08 April 2007
The Berean Call Newsletter April 2007
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THE BEREAN CALL www.thebereancall.org April 2007
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Why Everything Is the Way It Is
Dave Hunt
The prevailing view in today's media, public schools, and surrounding society is that the Bible isn't true, no educated person believes in God, and science is the key to life's mysteries. The lie of evolution becomes so deeply implanted that deliverance is increasingly difficult.
The world rejects "God says" and accepts "science says" as the ultimate truth. Few realize that science cannot answer the important questions:
why the universe and life exist, and why every child knows the difference between right and wrong and believes that God exists until taught "better."
Few know what leading scientists admit. Max Planck, father of Quantum Theory, declared: "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of
nature."1 We don't know what time, space, matter, or energy are-much less the soul and spirit.
Why? cannot be addressed to the universe but only to its Creator. One cannot reason with an earthquake or a hurricane. There is no sympathy in "Nature." Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger, one of the architects of quantum mechanics, wrote:
The scientific picture of the real world around me is...ghastly silent about all that...really matters to us....It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity....
Whence came I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question...for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.2
Science knows nothing of truth-only physical facts. Lee Smolin, founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, has said: "When a child asks, 'What is the world?' we literally have nothing to tell...."3 The question why? irritates atheists because the maker decides the purpose for whatever is made. Without a Creator, neither the universe nor life has any meaning. Without God, there is no reason for a rose bud or for the dew that makes it shimmer in the morning sun -or for anything else that we hold dear and enjoy, including human existence itself.
Why is everything the way it is? Because God is the way He is. But who is this God? Is he Zeus of the Greeks, Brahman of the Hindus, Allah of Islam? Does it matter? Can't we just acknowledge a "higher power"?
Higher than what? Power? No impersonal "power" could create personal beings. Nor could any "force" conceive and write in words on DNA the directions for constructing and operating all living things.
Atheism leads to numerous absurdities promoted by otherwise intelligent people. Sir Francis Crick, Nobel laureate as co-discoverer of the DNA language, begins his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis:
You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.4
If this is the way the universe made us, why does Crick call it Astonishing? He knows it is contrary to common sense. Yet to cling to his atheism he must persist in such madness. However, most people would firmly object to Crick's description. Any thinking person knows he weighs choices carefully, experiences joys, sorrows, hopes, ambitions, fears, remorse, and regrets that are very real. But "science says" is a holy mantra that causes every knee to bow-except those who will not worship Baal (1 Ki 19:18). Biologist Richard Lewontin defiantly boasts:
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs...for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.5
Arch atheist and outspoken enemy of God, Richard Dawkins, claims that we are merely vehicles through which "selfish genes" perpetuate themselves.
Yet he says genes have no foresight. They do not plan ahead. Genes just are. He also states, "Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species...are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense."6 What an admission!
If evolution makes us incapable of true love, morals, or ethics, why do we admire these qualities? How can we be so unnatural, if we are the offspring of nature? Crick and Dawkins seem embarrassed that many of the human qualities that everyone possesses could not have been produced by evolution. We do not think and act like we should if we were evolved from lower creatures.
The language component in the human gene "is identical in every particular to [that in] a snail. [Only] the sequence of building blocks
is...different...."7 The organizational genius behind DNA is breathtaking. Using the same four letters for plants, animals, and man, distinction is maintained not only between all kinds of living things but between individuals of each kind. This ingenious arrangement sets bounds which make it impossible for DNA of one kind of life to change into DNA of another kind.
Unquestionably, the DNA language, which is the basis of all life, did not and cannot evolve. The similarity between man's DNA and that of all animals is no more evidence that man evolved from animals than is the similarity in human and plant DNA evidence that we evolved from plants.
Evolution did not make us. God made us. But atheists cling to evolution as an escape from accountability to God. Darwin's theory was his revenge against the god he could no longer believe in, the "god" that had allowed his daughter, Annie, to die. Darwinism's atheism prevents science from knowing why things are as they are. Without God there is no answer to the why for anything. Yet here we are in a vast and awesome universe and common sense cries out for a reason for its existence and ours.
Why is everything the way it is? Only because God, who created it all, is the way He is. And why is God the way He is? Because, unlike the capricious gods of non-Christian religions, God revealed Himself to Moses thus: "I AM THAT I AM" (Ex 3:14). Consistently the Bible's God declares, "I am the Lord, I change not (Mal 3:6)." God is outside of, and untouched by, the time and change so evident in our world.
Dawkins says, "Genes just are." No, genes are not self-existent and eternal. They had to have a Maker. God alone has no maker but is the Maker of all: self-existent, uncreated, unchanging, perfect, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. For God to be God, this is who He must be.
Why is everything the way it is? Because God, who made all, is the way He is. Of the newly created universe, we read: "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Gn 1:31). Why was everything "good"? Because God who made everything is good: "There is none good but one, that is God" (Mt 19:17).
Even in its present corrupt state, much in the universe is still so beautiful that it thrills and moves us deeply because the God who made it is beautiful. David wrote: "I seek [to] dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord..." (Ps 27:4). We need greater appreciation of God's beauty!
Why is there some apparent "good" even in a Hitler or a Stalin? Nazi extermination camp guards who had presided over the murder of Jews all day could come home at night, kiss their wives, play with their children, and enjoy listening to Wagner. This is because God, who is good, made man in His image (Gn 1:26,27). Although sin separated all mankind from a holy God, a remnant of the image of God in which we were created remains. Yet everything man touches, even love, is corrupted.
The man who persuades a woman to live with him without marriage tells her, "I love you." But what he may mean (perhaps unknown even to him) could be, "I love myself, and I want you." Only too late they may discover that this is what both of them mean by "love."
Why the blight, rot, and death that taunts us everywhere? This, too, is because God is the way He is. Without God, whose character reveals and condemns it, there would be no sin; and without God's law written in man's conscience, there would be no knowledge of sin: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" (Is 45:7).
How could a good God create evil? The same way the God who is light creates darkness. A person who was born and died in a cave in total darkness would not know he was in the dark until someone shined a light.
The light suddenly reveals the darkness for what it is; and God's holy perfection reveals evil for what it is. The haunting memory of paradise lost lingers elusively in man's heart. Why must it be this way? Because the God who is good is also holy and just-and man, made in His image, rebelled.
What about eternal torment in the Lake of Fire? That, too, is because God is love and God is just. He created man to live forever in the joy of His love-not as an "extra" but as man's very life. Those who reject God's love consign themselves to the eternal torment of a burning thirst for the One who made them for Himself. Heaven will be the eternal satisfaction of the living water flowing "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Rv 22:1). Hell will be eternally dying from burning thirst for God, the horror of fully knowing one's sin and rebellion, and the realization that one is there only because of rejecting Christ.
"God is love" (1 Jn 4:8,16). Love is the essence of His being. He loves us and wants to forgive us; but He is also holy and just. For God to forgive sinners without the full penalty being paid would contradict His justice and make Him our partner in evil. Christ fully paid that penalty for our sins-but the pardon must be willingly and gladly received. God will not force anyone into heaven.
Atheists scoff, "How could a good God create this evil world? If God can't stop suffering and death, He is too weak to be God; and if He could but doesn't, He is a monster unworthy of our trust." In fact, this is not the world God made but the one we made in rebellion against Him.
Don't blame God for what we have done to His once-perfect world!
Why did God allow man to rebel? That fact, too, is true because "God is love." We can neither receive and enjoy His love nor love Him in return (or love one another) without the power of choice. Love is from the heart. The ability to say "yes" means nothing without the equal ability to say "no." Tragically, Adam and Eve, chose to say "no" to God and to follow Satan. The entire universe suffers as a result: "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now...waiting..." (Rom 8:20-23).
Those who reject the truth reject God. Sir David Attenborough, producer of decades of TV programs promoting evolution, argued:
The God you believe in...an all-merciful God created...a parasitic worm...that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball [in West Africa]?8 No, that is not the way the universe was at the beginning. And during the millennial reign of Christ, the world will be restored to its original condition, without animals devouring one another, without microbes and parasites preying on other living things: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb...the leopard shall lie down with the kid...the calf and the young lion...together; and a little child shall lead them....The lion shall eat straw like the ox...the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den...for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord..." (Is 11:6-9).
In Christ alone, and His payment of the penalty for our sins upon the Cross, we find reconciliation to God and ultimate meaning and purpose.
"All things were made by him..." (Jn 1:2). O mystery! The babe born in Bethlehem was and forever is "the mighty God, the everlasting Father"
(Is 9:6). Jesus said, "I and my Father are one" (Jn 10:30).
How can we understand and better know this infinite God? He made us for Himself, and we naturally thirst for Him: "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God..." (Ps 42:2). Yet those in rebellion foolishly attempt to quench that thirst in earthly possessions, pleasures, and pride. It was to reveal God to man as the only One who could fulfill that inner longing that Jesus, God's "only begotten" Son (Jn 1:14; 3:16,
etc.) was born into this world.
The suffering that Christ endured at men's hands revealed the evil in all of our hearts. That suffering, which we inflicted upon Him, could not save us. It was the punishment for our sins that Jesus suffered on the Cross under God's wrath against sin that made it possible for all to be forgiven who believe on Him. It is because He fully paid that penalty in our place that He can say, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (Jn 7:37).
He who was born of a virgin and fully man is also fully God: "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2:9); who being the brightness of his [God the Father's] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power...by himself purged our sins..." (Heb 1:3).
Paul declared, "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory" (1 Tm 3:16). Though now we only dimly understand ("we see through a glass darkly [and] know in part"-1 Cor 13:12), we have the glorious promise that the more we by faith look upon, meditate upon, and understand our Lord Jesus Christ, the more clearly we see Him and become like Him: "But we all, with open [unveiled] face beholding as in a glass [mirror] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor 3:18).
The revelation of Christ, for which our souls thirst, thrills us increasingly as we more clearly understand who He is in all His fullness and what He accomplished to reconcile us to Himself. Something of His glorious person is beautifully expressed in Graham Kendrick's hymn:
Meekness and majesty, manhood and deity, In perfect harmony-the man who is God; Lord of eternity, dwells in humanity, Kneels in humility, and washes our feet.
Father's pure radiance, perfect in innocence, Yet learns obedience to death on a cross; Suffering to give us life, Conquering through sacrifice- And as they crucify, prays, "Father, forgive."
Wisdom unsearchable, God the invisible,
Love indestructible in frailty appears;
Lord of infinity, stooping so tenderly
Lifts our humanity
To the heights of his throne.
Oh, what a mystery-Meekness and majesty; Bow down and worship, For this is your God,
This is your God! tbc
Endnotes
1. Max Planck, "The Mystery of Our Being," in Quantum Questions, ed. Ken Wilbur (Boston: New Science Library, 1984), 153.
2. Erwin Schrödinger, quoted in Quantum, 81.
3. Dennis Overbye, "Physics awaits new options as Standard Model idles,"
Symmetry, vol 03, issue 06, August 06.
4. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1994), 3.
5. Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons, The New York Review, January 9, 1997, 31.
6. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 30th anniversary edition, 2006), 2.
7. Dawkins, Selfish, 22.
8. M. Buchanan, "Wild, Wild Life," Sydney Morning Herald, The Guide, March 24, 2003, 6.
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Quotable
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Countless "Christians" today believe..."because it works" (pragmatism), because they "feel it is true in their experience" (subjectivism), because they sincerely believe it is true "for them" (relativism), and so on....The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. It is not true because we experience it; we experience it-deeply and gloriously-because it is true.
Os Guinness, Time for Truth, 58
When the Christian life becomes a lifestyle and no longer a relationship with a Person-rather than growing in the grace and knowledge of the Savior, we will develop in the art of refining, polishing, and perfecting the flesh. Then we can have the programs and activities, methods and formulas, strategies and procedures, systems and theologies, political involvement and community service...religious causes..."how-to" seminars and self-help books...and even outstanding character qualities-all without Christ as our sufficiency! Our flesh is very creative and knows how to make itself appear and act spiritual. But it is still the flesh, and it is rotten to the core!
Jerry Benjamin, Simply Singular: Is Christ Prominent or Preeminent?, 22-23
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Q&A
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Question: Enclosed is a booklet by Harold Camping titled, What Must I Do to Become Saved? I would appreciate your opinion about what he says.
Response: Harold Camping is a confused man who is leading many astray.
He owns and controls everything that is said on Family Radio Network (40
+ stations and 100 + translators). His unbiblical teaching goes out in
23 languages by short wave. Very little outside ministry is aired on his network. He believes that the church replaced Israel and that the Church Age ended in 1988; God is done with organized churches, we are to worship only in our homes, listen to Family Radio, and follow Camping.
In these fellowships there is no authority except Camping's teachings, no baptism, no breaking of bread.
In 1992 he wrote and self-published 1994?, which predicted that the world would end September 6, 1994. When that didn't happen, he decided (as did Ellen G. White of the Seventh-day Adventists for 1844 and Charles Taize Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses for 1874, then 1914), that the date was right but the interpretation wrong. Then, in 2002, Camping published The End of the Church Age...and After. He says the Bible's meaning is progressively revealed, and much previously unknown is now being revealed through him. The "end of the world" will now be 2011. So says his 2005 book titled Time Has an End: A Biblical History of the World, 11,013 BC - 2011 AD. He's way off on the "BC" also.
His background is Dutch Reformed and his Calvinism dominates the booklet
mentioned: You can't know whether you are one of the elect for whom Christ died-you can hope you are, but there is nothing one can do about it. Admitting this hopeless fact is required for salvation. He says:
God...can save an elect individual at any time....The only requirement is [to] be under the hearing of the Bible. At the moment of salvation, God gives that individual spiritual ears and a new eternal soul. Thus, a baby [as Calvin said] can be saved as readily as a mature adult....At an appropriate time...God will cause this person to actually experience the wonderful fact of salvation [and] a new resurrected soul.
Under the heading on page 17, "What Must I Do to Become Saved?", he
responds: "I cannot do anything....I must patiently wait upon the mercy of God....It is entirely possible that I, too...could be one of those who are chosen by God to become saved." He says that verses such as, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" don't tell the sinner how to get saved. Why? "When God is speaking to unsaved people, He is speaking to spiritual corpses [but] one here, one in another place...begins to believe...finds in their life a strong desire to obey the Bible [because] Jesus [has] created within them a new soul [with] eternal life...because they had been chosen by God from before the beginning of creation."
So the "good news" we preach to the world is not that anyone may believe on Christ and be saved but that maybe one was elected unto salvation. We can't know for sure, but if we're one of the elect, God will give us a new "resurrected" soul and cause us to believe and to love His Word.
Some of the most revered Christian leaders of today teach this same Calvinism but more subtly. We hear, from around the world, of Calvinism infiltrating evangelical churches and causing division. We also hear of many, including leaders, being rescued from Calvinism through reading What Love Is This? (See offering list.)
Question: John Hagee says we should not witness to the Jewish people; God will take care of them. Is this biblical?
Response: Speaking at the last Pre-trib Seminar in Dallas, Hagee said he had never taught this. In fact, he has taught it a number of times. The Houston Chronicle (4/30/88, sec. 6, p. 1) quoted Hagee, "I'm not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith...trying to convert Jews is a waste of time."
It only takes a few Bible verses to expose this serious heresy condemned by Paul in Galatians 1. The first Christians were all Jews. Peter preached the gospel on the day of Pentecost to Jews. The early Christians and apostles thought the gospel was only for Jews and preached "the word...unto the Jews only" (Acts 11:19). God had to give Peter a vision to get him to preach to Gentiles (Acts 10:9-16). In every town Paul entered, he first went into the synagogue, where he preached to the Jews, and only when they rejected the gospel did he turn to the Gentiles (Acts 9:20; 13:5, 14-46; 14:1; 17:2, etc.). Why did he always offer salvation to the Jews first? Because, as we are clearly told, "the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation...to the Jew first..." (Rom 1:16).
Question (Representative of several): I was listening to the Bible Answer Man when someone called in to ask Hank [Hanegraaff] about Dave Hunt. Please respond to what he said (from a transcript): "Dave Hunt has been a popular Christian author...and I think it's ironic that his organization is called The Berean Call, because the Bereans were counted as being more noble by the apostle Paul because daily they examined the scriptures to see if what he was saying was so....If you examine...what Dave Hunt is saying...you will find out that he errs quite consistently in his interpretation of scripture.
"He, for example, will tell you that the great whore of Babylon in Revelation 17 (he wrote a book about it) is the Roman Catholic Church, so he is slandering an already vulnerable target....This statement is absolutely reprehensible. I'm going to point this out in a book that I just finished which is called, The Apocalypse Code....
"He is also a sensationalist. He was right about Y2K for all the wrong reasons...he imposed his dispensational theology, his rapture theory...on Y2K to come up with a particular interpretation of Y2K and I debunk that in a book that I wrote called The Millennium Bug Debugged...I wrote this book and came to the same conclusion, which was that Y2K was not going to be a big problem...but a lot of people were jumping on it and making all kinds of interpretations about it, but they were doing it [by] imposing their particular model of eschatology on the scripture as Dave Hunt did when he wrote A Woman Rides the Beast. So yeah, this is a guy that you need to be very careful with because if you test what he says in light of scripture you'll find out that he gets it wrong more often than not."
Response: Whenever Hank is asked about me, this is his standard response. It is slanderous. I gave a more detailed response 11 years ago (TBC Q&A May 1996).
