Day: April 10, 2017

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

I can’t remember when I last went to a baseball game.  I love sports
and always enjoyed a day at the ballpark, except for the overpriced
concessions.  As you would walk up to the ticket taker at the turnstile
there was usually someone there with one of those handheld clickers that
they used to count how many people came through the gates.  I always
thought it was redundant but maybe it was their backup system.  But
their desire behind was to get as accurate a count as possible for their
attendance records.  The numbers are what mattered.

The seeker-driven church is no different.

They always talk about intentionality and purpose.  Well, with
intentionality,  they removed the Law which convicts the unregenerate of
their sin and the true gospel, the purpose of which is to save sinners.
 They have replaced the Gospel with a man-made good news story full of
life principles.  The pastors predetermine what the message will be
about, say church cliques, and cherry pick verses to support their
message, like Paul confronting Peter in Galatians when Peter separated
from the Gentiles because of the Jews visiting from Jerusalem.

It’s a numbers game to them.  They really do mean “come as you are”
and they don’t care much what state you’re in when you leave, as long as
you keep coming back with your money.  They don’t care what happens the
rest of the week.  They don’t care much about correcting false
teaching.  If they talk about Jesus, any Jesus, let’s invite them to the
church and get a crowd.  They actually disparage anyone in leadership
from posting discernment articles.  It’s not how they do church.  But
it’s perfectly alright for leaders to make excited posts about the
upcoming episode of that wholesome family entertainment show Game of
Thrones.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? – Romans 6:1

The issue is that they change this verse from a question to a
declarative statement: What shall we say then? We should continue to sin
so that the unchurched can feel more comfortable and that maybe they
stumble upon Jesus in the process.

When you are with the leaders of these churches the arrogance and
self-righteousness is palpable.  It is all founded in their size of
their church.  They completely believe the size of the crowd, the total
amount of people who have an emotional response to an emotional appeal,
and baptisms are evidence that God is blessing them.  The money,
especially, that flows into the church is the cherry that ices the
blessing.  How do we know that the growth may be a deception allowed by
God to deceive those who believe they are doing God’s work?

So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”  –Matt 15:6b-9

They mock churches who continue to sing old hymns from old hymnals in
old churches by calling them stuffy and stale.  What they don’t
understand is these churches are redundant.  You’ve attended one and you
won’t find much difference in another.  In their desire to called
cutting edge they have become cookie cutter churches.  In their vision
to be relevant to the culture, they have become irrelevant to the cause
of Christ and His gospel.  No amount of gimmicks like Easter eggs
dropped from a helicopter will add one jot or tittle to the
effectiveness of God’s written Word and the power contained within those
pages.  Man cannot improve on what God has established and ordained.

They are blinded by numbers, like the Boston Red Sox during the phony
sellout streak a few years ago.  But they have become sellouts of a
different kind.  They have sold out the One who died for them for the
fool’s gold of church growth.  Maybe this paraphrase from Matthew 7 fits:

“Lord, Lord, didn’t we complete the Purpose Driven Church and
Life agenda?  Didn’t we apply Andy Stanley’s unchurched principles in
Deep and Wide?  Didn’t we perform smoky rock shows and share lots of
relevant speeches that didn’t offend the unsaved  so they could come
feel comfortable?  Didn’t we change Your gospel so it would be received
better, because, let’s face it, it was just too offensive?

The number of clicks coming through the doors and turnstiles is all that matters.

4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that
friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes
to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. –James 4:4

 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

“ … in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their
condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not
asleep.  2 Peter 2:2

In Revelation 2:20,
Christ chided the church of Thyatira in no uncertain terms.  “I have
this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls
herself a prophetess.”  Today, though, it isn’t just a single church
tolerating just a single “prophetess;” it’s a large swath of the
evangelical church embracing a legion of false teaching sirens, none of
whom are actually named Jezebel.

One, in particular, is Christine Caine.

