Random Apostasies and Heresies

Let’s start out by telling of the movie I watched yesterday - Man of Steel.  I had read many articles about the numerous Christian references in the film, and most of them I would never have recognized as being such without having read about them first.  I thought the movie, which was over two hours long, was a waste of my money.  The story line really diverted from original Superman history, with Lois Lane knowing who he was from the beginning of her investigations.  The makers of the movie decided an overall gray tone was artistic, I suppose, but I found it very distracting.  The movie was just too much mayhem, and too much implausible and impossible stuff even for science-fiction.  I found nothing edifying, and little entertaining about the movie.  While there were indeed some good messages in the movie, I think they were far outweighed by the violence and mayhem, and the occasional crude language from Lois Lane.

But guess what - it has become the newest movie to be Christian-promoted!  After all, it has Christian themes, so they say.  But, even worse, you can now get “ministry resources” which can be used to “educate and uplift your congregation.”  On this site, you can get “Free Videos, Sermon Outlines and Images.”  Apparently this resource site was available in time for Father’s Day. 

An example of the nonsense is this citation from one of the teaching outlines:

“Kids will better appreciate Jesus and his sacrifice through looking at scripture and the parallels in the Man of Steel movie.”  Really?  The Bible isn’t enough so we have to appeal to a worldly movie story?

This is one of the problems with the Church today - too many leaders feel a necessity to appeal to the basest character of man and provide entertainment instead of meat.  I am really very tired of movies being used for sermon material.  We are to be in the world and not of it.  Keep Hollywood out of the Church!

Catholic Charities has invited a pro-homosexual priest, Greg Boyle as a keynote speaker at their annual gathering in September.  He supports same-sex fake marriage and wants women in the priesthood. This guy is apostate even by Romanist standards, so why has he not been defrocked! 

Rob Bell.  Do I need to say more?  An interesting video of an interview with Bell demonstrates his support for homosexuality and same-sex fake marriage.  After all, “That’s just how the world is.”  But watch the video and you will notice that Bell didn’t answer the question as to whether homosexuality is sinful.  He just keeps giving an obfuscating response.  He doesn’t want to say it isn’t sin in general, but his response does de facto claim it isn’t sinful.  As to his claim that Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality, I recommend this blog post by Stan demonstrating the ignorance - and dishonesty - of such a claim.

More on the Andy Stanley controversy as to his view of Scripture.  Denny Burke had two good posts, both of which really need to be perused to see exactly what the problem is.  The first one was posted May 30th, and Andy commented on it.  This led to a second post on June 6th responding to Stanley and his enablers.

False teacher Rodney Howard-Browne isn’t happy about an upcoming conference exposing him and his ilk.  Phil Johnson explains the conference and posts Rodney’s response, as well as a good example of Rodney’s behavior and false teaching in an attached video.

Over at Joe’s Jottings you can read of another example of abused Scripture.  In reference to Job 1:21, Joe asks, “Does the Lord give and then take away?”

Beth Moore is always a good example of what is wrong with the pop-culture teachers in the Church.  I have many articles exposing her false teachings, and they are the articles which get me the most hate mail.  Elizabeth Prata examined an older teaching by Moore  where Moore tells us that God revealed to her that the Church “is paralyzed by unbelief.”  (This statement was in her series, “Believing God,” which I examined five years ago.)  Prata does a very good job of dismantling this claim by Beth.

Lastly, another fad of recent times is called “contextualization of the Gospel.”  This teaching says that in order to reach people with the Gospel message, you have to consider the local culture, etc.  It is a teaching apparently originating in the Emergent movement, but now it is being fostered in more and more missionary work.  Roger Oakland examines the problems with this faddish idea.