~WEEKLY CHURCH NEWS NOTES
Pastor Dale Morgan
July 11, 2009
The Weekly Church News Notes is designed for use in churches
RICK WARREN’S TRAITOROUS ECUMENISM
Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California,
recently took his radical ecumenical agenda before the annual convention
of the Islamic Society of North America. He urged Muslims to join him in
“interfaith projects.” Though Warren told his church that he was
imitating Jesus by speaking to the Muslim convention, in fact he became
a traitor to Jesus. In a letter to the “Saddleback family,” Warren said,
“If you want to have a Christ-like ministry, you have to associate with
the people Jesus did--unbelievers!” It is true that Jesus associated
with unbelievers, for He “came to seek and to save that which is lost”
(Luke 19:10). Jesus ate with sinners and dinned with Pharisees, but He
didn’t appear before a conference of Pharisees and Sadducees or pagan
religionists and call upon them to join Him and His followers in a joint
ministry of social works. Rather, Christ proclaimed that He is the only
way of salvation and warned that those who tried to come to God by
another way are thieves and robbers (John 14:6; 10:1-11). He preached
repentance and reproved men for not repenting (Mark 1:15; Luke 13:1-5;
10:13; 11:32). He warned constantly of eternal hellfire (e.g. Mat. 5:22,
29, 30; 10:28; 11:23; 13:40-42; 23:33; 25:41; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 10:15;
16:23). Rick Warren is not following in Christ’s footsteps, because he
refrains to preach like Christ preached. If Warren were walking in
Jesus’ shoes, he would not be invited repeatedly to speak at major world
forums. Jesus was only popular with the crowds until they heard His
message (John 6:60-66); after that they called for His crucifixion! Rick
Warren complains frequently that he is persecuted by “fundamentalists”
who oppose his contemporary, ecumenical philosophy, but like
compromisers everywhere, he confuses godly reproof with persecution. In
the recent pastoral letter, Warren said, “Every time I speak to any
non-Christian group, I get criticized by well-meaning believers who
don’t really understand how much Jesus loves lost people. They are more
concerned with their own perceived purity than the salvation of those
Jesus died for.” This is slanderous. Warren’s conservative Christian
critics understand how much Jesus loves lost people, but they also
understand that lost people are not going to be saved by an ecumenical
social agenda but by the preaching of the gospel, and the fact is that
Rick Warren did not preach the gospel to the Islamic Society of North
America.
AL SHARPTON SAYS MICHAEL JACKSON NOT STRANGE
At the Michael Jackson Memorial on July 7 the entertainment industry
paid tribute to the late “King of Pop.” The weirdest remark of all at
this very weird event was made by racial pot-stirrer Al Sharpton, who
told Jackson’s children, “There wasn’t nothing strange about your daddy”
(“The Most Memorable Moments from the Michael Jackson Memorial,”
Yahoo.com, July 7, 2009). We wonder whether the double negative was
spoken out of purpose or ignorance? As it stands, Sharpton is on record
as saying that Michael Jackson was strange, but it appears that he was
trying to say emphatically that he wasn’t. Be that as it may, the fact
is that Jackson’s legacy was to redefine strange and push the moral
envelope farther than ever, and the wicked entertainment industry
applauds him for it. Beware of the pop culture and its rebellion. It is
a God-hating machine that seduces people, drugs them with its sensual
pleasures, devours whatever faith they might have, and leads them
giddily to eternal hell. As Brian Snider commented to me, rock & roll
destroyed Michael Jackson.
INDIA COURT RULES THAT ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL LAW IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
On July 2 the Delhi High Court in India ruled that the city’s law
against homosexuality “is a violation of basic human rights safeguarded
under the Indian Constitution” (“India Gays Win Landmark Ruling,” Los
Angeles Times, July 3, 2009). The court called for decriminalizing all
“sexual relations between consenting adults” and urged the government to
strike down a British-era anti-sodomy law that forbids “carnal
intercourse against the order of nature” and includes homosexuality in
the same category as pedophilia. Homosexual activists expect the
decision to influence courts across the country, and major newspapers
hailed the ruling. The Hindustan Times ran a banner headline “It’s O.K.
to Be Gay,” and The Asian Age welcomed “a sexual revolution in India.”
