Archive
Theology FAIL: Know your heretics
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| Heretics of the modern era. |
One of my main clarion calls to the church has been to pursue purity of doctrine. As you will find out from my own blog, one of my favourite series is Heresies in the church, which takes the doctrines of the Word-of-Faith crowd and compares it with the Scriptures.
Further, one of my favourite categories in my blogging is that of heresy, and what it is doing to the church. It is because of this that I feel that truth in the preaching of the gospel is so essential.
Christians fail to break away from false teaching only because they do not take the Bible seriously and because they ignore church history and its battles against the many heresies over the centuries. We all know what happens when we ignore history… We are simply doomed to repeat it!
Justin Holcomb has done a series of introductory articles on some of the heretics that the church encountered over the years in a series called Know Your Heretics. Heretics such as Marcion, Arius, Sabellus and Pelagius.
HT: Justin Taylor
5 Recurring historic heresies
Phil Johnson, our famous Pyromaniac, highlights 5 recurring, historic heresies that keep plaguing the church even today!
Founder of SATS debunks Brian McLaren heresy
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| Dr. Christopher Peppler |
Dr. Christopher Peppler wrote a very thought provoking, yet straight analysis of Brian McLaren’s heretical book “A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith.”
Dr. Peppler takes each of the ten questions that McLaren posed in his book and analyses them for truth and clarity. Peppler shows that while McLaren may have clarity in certain cases, that clarity has nothing to do with Scriptural truth, or at least does not contain the primary nature of the truth of the Scriptures and the gospel. In this blog post by Dr. Peppler, it is also shown how McLaren sets up straw men, just to knock down what does not exist!
In his conclusion, Dr. Peppler writes:
“It is good to ask questions and to seek deep and satisfying answers. It is reasonable to agonise over a Christianity that has so often presented itself as harsh, loveless, and power mad. It is evidence of a tender heart to wonder how a loving God could consign the bulk of humanity to eternal conscious torment. But, it is neither good or reasonable to attempt to recast the biblical narrative, redefine the nature of the Bible, and reformulate the principles of interpretation in order to create answers that the seeker finds acceptable. This is what I think Brian has attempted to do.”
To read Dr. Peppler’s accurate assessment of McLaren’s book read his blog post here.
Benny Hinn’s wife files for divorce
In a related post for South Africa see Pastor Ray McCauley to divorce… again!
Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of ‘Heretical’ Christianity
“So what I will not do is pretend that the issues McLaren raises are non-essential issues or that his mistakes are little mistakes. I will not refrain from serious critique because this is only a “quest” or merely an attempt to raise questions. Moreover, I will not attempt to find a middle ground with teaching that I believe to be heterodox. I will not look for a third way when I see Christianity going down one path and McLarenism going down another. I will state my disagreements with this book strongly and warn other Christians strenuously. I am not ashamed for having convictions, and I am not afraid to write as if I understand (truly though not exhaustively) what the Bible teaches and understand that what it teaches is incompatible with A New Kind of Christianity.”
“It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about Brian McLaren and got in trouble. Reflecting on seeing him speak at a nearby church, I suggested that he appears to love Jesus but hate God. Based on immediate and furious reaction, I quickly retracted that statement. I should not have done so. I believed it then and I believe it now. And if it was true then, how much more true is it upon the release of his latest tome A New Kind of Christianity. In this book we finally see where McLaren’s journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period.”
Trevin Wax, author of Holy Subversion has weighed in on McLaren’s book at his blog with Why Brian McLaren’s New Book is Good for the Emerging Church. Trevin writes:
“This book will hopefully lead to soul-searching (and maybe even Scripture-searching!) for those who still claim the Emerging label. McLaren’s proposal makes people decide whether they view Christianity the way he does, or whether they stand with Nicea, Chalcedon, and the Reformation. You are either with him or against him.”
Kevin DeYoung has written his second post in his review of McLaren’s thesis of humble heresy.
Pastor Ray McCauley to divorce… again!
In my previous post on this issue with McCauley I dealt with the divorce issue. This time I would like to deal with the qualifications of an elder and how they apply to McCauley. I will probably get flack for this, but it needs to be said. It is time for Ray McCauley to resign as pastor!