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful institution in history and the world today. Yet Hank describes it as a "vulnerable target." What?! I'm slandering it by identifying it as the whore in Revelation 17-18? The angel gives to John fourteen identifying characteristics that fit the Vatican (and nothing else) perfectly. This is how Luther and the Reformers and the thousands of true Christians down through history whom the RCC slaughtered (including even some Roman Catholic leaders) have always identified the "whore." Of these martyrs, the great historian, Will Durant, wrote, "The Roman Church, they were sure, was the Whore of Babylon." Einerius, an inquisitor appointed by Pope Innocent III 350 years before the Reformation, said of the Waldensian Christians, whom the RCC was attempting to exterminate, "They claim [that] the Roman Church is the whore described in John's Revelation." Even St. Bonaventure, cardinal and general of the Franciscans, in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, 300 years before the Reformation, called Rome "the harlot who makes kings and nations drunk with the wine of her whoredoms." D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "I would not hesitate with the Reformers...to [say that the RCC] is, as the Scripture puts it, 'the whore.'" When I tried to explain this to Hank and his staff many years ago, they accused me of inventing a new idea unknown in history. Their guffaws nearly drove me out of Hank's office.
My book, Y2K: A Reasoned Response to Mass Hysteria?, was published before Hank's. He says my Y2K book was based upon my "dispensational theology...rapture theory"? He only needed to read the back cover ("Dave Hunt argues that...Y2K has no direct relationship to biblical prophecy"), to realize that this is a baseless charge.
For the first 165 pages I quote the doomsayers, Christian and secular, who were predicting that millions would die. I analyze the problem from a purely technical and practical basis, quote the experts, top bankers, and IT managers who were not concerned at all, and explain why Y2K was not going to be any problem. I point out the folly of church leaders who were organizing Christians to store up food and water with which to rescue unsaved neighbors and thereby win them to Christ. The churches in our own town, led by a "Y2K Preparedness Committee," were going to rescue Bend from disaster. This was the biggest thing in the church for months. I won't name the popular Christian leaders who promoted this craze, nor those who accused me of causing a complacency that would kill millions.
It was not until page 166 that I dealt with Y2K from a biblical standpoint because so many Christian leaders were warning the inevitable computer crash would usher in a cashless society and the reign of Antichrist. Really? A cashless society would need computers, and so would the Antichrist to control the world. I pointed out the folly of trying to tie every apparent war or disaster to Bible prophecy and quoted the predictions of Christian leaders and prophecy teachers making Y2K a part of Bible prophecy. I wrote: "Sadly, each time a correspondence has been attempted between a current event and a specific biblical prophecy and the event failed to live up to that expectation (as in the case of the Gulf War), Bible prophecy was discredited....There is a great danger of the same disillusionment occurring again when Bible teachers link Y2K with Bible prophecy....Throughout this book we provide sufficient documentation to show that there will not be a general failure of computers on January 1, 2000. Yet a surprising number of Christians say that God has been confirming the worst Y2K disaster scenario to them by revelation and dreams."
Only on page 182 did I chide Christians for being so obsessed with Y2K that they had forgotten their hope of heaven and instead of looking for the Rapture were spending their time, money, and efforts preparing to survive Y2K on earth. For the next 20 pages I show that the Y2K disaster predictions, far from fulfilling biblical prophecy, contradicted it.
Then I go back to the technical reasons why Y2K was not going to be what the alarmists were saying.
I hope that Hank's accusations that I was "right about Y2K for all the wrong reasons [and] imposed [my] dispensational...rapture theory...on Y2K to come up with a particular interpretation of Y2K," as well as his claims relative to the "whore of Babylon" will at last be put to rest.
question: I've told unsaved friends that the Qur'an, Book of Mormon, etc., are false additions to the Bible. They asked me, "What is different about the many Old Testament books added to the Torah, and the New Testament to the Old?
response: The Qur'an, Book of Mormon, etc., make no claim of being part of the Bible, contradict it completely, and obviously have different authors. The entire Old and New Testaments agree with, foretell and/or fulfill each other, and clearly have the same Author.
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News Alert
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http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2946397, 3/13/2007: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, is facing some tough questions this morning about controversial comments he made about homosexuality and gays serving in the military during a newspaper interview.
Pace was asked about his view on gays in the military by the Chicago Tribune. His answer was carefully worded, but his meaning was unmistakable.
"My upbringing is such that I believe there are certain things, certain types of conduct that are immoral," Pace said during the tape-recorded interview.
"I believe that military members who sleep with other military members'
wives are immoral in their conduct, [and] that we should not tolerate that."
"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts."
Those comments are sure to provoke a firestorm today on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have been trying to overturn the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military.
Pace made it clear that he supported the policy because he believed homosexual acts were "immoral."
The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which was instituted by President Clinton and written by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, allows gays in the military only if they stay in the closet.
Pace says he supports the policy because it bans homosexual acts.
"I do not believe the armed forces of the U.S. are well served by saying through our policies that it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace said.
A spokesperson for Pace told ABC News that the general had been asked to give his personal opinion, and "he provided it."
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Itinerary
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Apr 13-14
So. Manitoba Prophecy Conference (Dave)
Winkler MB
(204) 325-6714
Apr 15
Ambassador Baptist Church (Dave)
Morden MB
(204) 822-3398
Apr 20-21
Discerning the Times Bible Conference (T.A.)
Saskatoon SK
(306) 717-0374
Apr 27- May 8
Various Assemblies of Believers in Albania (Dave) GEOSTURM01@aol.com
Jun 2-3
A Church for Jesus (Dave)
Port Neches TX
(409) 722-6959
Jul 6-7
Berean Calvary Chapel (Dave)
Kirkville NY
(315) 656-7021
Jul 8-14
Word of Life (Dave)
Schroon Lake NY
(518) 532-7114
Aug 3-4
Hope for Today Conference (Dave)
Chino Hills CA
(800) 752-4253
Aug 10-12
TBC Conference (Dave / TA)
Bend OR
(800) 937-6638
Aug 22-26
Hong Kong (Dave / TA)
(852) 2336-7602
Sep 7-9
Great Lakes Prophecy Conference (Dave / TA)
Appleton WI
(920) 735-1242
Sep 12-15
Winnipeg Prophecy Conference (Dave)
Winnipeg MB
(204) 853-7786
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Letters
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Dear Dave,
Words fail to express my appreciation for the way you have covered the current state of world affairs in...Judgment Day....We are indeed living in the last days and our hope rests not in the "strength of the horse"
(implements of war) but in trusting God and His prophetic Word. [Many] people (so-called believers included) exhibit disdain for anything dealing with the word "prophecy."...In fact, even in many so-called sound churches, the mere mention of the word "prophecy" sets the speaker up as a sure target for...ridicule. The standard response...is, "We've heard all this before!" The truth revealed in Judgment Day, however, is not only confirmed by the Word of God but also [events] reported daily by the world media. Thank you for using your God-given talent to call the world's attention to global events which are now spiraling out of man's control and for showing us where we must look for answers. DT (KY)
Dear Dave,
Thank you for your newsletter. It is so informative and very needed in
these days. Sometimes I feel that maybe I am not understanding things
and that I am wrong and that nobody sees things the way I do, and then
your newsletter will come in the mail and I realize I'm not alone or
crazy. JE (IN)
Dear Dave,
I thank...God for the team of The Berean Call, who continued to send
your...publication to me during a troubled period in my life. [It] was a
source of encouragement and strength because it has a "single eye,"
focused on God's Word alone for truth. (Matt 6:22). An elderly Christian
lady shared this verse with me years ago to show the importance of
holding fast to biblical truth as the sole, absolute, and final
authority of my faith. Now that I am becoming the older woman, I am
following the example of this fine lady who has since gone home to be
with the Lord. This is my main thrust in ministering to younger women-to
take God's Word into their hearts just as God has written it, not
to...try to redefine His doctrine or to mix His words with the consensus
of man's opinions. MP (MA)
Dear Dave, TA, and Friends,
I caused the death of a friend. After thirteen years, I was [finally]
able to ask for and receive forgiveness from his mom. I have a good
life....I have running water, filtered air, and free electricity in my
"dwelling." Literally half the people in the world can't say that.
People love me and I can...appreciate that love now. Most of all, my
Creator, Father, Master, Lord, Savior has a pure desire for me, which is
not tainted by a willful heart but rather continually manifested in His
patient drawing of me toward Him. When I got off dope... I caught the
pointed revelation that my life was ruined because of my own will. I
started to take responsibility for my situation, understood my
accountability to my Creator, and identified with Christ's death and
resurrection....But it took a five-year [period of trials] before my
heart was open to God's still, small voice....And though I had a lack of
fellowship, I had The Berean Call....I thank...you for your acceptance
of the monumental duty of love the Lord has set before you....I remind
myself when I deal with hopefully future believers that The Berean
Call's mission is not to judge and bad-mouth but to inform and warn out
of love-real, godly, loving consideration for a soul either unsaved or
just barely shining. JH (prisoner, NE)
Dear Dave,
I think it is unfortunate, Dave, that you work so hard at dividing God's
people rather than uniting them. Is it any wonder that we are losing the
war? Even the Lord himself said that a house divided against itself
cannot stand. Instead of cutting up those who hold to sound doctrine,
expose the Benny Hinn's, the Copeland's, and Schuller's, or the DaVinci
Codes, and the like. That is the kind of error that the body of Christ
needs to have exposed....You and Calvin are not that far apart, although
he never got into end time interpretations....His overall interpretation
could lead to a different end than yours, and I could see where that
could be a problem for you. Throughout my Christianity, I have had to
let the Spirit of God transform my thinking from previously held views,
because as you yourself have said, not Calvin, not our leaders, and not
you, but the Word of God is the final authority. LM (CA)
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TBC Notes
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Our Blessed Hope
Let us all be encouraged to keep "Looking for that blessed hope, and the
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus
2:13).
I know I need that encouragement. But it's not because my love for the
Lord has cooled off; it's because I get distracted, even drawn, from
time-to-time, to the things of this world.
When one considers the history of the church regarding its attitude
toward its "blessed hope" through the Rapture, it's easy to recognize
the conditions that cause apathy. As true believers got comfortable with
or began to preoccupy themselves with this world, they simply lost
interest in the imminent return of Jesus for them, His bride, to take
her to heaven.
That loss of interest had another dire consequence, one we tend to
forget about when we think about the Rapture. The doctrine with its
emphasis upon imminency has us expecting our Lord's coming for us at any
moment. Such an expectation has a purifying effect upon our lives, as
the Apostle John tells us: "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall
be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this
hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3: 2,3).
Lord, keep our hearts and minds stayed upon You, doing what pleases You,
and continually looking for Your appearing!
T.A. McMahon
Executive Director
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TBC Extra
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Idolatry
J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)
[Excerpts] Let me, then, first of all supply a definition of idolatry.
Let me show what it is.
It is of the utmost importance that we should understand this. Unless I
make this clear, I can do nothing with the subject. Vagueness and
indistinctness prevail upon this point, as upon almost every other in
religion. The Christian who desires [to] not be continually running
aground in his spiritual voyage, must have his channel well buoyed, and
his mind well stored with clear definitions.
I say then, that idolatry is a worship, in which the honor due to the
triune God, and to God only, is given to some of his creatures, or to
some invention of His creatures.
It may vary. It may assume different forms, according to the ignorance
or the knowledge-the civilization or the barbarism, of those who offer
it. It may be grossly absurd and ludicrous, or it may closely border on
truth, and being most superficially defended. But whether in the
adoration of the idol of Juggernaut, or in the adoration of the Pope in
St. Peter's at Rome, the principle of idolatry is in reality the same.
In either case the honor due to God is turned aside from Him, and
bestowed on that which is not God. And whenever this is done, whether in
heathen temples or in professedly Christian Churches, there is an act of
idolatry.
It is not necessary, for a man to formally deny God and Christ, in order
to be an idolater. Far from it. Professed reverence for the God of the
Bible and actual idolatry, are perfectly compatible. They have often
been done side by side, and they still do so. The children of Israel
never thought of renouncing God when they persuaded Aaron to make the
golden calf. "Here are your gods," they said, "who brought you up out of
Egypt." And the feast in honor of the calf was kept as a "festival to
the LORD (Jehovah)" (Exodus 32:4, 5).
Jeroboam, again, never pretended to ask the ten tribes to cast off their
allegiance to the God of David and Solomon. When he set up the calves of
gold in Dan and Bethel, he only said, "It is too much for you to go up
to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of
Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28).
In both instances, we should observe, the idol was not set up as a rival
to God, but under the pretense of being a help-a steppingstone to His
service. But, in both instances, a great sin was committed. The honor
due to God was given to a visible representation of Him. The majesty of
Jehovah was offended. The second commandment was broken. There was, in
the eyes of God, a flagrant act of idolatry.
Let us mark this well. It is high time to dismiss from our minds those
loose ideas about idolatry, which are common in this day. We must not
think, as many do, that there are only two sorts of idolatry-the
spiritual idolatry of the man who loves his wife, or child, or money
more than God; and the open, gross idolatry of the man who bows down to
an image of wood, or metal, or stone, because he knows no better. We may
rest assured that idolatry is a sin, which occupies a far wider field
than this. It is not merely a thing in pagan lands, that we may hear of
and pity at missionary meetings; nor yet is it a thing confined to our
own hearts, that we may confess before the mercy-seat upon our knees. It
is a pestilence that walks in the Church of the Living Christ to a much
greater extent than many suppose. It is an evil that, like the man of
sin, "that sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be
God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
It is a sin that we all need to watch and pray against continually. It
creeps into our religious worship unnoticed, and is upon us before we
are aware. Those are tremendous words which Isaiah spoke to the faithful
Jew-not to the worshiper of Baal, remember, to the man who actually came
to the temple (Isaiah 66:3): "Whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who
kills a man, and whoever offers a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's
neck; whoever makes a grain offering is like one who presents pig's
blood, and whoever burns memorial incense, like one who worships an idol."
This is that sin which God has especially denounced in His Word. One
commandment out of ten is devoted to the prohibition of it. Not one of
all the ten contains such a solemn declaration of God's character, and
of His judgments against the disobedient: "I, the LORD your God, am a
jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the
third and fourth generation of those who hate me" (Exodus 20:5). Not
one, perhaps, of all the ten is so emphatically repeated and amplified,
and especially in the fourth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. This is
the sin, of all others, to which the Jews seem to have been most
inclined to commit before the destruction of Solomon's temple. What is
the history of Israel under their judges and kings but a sorrowful
record of repeated falling away into idolatry? Again and again we read
of "high places" and "false gods." Again and again we read of
captivities and chastisements on account of idolatry. Again and again we
read of a return to the old sin. It seems as if the love of idols among
the Jews was naturally bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. The
besetting sin of the Old Testament Church, in one word, was idolatry. In
the face of the most elaborate ceremonial ordinances that God ever gave
to His people, Israel was incessantly turning aside after idols, and
worshipping the work of men's hands.
This is the sin, of all others, which has brought down the heaviest
judgments on the visible Church. It brought on Israel the armies of
Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. It scattered the ten tribes, burned up
Jerusalem, and carried Judah and Benjamin into captivity. It brought on
the Eastern Churches, in later days, the overwhelming flood of the
Muslim invasion, and turned many a spiritual garden into a wilderness.
The desolation which reigns where Cyprian and Augustine once preached,
the living death in which the Churches of Asia Minor and Syria are
buried, are all attributable to this sin. All testify to the same great
truth which the Lord proclaims in Isaiah: "I will not give my glory to
another or my praise to idols" (Isaiah 42:8).
Let us gather up these things in our minds, and ponder them well.
Idolatry is a subject which, in every Christian Church, that wants to
keep herself pure, should be thoroughly examined, understood, and known.
It is not for nothing that Paul lays down the stern command, "Flee from
idolatry."
This updated and revised manuscript is copyrighted 1998
by Tony Capoccia. All rights reserved.
Tony Capoccia - www.biblebb.com
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Why Everything Is the Way It Is
Dave Hunt
The prevailing view in today's media, public schools, and surrounding society is that the Bible isn't true, no educated person believes in God, and science is the key to life's mysteries. The lie of evolution becomes so deeply implanted that deliverance is increasingly difficult.
The world rejects "God says" and accepts "science says" as the ultimate truth. Few realize that science cannot answer the important questions:
why the universe and life exist, and why every child knows the difference between right and wrong and believes that God exists until taught "better."
Few know what leading scientists admit. Max Planck, father of Quantum Theory, declared: "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of
nature."1 We don't know what time, space, matter, or energy are-much less the soul and spirit.
Why? cannot be addressed to the universe but only to its Creator. One cannot reason with an earthquake or a hurricane. There is no sympathy in "Nature." Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger, one of the architects of quantum mechanics, wrote:
The scientific picture of the real world around me is...ghastly silent about all that...really matters to us....It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity....
Whence came I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question...for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.2
Science knows nothing of truth-only physical facts. Lee Smolin, founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, has said: "When a child asks, 'What is the world?' we literally have nothing to tell...."3 The question why? irritates atheists because the maker decides the purpose for whatever is made. Without a Creator, neither the universe nor life has any meaning. Without God, there is no reason for a rose bud or for the dew that makes it shimmer in the morning sun -or for anything else that we hold dear and enjoy, including human existence itself.