This revolution began in modern times with a multi-front attack upon the
Bible--by theological modernism, by evolution, by humanistic philosophy,
by Freudian and Jungian psychology, and many other godless isms. Since
the 1950s, sexual freedom was been at the forefront of the rock & roll
culture. As Debra Harry of Blondie said in 1979, “The main ingredients
in rock are … sex and sass” (Hit Parader, Sept. 1979, p. 31). The sexual
revolution is a revolt against God and His holy laws and was prophesied
in Scripture 3,000 years ago. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people
imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the
rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed
[Christ], saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their
cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord
shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath,
and vex them in his sore displeasure” (Psalms 2:1-5). God will have the
last laugh at man’s folly, but there is still time to be saved from
eternal destruction through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
A CHURCH WHERE DOGS ARE WELCOME (
City Community Church in Austin, Texas, welcomes literally “everyone and
his dog” to its services. Jamie Patterson, a church member, says, “It’s
fun to be able to have a church that incorporates your lifestyle and
what’s important to you” (“Church Opens Doors to Furry Creatures,”
KXAN.com, July 6, 2009). Contemporary churches let people keep the
modern idols of fashion, pop music, sports, and an unnatural affection
for pets. When the Lord Jesus Christ commanded that the gospel be
preached to “every creature,” He wasn’t referring to animals. Man is set
apart from the animals in that he alone is made in God’s image and he
alone has a living soul that will exist eternally either in heaven or
hell (Genesis 1:26; 2:7). When animals die, they are simply dead. As for
dogs in particular, the Bible has nothing good to say. Though dogs were
worshipped along with cats in idolatrous Egypt, the Jews did not value
them. “Among the Jews, to compare a person to a dog was the most
degrading expression possible, 1 Sa. 17:43; 24:14; 2 Sa. 9:8. The state
of dogs among the Jews was the same that now prevails in the East,
where, having no owners, they run about the streets in troops, and are
fed by charity or caprice, or live on such offal as they can pick up. As
they are often on the point of starvation, they devour corpses, and in
the night even attack living men, Ex. 22:31; Ps. 59:6, 14-15; 1 Ki.
14:11” (American Tract Society Dictionary). The term “dog” is often used
in the most derogatory sense in Scripture (e.g., for male prostitutes in
Deuteronomy 28:18, for Christ’s crucifiers in Psalm 22:16, and for false
teachers in Philippians 3:2). Twice the Bible emphasizes the dog’s folly
by its habit of returning to its own vomit (Prov. 26:11; 2 Pet. 2:22). A
dog is unacceptable as an offering to God (Isa. 66:3). Jesus said that
dogs have no capacity to appreciate that which is holy (Mat. 7:6). Dogs
will not be in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 22:15).
ANGLICAN BISHOP SAYS HOMOSEXUALS SHOULD REPENT
Michael Nazir-Ali, Anglican bishop of Rochester, England, told the
Sunday Telegraph that the Bible defines marriage as the union of a man
and a woman and that homosexuals must “repent and be changed” (“Church
of England Bishop Says Gays Should Repent,” USA Today, July 6, 2009).
Nazir-Ali supports the new Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, a
coalition of conservative parishes from around the world that reject the
theological liberalism of mainstream Anglicanism. Nazir-Ali said that
those who depart from Biblical teaching “don’t share the same faith.”
JEWISH PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS IN ISRAEL
The following is excerpted from “Watch Out, Missionaries,” The Jerusalem
Post, July 2, 2009: “The word ‘nigger’ features prominently in the
videos taken by Eddie Beckford and his wife Lura, a Messianic Christian
couple living in the desert town of Arad. The videos, going back to
2005, show anywhere from a handful to a mob of local Gur Hassidim
harassing them and other Messianics in town. Eddie Beckford, 61, is a
black American, hence the racial slur. ‘Nigger, go back to Harlem!’
chants one gleeful man in the midst of hundreds of shouting, singing,
fired-up hassidim who surrounded Beckford’s storefront
chess-club-cum-Christian-mission on Shabbat, June 17, 2005. ... They
curse in English, usually accented. The police keep the crowd a short
distance away from the club; otherwise they do nothing. The term
‘bastard’ is also popular with the Gur Hassidim seen in the videos, but
it’s usually in reference to Jesus. ... About two months after the video
was taken, the club, near the entrance to the town’s market, was burned
down in the middle of the night. ... Members of the Arad congregation,
which numbers about 50, say they’ve had their tires slashed dozens of
times. They’ve been surrounded, threatened and cursed by Gur Hassidim in
the market, on the streets or in their homes for about five years. In
all this time they can only recall one arrest of a suspect, and he was
released immediately. ... [One Jew who has participated in the protests]
said he wasn’t against Christians, just against missionaries who
proselytize Jews, insisting that this was against the law. (In fact, it
isn’t. Israeli law only forbids proselytizing minors or ‘bribing’
potential converts with money or material favors.) ‘This is not their
land, this is the land of the Jews,’ he said. ‘All these missionaries
have to be removed.’ From Arad? I asked. ‘From Israel,’ he replied.”