1 Tim 3:1-7 spell out the qualifications of an elder (pastor) in the church. Verse 2 says: “Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.” Zelda McCauley is Ray’s second wife, having sent his first wife, Lyndie, packing through divorce. Ray McCauley is clearly in violation of the qualifications for a pastor spelt out in 1 Tim 3.
In my previous post on the matter I dealt with divorce and what I believe is a Biblical divorce. Which means…, having divorced from Lyndie and marrying Zelda he was no longer a “one-woman man!” He therefore is in violation of Biblical principles on divorce and pastor’s qualifications, and if he is a man of integrity, he should resign as pastor of Rhema Biblie Church in Randburg.
Musings on the life and death of Oral Roberts
See what was written by Al Mohler and Fred Butler.
How can we eulogize heresy? How can we eulogize the one that preaches heresy?
Updates: (here are some more)
David A. Porter.
John MacArthur
Ted Olsen
Fraudulent gospel of the prosperity preachers – new series by John MacArthur
I have now for years decried the false gospel of the prosperity preachers. People like Kenneth & Gloria Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Paul & Jan Crouch, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagin, Joyce Meyer, Fred Price, Creflo Dollar and many more. To find out about the heresy taught by these people, read my blog series written in 2005, Heresies in the church.
John MacArthur has started a new series of blog posts, with the first post on 6 Dec 2009, highlighting the fraud of these heresy preachers. This series may just become a new call to Reformation in the church.
Read the first two blog posts:
A Colossal Fraud
Unholy Trinity
Churches, by being quiet about the wolves in sheep clothing in our midst, are doing a great disservice to the body of Christ.
Stand up and be part of the New Reformation!
Back to the true gospel!
Theo-Enthumology 
Global Leadership Summit and the lack of theological discernment in the church
Willow Creek, headed by Bill Hybels, is one of the largest churches in America. One of its babies is the Global Leadership Summit (GLS) which has been running for several years. Many churches have jumped on this bandwagon of leadership and growing leadership and running leadership seminars and other leadership BLAH BLAH BLAH. Oh, sorry, I drifted off their for a second or two. Must be all this leadership talk!
The modern church is making so much of leadership and leadership principles that in my opinion, it is forgetting its primary mandate from none other than Jesus Christ Himself. In Mt 28:18-20 it is written:
That is how it reads in the Leadership Principles Study Bible, available at all poor Christian bookstores near you!
But, this passage actually says:
When the church becomes this concerned with making leaders, then it has lost the plot. The primary mandate for the church is to make disciples, and those disciples must make disciples, recursively.
Enough of this “leadership” talk!
An alarming issue for me is the inclusion of T.D. Jakes. And this is where the theological discernment comes in! T.D. Jakes is a non-repentant, non-trinitarian. That means he does not believe in the Trinity of the Scriptures, hence putting himself outside of the fold of historic, Biblical Christianity. As a result, historically and Biblically, he would be known as a heretic! To find out more on what Jakes really believes you can go here, here and here. You can also read my blog series (first posted at Sovereign Truth) on the heresies of the Word-of-Faith preachers that have invaded the church so deeply.
The problem with all of these false teachers invading the church, is that the church has largely lost its ability to know and express a Biblical theological standpoint! The problem is that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not really that important any more!
When asked what is important, these people come up with all kinds of answers that do not really have any link back to the gospel! Things like being relevant, leadership and all kinds of worldly fads. I listened to a sermon by David Wells a while ago in which he said that when the church starts following a fad, that fad is no longer cool!
The church has essentially lost its foundation when it started adding all kinds of other ideas to the gospel and eventually lost much of the gospel. It is for this reason that preachers such as T.D. Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer and others have so easily invaded churches with their books and videos. The “essentials of the gospel” have become non-essential!
Due to this lack of theoscernment, many evangelicals have become evanjellycals.
We simply cannot allow these wolves in sheep’s clothing to further bring doctrines of death to our churches! Just because someone claims the name of Christ, does not mean that Christ has claimed that person. Christianity is a propositional faith. It makes some truth claims, and some of those truth claims are clearly doctrinal, and without them, your faith is no longer the Christian faith. It is on this basis that we can say that Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons are not Christian. It is, based on these accepted essential doctrines, that we can say that the WOF preachers and men like T.D. Jakes stand outside of the true Christian fold.
The question is, however, will pastors stand on the truth of the gospel, or on expediency, driven by the urge to be relevant in an age of intolerance.