Agglomeration

There are some good articles I come across in my daily feeds which I think need to be shared. There are some articles about the apostasy and heresy taking over the church and these alerts also need to be shared. So buckle up for a roller-coaster ride.

Beware of The Hidden Unchristian Belief of TOP Progressive Christian Influencers.

Why you should not consume bad Christian books/movies.

The False Gospel of the Enemies Within the Church. Sounds like a video I want to see!

The New Evangelical Latitudinarians, Emptying Christianity of All Meaning.

Why are so many kids rejecting Christianity? Look at their parents.

NO church or individual Christians should be listening to the shallow and theologically poor music/songs from Hillsong. Hillsong is an apostate, blasphemous, and often heretical organization with funding help coming from the sales and use of their music. The leadership has moral issues, just as every false church and cult has. Check out the latest from Brian Houston. I have quit a few copies of the PFO Journal with my article exposing Hillsong; if you would like one just ask and I’ll send you a copy.

Time to abandon AWANA!!!

A real kooky false teacher of whom I never heard—Kathryn Krick.

A perfect example of why I always called this magazine, “Christianity Astray.”

Michael Brown continues to endorse rank heretics — this time it’s Kevin Zadai.

Kenneth Copeland — as bad a false teacher as it gets.  Stay away from this voracious wolf!

Benny Hinn is still just as much a tool of Satan as he has always been. The man is not a Christian nor has he ever been.

When the emperor is naked, it isn’t hate speech to tell him he is naked. Just so, it isn’t hate speech to refuse to participate in the “transgender” delusion. This Christian band is obviously not really Christian.

Tim Keller helps promote the LGBT views of Revoice. 

First Baptist Church Orlando, FL, is definitely apostate and no Christians should associate with them. Thank you John MacArthur for rebuking them.

The Association of Related Churches is a hotbed of immorality and scandal.

Charismaniacs bring disgrace to the Church.

Book Review

From 1/20 to 3/17/22 I read the book, The Triumph of Christianity, by Rodney Stark. It is subtitled, “How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion.” By the time I was half-way through it I decided it was a book EVERY Christian should read so they can learn some accurate history of the Christian Church. While this post will be lengthy, it is not going to be a detailed review; rather I will use the author’s section and chapter headings (with subheadings in sections) and include some of the conclusions of each chapter. (Since I usually get no more than two hours a day to just sit and read, that’s why it took me two months!)

To begin with, the author exposes a lot of old “tales” about the church which have been propagated over the centuries; myths about the Church which just aren’t true, and these stories which turned out to be myths surprised even me and I have studied history—including Church history—since I was a teenager! And this is what kept my rapt attention the whole way through. (Note: the book is copyright 2011 so when it comes to statistics of current religions you can expect obsolescence.)

Introduction: 5 pages explaining the purpose and outline of the book.

PART ONE: Christmas Eve.

Chapter One: The Religious Context

1. Pagan Temple Societies
2. Zoroastrians and the Magi
3. Religions in Rome
4. Oriental Faiths
5. Fear of Congregations
6. Suppressing the Bacchanalians
7. Against Isis
8. Isolating Cybele
9. Persecution of the Jews
10. Pagan “Monotheism”

Conclusion: On Christmas Eve, Judaism was the only fully developed monotheism available in the Roman West. It is well known that Jews played a crucial role in preparing the way for the Christianization of Rome. But much too little has been made of the extent to which the Oriental religions also prepared the way: the geography of the spread of early Christianity through the empire closely followed the geography of the spread of temples devoted to Cybele and to Isis.

Chapter Two: Many Judaisms

1. Herod
2. Samaritans
3. Hellenistic Judaism
4. Jewish Pluralism
5. Messianism

Conclusion: This was the Jewish world into which Jesus was born and raised, conducted his ministry, and was crucified. It was a society of monotheists dedicated to the importance of holy scripture. In addition to sustaining a remarkable number of scholars and teachers, it was also a world prolific in prophets and terrorists. Hence, this tiny society of Jews at the edge of the empire caused Rome far more trouble than did any other province.

