*WEEKLY CHURCH NEWS NOTES
Pastor Dale Morgan
December 10, 2006.
The Weekly Church News Notes is designed for use in churches.
*
HOW TO BE A POPULAR PREACHER TODAY*
Joel Osteen, pastor of America's largest church, is a living example of
how to be a popular preacher in this apostate age. The key is to preach
a positive message that doesn't deal plainly with sin, repentance, and
judgment. About 38,000 people attend his Sunday services in Houston, and
his sermons are broadcast in more than 200 markets in the United States
as well as on major networks in Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia, and the
Middle East. He fills massive arenas throughout America, and his 2004
book Your Best Life Now has sold 4 million copies. Recently he was in
Tampa, Florida, and the St. Petersburg Times ran a front-page report on
the meetings entitled "God's Cheerleader." There is no way that a major
secular newspaper in America today would run such an affirmative report
on a preacher who is faithful to the Word of God. Notice how Osteen's
message is described: "Osteen's easy-going, all-inclusive gospel has
made him a spiritual rock star. He's unrelentingly positive, more Norman
Vincent Peale than Pat Robertson. His deliberately nonjudgmental sermons
... have made him into a bestselling author who is even popular among
agnostics and atheists. Osteen's positive messages--recent sermon topics
include 'Having Confidence in Yourself' and 'Stop Listening to the
Accusing Voices'--have helped make him a religious everyman. He touts a
loving God. There is no condemnation. No talk of judgment or damnation"
("God's Cheerleader," St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 26, 2006, p. 10A).
Osteen is no doubt sincere in what he is doing, but he is sincerely and
terribly wrong. The Lord Jesus Christ was a fire and brimstone preacher,
and every God-ordained preacher is commanded to preach the Word with
reproof, rebuke, and exhortation" (2 Timothy 4:2). The Scriptures warn
that many will turn away their ears from the truth in the last days and
after their own lusts will heap to themselves teachers, having itching
ears (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Sadly, that is exactly what America's favorite
pastor is doing. He is scratching the itching ears of those who have
rejected the plain teaching of the Bible and desire, instead, a new type
of Christianity, one with a smiley face, one that allows them to live
pretty much as they please, to follow their own lusts, and still feel
that they are right with God. Significantly, Osteen's nickname is the
"smiling preacher."
*RICK WARREN'S EVIL ASSOCIATIONS *
Rick Warren of Purpose Drive Church fame invited pro-abortion,
pro-homosexual politician Barack Obama to speak in his church on
December 1. The occasion was the second annual Global Summit on AIDS
conference at Warren's Saddleback Church in southern California. Obama,
a Democratic senator from Illinois, not only supports abortion, he
supports "partial birth abortion," a procedure whereby a living baby's
head is pulled out of the womb and its brain suctioned out before the
dead body is birthed. He also supports the homosexual agenda ("Why Is
Obama's Evil in Rick Warren's Pulpit?" WorldNetDaily, Nov. 17, 2006).
Jim Brown, a reporter with the American Family Radio who attended the
summit, said Obama was given a standing ovation when introduced, and
when Obama stated that just promoting abstinence was not enough, that
condoms needed to be handed out, Rick and Kay Warren nodded and joined
in the applause. Bill Gates and U2 frontman Bono also sent messages to
the conference by video. In an interview with David Frost on the Public
Broadcasting Network, November 1995, Gates said he does not believe in
"the specific elements of Christianity" and does not know "if there's a
god or not." Foul-mouthed Bono was named "premier male sexpot" in 1992.
I have read dozens of U2 interviews, but I have never heard any of them
give a clear testimony of the new birth or warn that those who are
without Christ are on their way to eternal Hell. Rick Warren replied to
his critics by saying, "Jesus loved and accepted others without
approving of everything they did. That's our position too, but it upsets
a lot of people, so we get attacked from both sides." Thus he
misinterprets reproof as persecution, and he grossly misrepresents Jesus
Christ. Though Christ loved all men, He did not yoke together with
wicked men and false prophets to accomplish supposed good deeds. The
Lord solemnly warned His people to beware of false prophets and warned
about those who make false professions of faith (Matthew 7:15-23), and
Obama and Bono, who claim to be Christians, are indeed false prophets.
Christ further instructs His people to mark and avoid those who teach
contrary to the apostolic faith (Romans 16:17) and not to be unequally
yoked together with unbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14). In his zeal to
fulfill a man-made agenda, Rick Warren disobeys the plain teaching of
the Holy Scripture.
*HURRICANE PREDICTIONS MISS THE MARK *
When the 2006 hurricane season was officially over on November 30, it
was obvious that the National Hurricane Center's prediction was far off
the mark. In May the Center announced that the season would be very
active, predicting 13 to 16 named storms, with 8 to 10 becoming
hurricanes, of which four to six could become "major" hurricanes. In
fact, there were nine tropical storms with only two evolving into major
hurricanes. This failure reminds us that even though weather science has
made amazing progress in the past 50 years, weathermen are not gods and
their tools in trade remain very imperfect. Some of them even admit it.
