Independent Baptist News & Views, June 2002

Baptist: Independent Fundamental Premillennial Missionary

News & Views

June 2002

Edited by E. L. Bynum

(Editor's Note: In our New & Views column we quote from many different sources. Please understand that this does not necessarily mean that we approve of all of the publications from which we quote. We will give the name of the source in the first quote and thereafter we will give the abbreviation of that name.)

Tired Of Tithing Traditionally? Rick Warren's Ministry Tool Box Carlton Pearson's `Inclusion Theology' Commercial Contemporary Music CCM Leads To New Evangelicalism U.N. Workers Trade Aid For Sex Forced To Pay For Someone Else's Abortion? Court Kills Ban On Virtual Child Porn Victim Awarded $80,000 For Injury At Service BWA Leader With Pope At Assisi Bill Bright's `Beyond All Limits' Conference, `Global Pastors Network', `Synergistic Church' Revisionist Evangelicals Offer Stale Liberalism The Extreme Middle Schuller Cozies With Muslims We Should Excuse Theology & Immorality of U2 CCM/Rock Group? `Moderate' Baptists Pledge $1 Million To Missionaries Who Decline To Affirm Doctrinal Statement NCC Names Quaker, A Catholic, To High Post Marty A Liberal Critic Of Fundamentalism Redefining Evangelism Why Does China Need Population Funds? `God Bless America'? Pres. Bush `Unsigns' Dangerous ICC Sad Statistics

Tired Of Tithing Traditionally? -From the Des Moines, Iowa Point Of Grace Church Web page A Willow Creek Association Church. "Tired of endlessly writing checks? Tired of trying to find a pen and missing the great music during the offering? We have the solution! POG DIRECT DEPOSIT. It's fast, easy and actually saves you the cost of checks! Simply print out the Direct Deposit form, mail it to the address on the form and vioila! No more scrambling frantically for pens during the service! It's as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4..." (via Australian Independent Baptist Newsletter [AIBN], 5/02)
Rick Warren's Ministry Tool Box-Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Church" is the icon of church development for many Baptists. He is promoting a new tool to reach another segment of the populace by catering to their worldly craving. A few quotations from his "Are We listening To The Hip-Hop Generation?," via AIBN: "I think it's important for Christians to engage in these cultural discussions. When you bring together wealthy youth, media exposure, social, economic, and political power and influence, we all should be paying attention to such an enormous captivator of youth culture. Often the church is guilty of the proverbial `ostrich in the sand,' `Johnny-come-lately' mentality when it comes to being aware of the major cultural trends, trends that are impacting youth across ethnic, racial and socio-economic lines. No matter what opinion one may have about the sound and substance, the message or meaning of rap music, hip hop and rap music are here to stay. Are we listening?" [The BMA of Texas church ministry director has pushed the church growth style of Warren for years. SBC churches are picking up on this in droves. Revealing signs: the pastor sheds his tie and coat, music choruses replace hymns, pulpit stands removed, CCM swayed to by the congregation, and other distinguishing traits of worldly identification. Warren and his parrots are confusing `head in the sand' with `heart of sin' and `Johnny-come-lately mentality' with `justify crowd growth by worldly methods.' The only heads in the sand are of those pastors who allow such methods. Beware! -WWM
Carlton Pearson's `Inclusion Theology'-Carlton Pearson is founder of a multiracial, charismatic megachurch in Tulsa. He claims he lost the recent mayoral primary due to his belief in inclusion theology, which also questions the existence of a literal hell (5/02 Charisma). His gospel of inclusion states that everyone is saved-they just don't know it. Pearson said he first started thinking about the inclusive doctrine after reading E.W. Kenyon's writings over 25 years ago and has been preaching it for three years. Per Dave Hunt, Kenyon is the real founder of today's Positive Confession movement which has also influenced Hagin, Cho, and others. Pearson spoke at NRB'98. (Calvary Contender, hereafter CC.)
Commercial Contemporary Music-Modern praise concerts where there is a ticket price have moved from worship of God, to the entertainment of the people. You don't pay to worship God! The cost of a praise service can be covered by a freewill offering but when tickets are sold, as in a recent Gaither concert in Toronto, the emphasis is on entertainment rather than the worship of God (2/02 Canadian Revivalist). Toronto Free Presby. pastor Dr. Frank McClelland said according to advertised ticket prices, if the Air Canada Centre was full that would bring in $1.5 million. -CC
CCM Leads To New Evangelicalism-Music is a powerful force for change. Rev. John Ashbrook writes in the 4/02 OBF Visitor: Wherever Christian contemporary music is welcomed by a fundamental church or school that fundamental entity will become new evangelical. Worship music is one of the great battles in Bible-believing churches today. We must teach students to thrill to the worship music which upholds the Savior. Be warned, be wise, beware! -CC