PART II: Christianizing the Empire

Chapter Three: Jesus and the Jesus Movement

1. Jesus (interesting note: Geza Vermes claimed that in “Talmudic sayings the Aramaic noun denoting carpenter or craftsman (naggar) stands for ‘scholar’ or ‘learned man.’” Both possibilities seem far more consistent with Jesus’s knowledge of the Law that is the idea he spent his formative years sawing wood.)
2. But Can the Gospels Be Trusted?
3. The Jesus Movement
4. The Holy Family. (Interesting note: Although Jesus’s family was prominent in the early church, the memory of them soon went into eclipse because of the developing tradition that not only was Mary a virgin when she bore Jesus, but that she remained one for life. As this doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary emerged in the second century, the brothers and sisters of Jesus were at first transformed into cousins and eventually ignored altogether.)
5. The Persecuted Church in Jerusalem
6. Mission to the world
7. On Conversion

Conclusion: We still know very little about the Jesus Movement during the first century. We know that Jesus’s family played a leading role in the church in Jerusalem—Paul clearly accepted the authority of James, the brother of Jesus, who headed the church until he was murdered in 62. Either in response to or in anticipation of the First Jewish Revolt, the Christian leadership left Jerusalem sometime in the late 60s and probably resettled in Pella. At this point their history ends—although it seems reasonable to assume that they played an active role in the rapid and remarkable Christianization of the East. For the spread of Christianity in the West, it often is assumed we have substantial information on how this occurred, based on Acts and Paul’s letters. But a closer look reveals that here too the story is quite lacking in details. That may well be because the spread of religious movements is not accomplished by dramatic events and persuasive preachers, but by ordinary followers who convert their equally anonymous friends, relatives, and neighbors.

Chapter Four: Missions to the Jews and the Gentiles

1. The Diasporan Jews
2. Cultural Continuity
3. Paul and the Diaspora
4. When Did Jewish Conversion Stop?
5. Gentile Yearnings (note: the author wrongly refers to Israel as “Palestine”)
6. Pagan Cultural Continuity (interesting note: But to claim that these similarities with pagan mythology discredit Christianity is to fail to see how these features played to the pagan world! There they were taken as compelling proof of Christ’s divinity—the Christ story fulfilled every element of the classical hero, of how a human rose to become a god. The early church fathers fully understood this. Having told the Christ story to a Roman magistrate, Tertullian (ca.160-?) suggested that he “accept this story—it is similar to your own.”)

Conclusion: The initial success of Christianity seems to have been based primarily on conversions among the Diasporan Jews. Our first knowledge of Christians in Rome comes from disorders reported within the Jewish community over “Chrestus.” Paul was sent to Damascus to punish Jews for accepting Christ. The many other Christian congregations that preceded Paul’s missions were most certainly Jewish since no exception had yet been made for the conversion of pagans without their becoming Jews too. No doubt Gentiles began to swell the ranks of converts as Paul spread the word about the new policies: the “God-fearers” probably quickly switched en masse from the synagogues to the churches. But since Paul continued to base his efforts within the Diasporan communities, Jewish Christians must have continued to dominate the church. This is consistent with my previous study in which I found strong statistical evidence that Greco-Roman cities with a significant Diasporan community had Christian congregations far sooner than did other cities. All nine of the larger Greco-Roman cities with Diasporan communities had a Christian congregation by the end of the first century. Only four of the twenty-two equally large Greco-Roman cities without such a community had a church that early; a third of them still lacked a church by 180. Eventually, of course, the rise of Christianity was accomplished by the mission to the Gentiles. This was greatly facilitated by the many aspects of the Christ story that made it familiar and convincing to pagans: the star in the East, the Virgin Birth, the visit by the Magi, the miracles, the blood sacrifice of the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension.