She is one of the sorts about whom Peter warned readers in his day, a
warning which applies no less directly to us today.  A word-faith
charlatan from the prosperity millennial cult of Hillsong, Caine is
driven by greed and … and she tells us as much.  (For more on the many
problems with Caine, see HERE or HERE or HERE)

Christianity Your Way … err, I mean, Christianity Today 
… featured an interview by Ed Stetzer with Caine.  Stetzer, as you may
know, departed the leadership of Lifeway for the “Billy Graham
Distinguished Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton
College.”  Distinguished or not, Stetzer is probably the ideal goateed ecumenist
to fill such a position. Graham was no stalwart for Biblical and Gospel
integrity, to be sure. (This is not, btw, a random, baseless slur
against the aged evangelist; you can examine for yourself Graham’s
egregious ecumenical, doctrine-disregarding alliances in the must-read
book Evangelicalism Divided by Iain Murray.)

Stetzer interviews Caine about “Her New Partnership with The Wheaton College Evangelism and Leadership Graduate Program.” This,
perhaps, provides us ample discernment fodder regarding Wheaton’s
doctrinal integrity as well.  It allows known heretics in its graduate
program, a program being administered under the evangelically-hallowed
name of Graham.

The article features two questions.  Here’s the first:

“Why did you decide to enroll in our program?”

And here’s what “the Bible is obviously nonauthoritative because I’m an ordained pastrix” replied …

“For many years, I’ve wanted to do this. When I was in
Bible school nearly 30 years ago, I remember reading something from
Billy Graham. He wrote that one thing he had wished was that he had
spent more time studying. For the last 30 years, I’ve been on the road
full-time. I’ve had the privilege and the honor to be across every
stream of Christianity in over 60 countries around the world, and have
seen God do amazing things.”

Because of her jet-setting for an “other” Jesus lifestyle,
disregarding clear commands of Scripture by usurping the
gender-specified guidelines of God for ministry, Caine has zero concern
for any notion of doctrinal allegiance.  She said so, but she’s just
been so busy.  She’s been across “every stream of Christianity,” a task
one cannot do and remain faithful to apostolic commands to avoid those
with “different doctrine,” (Romans 16:17-18)
unless, of course, YOU happen to be the one with the different
doctrine. Which is precisely who Caine is. The “abide in my word”
believer (John 8:31)
pondering who Paul means when he said, “avoid them” would, upon looking
up the word “them” in a modern apostolic dictionary, find a picture of
Caine as a suitable example of charlantanry.

No, Caine cares nothing for doctrine.  She was catapulted into the ministry by help from Hellsong …err, I mean Hillsong
… and was ushered to the charismaniacal, prosperity gospel spotlight by
none other than the queen maven of prosperity heresy, Joyce Meyer, whom
Caine refers to as her “spiritual mother.”  Caine has preached at Bethel Church; she has preached at Passion Conference with pal Louis Giglio and the “I’ve Got Zero Discernment” John Piper.  She’s endorsed the circle-praying, witchcraft-borne heresy of Mark Batterson.  She preaches at conferences
and pals about with numerous Scripturally toxic types such as T.D. Jakes, Steven Furtick, Rick Warren, Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer, Robert Morris, and Paula White.  She participated in the “we disregard doctrine cuz we just loovvvveee jeeeezuz” Together 2016 ecumeni-fest, along with gobs of other charismaniacal false teachers and … oh yeah, the chief apostate of the Tiber, the pope.

“I’m 50, and I knew that when I hit 50 I would be thinking more about legacy rather than how much I am doing today.”

Did Peter happen to mention “greed” as a feature of false teachers?
Oh, yes, yes he did.  Caine is driven by the prideful greed to
establish her “legacy.”  An authentic believer, much less one who was an
authentic minister – and Caine simply, Scripturally, cannot be the latter
– would have no concern for their legacy.  Being properly guided by the
Spirit-illuminated Truth of God’s Word, being sanctified in and by that
Word, we who genuinely belong to Christ can echo the words of John the
Baptist: “He must increase; I must decrease.” (John 3:30)  We can affirm fully Paul’s “not I, but Christ” pronouncement to the Galatians.  (Galatians 2:20)

Christ is the focus. His Gospel is the message. His legacy is what matters.  Ours? 
Not in the least.  But for Caine, who has spent 30 years in “the
ministry,” her preeminent concern isn’t about Christ, or the Gospel, or
the Kingdom of God, or about thinking on things above, not things below.
(Colossians 3:2)  Oh no. For Caine, what matters is her
legacy. The “it’s all about you” prosperity message that she hurls at
her fandom translates to an “it’s all about me” motivation for
ministry.  Christ is a means to her ends.

“If I am going to be able to speak into the next
generation, then I need to understand theologically some of the things
this generation is wrestling with culturally. … If I don’t do this, I’m
going to become irrelevant.”