CODEX SINAITICUS DIGITIZED
Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest extant near-complete copy of the New
Testament, has been digitized and placed on the internet. The
fourth-century Bible gets its name from the Monastery of Saint Catherine
at Mount Sinai, where it was discovered in the 19th century by German
textual critic Constantine Tischendorf. Today the surviving pages of the
codex are located in four places, the British Library (347 pages), the
University Library in Leipzig, Germany (43 pages), the National Library
of Russia (six fragments), and the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount
Sinai (12 pages and 40 fragments). For the past 150 years modern textual
criticism has favored the Sinaiticus and its bed-fellow, Codex Vaticanus
of the Vatican Library, and a small number of other manuscripts of
similar character over the vast majority of the roughly 5,500 Greek
manuscripts and lectionaries extant. Writing in 1883, John Burgon
observed, “...especially B [Vaticanus] and Aleph [Sinaiticus], have
within the last twenty years established a tyrannical ascendancy over
the imagination of the Critics, which can only be fitly spoken of as a
blind superstition” (The Revision Revised, p. 11). This handful of
Egyptian manuscripts preferred by modern textual critics was called by
John Owen in the 17th century “the spurious brood” and by John Burgon in
the 19th century the “little handful of suspicious documents” (The
Revision Revised, p. 78) and the “little handful of singularly
licentious documents” (Ibid.) and “those eccentric exemplars” (The
Traditional Text of the Gospels, p. 31). Since the discovery of the
Egyptian papyri in the 20th century, the number of Alexandrian
manuscripts has increased; but compared to the vast number that support
the Traditional text represented by the old Protestant versions such as
the King James in English, they still represent a very tiny and
“eccentric” minority, that not only disagree with the majority but also
with one another. Codex Sinaiticus includes two heretical writings, the
Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. The Epistle of Barnabas
is filled with heresies and fanciful allegorizing, claiming, for
example, that Abraham was familiar with the Greek alphabet and that
water baptism saves the soul. The Shepherd of Hermas is a gnostic
writing that presents the Adoptionist heresy that the Christ Spirit came
upon Jesus at his baptism. Sinaiticus also exhibits gnostic influence in
John 1:18, where “the only begotten Son” is changed to “the only
begotten God,” thus perpetuating the ancient Arian heresy that
disassociates the Son Jesus Christ with God Himself by breaking the
clear connection between God of John 1:1 with the Son of John 1:18. We
know that God was not begotten; it was the Son Who was begotten in the
incarnation.
CHINA’S ONE-CHILD POLICY AND THE ELDERLY PROBLEM
The following is excerpted from “China’s Elderly Will Overwhelm the
Nation,” The Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2009: “The one-child rule
imposed 30 years ago has created too few young people to support the
quickly expanding aging population. China’s working-age population--the
engine behind its prolific growth--will start shrinking within a few
years. Meanwhile, the ranks of elderly are projected to soar. By the
middle of this century, fully a third of China’s population will be age
60 or older, compared with 26% in the United States. China's projected
438 million senior citizens will outnumber the entire U.S. population.
... Shanghai provides a window into China's demographic future. Already
China's largest city, it’s also its grayest. More than one-fifth of its
population is at least 60 years old. That percentage is projected to
nearly double to 40% by 2030. ... So many residents have reached
retirement age that city officials are urging local companies to
persuade their aging staffs to stay on the job longer. The government
has injected $618 million into the public pension system over the last
two years to keep it solvent. ... Despite its dazzling economic growth,
China is still a low-income country. Its per-capita GDP in 2008 was just
over $5,000, one-ninth that of the United States. Only about a third of
China’s workforce is covered by a pension system; most of those covered
are urbanites. ... Introduced in 1979 by China’s paramount leader Deng
Xiaoping, China’s one-child policy aimed to slow the nation’s population
growth and boost living standards. ... The policy is estimated to have
prevented between 300 million and 400 million births to date. From the
beginning the program was controversial, criticized for boosting
abortions, sterilizations and infanticide. It is also blamed for China's
gender gap. The cultural preference for boys has resulted in 32 million
more males than females under the age of 20, according to one study.”
CONCLUSION: The Weekly Church News Notes is designed for use in
churches. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this
obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will
not be discouraged. 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. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need
to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again?
Are you living for Christ? “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).