Chapter Five: Christianity and Privilege

1. Privileged Christians
2. Christian Literacy
3. Privilege and Religious Innovation
4. Insufficiencies and Opportunities of Privilege

Conclusion: Karl Marx was merely reflecting the conventional wisdom of the day when he wrote that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature…the opium of the people.” But he might better have said that “religion often is the opium of the dissatisfied upper classes, the sigh of wealthy creatures depressed by materialism.” Of course, given his relentless intellectual as well as personal materialism, Marx couldn’t conceive of such a thing. Neither can far too many social scientists. Fortunately, most New Testament historians no longer believe that the early Christians were a motley crew of slaves and the downtrodden. Had that really been the case, the rise of Christianity would most certainly have required miracles.

Chapter Six: Misery and Mercy

(Interesting note: What is almost always missed is that Christianity often puts the pie on the table! It makes life better here and now. Not merely in psychological ways, as faith in an attractive afterlife can do, but in terms of concrete, worldly benefits. Consider that a study based on ancient tombstones has established that early Christians outlived their pagan neighbors! What that demonstrates is that Christians enjoyed a superior quality of life. They did so because of their commitment to what was an unusual virtue in ancient times: “the quality of mercy,” as Portia put it in The Merchant of Venice, played a major role in the growth of Christianity.)

1. Urban Misery
2. Size and Density
3. Housing
4. Filth
5. Crime and Disorder
6. Disease
7. Christian Mercy
8. Plagues and Faith

Conclusion: Some will object that to stress the importance of tangible, worldly benefits for Christian conversion is to wrongly downplay the religious motivations for the rise of Christianity. This objection overlooks that these worldly benefits were religious in the fullest sense. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). It was by imitation of Christ that Christians were able to live longer and enjoy more comfortable lives.

Chapter Seven: Appeals to Women

1. Pagan and Jewish Women
2. Christian women
3. Church Leadership.  NOTE: The author is a egalitarian when it comes to women’s roles in the church and therefore bleats out leftist nonsense to say Paul was wrong about not allowing women to teach men in the assembly. 
4. Infanticide
5. Marriage
6. Divorce
7. Sexuality
8. Sex Ratios and Fertility
9. Secondary Conversions

Conclusion: The rise of Christianity depended upon women. In response to the special appeal that the faith had for women, the early church drew substantially more female than male converts, and this in a world where women were in short supply. Having excess of women gave the church a remarkable advantage because it resulted in disproportionate Christian fertility and in a considerable number of secondary conversions.

Chapter Eight: Persecution and Commitment

1. Episodic Persecutions
2. Imperial Persecutions
3. Persecution by Decius and Valerian
4. The “Great Persecution”
5. Christian intransigence
6. The Basis of Martyrdom
7. Martyrdom and Credibility

Conclusion: It seems fitting to quote the introductory sentences written by Eusebius in The Martyrs of Palestine—his account of some who suffered during the Great Persecution. “These holy martyrs of God…accounted a horrible death more precious than a fleeting life, and won all the garlands of victorious virtue…. And the spirits of the martyrs, counted worthy of the kingdom of heaven, are come to the assembly of the prophets, and are precious.” Thus were the Roman authorities overmatched.

Chapter Nine: Assessing Christian Growth

1. Ancient Statistics
2. A Model of Growth
3. The Geography of Christian Growth
4. Christianizing the City of Rome

Conclusion: The fundamental purpose of this chapter was to impose needed discipline on the subject of Christian growth—to substitute an arithmetic of the plausible and possible for unfounded speculations and wild assumptions. … Possession of these estimates of the Christian population for the first three centuries brings needed discipline to the history of this era. If nothing else, it forces recognition of how tiny and fragile the church was for such a long time. … too often histories of Roman politics late in the third and early fourth centuries have tended to ignore the very large and rapidly growing Christian communities, especially in the major cities—both as they cause anxiety in ruling circles and as they offered a potential source of powerful political support. Hence, although a great deal has been written about how much the church benefitted from Constantine’s favor, far too little been [sic] written about how the support of millions of Christians benefitted Constantine by solidifying his power and ending decades of constantly changing rule.