Back To Top Back To: Plains Baptist Challenger, June 2002 Independent Baptist Bible & Missions Conferences Back To: Plains Baptist Challenger List Back To: News & Views List Search Our Web Page U.N. Workers Trade Aid For Sex-The United Nations has publicly accused its own aid workers and peacekeepers of rampant sexual abuse in West Africa (3/30 World). According to testimony of refugees, male UN staff members traded wheat and other food items, tarpaulins, and medicine for sex with girls under 18. UN workers feel free to abuse the people they are supposed to help and protect. -CC
Forced To Pay For Someone Else's Abortion?-Last month, California became the first state to force insurers to cover so-called morning-after pills. Gov. Gray Davis ordered California HMOs to pay for the drugs, claiming that a woman's right to choose must never be held up by red tape. (4/13 World) But, what about the right not to pay for someone else's abortion? In 1999, Davis signed a bill requiring HMOs to cover federally approved contraceptives. -CC
Court Kills Ban On Virtual Child Porn-The U.S. Supreme Court last month shocked Christians over the country with a decision that legalizes child pornography when the pictures are generated by computers, etc. The ruling struck down a congressional ban on virtual child pornography, saying the First Amendment protects pornography or other sexual images that only appear to depict real children engaged in sex. *** And a federal judge has ruled against a bid by the Justice Department to overturn an Oregon law that allows doctor-assisted suicide. Attorney General John Ashcroft had sought to override that law, saying helping people to die was not a "legitimate medical practice." -CC
Victim Awarded $80,000 For Injury At Service-A woman who broke her arm after being slain in the spirit during a charismatic worship service won $80,000 from the Long Island church where she was injured (2/21 Ala. Baptist). The minister placed his hand on her forehead causing her to fall backwards. She argued the church should have had someone in place to catch her. Or better yet, why not heal her? -CC
BWA Leader With Pope At Assisi-Baptist World Alliance Gen. Sec'y Denton Lotz participated in Pope John Paul's interfaith prayer gathering for world peace at Assisi, Jan. 24 (Foundation). Lotz said: I went to Assisi to affirm as Baptist Christians that we are people of peace and that we will join the other Christians to pray for peace. His other Christians included Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, etc. (2/15 CC), He has reached out ecumenically to Catholics before (see 2/1 CC). The testimony of conservative So. Baptists is tainted by its membership and support of the apostate BWA. -CC
Bill Bright's `Beyond All Limits' Conference, `Global Pastors Network', `Synergistic Church'-Dennis Costella has a good firsthand report of the Beyond All Limits pastor's conference which convened in Orlando, Jan. 17-19 (Foundation). Campus Crusade's Bill Bright had the vision for this. The purpose was twofold: first, to minister to the 5,000 pastors assembled at First Baptist Church and second, to launch a new Internet program for training pastors for the new millennium, the Global Pastors Network. The ambitious plan to network (join together in common fellowship, ministry and purpose) and instruct virtually every Christian worker in the world by way of the Internet and satellite technology in the decade ahead was impressive. The proposed global synergistic church model, an ecumenically-styled network of churches and ministries where doctrinal issues are set aside and all who say they love Jesus will join together to reach the world for Christ. Many messages were helpful and Biblically-based. Speakers included Drs. Falwell, Stowell, Smalley, Warren, Trask, and Merritt. Charismatics were well represented by Hayford, and PK's Bill McCartney who stressed the need for no divisions to exist between all Christians. The above speakers and the following other ministries are part of 200 already committed to the GPN. Kay Arthur, Henry Blackaby, Bill Bright, Chuck Colson, Jim Cymbala, James Dobson, John Hagee, David Jeremiah, John Kilpatrick, Erwin Lutzer, Chuck Swindoll, and Bruce Wilkinson. A conference leader said: In the future, those [pastors] who are not networking will not be working. -CC
Revisionist Evangelicals Offer Stale Liberalism-The struggle to define evangelical boundaries has existed since the formation of the movement in the 1940s. Young evangelicals in the 1970s stretched the movement leftward. The evangelical left now resists any meaningful boundaries at all (4/6 World). A group of theologians recently released a new manifesto for revisionist evangelicalism. The Word Made Fresh calls for evangelicals to resist attempts to propagate rigid definitions of evangelicalism that result in unnecessary alienation and exclusion. Without doctrinal boundaries, New Evangelicalism has long been adrift, moving leftward. The middle of the road is a dangerous parking place. -CC