Why is everything the way it is? Because God is the way He is. But who is this God? Is he Zeus of the Greeks, Brahman of the Hindus, Allah of Islam? Does it matter? Can't we just acknowledge a "higher power"?
Higher than what? Power? No impersonal "power" could create personal beings. Nor could any "force" conceive and write in words on DNA the directions for constructing and operating all living things.
Atheism leads to numerous absurdities promoted by otherwise intelligent people. Sir Francis Crick, Nobel laureate as co-discoverer of the DNA language, begins his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis:
You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.4
If this is the way the universe made us, why does Crick call it Astonishing? He knows it is contrary to common sense. Yet to cling to his atheism he must persist in such madness. However, most people would firmly object to Crick's description. Any thinking person knows he weighs choices carefully, experiences joys, sorrows, hopes, ambitions, fears, remorse, and regrets that are very real. But "science says" is a holy mantra that causes every knee to bow-except those who will not worship Baal (1 Ki 19:18). Biologist Richard Lewontin defiantly boasts:
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs...for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.5
Arch atheist and outspoken enemy of God, Richard Dawkins, claims that we are merely vehicles through which "selfish genes" perpetuate themselves.
Yet he says genes have no foresight. They do not plan ahead. Genes just are. He also states, "Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species...are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense."6 What an admission!
If evolution makes us incapable of true love, morals, or ethics, why do we admire these qualities? How can we be so unnatural, if we are the offspring of nature? Crick and Dawkins seem embarrassed that many of the human qualities that everyone possesses could not have been produced by evolution. We do not think and act like we should if we were evolved from lower creatures.
The language component in the human gene "is identical in every particular to [that in] a snail. [Only] the sequence of building blocks
is...different...."7 The organizational genius behind DNA is breathtaking. Using the same four letters for plants, animals, and man, distinction is maintained not only between all kinds of living things but between individuals of each kind. This ingenious arrangement sets bounds which make it impossible for DNA of one kind of life to change into DNA of another kind.
Unquestionably, the DNA language, which is the basis of all life, did not and cannot evolve. The similarity between man's DNA and that of all animals is no more evidence that man evolved from animals than is the similarity in human and plant DNA evidence that we evolved from plants.
Evolution did not make us. God made us. But atheists cling to evolution as an escape from accountability to God. Darwin's theory was his revenge against the god he could no longer believe in, the "god" that had allowed his daughter, Annie, to die. Darwinism's atheism prevents science from knowing why things are as they are. Without God there is no answer to the why for anything. Yet here we are in a vast and awesome universe and common sense cries out for a reason for its existence and ours.
Why is everything the way it is? Only because God, who created it all, is the way He is. And why is God the way He is? Because, unlike the capricious gods of non-Christian religions, God revealed Himself to Moses thus: "I AM THAT I AM" (Ex 3:14). Consistently the Bible's God declares, "I am the Lord, I change not (Mal 3:6)." God is outside of, and untouched by, the time and change so evident in our world.
Dawkins says, "Genes just are." No, genes are not self-existent and eternal. They had to have a Maker. God alone has no maker but is the Maker of all: self-existent, uncreated, unchanging, perfect, eternal, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. For God to be God, this is who He must be.
Why is everything the way it is? Because God, who made all, is the way He is. Of the newly created universe, we read: "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Gn 1:31). Why was everything "good"? Because God who made everything is good: "There is none good but one, that is God" (Mt 19:17).
Even in its present corrupt state, much in the universe is still so beautiful that it thrills and moves us deeply because the God who made it is beautiful. David wrote: "I seek [to] dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord..." (Ps 27:4). We need greater appreciation of God's beauty!
Why is there some apparent "good" even in a Hitler or a Stalin? Nazi extermination camp guards who had presided over the murder of Jews all day could come home at night, kiss their wives, play with their children, and enjoy listening to Wagner. This is because God, who is good, made man in His image (Gn 1:26,27). Although sin separated all mankind from a holy God, a remnant of the image of God in which we were created remains. Yet everything man touches, even love, is corrupted.
The man who persuades a woman to live with him without marriage tells her, "I love you." But what he may mean (perhaps unknown even to him) could be, "I love myself, and I want you." Only too late they may discover that this is what both of them mean by "love."
Why the blight, rot, and death that taunts us everywhere? This, too, is because God is the way He is. Without God, whose character reveals and condemns it, there would be no sin; and without God's law written in man's conscience, there would be no knowledge of sin: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" (Is 45:7).
How could a good God create evil? The same way the God who is light creates darkness. A person who was born and died in a cave in total darkness would not know he was in the dark until someone shined a light.
The light suddenly reveals the darkness for what it is; and God's holy perfection reveals evil for what it is. The haunting memory of paradise lost lingers elusively in man's heart. Why must it be this way? Because the God who is good is also holy and just-and man, made in His image, rebelled.
What about eternal torment in the Lake of Fire? That, too, is because God is love and God is just. He created man to live forever in the joy of His love-not as an "extra" but as man's very life. Those who reject God's love consign themselves to the eternal torment of a burning thirst for the One who made them for Himself. Heaven will be the eternal satisfaction of the living water flowing "out of the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Rv 22:1). Hell will be eternally dying from burning thirst for God, the horror of fully knowing one's sin and rebellion, and the realization that one is there only because of rejecting Christ.
"God is love" (1 Jn 4:8,16). Love is the essence of His being. He loves us and wants to forgive us; but He is also holy and just. For God to forgive sinners without the full penalty being paid would contradict His justice and make Him our partner in evil. Christ fully paid that penalty for our sins-but the pardon must be willingly and gladly received. God will not force anyone into heaven.
Atheists scoff, "How could a good God create this evil world? If God can't stop suffering and death, He is too weak to be God; and if He could but doesn't, He is a monster unworthy of our trust." In fact, this is not the world God made but the one we made in rebellion against Him.
Don't blame God for what we have done to His once-perfect world!
Why did God allow man to rebel? That fact, too, is true because "God is love." We can neither receive and enjoy His love nor love Him in return (or love one another) without the power of choice. Love is from the heart. The ability to say "yes" means nothing without the equal ability to say "no." Tragically, Adam and Eve, chose to say "no" to God and to follow Satan. The entire universe suffers as a result: "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now...waiting..." (Rom 8:20-23).
Those who reject the truth reject God. Sir David Attenborough, producer of decades of TV programs promoting evolution, argued:
The God you believe in...an all-merciful God created...a parasitic worm...that can live in no other way than in an innocent child's eyeball [in West Africa]?8 No, that is not the way the universe was at the beginning. And during the millennial reign of Christ, the world will be restored to its original condition, without animals devouring one another, without microbes and parasites preying on other living things: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb...the leopard shall lie down with the kid...the calf and the young lion...together; and a little child shall lead them....The lion shall eat straw like the ox...the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den...for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord..." (Is 11:6-9).
In Christ alone, and His payment of the penalty for our sins upon the Cross, we find reconciliation to God and ultimate meaning and purpose.
"All things were made by him..." (Jn 1:2). O mystery! The babe born in Bethlehem was and forever is "the mighty God, the everlasting Father"
(Is 9:6). Jesus said, "I and my Father are one" (Jn 10:30).
How can we understand and better know this infinite God? He made us for Himself, and we naturally thirst for Him: "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God..." (Ps 42:2). Yet those in rebellion foolishly attempt to quench that thirst in earthly possessions, pleasures, and pride. It was to reveal God to man as the only One who could fulfill that inner longing that Jesus, God's "only begotten" Son (Jn 1:14; 3:16,
etc.) was born into this world.
The suffering that Christ endured at men's hands revealed the evil in all of our hearts. That suffering, which we inflicted upon Him, could not save us. It was the punishment for our sins that Jesus suffered on the Cross under God's wrath against sin that made it possible for all to be forgiven who believe on Him. It is because He fully paid that penalty in our place that He can say, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (Jn 7:37).
He who was born of a virgin and fully man is also fully God: "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col 2:9); who being the brightness of his [God the Father's] glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power...by himself purged our sins..." (Heb 1:3).
Paul declared, "Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory" (1 Tm 3:16). Though now we only dimly understand ("we see through a glass darkly [and] know in part"-1 Cor 13:12), we have the glorious promise that the more we by faith look upon, meditate upon, and understand our Lord Jesus Christ, the more clearly we see Him and become like Him: "But we all, with open [unveiled] face beholding as in a glass [mirror] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Cor 3:18).
The revelation of Christ, for which our souls thirst, thrills us increasingly as we more clearly understand who He is in all His fullness and what He accomplished to reconcile us to Himself. Something of His glorious person is beautifully expressed in Graham Kendrick's hymn:
Meekness and majesty, manhood and deity, In perfect harmony-the man who is God; Lord of eternity, dwells in humanity, Kneels in humility, and washes our feet.
Father's pure radiance, perfect in innocence, Yet learns obedience to death on a cross; Suffering to give us life, Conquering through sacrifice- And as they crucify, prays, "Father, forgive."
Wisdom unsearchable, God the invisible,
Love indestructible in frailty appears;
Lord of infinity, stooping so tenderly
Lifts our humanity
To the heights of his throne.
Oh, what a mystery-Meekness and majesty; Bow down and worship, For this is your God,
This is your God! tbc
Endnotes
1. Max Planck, "The Mystery of Our Being," in Quantum Questions, ed. Ken Wilbur (Boston: New Science Library, 1984), 153.
2. Erwin Schrödinger, quoted in Quantum, 81.
3. Dennis Overbye, "Physics awaits new options as Standard Model idles,"
Symmetry, vol 03, issue 06, August 06.
4. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1994), 3.
5. Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons, The New York Review, January 9, 1997, 31.
6. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 30th anniversary edition, 2006), 2.
7. Dawkins, Selfish, 22.
8. M. Buchanan, "Wild, Wild Life," Sydney Morning Herald, The Guide, March 24, 2003, 6.
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Quotable
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Countless "Christians" today believe..."because it works" (pragmatism), because they "feel it is true in their experience" (subjectivism), because they sincerely believe it is true "for them" (relativism), and so on....The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. It is not true because we experience it; we experience it-deeply and gloriously-because it is true.
Os Guinness, Time for Truth, 58
When the Christian life becomes a lifestyle and no longer a relationship with a Person-rather than growing in the grace and knowledge of the Savior, we will develop in the art of refining, polishing, and perfecting the flesh. Then we can have the programs and activities, methods and formulas, strategies and procedures, systems and theologies, political involvement and community service...religious causes..."how-to" seminars and self-help books...and even outstanding character qualities-all without Christ as our sufficiency! Our flesh is very creative and knows how to make itself appear and act spiritual. But it is still the flesh, and it is rotten to the core!
Jerry Benjamin, Simply Singular: Is Christ Prominent or Preeminent?, 22-23
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Q&A
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Question: Enclosed is a booklet by Harold Camping titled, What Must I Do to Become Saved? I would appreciate your opinion about what he says.
Response: Harold Camping is a confused man who is leading many astray.
He owns and controls everything that is said on Family Radio Network (40
+ stations and 100 + translators). His unbiblical teaching goes out in
23 languages by short wave. Very little outside ministry is aired on his network. He believes that the church replaced Israel and that the Church Age ended in 1988; God is done with organized churches, we are to worship only in our homes, listen to Family Radio, and follow Camping.
In these fellowships there is no authority except Camping's teachings, no baptism, no breaking of bread.
In 1992 he wrote and self-published 1994?, which predicted that the world would end September 6, 1994. When that didn't happen, he decided (as did Ellen G. White of the Seventh-day Adventists for 1844 and Charles Taize Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses for 1874, then 1914), that the date was right but the interpretation wrong. Then, in 2002, Camping published The End of the Church Age...and After. He says the Bible's meaning is progressively revealed, and much previously unknown is now being revealed through him. The "end of the world" will now be 2011. So says his 2005 book titled Time Has an End: A Biblical History of the World, 11,013 BC - 2011 AD. He's way off on the "BC" also.
His background is Dutch Reformed and his Calvinism dominates the booklet
mentioned: You can't know whether you are one of the elect for whom Christ died-you can hope you are, but there is nothing one can do about it. Admitting this hopeless fact is required for salvation. He says:
God...can save an elect individual at any time....The only requirement is [to] be under the hearing of the Bible. At the moment of salvation, God gives that individual spiritual ears and a new eternal soul. Thus, a baby [as Calvin said] can be saved as readily as a mature adult....At an appropriate time...God will cause this person to actually experience the wonderful fact of salvation [and] a new resurrected soul.
Under the heading on page 17, "What Must I Do to Become Saved?", he
responds: "I cannot do anything....I must patiently wait upon the mercy of God....It is entirely possible that I, too...could be one of those who are chosen by God to become saved." He says that verses such as, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" don't tell the sinner how to get saved. Why? "When God is speaking to unsaved people, He is speaking to spiritual corpses [but] one here, one in another place...begins to believe...finds in their life a strong desire to obey the Bible [because] Jesus [has] created within them a new soul [with] eternal life...because they had been chosen by God from before the beginning of creation."
So the "good news" we preach to the world is not that anyone may believe on Christ and be saved but that maybe one was elected unto salvation. We can't know for sure, but if we're one of the elect, God will give us a new "resurrected" soul and cause us to believe and to love His Word.
Some of the most revered Christian leaders of today teach this same Calvinism but more subtly. We hear, from around the world, of Calvinism infiltrating evangelical churches and causing division. We also hear of many, including leaders, being rescued from Calvinism through reading What Love Is This? (See offering list.)
Question: John Hagee says we should not witness to the Jewish people; God will take care of them. Is this biblical?
Response: Speaking at the last Pre-trib Seminar in Dallas, Hagee said he had never taught this. In fact, he has taught it a number of times. The Houston Chronicle (4/30/88, sec. 6, p. 1) quoted Hagee, "I'm not trying to convert the Jewish people to the Christian faith...trying to convert Jews is a waste of time."
It only takes a few Bible verses to expose this serious heresy condemned by Paul in Galatians 1. The first Christians were all Jews. Peter preached the gospel on the day of Pentecost to Jews. The early Christians and apostles thought the gospel was only for Jews and preached "the word...unto the Jews only" (Acts 11:19). God had to give Peter a vision to get him to preach to Gentiles (Acts 10:9-16). In every town Paul entered, he first went into the synagogue, where he preached to the Jews, and only when they rejected the gospel did he turn to the Gentiles (Acts 9:20; 13:5, 14-46; 14:1; 17:2, etc.). Why did he always offer salvation to the Jews first? Because, as we are clearly told, "the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation...to the Jew first..." (Rom 1:16).
Question (Representative of several): I was listening to the Bible Answer Man when someone called in to ask Hank [Hanegraaff] about Dave Hunt. Please respond to what he said (from a transcript): "Dave Hunt has been a popular Christian author...and I think it's ironic that his organization is called The Berean Call, because the Bereans were counted as being more noble by the apostle Paul because daily they examined the scriptures to see if what he was saying was so....If you examine...what Dave Hunt is saying...you will find out that he errs quite consistently in his interpretation of scripture.
"He, for example, will tell you that the great whore of Babylon in Revelation 17 (he wrote a book about it) is the Roman Catholic Church, so he is slandering an already vulnerable target....This statement is absolutely reprehensible. I'm going to point this out in a book that I just finished which is called, The Apocalypse Code....
"He is also a sensationalist. He was right about Y2K for all the wrong reasons...he imposed his dispensational theology, his rapture theory...on Y2K to come up with a particular interpretation of Y2K and I debunk that in a book that I wrote called The Millennium Bug Debugged...I wrote this book and came to the same conclusion, which was that Y2K was not going to be a big problem...but a lot of people were jumping on it and making all kinds of interpretations about it, but they were doing it [by] imposing their particular model of eschatology on the scripture as Dave Hunt did when he wrote A Woman Rides the Beast. So yeah, this is a guy that you need to be very careful with because if you test what he says in light of scripture you'll find out that he gets it wrong more often than not."
Response: Whenever Hank is asked about me, this is his standard response. It is slanderous. I gave a more detailed response 11 years ago (TBC Q&A May 1996).
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful institution in history and the world today. Yet Hank describes it as a "vulnerable target." What?! I'm slandering it by identifying it as the whore in Revelation 17-18? The angel gives to John fourteen identifying characteristics that fit the Vatican (and nothing else) perfectly. This is how Luther and the Reformers and the thousands of true Christians down through history whom the RCC slaughtered (including even some Roman Catholic leaders) have always identified the "whore." Of these martyrs, the great historian, Will Durant, wrote, "The Roman Church, they were sure, was the Whore of Babylon." Einerius, an inquisitor appointed by Pope Innocent III 350 years before the Reformation, said of the Waldensian Christians, whom the RCC was attempting to exterminate, "They claim [that] the Roman Church is the whore described in John's Revelation." Even St. Bonaventure, cardinal and general of the Franciscans, in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, 300 years before the Reformation, called Rome "the harlot who makes kings and nations drunk with the wine of her whoredoms." D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "I would not hesitate with the Reformers...to [say that the RCC] is, as the Scripture puts it, 'the whore.'" When I tried to explain this to Hank and his staff many years ago, they accused me of inventing a new idea unknown in history. Their guffaws nearly drove me out of Hank's office.
My book, Y2K: A Reasoned Response to Mass Hysteria?, was published before Hank's. He says my Y2K book was based upon my "dispensational theology...rapture theory"? He only needed to read the back cover ("Dave Hunt argues that...Y2K has no direct relationship to biblical prophecy"), to realize that this is a baseless charge.
