Random Apostasies and Heresies

Tim Challies has been doing a series on false teachers, with short biographies and explanations of their false teaching.  Most, but not all, have been well-known cult leaders.  I don’t think many people know who Charles Taze Russell was (founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses), so here’s a link to that article.  Also, I’m always surprised by people who don’t know what a heretic Norman Vincent Peale was.

Speaking of false teachers, I like what this guy has to say about Mark Driscoll.

Then there is the emergent heretic Tony Jones.

It looks like a movie is coming soon based on the best selling “Heaven Is For Real.”  The sad thing is that the majority of the people buying this junk appear to be Christians — who obviously lack discernment.  I’m sure the movie version will be sold out.  This book is but one among many books by people claiming to have visited heaven.  Can these visits be real?  NO.  They all contradict Scripture.

The Cripplegate has another article in their series about speaking in tongues.

I have often noted problems with modern “worship” songs used in the assemblies, and how many of them are the “Jesus is my boyfriend” type of drivel.  I was directed to an outstanding article about the sensuality of so many contemporary songs.  The author had an excellent question:  “What if a generation is being trained to feel saved rather than to be saved?”

Same-sex fake marriage is now legal in England.  The Archbishop of Canterbury said the Church of England will now drop their opposition to the unions.  We knew that would happen, didn’t we?  Just another apostate denomination making people feel good rather than telling them of their sin and their need for a savior.

World Vision learned about what happens when you approve same-sex fake marriage while claiming to be Christian.  The Cripplegate tells of four lessons learned in this incident.

Of course we all know by now about the flap with World Vision wanting to sanction same-sex unions.  Their turnabout got Rachel Held Evans all in a snit.  She thinks evangelicals have “won a culture war and lost a generation.”  To begin with, we’ve actually lost the culture war, but we knew we would - all we had to do was read what the Bible says about the end times.  But Evans, ever the false teacher she has proven to be, says:  “There is a disproportionate focus on homosexuality that consistently dehumanizes, stigmatizes and marginalizes gay and lesbian people and, at least in this case, prioritizes the culture war against them over and against the important work of caring for the poor.”  Of course what Evans pretends isn’t happening is that it is the homosexual activists who are forcing the focus on homosexuality by using the power of government to force Christians to either accept homosexuality or be punished.  But getting on to Evans’ statement, she teaches the social gospel rather than the gospel which saves.  Guess what, Rachel — the church’s calling is NOT the social gospel!!!   Chelsen Vicari has a good response to Evans.  As does Neil Simpson.

Anyway, according to Tony Jones and Rachel Evans, would-be Christians are being driven away from the church.  Is this true? Of course not, because if people really want to be Christians, they will follow Christ rather than false teachers like Jones and Evans.

With so many denominations - and non-denominational churches - accepting homosexuality as something good rather than the abomination God calls it, there are those who ask why we can’t just all “get along.”  Stan tells us the reason why.  Always remember that "Jesus already defined marriage for his creation."

The “Noah” Movie — Follow-up

I’ve read so many good reviews about this movie that I decided to make a post with links I’ve found since my post on “Noah” so that others can glean the information.  These reviews approach the movie from many angles.

Too many Christians are promoting this garbage movie, and we need to be informed so as to show how unbiblical “Noah” really is, and why Christians should not be spending their money on it.  Nor should any Christian give it even the slightest recommendation for anything but the rubbish heap.  (pluggedin.com, the Focus on the Family movie review site, was way too soft on it, and should have blatantly stated to avoid it — after all, it pollutes the mind.)

This one is a video a bit over 16 minutes long.  The commentator gets a bit dramatic but his points are valid.

In my original article I linked to a couple of reviews by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (for which he was lambasted by a Paramount executive), but now AIG staff have posted an excellent detailed review worth reading.

A site I was directed to has “A No Holds Barred Review of Noah: The Movie (2014).”

Finally, check out Matt Walsh’s review.  His blog can be very interesting.

I hope that between my previous post and this one, you will have enough material to expose this horrid film for what it is, to anyone who praises it.

Which Kind of "Gospel" Do You Follow?