Back To Top Back To: Plains Baptist Challenger, June 2002 Independent Baptist Bible & Missions Conferences Back To: Plains Baptist Challenger List Back To: News & Views List Search Our Web Page The Extreme Middle-We have heard about the extreme right and the extreme left, but it is the extreme middle we need to expose as being extremely deceptive, extremely disobedient, and extremely dangerous. (Rev. Hayes Minnick). Dr. W. B. Riley in bygone years said: The middle-of-the-road man is the theological menace of the twentieth century. In the battle between truth and error, (good and evil) neutrality (moderation) is no virtue. -CC
Schuller Cozies With Muslims-Islam rejects the Jesus of the Bible. Yet Robert Schuller's compromises with Islam are notorious. From personally preaching in the mosque of the Grand Mufti in Damascus, to allowing the Islamic leader's cleric son to preach from his own pulpit, these things are nothing new for someone who sponsors Christians and Muslims for Peace at his Crystal Cathedral. He stated to an official of the Muslim American Society that if he [Schuller] came back in 100 years and found his descendants Muslims, it wouldn't bother him. (3/02 Berean Call) He was also a keynote speaker for the Unity School of Christianity's (New Age) conference ridiculing evangelical Christianity; at Unification Church (Moonies) functions with Sun Myung Moon, and at Mormon Tabernacle where he addressed an interfaith event and saluted the Mormon Church (Vantage Point). -CC
We Should Excuse Theology & Immorality of U2 CCM/Rock Group?-Probably the world's biggest [rock] band today is U2, an enormously popular Irish group whose leader, Bono, "for all of his left-leaning political posture, is remarkably open about his Christianity." (3/23 World) "U2's theology may not be as conservative as one would like [they shun the `Christian' label], but still, this is a long way from the Rolling Stone's `Sympathy for the Devil.'" A 4/02 Charisma reviewer of a book about U2 wrote: "[T]he book is effective in stating its case that artists with a spiritual message shouldn't be dismissed because they occasionally question their faith, drink, smoke and even curse. The world needs Bono as a model." -CC
`Moderate' Baptists Pledge $1 Million To Missionaries Who Decline To Affirm Doctrinal Statement-The moderate/liberal Baptist General Convention of Texas has pledged $1 million to a fund to help missionaries who will lose or relinquish their ministries rather than affirm in writing the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message doctrinal accountability instrument required by the SBC's Int'l Mission Board (3/7 Ala. Baptist). At least 60 missionary families have said they could not sign the statement, which opposes women pastors and says wives should "submit graciously to the servant leadership of their husbands." -CC
NCC Names Quaker, A Catholic, To High Post-The National Council of Churches has named a Quaker and former official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ann K. Riggs, to head up theological work for ecumenical discussions (3/11 CN). The appointment comes at a critical time for the NCC as it attempts to reinvent itself to attract participation of Catholics, Evangelicals and Pentecostals. A core group of leaders plans an April 4-6 meeting to talk about the future with non-NCC member churches, including Catholics, Salvation Army and the Church of God in Christ. -CC