For the first 165 pages I quote the doomsayers, Christian and secular, who were predicting that millions would die. I analyze the problem from a purely technical and practical basis, quote the experts, top bankers, and IT managers who were not concerned at all, and explain why Y2K was not going to be any problem. I point out the folly of church leaders who were organizing Christians to store up food and water with which to rescue unsaved neighbors and thereby win them to Christ. The churches in our own town, led by a "Y2K Preparedness Committee," were going to rescue Bend from disaster. This was the biggest thing in the church for months. I won't name the popular Christian leaders who promoted this craze, nor those who accused me of causing a complacency that would kill millions.
It was not until page 166 that I dealt with Y2K from a biblical standpoint because so many Christian leaders were warning the inevitable computer crash would usher in a cashless society and the reign of Antichrist. Really? A cashless society would need computers, and so would the Antichrist to control the world. I pointed out the folly of trying to tie every apparent war or disaster to Bible prophecy and quoted the predictions of Christian leaders and prophecy teachers making Y2K a part of Bible prophecy. I wrote: "Sadly, each time a correspondence has been attempted between a current event and a specific biblical prophecy and the event failed to live up to that expectation (as in the case of the Gulf War), Bible prophecy was discredited....There is a great danger of the same disillusionment occurring again when Bible teachers link Y2K with Bible prophecy....Throughout this book we provide sufficient documentation to show that there will not be a general failure of computers on January 1, 2000. Yet a surprising number of Christians say that God has been confirming the worst Y2K disaster scenario to them by revelation and dreams."
Only on page 182 did I chide Christians for being so obsessed with Y2K that they had forgotten their hope of heaven and instead of looking for the Rapture were spending their time, money, and efforts preparing to survive Y2K on earth. For the next 20 pages I show that the Y2K disaster predictions, far from fulfilling biblical prophecy, contradicted it.
Then I go back to the technical reasons why Y2K was not going to be what the alarmists were saying.
I hope that Hank's accusations that I was "right about Y2K for all the wrong reasons [and] imposed [my] dispensational...rapture theory...on Y2K to come up with a particular interpretation of Y2K," as well as his claims relative to the "whore of Babylon" will at last be put to rest.
question: I've told unsaved friends that the Qur'an, Book of Mormon, etc., are false additions to the Bible. They asked me, "What is different about the many Old Testament books added to the Torah, and the New Testament to the Old?
response: The Qur'an, Book of Mormon, etc., make no claim of being part of the Bible, contradict it completely, and obviously have different authors. The entire Old and New Testaments agree with, foretell and/or fulfill each other, and clearly have the same Author.
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News Alert
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http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2946397, 3/13/2007: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, is facing some tough questions this morning about controversial comments he made about homosexuality and gays serving in the military during a newspaper interview.
Pace was asked about his view on gays in the military by the Chicago Tribune. His answer was carefully worded, but his meaning was unmistakable.
"My upbringing is such that I believe there are certain things, certain types of conduct that are immoral," Pace said during the tape-recorded interview.
"I believe that military members who sleep with other military members'
wives are immoral in their conduct, [and] that we should not tolerate that."
"I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts."
Those comments are sure to provoke a firestorm today on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have been trying to overturn the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military.
Pace made it clear that he supported the policy because he believed homosexual acts were "immoral."
The "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which was instituted by President Clinton and written by then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, allows gays in the military only if they stay in the closet.
Pace says he supports the policy because it bans homosexual acts.
"I do not believe the armed forces of the U.S. are well served by saying through our policies that it is OK to be immoral in any way," Pace said.
A spokesperson for Pace told ABC News that the general had been asked to give his personal opinion, and "he provided it."
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Itinerary
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Apr 13-14
So. Manitoba Prophecy Conference (Dave)
Winkler MB
(204) 325-6714
Apr 15
Ambassador Baptist Church (Dave)
Morden MB
(204) 822-3398
Apr 20-21
Discerning the Times Bible Conference (T.A.)
Saskatoon SK
(306) 717-0374
Apr 27- May 8
Various Assemblies of Believers in Albania (Dave) GEOSTURM01@aol.com
Jun 2-3
A Church for Jesus (Dave)
Port Neches TX
(409) 722-6959
Jul 6-7
Berean Calvary Chapel (Dave)
Kirkville NY
(315) 656-7021
Jul 8-14
Word of Life (Dave)
Schroon Lake NY
(518) 532-7114
Aug 3-4
Hope for Today Conference (Dave)
Chino Hills CA
(800) 752-4253
Aug 10-12
TBC Conference (Dave / TA)
Bend OR
(800) 937-6638
Aug 22-26
Hong Kong (Dave / TA)
(852) 2336-7602
Sep 7-9
Great Lakes Prophecy Conference (Dave / TA)
Appleton WI
(920) 735-1242
Sep 12-15
Winnipeg Prophecy Conference (Dave)
Winnipeg MB
(204) 853-7786
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Letters
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Dear Dave,
Words fail to express my appreciation for the way you have covered the current state of world affairs in...Judgment Day....We are indeed living in the last days and our hope rests not in the "strength of the horse"
(implements of war) but in trusting God and His prophetic Word. [Many] people (so-called believers included) exhibit disdain for anything dealing with the word "prophecy."...In fact, even in many so-called sound churches, the mere mention of the word "prophecy" sets the speaker up as a sure target for...ridicule. The standard response...is, "We've heard all this before!" The truth revealed in Judgment Day, however, is not only confirmed by the Word of God but also [events] reported daily by the world media. Thank you for using your God-given talent to call the world's attention to global events which are now spiraling out of man's control and for showing us where we must look for answers. DT (KY)
Dear Dave,
Thank you for your newsletter. It is so informative and very needed in
these days. Sometimes I feel that maybe I am not understanding things
and that I am wrong and that nobody sees things the way I do, and then
your newsletter will come in the mail and I realize I'm not alone or
crazy. JE (IN)
Dear Dave,
I thank...God for the team of The Berean Call, who continued to send
your...publication to me during a troubled period in my life. [It] was a
source of encouragement and strength because it has a "single eye,"
focused on God's Word alone for truth. (Matt 6:22). An elderly Christian
lady shared this verse with me years ago to show the importance of
holding fast to biblical truth as the sole, absolute, and final
authority of my faith. Now that I am becoming the older woman, I am
following the example of this fine lady who has since gone home to be
with the Lord. This is my main thrust in ministering to younger women-to
take God's Word into their hearts just as God has written it, not
to...try to redefine His doctrine or to mix His words with the consensus
of man's opinions. MP (MA)
Dear Dave, TA, and Friends,
I caused the death of a friend. After thirteen years, I was [finally]
able to ask for and receive forgiveness from his mom. I have a good
life....I have running water, filtered air, and free electricity in my
"dwelling." Literally half the people in the world can't say that.
People love me and I can...appreciate that love now. Most of all, my
Creator, Father, Master, Lord, Savior has a pure desire for me, which is
not tainted by a willful heart but rather continually manifested in His
patient drawing of me toward Him. When I got off dope... I caught the
pointed revelation that my life was ruined because of my own will. I
started to take responsibility for my situation, understood my
accountability to my Creator, and identified with Christ's death and
resurrection....But it took a five-year [period of trials] before my
heart was open to God's still, small voice....And though I had a lack of
fellowship, I had The Berean Call....I thank...you for your acceptance
of the monumental duty of love the Lord has set before you....I remind
myself when I deal with hopefully future believers that The Berean
Call's mission is not to judge and bad-mouth but to inform and warn out
of love-real, godly, loving consideration for a soul either unsaved or
just barely shining. JH (prisoner, NE)
Dear Dave,
I think it is unfortunate, Dave, that you work so hard at dividing God's
people rather than uniting them. Is it any wonder that we are losing the
war? Even the Lord himself said that a house divided against itself
cannot stand. Instead of cutting up those who hold to sound doctrine,
expose the Benny Hinn's, the Copeland's, and Schuller's, or the DaVinci
Codes, and the like. That is the kind of error that the body of Christ
needs to have exposed....You and Calvin are not that far apart, although
he never got into end time interpretations....His overall interpretation
could lead to a different end than yours, and I could see where that
could be a problem for you. Throughout my Christianity, I have had to
let the Spirit of God transform my thinking from previously held views,
because as you yourself have said, not Calvin, not our leaders, and not
you, but the Word of God is the final authority. LM (CA)
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TBC Notes
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Our Blessed Hope
Let us all be encouraged to keep "Looking for that blessed hope, and the
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus
2:13).
I know I need that encouragement. But it's not because my love for the
Lord has cooled off; it's because I get distracted, even drawn, from
time-to-time, to the things of this world.
When one considers the history of the church regarding its attitude
toward its "blessed hope" through the Rapture, it's easy to recognize
the conditions that cause apathy. As true believers got comfortable with
or began to preoccupy themselves with this world, they simply lost
interest in the imminent return of Jesus for them, His bride, to take
her to heaven.
That loss of interest had another dire consequence, one we tend to
forget about when we think about the Rapture. The doctrine with its
emphasis upon imminency has us expecting our Lord's coming for us at any
moment. Such an expectation has a purifying effect upon our lives, as
the Apostle John tells us: "We know that, when he shall appear, we shall
be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this
hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3: 2,3).
Lord, keep our hearts and minds stayed upon You, doing what pleases You,
and continually looking for Your appearing!
T.A. McMahon
Executive Director
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TBC Extra
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Idolatry
J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)
[Excerpts] Let me, then, first of all supply a definition of idolatry.
Let me show what it is.
It is of the utmost importance that we should understand this. Unless I
make this clear, I can do nothing with the subject. Vagueness and
indistinctness prevail upon this point, as upon almost every other in
religion. The Christian who desires [to] not be continually running
aground in his spiritual voyage, must have his channel well buoyed, and
his mind well stored with clear definitions.
I say then, that idolatry is a worship, in which the honor due to the
triune God, and to God only, is given to some of his creatures, or to
some invention of His creatures.
It may vary. It may assume different forms, according to the ignorance
or the knowledge-the civilization or the barbarism, of those who offer
it. It may be grossly absurd and ludicrous, or it may closely border on
truth, and being most superficially defended. But whether in the
adoration of the idol of Juggernaut, or in the adoration of the Pope in
St. Peter's at Rome, the principle of idolatry is in reality the same.
In either case the honor due to God is turned aside from Him, and
bestowed on that which is not God. And whenever this is done, whether in
heathen temples or in professedly Christian Churches, there is an act of
idolatry.
It is not necessary, for a man to formally deny God and Christ, in order
to be an idolater. Far from it. Professed reverence for the God of the
Bible and actual idolatry, are perfectly compatible. They have often
been done side by side, and they still do so. The children of Israel
never thought of renouncing God when they persuaded Aaron to make the
golden calf. "Here are your gods," they said, "who brought you up out of
Egypt." And the feast in honor of the calf was kept as a "festival to
the LORD (Jehovah)" (Exodus 32:4, 5).
Jeroboam, again, never pretended to ask the ten tribes to cast off their
allegiance to the God of David and Solomon. When he set up the calves of
gold in Dan and Bethel, he only said, "It is too much for you to go up
to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of
Egypt" (1 Kings 12:28).
In both instances, we should observe, the idol was not set up as a rival
to God, but under the pretense of being a help-a steppingstone to His
service. But, in both instances, a great sin was committed. The honor
due to God was given to a visible representation of Him. The majesty of
Jehovah was offended. The second commandment was broken. There was, in
the eyes of God, a flagrant act of idolatry.
Let us mark this well. It is high time to dismiss from our minds those
loose ideas about idolatry, which are common in this day. We must not
think, as many do, that there are only two sorts of idolatry-the
spiritual idolatry of the man who loves his wife, or child, or money
more than God; and the open, gross idolatry of the man who bows down to
an image of wood, or metal, or stone, because he knows no better. We may
rest assured that idolatry is a sin, which occupies a far wider field
than this. It is not merely a thing in pagan lands, that we may hear of
and pity at missionary meetings; nor yet is it a thing confined to our
own hearts, that we may confess before the mercy-seat upon our knees. It
is a pestilence that walks in the Church of the Living Christ to a much
greater extent than many suppose. It is an evil that, like the man of
sin, "that sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be
God" (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
It is a sin that we all need to watch and pray against continually. It
creeps into our religious worship unnoticed, and is upon us before we
are aware. Those are tremendous words which Isaiah spoke to the faithful
Jew-not to the worshiper of Baal, remember, to the man who actually came
to the temple (Isaiah 66:3): "Whoever sacrifices a bull is like one who
kills a man, and whoever offers a lamb, like one who breaks a dog's
neck; whoever makes a grain offering is like one who presents pig's
blood, and whoever burns memorial incense, like one who worships an idol."
This is that sin which God has especially denounced in His Word. One
commandment out of ten is devoted to the prohibition of it. Not one of
all the ten contains such a solemn declaration of God's character, and
of His judgments against the disobedient: "I, the LORD your God, am a
jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the
third and fourth generation of those who hate me" (Exodus 20:5). Not
one, perhaps, of all the ten is so emphatically repeated and amplified,
and especially in the fourth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. This is
the sin, of all others, to which the Jews seem to have been most
inclined to commit before the destruction of Solomon's temple. What is
the history of Israel under their judges and kings but a sorrowful
record of repeated falling away into idolatry? Again and again we read
of "high places" and "false gods." Again and again we read of
captivities and chastisements on account of idolatry. Again and again we
read of a return to the old sin. It seems as if the love of idols among
the Jews was naturally bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. The
besetting sin of the Old Testament Church, in one word, was idolatry. In
the face of the most elaborate ceremonial ordinances that God ever gave
to His people, Israel was incessantly turning aside after idols, and
worshipping the work of men's hands.
This is the sin, of all others, which has brought down the heaviest
judgments on the visible Church. It brought on Israel the armies of
Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. It scattered the ten tribes, burned up
Jerusalem, and carried Judah and Benjamin into captivity. It brought on
the Eastern Churches, in later days, the overwhelming flood of the
Muslim invasion, and turned many a spiritual garden into a wilderness.
The desolation which reigns where Cyprian and Augustine once preached,
the living death in which the Churches of Asia Minor and Syria are
buried, are all attributable to this sin. All testify to the same great
truth which the Lord proclaims in Isaiah: "I will not give my glory to
another or my praise to idols" (Isaiah 42:8).
Let us gather up these things in our minds, and ponder them well.
Idolatry is a subject which, in every Christian Church, that wants to
keep herself pure, should be thoroughly examined, understood, and known.
It is not for nothing that Paul lays down the stern command, "Flee from
idolatry."
This updated and revised manuscript is copyrighted 1998
by Tony Capoccia. All rights reserved.
Tony Capoccia - www.biblebb.com
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complete catalog of products.