From the time of the Fall to the present day, men and women have frequently succumbed to the deceptive devices of the devil.  Christians are especially open to the king of cunning deceit that combines the language of faith and religion with the content of self-interest and flattery.  We like to be told how special we are, how wise, how blessed, especially if as a consequence others are greatly diminished.  We like to have our Christianity shaped less by the cross than by triumphalism or rules or charismatic leadership or subjective experience.  And if this shaping can be coated with assurances of orthodoxy, complete with the cliche, we may not detect the presence of the archdeceiver, nor see that we are being weaned away from the “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” to a “different gospel.”

D.A. Carson, A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13, p.96-97

Judgments Are Necessary

It is quite impossible for either an individual or a church to make no judgments; for even the failure to make decisions is in fact a decision based on the implicit assumption that this circumstances are not weighty enough to force a judgment…. Neither an individual Christian nor a church can avoid responsibility by refusing to make judgements; for that very refusal is already a judgment, an evaluation of commitments, strategies, priorities, and competing truth claims….

D.A. Carson, A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13, p.70

The “Noah” Movie

I read reports of this movie over the past month, from people who had seen previews, and realized from the get-go that it would be normal Hollywood garbage.  Yet the producer, Scott Franklin, claimed, “I think we stayed very true to the story and didn’t really deviate from the Bible.”

Regardless of such a claim, from the reports I've read I’ve acquired some information as to unbiblical problems with “Noah.”  And these don’t even include the fact that it was primarily an extremist enviro-nazi propaganda piece.

1.  Only one son takes his wife on the Ark in the movie, while in the Bible all three sons had wives with them.

2.  Noah decides who will be worthy board the Ark, while in the Bible it is GOD who chooses.

3.  The son with the wife has twin daughters, which are perhaps supposed to be the future wives of the other two sons.

4.  Noah seeks advice from his grandfather Methuselah to understand a vision by God; this never happened.  Apparently in the movie Noah really never understands God.

5.  Methuselah is shown to be sort of a witch-doctor with mental health issues.

6.  Noah has no concern for the people who will be killed in the flood, but the Bible says he was a “preacher of righteousness,” which would make his lack of concern out of character.

7.  When Noah learns that his son’s wife is expecting, he says if it is a girl she should be killed because God doesn’t want to repopulate the world.  Yet in the Bible we find that repopulation is exactly why Noah and his family — all eight of them — are saved.

8.  A wounded man cuts his way into the Ark and eats animals to stay alive as a stowaway, and even tries to kill Noah.  The Bible says no one but the eight of Noah’s family were on the Ark, and none of the animals died on the journey.

9.  Noah teaches theistic evolution to his family while on board the Ark.

10.  The “nephilim” are giant rock-creatures, help Noah build the Ark, and defend the Ark in battle.

Well, just with these little tid-bits, it should be no surprise to those who follow my blog that I won’t waste my time, money, or brain cells on viewing such trash.  However, Time magazine’s on-line review of this movie said it was “Better Than The Book.”  Of course that’s about what we can expect from a secular magazine.

Well, “Noah” has now been released in the theaters, and some good reviews have been posted.

The first one I read was a short one from Ken Ham’s blog.  He said the movie “is disgusting and evil — paganism.”  Ham said the movie “portrays Noah as a psychopath who says that if his daughter-in-law’s baby is a girl then he will kill her as soon as she’s born,” and that “Psychopathic Noah sees humans as a blight on the planet and wants to rid the world of people.”  Ham said the movie was boring and the worst movie he’d ever seen.

Ken Ham was able to get a more detailed review posted at time.com to rebut their claims about it.

“Except for some of the names in the movie, like Noah, his sons’ names, and Methuselah, hardly any remnant of the Bible’s account of the Flood in Genesis 6-9 is recognizable. Yes, there is an Ark in the film that is true to the massive biblical proportions, but it did not look like a seaworthy vessel. There were many animals that came to Noah and went on board the Ark, but there were far too many creatures crammed inside and certainly many more than were needed. Also, while the extreme wickedness of man was depicted, the real sin displayed in the film was the people’s destruction of the earth. Lost within the film’s extreme environmentalist message is that the actual sins of the pre-Flood people were a rebellion against God and also man’s inhumanity to man. . . . Ultimately, there is barely a hint of biblical fidelity in this film. It is an unbiblical, pagan film from its start. It opens with: ‘In the beginning there was nothing.’ The Bible opens with, ‘In the beginning God.’ That difference helps sum up the problem I have with the film.”

