DAVID CLOUD’S “WAY OF LIFE” RECENT ARTICLES

SEE: https://www.wayoflife.org/friday_church_news/21-42.php
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

CAMPUS CRUSADE’S APOSTASY 

(Friday Church News Notes, October 16, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Campus Crusade for Christ is an “evangelical” interdenominational ministry with 25,000 workers in nearly 200 countries. (The name was changed to “Cru” in 2011.) Never really sound theologically, the organization has moved ever farther from God’s Word. Founded by Bill Bright, Campus Crusade was radically ecumenical from its inception. In 1969, Bright said, “We do not attack the Roman Church. We believe God is doing a mighty work in it and will no doubt use millions of Roman Catholics to help evangelize the world” (The Post & Times Star, Cincinnati, Ohio, Aug. 30, 1969). By the 1970s Campus Crusade had several Catholics on staff (James Hefley, A Prejudiced Protestant Takes a New Look at the Catholic Church, 1971, p. 122). In an interview with Wittenburg Door, June-July 1978, Richard Quebedeaux said, “In Ireland, Campus Crusade is registered as a religious order. … And they work entirely within the Catholic church there with Catholics...” Now Campus Crusade is promoting the philosophy that Christians can be homosexual in dress and desire, as long as they don’t engage in homosexual activity. For example, in July 2019, Cru student leader Grant Hartley of California, who uses the hashtag #LGBTQinChrist, tweeted the following quote from Rachel Gilson, “There is no command in scripture to be straight; there is a command to be faithfully single or faithfully married, and you can do either of those without being straight.” Gilson is a Cru staff director in Boston (“Campus Crusade Teaching Kids That It’s Okay to be Gay,” Reformation Charlotte, July 30, 2019). God’s Word plainly condemns homosexuality in every aspect, including its “vile affections” and “burning lust” (Ro. 1:26-27).

MARXISM, THE NEW LEFTISM, CRITICAL THEORY, ETC., IS SIMPLY A WAR AGAINST GOD AND HIS HOLY LAWS 

(Friday Church News Notes, October 16, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Karl Marx wrote, “Communism abolishes eternal truth, it abolishes all religion, and all morality” (The Communist Manifesto). Herbert Marcuse, father of the New Left, called for a “cultural revolution in the sense that the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including the morality of the existing society” (“Reflections on the French Revolution,” cited from Michael Walsh, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West, 2015). Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party and one of the founders of cultural Marxism, said, “One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality,” and, “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity” (Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process, 1981). Saul Alinsky, communist-leaning community organizer who influenced Barack Obama, honored Lucifer in Rules for Radicals. In the front of the book he said, “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgement to the very first radical ... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.” Alinsky’s book has been called “the bible of the far left.” Kate Millett influential feminist, said, “A sexual revolution would require perhaps first of all an end of traditional sexual inhibitions and taboos, particularly those that most threaten patriarchal monogamous marriage: homosexuality, ‘illegitimacy,’ adolescent pre- and extra-marital sexuality” (Sexual Politics, 1979). Following is a chant led by Kate Millett in a consciousness-raising group in New York City in 1969: “And how do we make Cultural Revolution? By destroying the American family. How do we destroy the family? By destroying the American Patriarch. And how do we destroy the American Patriarch? By taking away his power. How do we do that? By destroying monogamy. How can we destroy monogamy? By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality” (cited by Kate Millett’s sister Mallory Millett who attended the meeting, “Marxist Feminism’s Ruined Lives,” Frontpage magazine, Sep. 1, 2014).

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL, CULTURAL MARXISM, CRITICAL THEORY 