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02 March 2007
The Berean Call Newsletter -- March 2007
THE BEREAN CALL
www.thebereancall.org
March 2007
Weaning Evangelicals
Off the Word-Part II
T.A. McMahonLast month, in part one of this series, we quoted the Apostle Paul speaking about how Christians would view doctrine in the time prior to the return of Christ for His church: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3,4). Obviously, biblical doctrine will not be looked upon favorably. The implication is that doctrine will be regarded as rather burdensome, something that Christians of the future won’t want to “endure.” Conforming to sound doctrine involves spiritual discipline, thoughtful diligence, and making choices based on God’s Word that go against the desires of the flesh.What is sound doctrine? Very simply, it is the teachings of God, including His instructions, His precepts, His commandments—in short, it is every word that He says from Genesis to Revelation. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). Yet in the Last Days, many if not most Christians will not endure sound doctrine.So what will be left? Apostasy—a form of Christianity that is a mere shell of what the Bible teaches. It will accommodate the lusts of the flesh under the guise of godliness, as Paul tells us in his second epistle to Timothy. Furthermore, there will be an ample supply of persuasive Christians around who will, wittingly or unwittingly, subtly and not so subtly (but nonetheless surely), subvert sound doctrine. And the process is already well underway.As we pointed out in part one, Satan’s chief strategy in the seduction of mankind is to undermine, pervert, distort, corrupt, libel, denigrate, and deny the Scriptures by any and every means he can. The end product of his mission will be an apostate religion and church in which its adherents will worship and follow the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness whom Satan will empower. Fulfilling his mission involves a rather simple formula that was terribly effective in the Garden of Eden and throughout the Old Testament and Apostolic times. It has continued throughout church history right up to our present day: to induce humanity to deviate from and then ultimately reject what God has said. Adam and Eve were the first to succumb. An inherited sin nature made their offspring easier prey for the adversary, the devil, who goes about as a roaring lion, “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).God continually declared to the Israelites that if they obeyed Him they would be blessed, and if they walked in disobedience they would suffer the devastating consequences of their sin: their separation from God, and God’s separation from them, the loss of righteous guidance and protection, and the various disciplinary actions of God, including being subjected to His wrath. Israel’s wilderness experiences in Exodus and through the cycles of rebellion and repentance in the book of Judges testify to the fact of God being true to His word and His warnings. Deuteronomy seems to be an exercise in redundancy as Moses again and again issues God’s instructions to the children of Israel and cautions them to carefully obey what He has commanded. It wasn’t just a matter of law, but of life: “And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life” (Deuteronomy 32:46,47).Samuel, the prophet and judge, echoes Moses’ exhortation more than three centuries later: “Serve the Lord with all your heart; and turn ye not aside: for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain” (1 Samuel 12:20,21). Not only is turning from God a pursuit after vanity, something worthless, but the process itself is wickedness: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23). Samuel’s inspired analogy underscores not only the evil of rebellion as it relates to idolatry but it provides insight that helps us recognize Satan’s inducements to disobedience that are prevalent in the church today.Idolatry was the dominant issue. The children of Israel were commanded not to make graven images or gods of silver or gold (Exodus 20:3,4, 23). What was their reply? “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7). Yet days later, when Moses failed to return from Mount Sinai and fear set in, they turned from the words of God to what they supposed would better meet their emotional and spiritual “felt needs.” They fashioned a physical object to worship—a golden calf.Although their act was unmitigated rebellion against God, let’s consider what very likely influenced their thinking. Their spiritual leader had disappeared. Panic gripped them. They were more comfortable with the physical forms of worship learned from the Egyptians than with instructions from an invisible God. Perhaps Aaron thought the best way to pacify the people was to give them something their physical senses could relate to—something experientially reassuring.What’s wrong with taking a wholistic approach, i.e., meeting the needs of body, mind, and spirit? Wouldn’t their worship of a physical thing, as well as the spiritual stimulation of ritual, be “acceptable,” as long as it was directed toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Aaron must have thought so. He crafted a golden calf, built an altar, oversaw the liturgy, and dedicated the feast “unto the Lord.” The Israelites’ response was a precursor to the spirit of religious ecumenism and compromise, so prevalent in our day, which is also based upon lies: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4).We urgently need a biblical understanding of what idolatry comprises. Old Testament examples and the admonitions against it are given by God. Why would they be relevant for us? Because the evangelical church today is following Aaron’s example! Most Christians would define idolatry as “whatever takes the place of God in our lives.” True. Yet, too often, that rather general answer fails to help us understand the ways and means by which idolatry works. Consequently, we may not have the discernment necessary to be on our guard against it.Why is idolatry so critical? Let’s start with the obvious: The Bible defines idols as false gods (Psalm 96:5). They are items of deception and, even worse, the creations of men and devils. To worship them is delusion. The veneration itself often consists of debauchery and depravity, ritual activities completely given over to the physical senses. Idolatry involves materialism and experientialism, totally oriented toward the flesh. The so-called gods are physically represented and sensually worshiped. Most evangelicals know all this, but what many seem not to understand today is the nature of idolatry and how it subverts our worship of the true and living God.The worship God desired from the Israelites, His people whom He set apart to receive His Messiah, stands in stark contrast to the religious endeavors of the heathen nations. Rather than giving them images, Moses spoke the words of God to them, and then he wrote the words in a Book. “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord...and he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people” (Exodus 24:4,7). He told them (then wrote it down) that the making of images to represent God is condemned: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4-5).Why would God give such a command? Because no image that man could ever draw, engrave, paint, sculpt, fashion through any medium, or conjure up in his mind could truly represent Jehovah God. He is infinite (1 Kings 8:27). He is spirit (John 4:24). He is invisible (John 1:18). Even the God-prescribed places of worship were drastically different from their pagan counterparts. There was nothing physical to worship! The Holy of Holies within the tabernacle, and later in Solomon’s temple, contained not the image of God but the Word of God, represented by the Ark of the Covenant. Contained within the Ark was the Testimony of God, the second set of tablets written by God’s own hand (Deuteronomy 10:1,2). Again, by the design of God, the emphasis is on the Word.God has chosen to reveal Himself to humanity through words, not Images. In like manner, worship must be through His Word, according to His Word.No doubt He selected words because they are best suited to convey precisely what He wants mankind to know and to do. Words have definite meanings and can be interpreted objectively. Only words, spoken or written, can come close to accurately communicating attributes of our transcendent God and His divine nature. On the other hand, worship aroused by imagery is based upon the imagination rather than upon the teachings of Scripture. Religious images can at best only convey information in a symbolic and superficial way. Their interpretations are mostly subjective, experiential, and rely mainly upon the imagination of the observer. The message of the Bible, however, is not about aesthetic gratification but about our redemption; it’s not about our feelings but His truth, which images can never express but only oppose. Jesus prayed to His Father for His disciples, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17).The theology of the Bible is instructional. It is given in words so that man can understand it. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7). The Bible encourages faith that is founded upon evidence, logic, and reason. No image-reliant belief system can make those claims, and when the people of the Book turn to religious imagery, they are abandoning reason and following idolatry. That happened to the Israelites throughout their history, including when they were instructed by God to make a bronze serpent as a symbol that ultimately pointed to Christ’s death on the Cross, in payment for the sins of the world. They later turned it into an object of idolatry and as a consequence God told them to destroy it (2 Kings 18:4).Throughout its history, Christendom has likewise succumbed to idolatry through imagery and liturgical ritual. Roman Catholic tradition credits St. Veronica as having captured the image of Christ upon her veil, which supposedly became the source for later icons, paintings, and engravings of Jesus. St. Veronica continues to be venerated today when Catholics observe the ritual of the Stations of the Cross. Eastern Orthodoxy developed icons of Christ, Mary, and the Saints as devices for mystically transcending the temporal through imagery that enables one to “spiritually see” indescribable divinity. In the ninth century, the Russian Orthodox Church incorporated icons as a central part of their worship, including a form of divination known as “praying through the icons.” Again, this is religious rebellion, which the Scriptures tell us is as the sin of witchcraft.The Emperor Constantine did much to introduce idolatrous imagery into Christianity in order to appease the multitudes of pagans he coerced into joining his newly favored religion of the realm. It was during the Middle Ages, however, that the Roman Catholic Church greatly increased its use of visual imagery. Religious statues, paintings, reliefs, the display of relics, as well as expanded liturgies with the use of luxurious vestments, incense, candles, and processions were increasingly emphasized to encourage the participation of the mostly illiterate population. Rather than educate the people, the Church of Rome fed them an experiential, visual theology that prolonged their ignorance of the Scriptures and bred superstition. By God’s grace, Gutenburg’s printing press in the fifteenth century and the Reformation in the sixteenth century were instrumental in helping to turn those who “protested” against the abuses of the Catholic Church back to the Bible.Astonishingly, the evangelical church is progressively sliding into idolatry as it turns from the Word of God to visual imagery. A goal of the American Bible Society is to put the entire Bible on video to accommodate our visually oriented generation (which has little interest in reading). The Jesus Film, a dramatic representation of the Gospel of Luke, has been the staple of Campus Crusade’s overseas evangelical efforts. The very Catholic movie The Passion of the Christ became a runaway box-office hit, largely due to the overwhelming support it received from evangelicals. Biblically conservative mission organizations such as Gospel for Asia are using Mel Gibson’s Hollywood production as part of its outreach program. Millions of The Passion of the Christ DVDs were purchased by evangelical churches for their Sunday schools, Bible studies, and small group meetings.Religious movies are on the rise (e.g., The Nativity Story, One Night with the King) as evangelicals “partner” with Hollywood and demonstrate that they are an eager and profitable market. One pastor, whose church bought out theaters for private showings of The Passion (which produced only “one conversion”) repented. He came under the conviction that rather than partnering with, his church was, in fact, “pimping for Hollywood.” As true as that may be, and as praiseworthy as his repentance was, if he doesn’t understand the serious nature (as explained above) of attempting to represent God’s Word in dramatic visual form, he is vulnerable to repeating the same error with visual idolatry.This is not a blanket condemnation of the film/video medium, but films cannot be used to present the Scriptures visually without becoming idolatrous. Not only are the images historically false (they are conjured up from the imagination of a screenwriter or director) but they must also conform to the mechanics of the medium (acting, cinematography, art direction, lighting, music, sound effects, etc.), which are designed to manipulate the senses and the emotions for dramatic purposes (see Showtime for the Sheep?, http://www.thebereancall.org/ a more detailed explanation).Biblical movies are just one trend among dozens that are contributing to weaning evangelicals off the Word of God and producing biblically illiterate Christians. This is especially true regarding our visually oriented youth. In the final part of this series, we want to give more extensive examples of movements within evangelical Christianity that are aggressively turning our next generation away from the Scriptures and toward an idolatry of experientialism.We serve a merciful God who can rescue a soul out of the darkest of circumstances but who will not support by His grace man’s religious ways and means in their attempts to serve Him. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). To the degree that we deviate from His way, we are lapsing into idolatry. As Jesus explained, “God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). TBC----------------------------------------------------------------------------Quotable----------------------------------------------------------------------------God loves broken things and broken people. As Vance Havner wrote, “It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that sheds forth perfume. It is Jacob limping from Jabbok who has power with God and men. It is Peter weeping bitterly who returns to greater power than ever.”William MacDonald, The Forgotten Command: Be Holy, 195Out of the heart “are the issues of life....” As our thoughts are, so are our affections...our prayers, and all else....God...knows the thoughts and judges them....In what does the difficulty of Christianity lie [but] in keeping of the thoughts in bounds. Without this, all religion is but “bodily exercise.” Papists may mumble over their prayers, hypocrites may talk, but this is godliness.Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680), The Vanity of Thoughts, 28Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but recordOne death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne—Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891----------------------------------------------------------------------------Q&A----------------------------------------------------------------------------Question: I love TBC. It keeps me informed on the issues that the fundamentalist sect of Christianity is concerned with....I’m an “informed atheist”...in that I’m just as knowledgeable about the Bible, its god and related subjects as either Dave or T.A. Tell Dave I read In Six Days. That book confirmed why sectarian religious views and science are incompatible. I was saddened at the waste of the 50 authors’ minds. As you are aware, the greatest enemy of religion is reason (Martin Luther), for it exposes “faith” as the emperor’s new clothes that it is. All one has to do to overthrow atheism...is to obey Paul when he says the gospel isn’t word only, but a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. How hard can it be for an In-Six-Days god to put arms, legs, and other missing body parts on the fine Christian men/women who were deceived by Bush to fight for God and country in Iraq? Perhaps Biblegod could “stop” the sun—which Hezekiah says is a “light” thing....Even something as easy as causing an iron axehead to “swim” will suffice. How hard can any of this be for a real God? (Humans making excuses for their God’s inaction is unworthy of a real, divine being.) Man has invented close to 6,000,000 gods! All of you at The Berean Call are atheists concerning all but one! I have simply added that one to the pile of would-be gods. Love your newsletter.Response [as promised in Letters section last month]: Apparently TBC hasn’t helped you but has only given your atheist mill more grist for mocking God. That fact either reflects our incompetence—or your unwillingness to admit the truth that would bow you before your Creator. You are not as knowledgeable about the Bible as you think you are. Instead, you exemplify the scripture that says, “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tm 3:7).We encourage readers to “search the Scriptures daily.” Neither the Scriptures nor TBC promotes “sectarian religious views.” If you knew the Bible as well as you claim, you would know that it is not about religion. The words “religion” and “religious” are found only seven times in the entire Bible—six times referring to false religion, and only once to true religion—which is not what you think it is. You think science and religion are at odds, yet the National Academy of Sciences says they are not.You say that faith is unscientific, “the emperor’s new clothes.” But hundreds of top scientists, past and present, disagree with you. William D. Phillips, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry, once said that so many of his colleagues were Christians that he couldn’t walk across his church’s fellowship hall without “tripping over a dozen physicists....” You seem to be out of touch with science and scientists. Has your atheism blinded you to the truth?Astronauts are scientists. The crew of Apollo 8 (William Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman) have all been inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame. They were the first humans to circle the moon, and on the evening of December 24, 1968, broadcast back to earth their reading of the first 10 verses in Genesis. They introduced this passage about God creating the universe with these words, “For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.”Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon. The first food or drink ever ingested on the moon was the bread and wine Aldrin had brought to celebrate communion. And you say science and religion are incompatible and mock believers as unscientific? You are really out of touch!As for “sectarian religious views,” not one of the 50 scientist authors of In Six Days promotes such. These Christians are all competent scientists, respected in their fields, from Biology to Physics, Biochemistry to Genetics, Mathematics to Geophysics, Botany to Geology, etc.Your suggestion that scientists must be atheists contradicts the facts and reveals either ignorance or prejudice. The greatest scientists of all time, the founders of science, nearly all believed in God. Among believers were: Aggasiz, Bacon, Bell, Boyle, Copernicus, Cuvier, Descarte, Fabre, Faraday, Joule, Kelvin, Kepler, Maxwell, Mendel, Newton, Pascal, Pasteur, and too many others to name. Boyle even left a fund to support lectures refuting atheism that still continue at Oxford today. Newton published more material devoted to the Bible than about mathematics and physics. Is your ignorance showing, or is it just prejudice?You claim to know the Bible yet say that “the greatest enemy of religion is reason”? You haven’t heeded God’s challenge: “Come now, and let us reason together” (Is 1:18). Perhaps you overlooked the many times that Paul reasoned with Jews and Gentiles from the Scriptures. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that Peter reminds believers always to be ready to give a reason for why they believe (1 Pt 3:15).It is irrational to blame God for what Bush or any other man does in His name. And it is equal folly to blame God for wars and other evil and suffering in the world. This is not the world God made but the world we have made in our selfish rebellion against Him. Of course TBC doesn’t honor the false gods that foolish men have invented. But even if there were a billion, that would be no reason to say there could not be one true God.Question: Have you read former President Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid? Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has said that Carter’s book is “blatantly one-sided and unbecoming of a former president.” I was wondering what your thoughts are.Response: Yes, I’ve read that brazenly anti-Israel book. Israel is blamed for everything, the Arabs are whitewashed. Arafat is called “a strong leader...well-educated...