You really need to read his whole rebuttal.

The next review was by Debbie Schlussel.  Debbie is a practicing Jew, and she found the film to be abhorrent.  She starts her review with, “Hollywood committed Noahcide. They killed the Biblical story in favor of a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, soap opera, action film version of what bears little resemblance to the Bible version.  The new movie, ‘Noah,’ in theaters today, would be better called a host of other things: ‘Game of Thrones Noah,’ ‘The Noah-dashians,’ ‘Dysfunctional Family Noah.’ Or just plain, ‘NOT Noah.’”  

Debbie is known for calling a spade a spade, so her review is much more harsh than even Ken Ham’s - but don’t miss it.

I finally read Glenn Beck’s review.  [Link gone by Sep 2020] Of course I know Beck is a Mormon, but even Mormons have a quasi-biblical worldview and agree with a lot of the Bible’s teachings.  Beck said of “Noah,” “It’s more take ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ meets ‘The Shining’ and ‘Friday the 13th,’ with a sprinkle of ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.’”  He further stated that,“If you are looking for a biblical movie, this is definitely not it … It’s not the story of Noah that I was hoping for. If you are going for that, you will be horribly disappointed. . . . . I always thought of Noah as more of a nice, gentle guy, prophet of God … and less of the homicidal maniac that Paramount found in the Bible. More of the man [that] loves God, and less of him trying to break down the doors inside the ark to kill his whole family.”

Believe it or not, there are actually “Christian” leaders who recommend this movie.

Arch-heretic and political darling Jim Wallis proved he is not a Christian, and that he has no idea what the Bible says.  He was all twitter-pated about it:  “in my opinion Aronofksy’s Noah is a beautiful, powerful, difficult film worthy of the ‘epic’ label. A vivid, visually spectacular reimagining of an ancient story held as sacred by all three Abrahamic religious traditions, it also is the most spiritually nuanced, exquisitely articulated exploration of the ideas of justice and mercy I’ve ever seen on a movie screen. … And despite what you may have heard elsewhere, Noah is deeply, passionately biblical.  Nothing in the film contradicts the Bible’s account of Noah and the Great Flood, either in spirit or detail.”

Wallis must have see a different movie than these other people saw.

One last review I invite you to read is by Erick Erickson at Red State.  I liked the way he ended his review:  “Also, we might should [sic] consider burning at the stake any Christian leader who endorses this movie. The book is always better.”  I agree with you 100%, Erick!

And, by the way, this isn’t the last Hollywood religious garbage film to come out this year.  Elizabeth Prata has a good article about the problem with this type of entertainment, as well as examples of up-coming religious movies.

Random Apostasies and Heresies

I’ll start off today with a bit more about World Vision and their latest fiasco.  A good point made by Bryan Fischer is that World Vision needs to “clean house” [link gone by Sep 2020] of those who would even suggest sanctioning same-sex unions.  Meanwhile, Sola Sisters has an article about the philosophy in general at World Vision.  They also have a commentary about when the church at large will accept homosexuality.

Mormons.  I can never do enough to expose their false religious system for what it is: a system which leads people to hell rather than to eternal life.  Anyway, they claim to believe in the Bible, “as far as it is translated correctly.”  Of course this is a smokescreen, because their claims against it have been proven totally erroneous for decades, especially since discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which proved the accuracy of the transmission of the Old Testament.  Well, this is another one of those beliefs that they obfuscate about when asked.

For a bit more fun with Mormons, this will take 36 minutes of your time, but will give you a good insight as to how well the average Mormon don’t know their own belief system!

Hip and Thigh has the review of Michael Brown’s Authentic Fire, chapter 8.

Sola Sisters has updated their one-article clearing house of all the problems which make Mark Driscoll unqualified for the pastoral role.

More about Beth Moore.  She is now really aligning herself with more false teachers and heretics, as she joins them at Joel Osteen’s goat-pen.

Moore isn’t the only one buddying up with false teachers; James MacDonald is buddies with those on the heretical TBN TV.