(Friday Church News Notes, October 16, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from Christopher Haun, The Eight Spectres of Karl Marx in the 21st Century: “In the 1930s, a group of professors at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany (‘the Frankfurt School’ for short) developed their own unique strains of Western Marxism. While they preferred to call their theory ‘the critical theory of society’ their work has become more commonly known as ‘Cultural Marxism.’ They were keenly aware of the fact that the German workers did not revolt as Marx had predicted. But the fact that Marxism had failed its first and biggest test wasn’t enough to make them abandon Marx. They remained Marxist at the core and sought to salvage Marx’s vision for the dissolution of the evil ‘capitalist’ systems that dominated Europe and the United States and plagued the world. Max Horkheimer defined their critical theory of society as (1) ‘a theory dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life,’ (2) a theory which condemns existing social institutions and practices as ‘inhuman,’ and (3) a theory which contemplates the need for ‘alteration of society as a whole.’ In harmony with Marx, the Frankfurt School theorists taught that everything in Western society is so evil that every facet of it needs to be ruthlessly criticized, weakened, and destroyed. The rise of the Nazi movement in Germany forced these professors to flee their German homeland. The National Socialists were competing with Marxist Socialists and the Frankfurt theorists were definitely recognizable as Marxists. They were also all Jewish. So in 1935 they fled Germany and made Columbia University of New York their base of operations. ... Although sympathetic to Marx’s war on inequality among socio-economic classes, these ‘cultural Marxists’ instead focused on other cultural areas where people groups encounter inequality. They saw power inequalities in the clash of cultures ... races ... religions ... family ... gender ... and sexual orientation. ... The chief weapon in their ideological arsenal was criticism. The Frankfurt School made it academically fashionable to subject every old truth claim to ‘new criticism’ or ‘critical theory.’ Quite in harmony with Marx, every established authority and every established belief must be questioned, challenged, critiqued, doubted, ridiculed, marginalized, weakened, subverted, destroyed, and replaced. Beginning with criticism, Marx’s spectre can proceed to liberate all the peoples of the world from the oppression of Classical civilization and Judeo-Christian culture. Herbert Marcuse was one of the most influential and best known theorists of the Frankfurt School. He taught his brand of cultural Marxism into the 1970s at Columbia University, Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California, San Diego. He is now widely regarded as the father of the New Left movement, the most influential ‘radical philosopher’ of the 1960s, and a major inspiration for the Hippie Movement, the student movement, and the civil rights movement.”

THE SPIRIT OF ADOPTION 

(Friday Church News Notes, October 16, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from the Way of Life Commentary Series on Romans: “The sons of God have ‘the Spirit of adoption’ (Ro. 8:15). The “spirit of bondage again to fear” is the spirit of living under the law and being condemned by the law for every infraction in thought and deed. It is to live under the darkness and fire of Mt. Sinai, as described in Hebrews 12:18-21. It is to live under the curse of God, ‘for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them’ (Gal. 3:10). What a bondage! But the believer has ‘the spirit of adoption.’ Our curse fell upon Christ, and in Christ we are adopted children. We are sons in God’s family. We know God as ‘Abba,’ which is an intimate, tender term like ‘Papa.’ What an amazing and wonderful thing it is for a sinner to be able to call the thrice holy Creator God ‘Abba’! Jesus called the Father Abba (Mr. 14:36), and God’s redeemed children call Him Abba. This was God’s plan and purpose in redemption. His Father heart accomplished redemption for the purpose of enlarging His family. Note that it is by the Spirit “whereby we cry, Abba.” Compare Galatians 4:6, ‘And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’ It is the Spirit of Jesus crying out to the Father through His redeemed people. Note that we ‘cry, Abba.’ This is the Greek krazo, which is a strong, passionate crying out. It is the blind men crying out to Jesus for healing (Mt. 9:27), the disciples crying out for fear when they saw Jesus walking on the water (Mt. 14:26), Peter crying out to Jesus to save him when he was sinking in the storm (Mt. 14:30), the Canaanite woman crying out for healing for her demon possessed daughter (Mt. 15:22-23), the people crying out to Pilate, ‘Let him be crucified’ (Mt. 27:23), the angels crying out with loud voices in the day of the Lord (Re. 7:2; 10:3; 14:15; 18:2; 19:17). To cry ‘Abba, Father,’ by the Spirit is no half-hearted, lukewarm thing. Salvation is a very, very big thing, and those who are saved are dramatically changed and they have a new and passionate relationship with God. The world is passionate for the lusts of the flesh, and the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life; it cries out for pleasure pastimes such as rock concerts, gambling, sports, and video games. But God’s people are passionate about God. Their chief enthusiasm is God, which is the purpose for which they were created. We observe, too, that ‘cry’ is present tense, which indicates that calling on God as Abba Father is their way of life, not something they do sometimes when they are in trouble.”