[who] turned much of his attention to raising funds for the care and support of the refugees and inspiring worldwide contributions to their cause.” No mention is made that Arafat and his PLO murdered thousands, or that he siphoned off billions for his Swiss bank accounts, lied continually, and never kept one promise that he made to Israel. Carter writes as an unabashed promoter of PLO and Muslim lies, which he passes off as the informed truth, for example: that Arabs, PLO, or “Palestinians” have never threatened Israel, have always wanted peace and have done all they could to effect it, and that the land of Israel belongs to them as descendants of the original inhabitants—none of this true!Carter dares to say that the Israeli kibbutz dwellers in 1948, who had few and inferior weapons, were “better armed” than the regular armies of the six Arab nations (600,000 against 60,000) who attacked Israel with tanks and planes, of which Israel had none. He says it was “the continuing state of war between Israel and its neighbors [that] caused many Jews to flee Syria, Iraq, and other Arab countries to Israel.” No, it was 1,300 years of perpetual persecution and murder of thousands that caused Jews to flee to Israel when it became a nation and offered the first refuge they’d ever had.Carter’s claim that in 1993 Arafat and his PLO “recognized the right of Israel to exist in peace and security...renounced the use of terrorism [and] those articles of the PLO covenant that deny Israel’s right to exist” is not true. He blames “Israeli repression” of Palestinian rights for the terrorist attacks against Israel, exonerating the Arabs. He accuses Israel of imposing “apartheid” upon the “Palestinians” and says, “Peace will come...when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law...by accepting its legal borders.”Carter is scandalously dishonest. In fact, Israel accepted the borders set by the UN in 1948. “Palestinians” could have been living in peace for the last 60 years, had they done likewise. Instead, the Arabs refused to accept the existence of an Israel of any size, attacked to annihilate her, and have sought to destroy her ever since. Any land Israel ever took was in self-defense against an enemy that will not recognize her existence (no Arab map in the world shows Israel). Why should Israel retreat to the indefensible borders dictated by the UN in 1948 (as Carter advocates), which the Arabs refused to accept?Never in history has an attack upon any country other than Israel been for the purpose of annihilation, which has been sworn to repeatedly by the Arab world. Muslims must destroy Israel—or renounce their religion, Allah, Muhammad, and the Qur’an. Never was any nation except Israel blamed for failing to make peace with an enemy whose openly stated and irreversible goal was its total destruction. Never was a nation so pressured by the world to surrender territory taken in self-defense as has been Israel. Carter’s book justifies the Muslim desire to destroy Israel in order to make “peace.” In contrast, we give you the shocking truth in Judgment Day (see offering list).Question: Our church says you must speak in tongues or you don’t have the Holy Spirit. Is tongues for all?Response: Not a single verse says that the sign of having “received the Holy Spirit” is to speak in tongues. No one can be saved without being indwelt and sealed with the Holy Spirit. A Christian has been “born again...of the Spirit” (Jn 3:7,8) and “by one Spirit...baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). Those whom Paul asked, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost...?” (Acts 19:2-4) were not yet Christians. They were followers of John the Baptist and had never heard the gospel of Christ until Paul explained it to them.Paul asks a rhetorical question: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing?” (1 Cor 12:29,30).The obvious answer is, “No. Not every Christian is an apostle, prophet, teacher, worker of miracles, healer, etc.” There is no reason for the next two questions to have a different answer: “Do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?” Of course not -- unless all are apostles, prophets, and workers of miracles.The spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 are said to be distributed by the Holy Spirit when and to whom He wills. “Tongues” is part of this list. Just as no one can prophecy or heal at his own initiative or power, so no one can speak in tongues except as given at the time by the Holy Spirit. A basic error of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements has been to put tongues in a different category—a “gift” that one can “learn,” should continually “practice,” and can use whenever one pleases. That is not biblical.One might as well practice walking on water or raising the dead as “practice speaking in tongues.” We do not get any gift from God by practicing. That false teaching has led multitudes astray and causes “tongues speakers” (including leaders) so often to fall into immorality.“Tongues” is the most dangerous gift. One could hardly deceive anyone to believe that he was raising the dead or restoring a missing limb. But it is quite easy to deceive oneself and others into thinking one is speaking in tongues. Millions have been and still are under this delusion, with serious consequences evident everywhere.Question: Why is Israel giving up land -- and when will she once again have all the land God promised her?Response: The United States, UN, EU, and most of the world have been pressuring Israel ever since 1948 to give back the land she was forced to take in self-defense when attacked by Muslim neighbors determined to annihilate her. Tiny Israel is blamed for the terrorist attacks and wars that Arabs start. She depends upon Europe to buy her produce and upon the world to buy her electronics. If the nations boycotted her products (as some Christian denominations have advocated), how could she survive? Although Israel is under God’s judgment for centuries of rebellion against Him, she is also under His protection. There can be no other explanation for the fact that she exists today.Israel will only possess in peace all the land God promised her when Christ intervenes at Armageddon to rescue her, all Israel believes He is the Messiah, and He sets up His kingdom over her and the world on the throne of David. This is declared clearly in Ezekiel 36-39, Zechariah 12-14, and elsewhere.----------------------------------------------------------------------------News Alert----------------------------------------------------------------------------Denverpost.com, 2/6/07: Disgraced pastor goes for master’s degree in psychology [Excerpts]—Former National Association of Evangelicals president and pastor, the Rev. Ted Haggard, emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is “completely heterosexual” and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.Haggard broke a three-month silence in e-mails over the weekend to select members of his former church. In the message, Haggard revealed that he and his wife, Gayle, intend to leave Colorado Springs and pursue master’s degrees in psychology through online courses.Among other things, the overseers urged Haggard to enter a 12-step program for sexual addiction. Haggard’s “restoration” is being overseen by another panel: megachurch pastors Tommy Barnett and Jack Hayford, and H.B. London, who runs a Focus on the Family ministry to pastors.London said he was not surprised Haggard was considering the psychological field. “Many of us that go into the healing, helping professions do so out of some sort of dysfunction or traumatic event in our lives, and we want to do what we can to help other people avoid what we’ve gone through,” he said.[TBC: The only thing that is surprising about this article is that Haggard is not “confessing” that a demon made him carry on a sexual affair with a former male prostitute. That’s the usual rationale given by those involved with C. Peter Wagner’s Strategic Spiritual Warfare movement (see TBC issues May & June ’97...), a group heavily connected with Haggard and his church. But we suspect that wouldn’t play well in the press.On the other hand, the myth of psychological counseling still has the world and the church duped. “Three weeks of intensive counseling” gave him insights from the professionals, whose degrees and licensing necessitate that they ignore sin and place the root of the problem and the blame elsewhere (e.g., his parents, a childhood trauma, or some experience buried deep within his unconscious). Now he and his wife want to become professionals as well.Tragically, the leaven of delusion spreads. Overseers recommend the unbiblical, occult inspired “12-step program for sexual addiction.” Focus on the Family’s London sees hope in Haggard’s desire to join the “helping professions.”]----------------------------------------------------------------------------Itinerary----------------------------------------------------------------------------Mar 9-11Westside Bible Church (Dave)Meridian ID(208) 938-9424Apr 13-14South Manitoba Prophecy Conference (Dave)Winkler MB(204) 325-6714April 15Ambassador Baptist Church (Dave)Morden MB(204) 822-3398Apr 20-21Discerning the Times Bible Conference (T.A.)Saskatoon SK(306) 717-0374Apr 25- May 9Various Assemblies of Believers in Albania (Dave)GEOSTURM01@aol.comJun 2-3A Church of Jesus (Dave)Port Neches TX(409) 722-6959Jul 7-14Word of Life (Dave)Schroon Lake NY(518) 532-7114Aug 3-4Hope for Today Conference (Dave)Chino Hills CA(800) 752-4253Aug 9-11TBC Conference (Dave/TA)Bend OR(800) 937-6638----------------------------------------------------------------------------Letters----------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear Dave and Staff,Thank you all once again for another year’s magazines loaded with helpful information. Things here in the UK are spiraling out of control both morally and spiritually as a result, I firmly believe, of a judicial blindness upon the Nation’s leaders for willfully embracing and incessantly promoting devious lifestyles and concocting laws giving strong rights to the homosexual camp to sue anyone who does not bow the knee to their perversions. Please renew my subscription. GC (United Kingdom)Dear Mr. Hunt and Mr. McMahon,Let me thank you for The Berean Call letter every month. I appreciate your insight on the Scriptures and your truth on the Catholic religions. I was Catholic the first 35 years of my life (I’m 75 now) but thank God and His grace, I’m free. MD (KY)Dear Dave,I just finished reading your book The Mind Invaders for the second time. [It] really encouraged me, and even though it’s a work of fiction, I also know that evil spirits truly work in such a deceitful manner. By leading victims unaware by these methods of so-called spiritists and mediums, these evil forces lead untold thousands into the paths of deception. As believers, we should be “blowing the whistle” on such travesties, even when the “wise” of this world call us small-minded and intolerant. CP (prisoner, FL)Dear Folks at Berean Call,Please keep up the great work, particularly in your exposés on the failure of psychology and secular counseling. I work in the court system, and it’s discouraging and heartbreaking to see families in crisis being referred to counselors who do nothing but make their situations worse. It’s particularly distressing to see these spiritually bankrupt “solutions” used in juvenile courts, where so many lost, empty, precious children are floundering. I pray that their lives will be touched by true believers in Christ who will offer them life and hope in place of the deadness that all these secular programs doom them to. MC (NH)Dear Co-Laborers in Christ,About two years ago, I was attending a good Bible-based community church when seemingly out of nowhere TULIP teaching became the focal point. I struggled with the “T” [Total Depravity] and the “U” [Unconditional Election] but when it came to the “L” (Limited Atonement), I looked around the congregation and noticed no one else seemed to be looking around—stunned, as I was. This Calvinist teaching was taught in-depth for several months. Even before moving on to the “I” and “P,” I hit a pit of despair. For the first time since my salvation, I began to doubt and realized there was no assurance. If I’m chosen, I’m chosen. If I’m damned, I’m damned. And God is glorified in both? I was astounded to learn that the words “world” and “whosoever” did not mean what they implied but meant that “God so loved the ‘chosen’...” and they were “whosoever.” For months I continued searching and despairing....During this time, a friend came into [our] store and I tentatively shared with her my new-found doubts. My fear was that she too believed this TULIP doctrine. Instead she loaned me her husband’s book by Dave Hunt, What Love Is This? It was underlined and highlighted and I knew I needed my own copy. I contacted TBC and ordered the book....The ministry at TBC is invaluable. Many of our customers are delighted to find books that offer substance and answers to those who are thirsting, starving, and despairing. LP (WA)Dear Dave,It is with sadness that I ask to be removed from your mailing list. I have been an avid reader for over 12 years now. I am United Pentecostal but the apostolic movement is far greater than one organization. Of course, we believe in the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit of Christ. One can’t see a Spirit for He is invisible. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Spirit. He is invisible too. Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God. God manifest in human flesh. There is only 1 Spirit—not 2 or 3. Scriptures say that the Lord is that Spirit. There is only One Lord—not 2 or 3. Acts 2:37 clearly shows that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ....You are in grievous error in your remarks and my heart goes out to you and forgives you, but how can two walk together unless they be agreed? The Trinity doctrine is the only doctrine that links the Protestants and denominations to the Mother Harlot Church of Rome, kind of like an umbilical cord. We have severed all ties with Rome. VH (TX)Dear Berean Call,I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for your newsletter. It is refreshing to read articles that declare fundamental, God-inspired truth. So many mainstream Christian magazines and newsletters along with the ministers of those denominations have bowed to such deceptive and liberal thinking. By the inspired Word of God today, as God allows, I will seek to only fill my mind with God’s Word, “The Standard for Truth.” Thanks for writing material that uses God’s Word as your plumbline. ML (prisoner, SC)----------------------------------------------------------------------------TBC Notes----------------------------------------------------------------------------Letters, We Get LettersPlease don’t be upset if you take the time to write to us and you don’t receive a reply. Although we continue to grow as a ministry, we still try to keep TBC’s operation small and personal yet at the same time economically efficient. Aside from Dave, only one person answers letters on a regular basis, along with many other duties. Every letter is read, and the input is greatly appreciated and often put to use; but it is physically impossible to answer each one.We trust that our newsletter and the books and cds we recommend will continue to be the ministry’s primary information resource. The newsletter archives are available for free online and have proved to be tremendously valuable to our readers, providing answers to the majority of questions.T.A. McMahonExecutive Director----------------------------------------------------------------------------TBC Extra----------------------------------------------------------------------------SHAMANISM IN THE CHURCHOccult “Eagle Spirituality” Manifests in Popular “Prophetic” MinistriesAs demonstrated by native American culture and indigenous people groups worldwide, animal worship has long been a means of contacting and interacting with deceiving spirits. Equally pleased to appear in human or animal form, they often take willing participants on exciting out-of-body experiences or communicate “secret knowledge.”Modern shamans (who are as apt to wear suits as loin cloths) market seminars where everyday people can “encounter” their personal “power animal.” In public schools, children are encouraged to use their “imagination” and “dreams” for astral travel. Occult relaxation and visualization techniques are reinforced by literature such as the Harry Potter books and Scholastic’s “Animorphs” series, in which hero-children transform into creatures with special powers and abilities.Fictionalized in popular games and movies, these techniques are based on ancient occult practices that, once widely banned, now flourish virtually unchecked. According to answers.com, “a familiar spirit...obeys a witch, conjurer, or other users of the supernatural, and serves and helps that person....If they look like ordinary animals, they can be used to spy....These spirits [also]...inspire artists and writers.”Many new age writers and occult practitioners have been assisted or encouraged by animals they perceive as “familiars.” As Patrick Ryan, author of The Eagle’s Call: A Journey of Body, Mind, and Spirit recounts,When I was writing this book...an eagle often circled the building in which I lived, visiting many times....When I was...doubting my direction, a coyote also came to visit....Across the street, it looked toward me as if encouraging me on....So, led by the spirit of coyote, eagle and the many other guides of the universe, I was able to complete this tale. Its primary message is about following the call of my body, mind and spirit.Romans 1:18-32 gives a clear account of man’s “call of his body and mind”—a rejection of God in favor of nature worship: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things” (Rom 1:22-23).Perhaps in part due to the reverence of “animal spirits” by ancient pagan cultures, animals continue to play a significant symbolic role in our world today. School and professional sports teams adopt animal names such as the panthers, tigers, lions, bears, wolves, or eagles—based on popular significance of animal traits. Consumers even purchase “animal” car models and athletic shoes marketed for their perceived attributes of speed and power.So, what’s the fuss? Is animal symbology inherently evil? No, even Scripture makes generous use of animals as symbols—from love poems in The Song of Songs to comforting analogies of the Lord: “hide me under the shadow of thy wings” (Ps 17:8b) et al.Take the eagle, for example. Revered as a national symbol by various countries, Scripture makes several positive references to the eagle. One of the most popular verses cited for encouragement is “they shall mount up with wings like eagles...” (Is 40:31). Many are comforted by the eagle as a symbol of patriotism and American heritage (which is often equated with Christianity). Fewer though, take note of passages that portray the eagle in a negative light, or realize that the eagle doubles as a Masonic symbol of the phoenix, representing “rebirth through fire” in occult mythology.In addition to its being an “unclean” animal, Scripture also contains a number of negative references to the eagle (“They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey” (Job 9:26). Obadiah even contains a reference to Edom as an eagle, apparently as a type of Lucifer: “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord” (Ob 1:3-4).So why do the neo-prophets and apostles of today use the eagle as a symbol of choice? Many “prophetic” ministries associate eagles with tremendous natural vision and observable qualities of “rising above;” but like shamans and seers—ancient and modern—they err in assigning to eagles spiritual qualities. An occult website declares the eagle’s role is that of an “illuminating force” that rises on the east wind, whose gift is that of “seeing hidden spiritual truths” and “whose strength is by its connection to spirit guides.” The website advises: “One who flies with the Eagle has a responsibility...to operate from Higher Intent, to develop the latent abilities of Illumination, and then freely share this Illumination with Others.” In other words, a seer who channels the eagle is to “impart” this knowledge and “gifting” to others.A number of prominent ministries use the eagle as a corporate symbol, and most of these do so quite innocently. But research into the testimony of a young prophetess associated with C. Peter Wagner’s self-titled New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) raises great concern. (The NAR, a blended resurrection of several modern heresies—kingom-dominionism, manifest sons of God, new breed, et al.—is spreading like wildfire through a growing number of charismatic and evangelical churches.) Here is just one example of cause for alarm:Sharnael Wolverton...was called to the ministry at an early age....During [an] incredible period of seeking intimacy with [God] she encountered many dreams, visions, visitations and divine appointments leading to the birthing of Swiftfire Ministries....One divine appointment...was with Bob Jones, who introduced her to a golden eagle named “Swift.” “Swift is sent forth to those in order to carry the purposes of God swiftly.” Another encounter was with Patricia King of Extreme Prophetic, who had also been introduced to Swift.This admission by a professing Christian “minister” is nothing short of astounding! Aside from this startling testimony, most followers of these seers (and even skeptics) would not think twice about the recurring “eagle” motif on the websites of Sharnael Wolverton (swiftfire.org), Bob Jones (bobjones.org/itinerary), and Patricia King (extremeprophetic.com). But with the knowledge that Bob Jones (a proven false prophet who was removed from ministry in 1991 for sexual misconduct) “introduced” at least two prominent neo-apostolic women to a demonic entity that manifests as an eagle (whom all three know as Swift) the “birds of a feather” mascots they share take on far greater significance.Other “apostolic-prophetic” leaders who often teach with or promote Bob Jones also use the symbol of an eagle in their ministry logo: Paul Keith Davis, Rick Joyner, Bobby Conner, Cindy Jacobs, and others. Does this mean they also have the spirit of Swift to help them “carry out the purposes of God?” Not necessarily—but the connection between “eagle spirits,” shamans, and today’s neo-prophetic seers is unmistakable. This is the New Spirituality.Though his mystical teaching remains unchanged, none of Jones’ co-ministers or spiritual offspring seem to mind that his misconduct involved giving private “hands-on” readings to young women—disrobed to “stand naked before the Lord”—or that he was rebuked for other occultish practices. Ironically, he is revered as a spiritual grandfather among today’s rising stars of the Third Wave (neo-apostolic) movement, promoted largely by the much-hyped pseudo-prophetic website, “The Elijah List.”But, Jones is in good company. Many of his disciples, as well as the “apostles” and “prophets” who endorse or teach with him, claim to have met and talked with angels, with the Lord, and with saints of the past (the forbidden practice of necromancy); and, they all take great pride in teaching others how to have angelic encounters and “third heaven visions.”Undoubtedly believing they are working divine signs and wonders, could they instead be “deceived and deceiving others” (2 Tim 3:13)? As God’sword declares, “There shall not be found among you any one...that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord” (Deut 18:10-11).—Mark Dinsmore----------------------------------------------------------------------------Please visit our online shopping area at http://www.tbcorders.org/ to browse our complete catalog of products.----------------------------------------------------------------------------The Berean Call is a nonprofit 501 [c] [3], tax-exempt corporationregistered in the State of Oregon. It is overseen by an independentboard which has full and final authority over all corporate assets,personnel, and affairs. 3/07)----------------------------------------------------------------------------EMAIL COMMANDS:To subscribe, send an email to: updates-subscribe@lists.thebereancall.orgTo cancel your subscription, send an emailto:updates-unsubscribe@lists.thebereancall.org
www.thebereancall.org
March 2007
Weaning Evangelicals
Off the Word-Part II