PART III: Consolidating Christian Europe

Chapter Ten: Constantine’s Very Mixed Blessings

1. Constantine
2. Building the Church (Interesting note: But Constantine’s major contribution was to elevate the clergy to high levels of wealth, power, and status [which resulted in a corrupt clergy and the Roman papacy—GC]. Keep in mind that, contrary to popular belief, Constantine did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire. “What he did was to make the Christian church the most-favored recipient of the near-limitless resources of imperial favour.” Legl privileges and powers were lavished on the clergy. Episcopal courts were given official status. The clergy were exempted from taxes and civic duties. And bishops “now became grandees on a par with the wealthiest senators…[and were] expected to take on the role of judges, governors, great servants of state.” As a result there was a sudden influx of men from aristocratic families into the priesthood which transformed the church into a far more worldly and far less energetic institution.)
3. Unity and Conformity
4. The Donatist Controversy
5. Arianism
6. Pagan Coexistence
7. The Persian Massacres

Conclusion: The creation of a rich, powerful, and intolerant Christian church was the primary legacy of the conversion of Constantine. Far better that he had remained a pagan who opposed religious persecution while allowing Christian diversity to flourish.  

And this was the birth of the Roman Catholic Church and why it is still a corrupt and unbiblical organization.

Chapter Eleven: The Demise of Paganism

1. Coexistence
2. Julian’s Folly
3. Persecution and Persistence
4. The Decline of Paganism
5. Assimilation

Conclusion: … In the fourth and early fifth centuries, paganism was still quite robust. But to recognize that fact it is necessary, as Peter Brown put it, to attend to “tantalizing fragments” of historical evidence that can be “glimpsed through the chinks in a body of evidence which claims to tell a very different story.” That false story being that “this one short period of time (under a century) witnessed the ‘death of paganism’…as a succession of Christian emperors…played out there God-given role in abolishing…the old gods.” … Instead, paganism survived relatively unmolested for centuries after the conversion of Constantine, only slowly sinking into obscurity, meanwhile managing to create niches for some of its traditions within Christianity an to live on among the only slightly Christianize European masses.

Chapter Twelve: Islam and the Destruction of Eastern and North African Christianity

1. Muslim Conquests
2. Conversion
3. Dhimmis and Muslim “Tolerance”
4. Stamping Out the “Unbelievers”

Conclusion: By the end of the fourteenth century only tiny remnants of Christianity remained here and there in the East and North Africa, having been almost completely wiped out by Muslim persecution. Thus, as Philip Jenkins put it, Christianity became a European faith because Europe was the only “continent where it was not destroyed.”

Chapter Thirteen: Europe Responds 

1. The Case for the Crusades. (Interesting notes: Western condemnations of the Crusades originated in the “Enlightenment,” that utterly misnamed era during which French and British intellectuals invented the “Dark Ages” in order to glorify themselves and vilify the church. … But the notion that the crusades were early Western imperialists who used a religious excuse to seek land and loot probably originated by Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), who claims that the crusaders really went in pursuit of “mines of treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper, and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense.”  … Muslim antagonism about the Crusades did not appear until about 1900 in reaction against the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the onset of actual European colonialism in the Middle East.)
2. Provocations
3. Economic Aspects of the Crusades
4. Why They Wentd
5. The Crusader Kingdoms
6. Crusader “War Crimes” (Interesting note: No doubt it was very “unenlightened” of the crusaders to be typical medieval warriors, but it strikes me as even more unenlightened to anachronistically impose the Geneva Convention on the crusaders while pretending that their Islamic opponents were either UN Peacekeepers or hapless victims.)
7. Rediscovering the Crusades (Interesting note: Thus, current Muslim memories and anger about the Crusades are a twentieth century creation, prompted in part by “post-World War I British and French imperialism and the post-World War II creation of the state of Israel.”)

Conclusion: The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. The Crusades are not a blot on the history of Christianity. No apologies are required.

