlike the whacked out religious right Baptists, believes that Christians should stop being known for what they are AGAINST. They need to be positive and proactive rather than reactive. Here’s a quote from his site:

"When we started BCE, we recognized that too often Christians have been known for what we are against. We were convinced that it was high time for thoughtful Christians to be positive and proactive. So, we seek to reframe the way Christians think, talk and work on issues. BCE challenges Christians to be pro-health, not anti-alcohol; pro-women and pro-people of color, not anti-discrimination; pro-poor people, not anti-poverty; pro-family, not anti-abortion and anti-pornography; pro-sex education, not anti-human sexuality; pro-character development, not anti-moral failure. While it is more difficult to be positive than negative, we are committed to a constructive ethics agenda."

Read it all in context here. Reading his insulting, sneering words against those Southern Baptists who actually believe what the Bible says about the model for the Christian family, I assumed that Parham was just another liberal hack journalist, chipping his teeth on conservatives for pay. Come to find out, he is a “positive, proactive” Baptist who wants to improve the tone of discourse in America and demonstrate how tolerant and creative Christians can be. Physician, heal thyself. Mr. Parham’s public potrayal of Paige Patterson and the staff and faculty of Southwestern Baptist Seminary as cultural neanderthals is disgraceful and uncouth. Why is it that his ethic of tolerance and positivity doesn’t apply when it involves a Christian conservative who believes the Bible? If he can’t manage to do that, deleting his pious statements on his website would be in order.

True Christianity is a Fight!

True Christianity! Let us mind that word “true.” There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster, it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. It is not the authentic reality that called itself Christianity in the beginning. There are thousands of men and women who go to churches and chapels every Sunday and call themselves Christians. They make a “profession” of faith in Christ. Their names are in the baptismal register. They are reckoned Christians while they live. They are married with a Christian marriage service. They mean to be buried as Christians when they die. But you never see any “fight” about their religion! Of spiritual strife and exertion and conflict and self–denial and watching and warring they know literally nothing at all. Such Christianity may satisfy man, and those who say anything against it may be thought very hard and uncharitable; but it certainly is not the Christianity of the Bible. It is not the religion which the Lord Jesus founded and His apostles preached. It is not the religion which produces real holiness. True Christianity is “a fight.”

The true Christian is called to be a soldier and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death. He is not meant to live a life of religious ease, indolence and security. He must never imagine for a moment that he can sleep and doze along the way to heaven, like one traveling in an easy carriage. If he takes his standard of Christianity from the children of this world, he may be content with such notions, but he will find no countenance for them in the Word of God. If the Bible is the rule of his faith and practice, he will find his course laid down very plainly in this matter. He must “fight.”

–J.C. Ryle

HAT TIP: Slice of Laodicea