T.A. McMahonLast month, in part one of this series, we quoted the Apostle Paul speaking about how Christians would view doctrine in the time prior to the return of Christ for His church: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:3,4). Obviously, biblical doctrine will not be looked upon favorably. The implication is that doctrine will be regarded as rather burdensome, something that Christians of the future won’t want to “endure.” Conforming to sound doctrine involves spiritual discipline, thoughtful diligence, and making choices based on God’s Word that go against the desires of the flesh.What is sound doctrine? Very simply, it is the teachings of God, including His instructions, His precepts, His commandments—in short, it is every word that He says from Genesis to Revelation. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4). Yet in the Last Days, many if not most Christians will not endure sound doctrine.So what will be left? Apostasy—a form of Christianity that is a mere shell of what the Bible teaches. It will accommodate the lusts of the flesh under the guise of godliness, as Paul tells us in his second epistle to Timothy. Furthermore, there will be an ample supply of persuasive Christians around who will, wittingly or unwittingly, subtly and not so subtly (but nonetheless surely), subvert sound doctrine. And the process is already well underway.As we pointed out in part one, Satan’s chief strategy in the seduction of mankind is to undermine, pervert, distort, corrupt, libel, denigrate, and deny the Scriptures by any and every means he can. The end product of his mission will be an apostate religion and church in which its adherents will worship and follow the Antichrist, the man of lawlessness whom Satan will empower. Fulfilling his mission involves a rather simple formula that was terribly effective in the Garden of Eden and throughout the Old Testament and Apostolic times. It has continued throughout church history right up to our present day: to induce humanity to deviate from and then ultimately reject what God has said. Adam and Eve were the first to succumb. An inherited sin nature made their offspring easier prey for the adversary, the devil, who goes about as a roaring lion, “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).God continually declared to the Israelites that if they obeyed Him they would be blessed, and if they walked in disobedience they would suffer the devastating consequences of their sin: their separation from God, and God’s separation from them, the loss of righteous guidance and protection, and the various disciplinary actions of God, including being subjected to His wrath. Israel’s wilderness experiences in Exodus and through the cycles of rebellion and repentance in the book of Judges testify to the fact of God being true to His word and His warnings. Deuteronomy seems to be an exercise in redundancy as Moses again and again issues God’s instructions to the children of Israel and cautions them to carefully obey what He has commanded. It wasn’t just a matter of law, but of life: “And he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life” (Deuteronomy 32:46,47).Samuel, the prophet and judge, echoes Moses’ exhortation more than three centuries later: “Serve the Lord with all your heart; and turn ye not aside: for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain” (1 Samuel 12:20,21). Not only is turning from God a pursuit after vanity, something worthless, but the process itself is wickedness: “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23). Samuel’s inspired analogy underscores not only the evil of rebellion as it relates to idolatry but it provides insight that helps us recognize Satan’s inducements to disobedience that are prevalent in the church today.Idolatry was the dominant issue. The children of Israel were commanded not to make graven images or gods of silver or gold (Exodus 20:3,4, 23). What was their reply? “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7). Yet days later, when Moses failed to return from Mount Sinai and fear set in, they turned from the words of God to what they supposed would better meet their emotional and spiritual “felt needs.” They fashioned a physical object to worship—a golden calf.Although their act was unmitigated rebellion against God, let’s consider what very likely influenced their thinking. Their spiritual leader had disappeared. Panic gripped them. They were more comfortable with the physical forms of worship learned from the Egyptians than with instructions from an invisible God. Perhaps Aaron thought the best way to pacify the people was to give them something their physical senses could relate to—something experientially reassuring.What’s wrong with taking a wholistic approach, i.e., meeting the needs of body, mind, and spirit? Wouldn’t their worship of a physical thing, as well as the spiritual stimulation of ritual, be “acceptable,” as long as it was directed toward the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Aaron must have thought so. He crafted a golden calf, built an altar, oversaw the liturgy, and dedicated the feast “unto the Lord.” The Israelites’ response was a precursor to the spirit of religious ecumenism and compromise, so prevalent in our day, which is also based upon lies: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4).We urgently need a biblical understanding of what idolatry comprises. Old Testament examples and the admonitions against it are given by God. Why would they be relevant for us? Because the evangelical church today is following Aaron’s example! Most Christians would define idolatry as “whatever takes the place of God in our lives.” True. Yet, too often, that rather general answer fails to help us understand the ways and means by which idolatry works. Consequently, we may not have the discernment necessary to be on our guard against it.Why is idolatry so critical? Let’s start with the obvious: The Bible defines idols as false gods (Psalm 96:5). They are items of deception and, even worse, the creations of men and devils. To worship them is delusion. The veneration itself often consists of debauchery and depravity, ritual activities completely given over to the physical senses. Idolatry involves materialism and experientialism, totally oriented toward the flesh. The so-called gods are physically represented and sensually worshiped. Most evangelicals know all this, but what many seem not to understand today is the nature of idolatry and how it subverts our worship of the true and living God.The worship God desired from the Israelites, His people whom He set apart to receive His Messiah, stands in stark contrast to the religious endeavors of the heathen nations. Rather than giving them images, Moses spoke the words of God to them, and then he wrote the words in a Book. “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord...and he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people” (Exodus 24:4,7). He told them (then wrote it down) that the making of images to represent God is condemned: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4-5).Why would God give such a command? Because no image that man could ever draw, engrave, paint, sculpt, fashion through any medium, or conjure up in his mind could truly represent Jehovah God. He is infinite (1 Kings 8:27). He is spirit (John 4:24). He is invisible (John 1:18). Even the God-prescribed places of worship were drastically different from their pagan counterparts. There was nothing physical to worship! The Holy of Holies within the tabernacle, and later in Solomon’s temple, contained not the image of God but the Word of God, represented by the Ark of the Covenant. Contained within the Ark was the Testimony of God, the second set of tablets written by God’s own hand (Deuteronomy 10:1,2). Again, by the design of God, the emphasis is on the Word.God has chosen to reveal Himself to humanity through words, not Images. In like manner, worship must be through His Word, according to His Word.No doubt He selected words because they are best suited to convey precisely what He wants mankind to know and to do. Words have definite meanings and can be interpreted objectively. Only words, spoken or written, can come close to accurately communicating attributes of our transcendent God and His divine nature. On the other hand, worship aroused by imagery is based upon the imagination rather than upon the teachings of Scripture. Religious images can at best only convey information in a symbolic and superficial way. Their interpretations are mostly subjective, experiential, and rely mainly upon the imagination of the observer. The message of the Bible, however, is not about aesthetic gratification but about our redemption; it’s not about our feelings but His truth, which images can never express but only oppose. Jesus prayed to His Father for His disciples, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17).The theology of the Bible is instructional. It is given in words so that man can understand it. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding” (Proverbs 4:7). The Bible encourages faith that is founded upon evidence, logic, and reason. No image-reliant belief system can make those claims, and when the people of the Book turn to religious imagery, they are abandoning reason and following idolatry. That happened to the Israelites throughout their history, including when they were instructed by God to make a bronze serpent as a symbol that ultimately pointed to Christ’s death on the Cross, in payment for the sins of the world. They later turned it into an object of idolatry and as a consequence God told them to destroy it (2 Kings 18:4).Throughout its history, Christendom has likewise succumbed to idolatry through imagery and liturgical ritual. Roman Catholic tradition credits St. Veronica as having captured the image of Christ upon her veil, which supposedly became the source for later icons, paintings, and engravings of Jesus. St. Veronica continues to be venerated today when Catholics observe the ritual of the Stations of the Cross. Eastern Orthodoxy developed icons of Christ, Mary, and the Saints as devices for mystically transcending the temporal through imagery that enables one to “spiritually see” indescribable divinity. In the ninth century, the Russian Orthodox Church incorporated icons as a central part of their worship, including a form of divination known as “praying through the icons.” Again, this is religious rebellion, which the Scriptures tell us is as the sin of witchcraft.The Emperor Constantine did much to introduce idolatrous imagery into Christianity in order to appease the multitudes of pagans he coerced into joining his newly favored religion of the realm. It was during the Middle Ages, however, that the Roman Catholic Church greatly increased its use of visual imagery. Religious statues, paintings, reliefs, the display of relics, as well as expanded liturgies with the use of luxurious vestments, incense, candles, and processions were increasingly emphasized to encourage the participation of the mostly illiterate population. Rather than educate the people, the Church of Rome fed them an experiential, visual theology that prolonged their ignorance of the Scriptures and bred superstition. By God’s grace, Gutenburg’s printing press in the fifteenth century and the Reformation in the sixteenth century were instrumental in helping to turn those who “protested” against the abuses of the Catholic Church back to the Bible.Astonishingly, the evangelical church is progressively sliding into idolatry as it turns from the Word of God to visual imagery. A goal of the American Bible Society is to put the entire Bible on video to accommodate our visually oriented generation (which has little interest in reading). The Jesus Film, a dramatic representation of the Gospel of Luke, has been the staple of Campus Crusade’s overseas evangelical efforts. The very Catholic movie The Passion of the Christ became a runaway box-office hit, largely due to the overwhelming support it received from evangelicals. Biblically conservative mission organizations such as Gospel for Asia are using Mel Gibson’s Hollywood production as part of its outreach program. Millions of The Passion of the Christ DVDs were purchased by evangelical churches for their Sunday schools, Bible studies, and small group meetings.Religious movies are on the rise (e.g., The Nativity Story, One Night with the King) as evangelicals “partner” with Hollywood and demonstrate that they are an eager and profitable market. One pastor, whose church bought out theaters for private showings of The Passion (which produced only “one conversion”) repented. He came under the conviction that rather than partnering with, his church was, in fact, “pimping for Hollywood.” As true as that may be, and as praiseworthy as his repentance was, if he doesn’t understand the serious nature (as explained above) of attempting to represent God’s Word in dramatic visual form, he is vulnerable to repeating the same error with visual idolatry.This is not a blanket condemnation of the film/video medium, but films cannot be used to present the Scriptures visually without becoming idolatrous. Not only are the images historically false (they are conjured up from the imagination of a screenwriter or director) but they must also conform to the mechanics of the medium (acting, cinematography, art direction, lighting, music, sound effects, etc.), which are designed to manipulate the senses and the emotions for dramatic purposes (see Showtime for the Sheep?, http://www.thebereancall.org/ a more detailed explanation).Biblical movies are just one trend among dozens that are contributing to weaning evangelicals off the Word of God and producing biblically illiterate Christians. This is especially true regarding our visually oriented youth. In the final part of this series, we want to give more extensive examples of movements within evangelical Christianity that are aggressively turning our next generation away from the Scriptures and toward an idolatry of experientialism.We serve a merciful God who can rescue a soul out of the darkest of circumstances but who will not support by His grace man’s religious ways and means in their attempts to serve Him. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). To the degree that we deviate from His way, we are lapsing into idolatry. As Jesus explained, “God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). TBC----------------------------------------------------------------------------Quotable----------------------------------------------------------------------------God loves broken things and broken people. As Vance Havner wrote, “It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that sheds forth perfume. It is Jacob limping from Jabbok who has power with God and men. It is Peter weeping bitterly who returns to greater power than ever.”William MacDonald, The Forgotten Command: Be Holy, 195Out of the heart “are the issues of life....” As our thoughts are, so are our affections...our prayers, and all else....God...knows the thoughts and judges them....In what does the difficulty of Christianity lie [but] in keeping of the thoughts in bounds. Without this, all religion is but “bodily exercise.” Papists may mumble over their prayers, hypocrites may talk, but this is godliness.Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680), The Vanity of Thoughts, 28Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but recordOne death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne—Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891----------------------------------------------------------------------------Q&A----------------------------------------------------------------------------Question: I love TBC. It keeps me informed on the issues that the fundamentalist sect of Christianity is concerned with....I’m an “informed atheist”...in that I’m just as knowledgeable about the Bible, its god and related subjects as either Dave or T.A. Tell Dave I read In Six Days. That book confirmed why sectarian religious views and science are incompatible. I was saddened at the waste of the 50 authors’ minds. As you are aware, the greatest enemy of religion is reason (Martin Luther), for it exposes “faith” as the emperor’s new clothes that it is. All one has to do to overthrow atheism...is to obey Paul when he says the gospel isn’t word only, but a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. How hard can it be for an In-Six-Days god to put arms, legs, and other missing body parts on the fine Christian men/women who were deceived by Bush to fight for God and country in Iraq? Perhaps Biblegod could “stop” the sun—which Hezekiah says is a “light” thing....Even something as easy as causing an iron axehead to “swim” will suffice. How hard can any of this be for a real God? (Humans making excuses for their God’s inaction is unworthy of a real, divine being.) Man has invented close to 6,000,000 gods! All of you at The Berean Call are atheists concerning all but one! I have simply added that one to the pile of would-be gods. Love your newsletter.Response [as promised in Letters section last month]: Apparently TBC hasn’t helped you but has only given your atheist mill more grist for mocking God. That fact either reflects our incompetence—or your unwillingness to admit the truth that would bow you before your Creator. You are not as knowledgeable about the Bible as you think you are. Instead, you exemplify the scripture that says, “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tm 3:7).We encourage readers to “search the Scriptures daily.” Neither the Scriptures nor TBC promotes “sectarian religious views.” If you knew the Bible as well as you claim, you would know that it is not about religion. The words “religion” and “religious” are found only seven times in the entire Bible—six times referring to false religion, and only once to true religion—which is not what you think it is. You think science and religion are at odds, yet the National Academy of Sciences says they are not.You say that faith is unscientific, “the emperor’s new clothes.” But hundreds of top scientists, past and present, disagree with you. William D. Phillips, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in chemistry, once said that so many of his colleagues were Christians that he couldn’t walk across his church’s fellowship hall without “tripping over a dozen physicists....” You seem to be out of touch with science and scientists. Has your atheism blinded you to the truth?Astronauts are scientists. The crew of Apollo 8 (William Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman) have all been inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame. They were the first humans to circle the moon, and on the evening of December 24, 1968, broadcast back to earth their reading of the first 10 verses in Genesis. They introduced this passage about God creating the universe with these words, “For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.”Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon. The first food or drink ever ingested on the moon was the bread and wine Aldrin had brought to celebrate communion. And you say science and religion are incompatible and mock believers as unscientific? You are really out of touch!As for “sectarian religious views,” not one of the 50 scientist authors of In Six Days promotes such. These Christians are all competent scientists, respected in their fields, from Biology to Physics, Biochemistry to Genetics, Mathematics to Geophysics, Botany to Geology, etc.Your suggestion that scientists must be atheists contradicts the facts and reveals either ignorance or prejudice. The greatest scientists of all time, the founders of science, nearly all believed in God. Among believers were: Aggasiz, Bacon, Bell, Boyle, Copernicus, Cuvier, Descarte, Fabre, Faraday, Joule, Kelvin, Kepler, Maxwell, Mendel, Newton, Pascal, Pasteur, and too many others to name. Boyle even left a fund to support lectures refuting atheism that still continue at Oxford today. Newton published more material devoted to the Bible than about mathematics and physics. Is your ignorance showing, or is it just prejudice?You claim to know the Bible yet say that “the greatest enemy of religion is reason”? You haven’t heeded God’s challenge: “Come now, and let us reason together” (Is 1:18). Perhaps you overlooked the many times that Paul reasoned with Jews and Gentiles from the Scriptures. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that Peter reminds believers always to be ready to give a reason for why they believe (1 Pt 3:15).It is irrational to blame God for what Bush or any other man does in His name. And it is equal folly to blame God for wars and other evil and suffering in the world. This is not the world God made but the world we have made in our selfish rebellion against Him. Of course TBC doesn’t honor the false gods that foolish men have invented. But even if there were a billion, that would be no reason to say there could not be one true God.Question: Have you read former President Carter’s new book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid? Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center has said that Carter’s book is “blatantly one-sided and unbecoming of a former president.” I was wondering what your thoughts are.Response: Yes, I’ve read that brazenly anti-Israel book. Israel is blamed for everything, the Arabs are whitewashed. Arafat is called “a strong leader...well-educated...[who] turned much of his attention to raising funds for the care and support of the refugees and inspiring worldwide contributions to their cause.” No mention is made that Arafat and his PLO murdered thousands, or that he siphoned off billions for his Swiss bank accounts, lied continually, and never kept one promise that he made to Israel. Carter writes as an unabashed promoter of PLO and Muslim lies, which he passes off as the informed truth, for example: that Arabs, PLO, or “Palestinians” have never threatened Israel, have always wanted peace and have done all they could to effect it, and that the land of Israel belongs to them as descendants of the original inhabitants—none of this true!Carter dares to say that the Israeli kibbutz dwellers in 1948, who had few and inferior weapons, were “better armed” than the regular armies of the six Arab nations (600,000 against 60,000) who attacked Israel with tanks and planes, of which Israel had none. He says it was “the continuing state of war between Israel and its neighbors [that] caused many Jews to flee Syria, Iraq, and other Arab countries to Israel.” No, it was 1,300 years of perpetual persecution and murder of thousands that caused Jews to flee to Israel when it became a nation and offered the first refuge they’d ever had.Carter’s claim that in 1993 Arafat and his PLO “recognized the right of Israel to exist in peace and security...renounced the use of terrorism [and] those articles of the PLO covenant that deny Israel’s right to exist” is not true. He blames “Israeli repression” of Palestinian rights for the terrorist attacks against Israel, exonerating the Arabs. He accuses Israel of imposing “apartheid” upon the “Palestinians” and says, “Peace will come...when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law...by accepting its legal borders.”Carter is scandalously dishonest. In fact, Israel accepted the borders set by the UN in 1948. “Palestinians” could have been living in peace for the last 60 years, had they done likewise. Instead, the Arabs refused to accept the existence of an Israel of any size, attacked to annihilate her, and have sought to destroy her ever since. Any land Israel ever took was in self-defense against an enemy that will not recognize her existence (no Arab map in the world shows Israel). Why should Israel retreat to the indefensible borders dictated by the UN in 1948 (as Carter advocates), which the Arabs refused to accept?Never in history has an attack upon any country other than Israel been for the purpose of annihilation, which has been sworn to repeatedly by the Arab world. Muslims must destroy Israel—or renounce their religion, Allah, Muhammad, and the Qur’an. Never was any nation except Israel blamed for failing to make peace with an enemy whose openly stated and irreversible goal was its total destruction. Never was a nation so pressured by the world to surrender territory taken in self-defense as has been Israel. Carter’s book justifies the Muslim desire to destroy Israel in order to make “peace.” In contrast, we give you the shocking truth in Judgment Day (see offering list).Question: Our church says you must speak in tongues or you don’t have the Holy Spirit. Is tongues for all?Response: Not a single verse says that the sign of having “received the Holy Spirit” is to speak in tongues. No one can be saved without being indwelt and sealed with the Holy Spirit. A Christian has been “born again...of the Spirit” (Jn 3:7,8) and “by one Spirit...baptized into one body” (1 Cor 12:13). Those whom Paul asked, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost...?” (Acts 19:2-4) were not yet Christians. They were followers of John the Baptist and had never heard the gospel of Christ until Paul explained it to them.Paul asks a rhetorical question: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing?” (1 Cor 12:29,30).The obvious answer is, “No. Not every Christian is an apostle, prophet, teacher, worker of miracles, healer, etc.” There is no reason for the next two questions to have a different answer: “Do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?” Of course not -- unless all are apostles, prophets, and workers of miracles.The spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 are said to be distributed by the Holy Spirit when and to whom He wills. “Tongues” is part of this list. Just as no one can prophecy or heal at his own initiative or power, so no one can speak in tongues except as given at the time by the Holy Spirit. A basic error of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements has been to put tongues in a different category—a “gift” that one can “learn,” should continually “practice,” and can use whenever one pleases. That is not biblical.One might as well practice walking on water or raising the dead as “practice speaking in tongues.” We do not get any gift from God by practicing. That false teaching has led multitudes astray and causes “tongues speakers” (including leaders) so often to fall into immorality.