Marty A Liberal Critic Of Fundamentalism-The 3/9 Huntsville Times stated: "Huntingdon College [Montgomery, AL] will present internationally known theologian Dr. Martin Marty Tues. for the annual Stallworth Lecture Series. His topic will be `Fundamentalism: Around the World, Down the Block, and Dividing Our Minds.' He will address the tensions caused by religious exclusivity." The latter term refers to teaching that Jesus is the only way, e.g., and is the opposite of religious pluralism. Christian News has had many articles on Marty, showing that he for over 40 years has repeatedly attacked the Bible and that he denies the physical resurrection of Christ, supports abortion and homosexuality, and maintains that adultery is permissible in certain situations (3/18 CN). Yet he, a liberal ELCA minister, is also scheduled to lecture at the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod's Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. -CC
Redefining Evangelism-Jim Henderson, a founder of a Seattle-based network exploring new forms of sharing faith in a postmodern world, wants to change the way we define and do evangelism. The movement encourages Christians to see the unsaved as "missing" rather than "lost" the latter, he says, is often meant in a derogatory way (4/02 Charisma). Would he then also change Luke 19:10 to read: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was missing."? *** In a recent Decision magazine interview, Ravi Zacharias said that over 90% of the Muslim converts to Christianity he has spoken to did so as a result of a dream or vision. We must stick with Scriptural terminology. Experiences are not sufficient to base our salvation on. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." -CC
Why Does China Need Population Funds?-Why does the United Nations Population Fund need $34 million from us (or anyone) to promote family planning in China, a nation that slaughtered 85.5 million unborn babies and sterilized 45 million women in a mere 10 years? (3/2 World) -CC
`God Bless America'?-Dave Hunt writes (2/02 Berean Call): "To gain God's blessing cannot be as simple as saying, `God bless America.' Yet in all the memorial services and confident expressions of God's favor, scarcely a word has been said about man's failure to obey what God has written upon every conscience. America has thrown God out of public schools; ridicules, maligns and misrepresents Him in film and media; murders babies in the womb by the millions; flaunts before Him rampant fornication, homosexuality, divorce, pornography and all manner of evil-then asks His blessing!" -CC
Pres. Bush `Unsigns' Dangerous ICC According to AgapePress, the Bush Administration announced last month it is formally renouncing Bill Clinton's agreement to give U.S. backing to a world court. The International Criminal Court treaty would open U.S. soldiers, military leaders, and even the president to prosecution by anyone in the world who deemed Americans had done something wrong on the battlefield. This world court already has the endorsement of over 60 other nations and is due to begin operations next year in The Hague. Clinton signed the treaty on his last day in office, but it never made it to the Senate for ratification. [We are disappointed with Pres. Bush's favors to homosexuals, having disgraceful rock star Ozzy Osbourne at the White House last month, but we applaud his unsigning of the ICC treaty. We're in perilous times. Pray for our leaders.]
Sad Statistics-According to the 5/02 Charisma: "Over 70 million Christians over the world have been martyred in the last 20 centuries. *** There are 500 million orphans in the world and 70 million abandoned children and infants. *** Worldwide, 200 million children are exploited for labor. *** Even in the year 2002, 35 million people are still slaves. *** Pedophile racketeers victimize some 5.8 million children.*** There are 24 million prostitutes. *** Each year, about $47 billion of cocaine is sold in the world. *** Trusted church workers steal some $16 billion annually from church funds."

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