Steven Furtick is daily getting more bizarre.  A true goatherd who seems to be more about worshiping himself than about pointing to God.

Oh, and did you know that wife battery and other anti-woman behavior is due to things like the Catholic ban on women priests?  Well, Jimmy Carter said it, so it must be true.  He’s a worse Christian than he was a president (don’t forget that he thinks homosexuality is okay).

An article about the need for sober leaders in the church comes from Elizabeth Prata.  See how many things above are examples of what she writes about.

Living Your Faith

Religion is not a single, separate sphere of human life, but the divine principle by which the entire man is to be pervaded, refined and made complete.  It takes hold of him in his undivided totality, in the center of his personal being; to carry light into his understanding, holiness into his will, and heaven into his heart; and to shed thus the sacred consecration of the new birth, and the glorious liberty of the children of God, over his whole inward and outward life.  No form of existence can withstand the renovating power of God’s Spirit.  There is no rational element that may not be sanctified; no sphere of natural life that may not be glorified.

Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism.  Cited in Revelation: Four Views: A Parallell Commentary, edited by Steve Gregg, p.491.

False Teaching Is No Small Thing

Let us never forget that we who stand in the historic stream of Christianity really believe that false doctrine, at those crucial points where false doctrine is heresy, is not a small thing.  If we do not make clear by word and practice our position for truth as truth and against false doctrine, we are building a wall between the next generation and the gospel.

Francis Shaeffer, 1966 Berlin Conference on Evangelism.  Cited by Iain H. Murray, “The Unresolved Controversy: Unity With Non-Evangelicals,” pp.13-14.

Random Apostasies and Heresies

Wow, short time from last RA&H post, but I just got so many things to alert my readers to that I just had to write it up NOW!  (And that is a sad commentary on the state of the church.)

Another good review of the Son of God movie.

Perhaps you have read some of my “Did They Really Say That?!?” articles citing the Seventh-day Adventist false prophet Ellen G. White.  Perhaps you’ve also read my article about the false teachings of the SDA.  Tim Challies has an excellent article exposing E.G. White as a false teacher.

Hip and Thigh has a good commentary on the nonsense going on at another goat-pen.

Or the "WOW worship."

I wonder why Paul never had to resort to such worldly ways to spread the REAL gospel!

Even worse - or maybe they’re even in their own ways - is the Word of Faith heresy and how it is spreading within the mainstream church.

Mormonism Research Ministry’s blog Mormon Coffee always has some interesting tidbits about the Mormon Church’s false teachings.  This article explains their convoluted teaching about God the Father.

Voice of the Martyrs has been a good organization for speaking on behalf of the many persecuted Christians around the world.  Well, things seem to be a wee bit “rotten in Denmark” with VOM recently.

Mark Driscoll; I’ve been telling you over and over how he is unworthy to be in a pastoral position.  In my last RA&H report I exposed his unethical actions to get his book on the best sellers list.  
Well, now it seems Driscoll is coming out with apologies and repentance, and claims that he will be turning his life around.  The Cripplegate has an article questioning how our response should be to all this.  My thinking is pretty much summed up in the article posted by Sola Sisters.  Driscoll should definitely step down from any and all leadership positions.

I came across an article this week on a blog I’m not familiar with, and penned by an author I can’t recommend to those not solid in the faith (because he is a preterist,  buddies up with Rome, appears to be egalitarian, is a replacement theologian, promotes a Sunday “Sabbath” and tithing).  BUT, the article is a solid examination of Joel Osteen and what his teaching is doing to Christianity.

The review of Chapter 7 of Michael Brown’s book, Authentic Fire, is posted.

Oh boy, Steven Furtick will have the ability to reach even more people with his false teachings.

Beware of Unorthodoxy

Unorthodoxy makes its advance in the face of tolerance and undermines orthodoxy like a slowly creeping paralysis. It does not need to repudiate evangelicalism explicitly because it constantly destroys and overthrows it by more subtle means. Unorthodoxy is always happy to keep evangelical terminology because it simply redefines the terms and makes them meaningless. When words can mean anything they mean nothing.

--John Bunyan (28 November 1628 - 31 August 1688, English Christian writer and preacher, who was imprisoned twice for his ministry)  Cited in the 3/18/14 The Berean Call e-mail.