“Tongues” is the most dangerous gift. One could hardly deceive anyone to believe that he was raising the dead or restoring a missing limb. But it is quite easy to deceive oneself and others into thinking one is speaking in tongues. Millions have been and still are under this delusion, with serious consequences evident everywhere.Question: Why is Israel giving up land -- and when will she once again have all the land God promised her?Response: The United States, UN, EU, and most of the world have been pressuring Israel ever since 1948 to give back the land she was forced to take in self-defense when attacked by Muslim neighbors determined to annihilate her. Tiny Israel is blamed for the terrorist attacks and wars that Arabs start. She depends upon Europe to buy her produce and upon the world to buy her electronics. If the nations boycotted her products (as some Christian denominations have advocated), how could she survive? Although Israel is under God’s judgment for centuries of rebellion against Him, she is also under His protection. There can be no other explanation for the fact that she exists today.Israel will only possess in peace all the land God promised her when Christ intervenes at Armageddon to rescue her, all Israel believes He is the Messiah, and He sets up His kingdom over her and the world on the throne of David. This is declared clearly in Ezekiel 36-39, Zechariah 12-14, and elsewhere.----------------------------------------------------------------------------News Alert----------------------------------------------------------------------------Denverpost.com, 2/6/07: Disgraced pastor goes for master’s degree in psychology [Excerpts]—Former National Association of Evangelicals president and pastor, the Rev. Ted Haggard, emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is “completely heterosexual” and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.Haggard broke a three-month silence in e-mails over the weekend to select members of his former church. In the message, Haggard revealed that he and his wife, Gayle, intend to leave Colorado Springs and pursue master’s degrees in psychology through online courses.Among other things, the overseers urged Haggard to enter a 12-step program for sexual addiction. Haggard’s “restoration” is being overseen by another panel: megachurch pastors Tommy Barnett and Jack Hayford, and H.B. London, who runs a Focus on the Family ministry to pastors.London said he was not surprised Haggard was considering the psychological field. “Many of us that go into the healing, helping professions do so out of some sort of dysfunction or traumatic event in our lives, and we want to do what we can to help other people avoid what we’ve gone through,” he said.[TBC: The only thing that is surprising about this article is that Haggard is not “confessing” that a demon made him carry on a sexual affair with a former male prostitute. That’s the usual rationale given by those involved with C. Peter Wagner’s Strategic Spiritual Warfare movement (see TBC issues May & June ’97...), a group heavily connected with Haggard and his church. But we suspect that wouldn’t play well in the press.On the other hand, the myth of psychological counseling still has the world and the church duped. “Three weeks of intensive counseling” gave him insights from the professionals, whose degrees and licensing necessitate that they ignore sin and place the root of the problem and the blame elsewhere (e.g., his parents, a childhood trauma, or some experience buried deep within his unconscious). Now he and his wife want to become professionals as well.Tragically, the leaven of delusion spreads. Overseers recommend the unbiblical, occult inspired “12-step program for sexual addiction.” Focus on the Family’s London sees hope in Haggard’s desire to join the “helping professions.”]----------------------------------------------------------------------------Itinerary----------------------------------------------------------------------------Mar 9-11Westside Bible Church (Dave)Meridian ID(208) 938-9424Apr 13-14South Manitoba Prophecy Conference (Dave)Winkler MB(204) 325-6714April 15Ambassador Baptist Church (Dave)Morden MB(204) 822-3398Apr 20-21Discerning the Times Bible Conference (T.A.)Saskatoon SK(306) 717-0374Apr 25- May 9Various Assemblies of Believers in Albania (Dave)GEOSTURM01@aol.comJun 2-3A Church of Jesus (Dave)Port Neches TX(409) 722-6959Jul 7-14Word of Life (Dave)Schroon Lake NY(518) 532-7114Aug 3-4Hope for Today Conference (Dave)Chino Hills CA(800) 752-4253Aug 9-11TBC Conference (Dave/TA)Bend OR(800) 937-6638----------------------------------------------------------------------------Letters----------------------------------------------------------------------------Dear Dave and Staff,Thank you all once again for another year’s magazines loaded with helpful information. Things here in the UK are spiraling out of control both morally and spiritually as a result, I firmly believe, of a judicial blindness upon the Nation’s leaders for willfully embracing and incessantly promoting devious lifestyles and concocting laws giving strong rights to the homosexual camp to sue anyone who does not bow the knee to their perversions. Please renew my subscription. GC (United Kingdom)Dear Mr. Hunt and Mr. McMahon,Let me thank you for The Berean Call letter every month. I appreciate your insight on the Scriptures and your truth on the Catholic religions. I was Catholic the first 35 years of my life (I’m 75 now) but thank God and His grace, I’m free. MD (KY)Dear Dave,I just finished reading your book The Mind Invaders for the second time. [It] really encouraged me, and even though it’s a work of fiction, I also know that evil spirits truly work in such a deceitful manner. By leading victims unaware by these methods of so-called spiritists and mediums, these evil forces lead untold thousands into the paths of deception. As believers, we should be “blowing the whistle” on such travesties, even when the “wise” of this world call us small-minded and intolerant. CP (prisoner, FL)Dear Folks at Berean Call,Please keep up the great work, particularly in your exposés on the failure of psychology and secular counseling. I work in the court system, and it’s discouraging and heartbreaking to see families in crisis being referred to counselors who do nothing but make their situations worse. It’s particularly distressing to see these spiritually bankrupt “solutions” used in juvenile courts, where so many lost, empty, precious children are floundering. I pray that their lives will be touched by true believers in Christ who will offer them life and hope in place of the deadness that all these secular programs doom them to. MC (NH)Dear Co-Laborers in Christ,About two years ago, I was attending a good Bible-based community church when seemingly out of nowhere TULIP teaching became the focal point. I struggled with the “T” [Total Depravity] and the “U” [Unconditional Election] but when it came to the “L” (Limited Atonement), I looked around the congregation and noticed no one else seemed to be looking around—stunned, as I was. This Calvinist teaching was taught in-depth for several months. Even before moving on to the “I” and “P,” I hit a pit of despair. For the first time since my salvation, I began to doubt and realized there was no assurance. If I’m chosen, I’m chosen. If I’m damned, I’m damned. And God is glorified in both? I was astounded to learn that the words “world” and “whosoever” did not mean what they implied but meant that “God so loved the ‘chosen’...” and they were “whosoever.” For months I continued searching and despairing....During this time, a friend came into [our] store and I tentatively shared with her my new-found doubts. My fear was that she too believed this TULIP doctrine. Instead she loaned me her husband’s book by Dave Hunt, What Love Is This? It was underlined and highlighted and I knew I needed my own copy. I contacted TBC and ordered the book....The ministry at TBC is invaluable. Many of our customers are delighted to find books that offer substance and answers to those who are thirsting, starving, and despairing. LP (WA)Dear Dave,It is with sadness that I ask to be removed from your mailing list. I have been an avid reader for over 12 years now. I am United Pentecostal but the apostolic movement is far greater than one organization. Of course, we believe in the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit of Christ. One can’t see a Spirit for He is invisible. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Spirit. He is invisible too. Jesus is the visible expression of the invisible God. God manifest in human flesh. There is only 1 Spirit—not 2 or 3. Scriptures say that the Lord is that Spirit. There is only One Lord—not 2 or 3. Acts 2:37 clearly shows that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ....You are in grievous error in your remarks and my heart goes out to you and forgives you, but how can two walk together unless they be agreed? The Trinity doctrine is the only doctrine that links the Protestants and denominations to the Mother Harlot Church of Rome, kind of like an umbilical cord. We have severed all ties with Rome. VH (TX)Dear Berean Call,I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for your newsletter. It is refreshing to read articles that declare fundamental, God-inspired truth. So many mainstream Christian magazines and newsletters along with the ministers of those denominations have bowed to such deceptive and liberal thinking. By the inspired Word of God today, as God allows, I will seek to only fill my mind with God’s Word, “The Standard for Truth.” Thanks for writing material that uses God’s Word as your plumbline. ML (prisoner, SC)----------------------------------------------------------------------------TBC Notes----------------------------------------------------------------------------Letters, We Get LettersPlease don’t be upset if you take the time to write to us and you don’t receive a reply. Although we continue to grow as a ministry, we still try to keep TBC’s operation small and personal yet at the same time economically efficient. Aside from Dave, only one person answers letters on a regular basis, along with many other duties. Every letter is read, and the input is greatly appreciated and often put to use; but it is physically impossible to answer each one.We trust that our newsletter and the books and cds we recommend will continue to be the ministry’s primary information resource. The newsletter archives are available for free online and have proved to be tremendously valuable to our readers, providing answers to the majority of questions.T.A. McMahonExecutive Director----------------------------------------------------------------------------TBC Extra----------------------------------------------------------------------------SHAMANISM IN THE CHURCHOccult “Eagle Spirituality” Manifests in Popular “Prophetic” MinistriesAs demonstrated by native American culture and indigenous people groups worldwide, animal worship has long been a means of contacting and interacting with deceiving spirits. Equally pleased to appear in human or animal form, they often take willing participants on exciting out-of-body experiences or communicate “secret knowledge.”Modern shamans (who are as apt to wear suits as loin cloths) market seminars where everyday people can “encounter” their personal “power animal.” In public schools, children are encouraged to use their “imagination” and “dreams” for astral travel. Occult relaxation and visualization techniques are reinforced by literature such as the Harry Potter books and Scholastic’s “Animorphs” series, in which hero-children transform into creatures with special powers and abilities.Fictionalized in popular games and movies, these techniques are based on ancient occult practices that, once widely banned, now flourish virtually unchecked. According to answers.com, “a familiar spirit...obeys a witch, conjurer, or other users of the supernatural, and serves and helps that person....If they look like ordinary animals, they can be used to spy....These spirits [also]...inspire artists and writers.”Many new age writers and occult practitioners have been assisted or encouraged by animals they perceive as “familiars.” As Patrick Ryan, author of The Eagle’s Call: A Journey of Body, Mind, and Spirit recounts,When I was writing this book...an eagle often circled the building in which I lived, visiting many times....When I was...doubting my direction, a coyote also came to visit....Across the street, it looked toward me as if encouraging me on....So, led by the spirit of coyote, eagle and the many other guides of the universe, I was able to complete this tale. Its primary message is about following the call of my body, mind and spirit.Romans 1:18-32 gives a clear account of man’s “call of his body and mind”—a rejection of God in favor of nature worship: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things” (Rom 1:22-23).Perhaps in part due to the reverence of “animal spirits” by ancient pagan cultures, animals continue to play a significant symbolic role in our world today. School and professional sports teams adopt animal names such as the panthers, tigers, lions, bears, wolves, or eagles—based on popular significance of animal traits. Consumers even purchase “animal” car models and athletic shoes marketed for their perceived attributes of speed and power.So, what’s the fuss? Is animal symbology inherently evil? No, even Scripture makes generous use of animals as symbols—from love poems in The Song of Songs to comforting analogies of the Lord: “hide me under the shadow of thy wings” (Ps 17:8b) et al.Take the eagle, for example. Revered as a national symbol by various countries, Scripture makes several positive references to the eagle. One of the most popular verses cited for encouragement is “they shall mount up with wings like eagles...” (Is 40:31). Many are comforted by the eagle as a symbol of patriotism and American heritage (which is often equated with Christianity). Fewer though, take note of passages that portray the eagle in a negative light, or realize that the eagle doubles as a Masonic symbol of the phoenix, representing “rebirth through fire” in occult mythology.In addition to its being an “unclean” animal, Scripture also contains a number of negative references to the eagle (“They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey” (Job 9:26). Obadiah even contains a reference to Edom as an eagle, apparently as a type of Lucifer: “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord” (Ob 1:3-4).So why do the neo-prophets and apostles of today use the eagle as a symbol of choice? Many “prophetic” ministries associate eagles with tremendous natural vision and observable qualities of “rising above;” but like shamans and seers—ancient and modern—they err in assigning to eagles spiritual qualities. An occult website declares the eagle’s role is that of an “illuminating force” that rises on the east wind, whose gift is that of “seeing hidden spiritual truths” and “whose strength is by its connection to spirit guides.” The website advises: “One who flies with the Eagle has a responsibility...to operate from Higher Intent, to develop the latent abilities of Illumination, and then freely share this Illumination with Others.” In other words, a seer who channels the eagle is to “impart” this knowledge and “gifting” to others.A number of prominent ministries use the eagle as a corporate symbol, and most of these do so quite innocently. But research into the testimony of a young prophetess associated with C. Peter Wagner’s self-titled New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) raises great concern. (The NAR, a blended resurrection of several modern heresies—kingom-dominionism, manifest sons of God, new breed, et al.—is spreading like wildfire through a growing number of charismatic and evangelical churches.) Here is just one example of cause for alarm:Sharnael Wolverton...was called to the ministry at an early age....During [an] incredible period of seeking intimacy with [God] she encountered many dreams, visions, visitations and divine appointments leading to the birthing of Swiftfire Ministries....One divine appointment...was with Bob Jones, who introduced her to a golden eagle named “Swift.” “Swift is sent forth to those in order to carry the purposes of God swiftly.” Another encounter was with Patricia King of Extreme Prophetic, who had also been introduced to Swift.This admission by a professing Christian “minister” is nothing short of astounding! Aside from this startling testimony, most followers of these seers (and even skeptics) would not think twice about the recurring “eagle” motif on the websites of Sharnael Wolverton (swiftfire.org), Bob Jones (bobjones.org/itinerary), and Patricia King (extremeprophetic.com). But with the knowledge that Bob Jones (a proven false prophet who was removed from ministry in 1991 for sexual misconduct) “introduced” at least two prominent neo-apostolic women to a demonic entity that manifests as an eagle (whom all three know as Swift) the “birds of a feather” mascots they share take on far greater significance.Other “apostolic-prophetic” leaders who often teach with or promote Bob Jones also use the symbol of an eagle in their ministry logo: Paul Keith Davis, Rick Joyner, Bobby Conner, Cindy Jacobs, and others. Does this mean they also have the spirit of Swift to help them “carry out the purposes of God?” Not necessarily—but the connection between “eagle spirits,” shamans, and today’s neo-prophetic seers is unmistakable. This is the New Spirituality.Though his mystical teaching remains unchanged, none of Jones’ co-ministers or spiritual offspring seem to mind that his misconduct involved giving private “hands-on” readings to young women—disrobed to “stand naked before the Lord”—or that he was rebuked for other occultish practices. Ironically, he is revered as a spiritual grandfather among today’s rising stars of the Third Wave (neo-apostolic) movement, promoted largely by the much-hyped pseudo-prophetic website, “The Elijah List.”But, Jones is in good company. Many of his disciples, as well as the “apostles” and “prophets” who endorse or teach with him, claim to have met and talked with angels, with the Lord, and with saints of the past (the forbidden practice of necromancy); and, they all take great pride in teaching others how to have angelic encounters and “third heaven visions.”Undoubtedly believing they are working divine signs and wonders, could they instead be “deceived and deceiving others” (2 Tim 3:13)? As God’sword declares, “There shall not be found among you any one...that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord” (Deut 18:10-11).—Mark Dinsmore----------------------------------------------------------------------------Please visit our online shopping area at http://www.tbcorders.org/ to browse our complete catalog of products.----------------------------------------------------------------------------The Berean Call is a nonprofit 501 [c] [3], tax-exempt corporationregistered in the State of Oregon. It is overseen by an independentboard which has full and final authority over all corporate assets,personnel, and affairs. 3/07)----------------------------------------------------------------------------EMAIL COMMANDS:To subscribe, send an email to: updates-subscribe@lists.thebereancall.orgTo cancel your subscription, send an emailto:updates-unsubscribe@lists.thebereancall.org
17 December 2006
The Real Meaning Christians Celebrate Christmas: Taken from the Gospel According to St, Matthew 2:18-23Authorized Version
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.
19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:
25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.
7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.
8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.
9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.
10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.
11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:
15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.
17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,
18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
19 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,
20 Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.
21 And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
22 But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee:
23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.
19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily.
20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:
25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.
1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,
2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.
7 Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.
8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.
9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.
10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.
11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt:
15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.
17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,
18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
19 But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt,
20 Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.
21 And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.
22 But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee:
23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.