Ned Guttman, a scientist with the national Climatic Data Center in North
Carolina, said recently: "We can look at the weather. We can forecast to
the best of our ability. But we still don't know as to why things happen
and why they don't" ("Polk Enters Dry Season Thirsty," The Ledger,
Lakeland, Florida, Dec. 2, 2006, p. A1). This should cool the global
warming fervor, but it won't. In a couple of decades it will be obvious
that global warming was a figment of man's imagination, but by then
draconian measures will probably be in place to prevent the non-existent
phenomenon and these measures will take decades more (if Jesus has not
come by then) to dismantle (if they ever are).
*CATHOLICS AND MUSLIMS TOGETHER *
For the second time in five years a pope has attended worship in an
Islamic mosque. On November 30, 2006, Benedict XVI prayed to Allah with
Muslims in the Blue Mosque in Turkey. The pope stood with Muslims facing
toward Mecca and prayed silently. In 2001 John Paul II visited a mosque
in Syria. Following Benedict's visit to the Blue Mosque, the head
Islamic mufti in Istanbul, Mustafa Carici, said there is "a spring ahead
for this world." The peace sought by the pope is a false one. There will
be no peace in this wicked world until Jesus Christ, the Price of Peace,
sits on the throne of the world, and that will not happen until after
the fierce judgments of the Day of the Lord. Pope Benedict also used the
visit to Turkey to further unity between Roman Catholicism and Greek
Orthodoxy. After visiting the Hagia Sophia, which has been an Orthodox
church as well as a Muslim mosque, the Pope wrote: "In our diversity, we
find ourselves before faith in the one God." Unity in religious
diversity is not the mark of the New Testament Christian faith; it is
the mark of the great whore of Revelation.
*
RODNEY HOWARD-BROWNE SAYS HOSPITALS WILL BE EMPTIED *
During a visit to Florida recently I attended a service at Rodney
Howard-Browne's church in Tampa. The occasion was the 10th anniversary
of the congregation, which is called "The River at Tampa Bay Church."
Howard-Browne is a South African but he came to the States in the late
1980s allegedly at God's bidding to be at the head of a great revival.
He was ushered into prominence in 1993 when a "revival" broke out during
his meeting at Carpenter's Home Church in Lakeland, Florida. People
began to laugh hysterically and to get drunk "with the spirit."
Howard-Browne calls himself the "Holy Ghost Bartender." At the recent
10th anniversary services he said God is going to raise up an army of
Christians that will operate in supernatural apostolic miracle power and
that hospitals and mental institutions will be emptied. This is a
figment of his imagination, because it is nowhere taught in Scripture
that a generation in the last days of the church age will do such
things. That type of thing was not even done in the apostolic age. He is
teaching Pentecostal Latter Rain heresy. The only "miracle" that I
witnessed at Howard-Browne's meeting was a bit of "holy laughter." While
he talked, some of the people laughed hysterically. He touched some of
them on the forehead and the belly, and they laughed even more. If this
is biblical Christianity and apostolic miracles, I am the pope. Further,
if "holy laughter" is a sign of God's blessing, Howard-Browne doesn't
have it, because during these meetings he doesn't roll in laughter; he
only encourages others to do so.
*THE DANGER OF MODERN TEXTUAL CRITICISM *
The following is by the late Edward F. Hills, who had a doctorate in
textual criticism from Harvard and who wrote The King James Version
Defended in 1956: "... the logic of naturalistic textual criticism leads
to complete modernism, to a naturalistic view not only of the biblical
text but also of the Bible as a whole and of the Christian faith. For if
it is right to ignore the providential preservation of the Scriptures in
the study of the New Testament text, why isn't it right to go farther in
the same direction? Why isn't it right to ignore other divine aspects of
the Bible? Why isn't it right to ignore the divine inspiration of the
Scriptures when discussing the authenticity of the Gospel of John or the
Synoptic problem or the authorship of the Pentateuch? ... Impelled by
this remorseless logic, many an erstwhile conservative Bible student has
become entirely modernistic in his thinking. But he does not acknowledge
that he has departed from the Christian faith. For from his point of
view he has not. He has merely traveled farther down the same path which
he began to tread when first he studied naturalistic textual criticism
of the Westcott and Hort type, perhaps at some conservative theological
seminary. From his point of view his orthodox former professors are
curiously inconsistent. They use the naturalistic method in the area of
New Testament textual criticism and then drop it most illogically, like
something too hot to handle, when they come to other departments of
biblical study."
CONCLUSION: Friends in Christ, do not be discouraged by any of this. It
is God's will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that
we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. These things remind us
that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the coming of
the Lord. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for
Christ day by day? "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time
to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we
believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore
cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not
in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil
the lusts thereof" (Rom. 13:11-14).