Sorry Christine, to the authentic body of Christ, you ARE
irrelevant. And you are illegitimate. And you are dangerous. If you were
spreading the message from the narrow path, you’d know that what the
culture is dealing with is completely inconsequential.  To speak
relevantly – for the purposes of the Kingdom of God – requires just one
thing: the Gospel is the power of God for salvation.  God is immutable;
so is His gospel.  If Caine had “understood theologically” – and
especially salvifically – the actual, Scriptural gospel, she’d know
this.  Her forlorn anxiety over becoming irrelevant would be absent.

“I keep thinking that it all doesn’t feel right.”

She’s talking about how, in thirty years of “ministry,” the culture’s
attitudes about “sin, repentance, and salvation” have become skewed. 
But, true to the “it’s what I feel” spirit of post-modernism, Caine
bemoans the change because of a feeling she has, not because of the fact
that God’s Word tells us something rather explicit about the world “in
the last days.”

“But understand this, that in the last days there will
come times of difficulty.  For people will be lovers of self, lovers of
money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents,
ungrateful, unholy,  heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without
self-control, brutal, not loving good,  treacherous, reckless, swollen
with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the
appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.”  2 Timothy 3: 1-5

Of course, coming from the wide path as she does, Caine is – as a
legacy-driven “lover of self” – incapable of gleaning Scriptural truth
and comparing it to what’s actively going on in the world. Those who are
biblically informed are not in the least surprised in the cultural
attitude shift, nor does it cause us angst.  Instead, it’s evidence of
God’s hand of judgment at work.  See Romans 1 for more.

“I have maxed out my own understanding and knowledge, and
I really want to be in a place that will challenge me intellectually,
but still in an environment that is full of heart, full of spirit, and
has a commitment to evangelism.”

Maxed out your knowledge? Really? On the one hand, Caine is
either confessing her own obvious inadequacies to be engaged as a
“minister,” or, on the other hand, she’s gratuitously back-slapping
herself for how extensively she’s pushed her neurons to garner all the
knowledge she can about God and His Word. She wants to be, she must be,
in a place that “will challenge me intellectually” because she’s
exceeded the level of even her own genius. Too bad she doesn’t know that
“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” (Proverbs 1:7)  and that God freely gives wisdom to those of His who ask, (James 1:5)
but He doesn’t give it to those with an “other gospel” touting an
“other Jesus.”  For those doing that, wisdom won’t come, rather
something far more legacy-destructive is Biblically assured …”But even
if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to
the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”  (Galatians 1:8)

What Caine’s “I’ve maxed out” statement means, besides sounding like
an anxious, apostolically-accursed Aussie’s fear that “a dingo may eat
my legacy,” (and thus cut off my future gig income and book royalties)  is this: Caine knows not the Scriptures. Jesus phrased it this way for the faithless Pharisees: “Have you not read?” (Matthew 19:4)
 And we know that for this false teacher, Scripture is – like Jesus –
just a means to her ends. Her false gospel isn’t derived from
thoughtful, prayerful study of the Word, nor is her theology the result
of having been taught “what accords with sound doctrine.” (Titus 2:1)

Caine hasn’t maxed out her knowledge, for knowledge starts with a
right understanding of God. What she has maxed out, perhaps, are novel
ways to twist God’s Word for her legacy-building efforts in order to
remain deceptively, relevantly cutting-edge, able to entice those among
the “deceived and being deceived.”  (2 Timothy 3:13)
For the authentic believer, though, it is impossible to delve the
depths of Scriptural truth and “max out.”  To continue study – a noble
desire, indeed – does not require advanced degrees from academically
elite, though theologically inert, universities, even those laden with
lofty evangelical monikers.  It merely requires continued, prayerful
study of God’s unfathomable truth in His Word.

“Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.” Charles Spurgeon

“Ed: We are also launching a partnership with Propel, so
women who are in relationship with Propel can be a part of our program.
What do you hope they might gain?”