PART IV: Medieval Currents

Chapter Fourteen: The “Dark Ages” and Other Mythical Eras

(Interesting note: Western history consists of four major eras: 1) classical antiquity, then 2) the Dark Ages when the church dominated, followed by 3) the Renaissance-Enlightenment which led the way to 4) modern times. For several centuries that has been the fundamental organizing scheme for every textbook devote to Western history, despite the fact that serious historians have known for decades that this scheme is a complete fraud—“an indestructible fossil of self-congratulatory Renaissance humanism.” It is appropriate  to use the term renaissance to identify a particular period in the arts when there was a renewed interest in classical styles, and to distinguish this period from the Gothic or the Baroque. But it is inappropriate to apply this term to identify the rebirth of progress following the Dark Ages because there never were any Dark Ages!)

1. The Myth of the “Dark Ages” (Interesting note: But perhaps the most important factor in the myth of the “Dark Ages” is the inability of intellectuals to value or even to notice the nuts and bolts of real life. Hence, revolutions in agriculture, weaponry and warfare, nonhuman power, transportation, manufacturing, and commerce went unappreciated. So too did remarkable moral progress.)
2. Progress in Technology
3. Inventing Capitalism
4. Moral Progress. (Interesting note: All classical societies were slave societies—both Plato and Aristotle were slave owners, as were most free residents of Greek city-states. In fact, all know societies above the very primitive level have been slave societies—even many of the Northwest American Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus’s voyage. Amid this universal slavery, only one civilization ever rejected human bondage: Christendom. And it did it twice!)
5. Progress in High Culture
6. The Myth of the “Renaissance”
7. The Myth of Secular “Enlightenment” (Interesting note: What the proponents of “Enlightenment” actually initiated was the tradition of angry secular attacks on religion in the name of science—attacks like those of their modern counterparts such as Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. Presented as the latest word in sophistication, rationalism, and reason, these assaults are remarkably naive and simplistic—both then and now. In truth, the rise of science was inseparable from Christian theology, for the latter gave direction and confidence to the former.)

Conclusion: When one examines the conventional outline of Western history one encounters some truly fabulous inventions of great historical eras that never really happened: the “Dark Ages,” the “Renaissance,” the “Enlightenment,” and the “Age of Reason.” We turn next to an equally fictitious era: the “Age of Faith.”

Chapter Fifteen: The People’s Religion

1. Popular Christian Commitment
2. Defective Clergy
3. Rural Neglect
4. Inappropriate Expectations
5. The People’s Religion
6. Magic and Misfortune
7. Church Magic
8. Theology and Tragedy

Conclusion: Medieval times were not the “Age of Faith.” For the vast majority of medieval Europeans, their “religious” beliefs were a hodgepodge of pagan, Christian, and superstitious fragments; they seldom went to church; and they placed greater faith in the magic of the Wise Ones that in the services of the clergy….

Chapter Sixteen: Faith and the Scientific “Revolution”

(Interesting note: The truth is that not only did Christianity not impede the rise of science; it was essential to it, which is why science arose only in the Christian West! Moreover, there was no sudden “Scientific Revolution”; the great achievements of Copernicus, Newton, and other stalwarts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the product of normal scientific progress stretching back for centuries.)

1. What Is Science?
2. The Scholastic Origins of Science (Interesting note: Just as there were no “Dark Ages,’ there was no “Scientific Revolution.” Rather, the notion of a Scientific Revolution was invented to discredit the medieval church by claiming that science burst forth in full bloom (thus owing no debts to prior Scholastic scholars) only when a weakened Christianity no longer could suppress it.)
3. Copernicus and Normal Science
4. Scholastic Universities
5. Scholastic Empiricism (Interesting note: Many societies pursued alchemy, but only in Christian Europe did it lead to chemistry; many societies developed extensive systems of astrology, but only in Europe was astrology transformed into scientific astronomy. Why?)
6. The God of Reason
7. What About Galileo?
8. Inerrancy and Divine Accommodation. This section is where the author goes off the rails with Genesis not being literal but just a story to accommodate the understanding of the people of the times.