Propel
Women is one of the “ministries” that keeps Caine globetrotting for her
false Jesus as she desperately seeks to keep the metaphorical dingo of
irrelevancy from eating her must-have legacy. Caine replies to Stetzer’s
second question by lauding a “good side of the feminist revolution”
saying that “…it got women out of the home and into the marketplace,
where the harvest is. [Matthew 9]”  But she is quick to point out that
“these women aren’t necessarily equipped.”  While she doesn’t say so, if
Caine’s idea of being “equipped” is equivalent to more women becoming
ordained “ministers” like her, then equipping won’t matter.  The Lord
will not bless disobedience to His Biblical commands. Thus, Caine
herself, acting beyond the bounds of allegiance to Scripture, is not
duly equipped either.  But then, no charlatan ever is, whether they’ve
“maxed out” or not.

“What does it mean to be salt and light in the midst of a
dark world as we, as women in leadership, are contending with different
issues in society?”

No doubt, while Christ expects His sheep to be in the world, not of
it, the “contending” to which Caine speaks is issues based, not Gospel
based.  One may infer the increasingly popular strains of the social
justice gospel wafting from Caine’s words.  While believers are faced
with many different issues, our response to them is driven by faith and
guided by the Word.  And it is that faith for which we contend (Jude 3),
not noble goals of solving the ills of the world.  The Scripture,
nowhere, teaches a social justice gospel.  Jesus came proclaiming the
gospel, not a solution to social ills.  Believers contend for the faith
and proclaim the Gospel.  God orchestrates all things to His glory
through these means.  Jesse Johnson, writing in Right Thinking In A Church Gone Astray, makes the point, “Make no mistake – appeals to pursue social justice ends through ecclesiastical means are often in conflict with the Great Commission.”  (Emphasis Original)

“We’ve got to rethink a lot of things when it comes to our witness in the world.”

This notion that we’ve got to contextualize the gospel to make our
witness relevant to an increasingly depraved, and changing, culture is
post-modern hogwash that has the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4)
giggling with impish glee at the utter faithlessness of professing
“Christians” who swallow it.  What we need isn’t a rethink of our
witness, but a refocus on the Word.  To the extent that it’s
implemented, the Christian witness is alive and well on planet earth,
because it is driven by a proclamation of the one singular, saving
Gospel. The state of the unregenerate first-century soul is absolutely
no different that the state of the unregenerate twenty-first-century
one.  Each stands “condemned already” (John 3:18) in desperate need of God’s grace, the power of which is divinely bestowed through the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. (Romans 1:16)

Far from rethinking “our witness in the world,” genuine believers of
the Scriptural Jesus of the Scriptural Gospel – a category absent the
membership of Caine and her prosperity gospel – must confront the world
with God’s clear, absolute Truth in a loving, but unvarnished (i.e.,
un-contextualized) manner.  The late Francis Schaeffer put it pointedly
in the 1984 work, The Great Evangelical Disaster.

“Truth carries with it confrontation.  Truth demands
confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.  If
our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality
of the truth involved, there is something wrong.  Just as what we may
call holiness without love is not God’s kind of holiness, so also what
we may call love without holiness, including when necessary
confrontation, is not God’s kind of love.”

Believers must be willing to proclaim the full Truth of the
Scriptural Gospel to the world, not engage it with the coddling
apparatus of a watered-down, contextualized, and easy-to-digest, but no
less damning, gospel.  Caine’s gospel is, of course, no gospel at all,
but a heresy that is all too popular, all too embraceable, and,
increasingly, all too prevalent in what is called the “church.”

Caine is a wolf – or, perhaps, a dingo – in sheep’s clothing, more
concerned with establishing for herself a relevant legacy than with
proclaiming the glory and gospel of the risen Christ.  But this comes as
no surprise from Caine and those of her ilk who are, as Paul reminded
Titus, insubordinate to the clear teaching of Scripture, being eager for
“shameful gain” by teaching “what they should not teach.  (Titus 1: 10-11) They must be avoided. (Romans 16:17-18)
 Pay close, close attention, as well, to those willing to embrace such
wolves, for they too are serving to usher souls down an exit ramp from
the narrow path and to keep those on the wide path firmly entrenched in
its deceptions.  (Matthew 7:13-14)

Jesus warned the Jezebel-tolerating church of Thyatira, promising His
judgment on her wickedness and on those who tolerated it.  But for
those “who do not hold this teaching” He exhorted them to “hold fast
what you have until I come.”  And what they had was Truth … His Truth.
 (Revelation 2:18-29)  We have that Truth too.  Let us beware the popular, relevant, legacy-building charlatans and “contend for the faith.”  (Jude 3)