Conclusion: The original warfare between religion and science never happened: Christianity not only did not impede the rise of science; it was essential to its having taken place. As for the contemporary conflict between religion and science, it is a battle limited to extremists…. He then notes militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and “fundamentalists” like Henry More who dares to call evolutionism (“modern science”) nonsense.

PART V: Christianity Divided

Chapter Seventeen: Two “Churches” and the Challenge of Heresy

(Interesting note: Soon Christian offices, and especially the higher positions, were dominated by the sons of the aristocracy—some of them gaining bishoprics even before being baptize. As a result, many immoral, insincere, and indolent men were ordained, far too many of whom gained very important positions in the church.) Sounds like Roman Catholicism to me!

1. The Church of Power
2. Power and Corruption
3. The Church of Piety
4. The Lazy Monopoly
5. Piety and Reform
6. Encapsulation
7. Persecution
8. Cathars
9. Waldensians

Conclusion: Despite persecution, the demand for reform would not die. New “heretical” groups continued to erupt: the Beghards and Beguines, the Fraticelli, the Humiliati, the Flagellants, and the Lollards….

Chapter Eighteen: Luther’s Reformation

1. Creating a “Heretic”
2. Explaining the Reformation
3. Reform and Discontent
4. Pamphlets and Printers
5. Professors and Students
6. Responsive City Governance
7. Royal Self-Interest
8. The Catholic Reformation

Chapter Nineteen: The Shocking Truth About the Spanish Inquisition

1. Creating the “Black Legend”
2. The Real Inquisition
3. Deaths
4. Torture
5. Witchcraft
6. Heresy
7. Marranos
8. Moriscos
9. Luteranos
10. Sexuality
11. Book Burning

Conclusion: Great historical myths die hard even when there is no vested resistance to new evidence. But in this case, many recent writers continue to spread the traditional myths about this “holy terror” even though they are fully aware of the new findings. They do so because they are determined to show that religion and especially Christianity, is a dreadful curse upon humanity. So these writers casually dismiss the new studies as written by “apologists” and go on as before about the sadistic monsters in black robes.

PART VI: New Worlds and Christian Growth

Chapter Twenty: Pluralism and American Piety

1. Colonial Pluralism
2. Pluralism Misconceived
3. Successful Religious “Firms”. A problem with charting “Christianity” is that the author includes cults (e.g., LDS and JW) and LEFTIST denominations (e.g., ELCA, PCUSA) which are not true Christian bodies. Also, he ignores the fact that ALL Islamic bodies are demonic.
4. Mystical America
5. Pluralism and Religious Civility

Chapter Twenty-One: Secularization—Facts and Fantasies

1. The American “Exception”
2. World Religiousness
3. Understanding the European “Exception”

1. Christianization?

2. Lazy, Obstructionist State Churches

3. “Enlightened” Churches

4. Beleving Nonbelongers

5. Leftist politics

6. Statistical Moonshine

Chapter Twenty-Two: Globalization [mostly statistics]

1. Faiths on Earth
2. Nominal Members
3. Active Membership
4. Regional Variations
5. Christian Africa
6. Latin American Pluralism
7. Protestants in Latin America
8. The Catholic Response. (Interesting note: Liberation Theology failed as a social movement, if for no other reason than that it was an ideological misfit. It lacked credibility to the political Left because of its religious rhetoric and connections to the [Catholic] church. Its emphasis on political goals and tactics made it a nonstarter in competition with religious movements.)
9. Christians in China
10. Why Christianity Grows

1. Message

2. Scripture

3. Pluralism

4. Modernity

Conclusion: Perhaps the most essential aspect of Christianity that has facilitated its globalization is its remarkable cultural flexibility. Wherever it goes, the faith is adapted to the local culture—made possible by its universal message. Hence, worldwide Christianity is an enormous tent within which thousands of distinct churches sustain a common faith in Christ.

Conclusion

1. Council of Jerusalem
2. The Conversion of Constantine
3. The Reformations
4. Summing Up. This section sums up the major subjects of each chapter.