Author: Pilgrim

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Doctrine divides!

standing-alone “Doctrine divides!”

Whenever you hear this it’s usually followed up with “we all worship the same God” and “can’t we all get along?”

Whenever the mantra “doctrine divides” is employed, it’s always with a negative connotation. But have you stopped to ponder why?

Allow me to submit for your consideration, that “doctrine divides” is actually a good thing–a positive thing. It’s true that “doctrine divides,” and here’s what it divides:

The ones just wanting to be fed from the ones willing to take up their cross.

The false conversions from the true conversions.

The ones under law from the ones under grace.

The swine from the pearls.

The profane from the holy.

The tares from the wheat.

The goats from the sheep.

The wolves from the flock.

The hirelings from the shepherds.

The “other gospels” from the one true Gospel.

The false christs from the one true Christ.

The darkness from the Light.

The lies from the Truth.

The myths from the facts.

The wicked from the righteous.

The wide gate from the narrow gate.

The broad road from the narrow road.

and

The many paths from the only Way.

Doctrine divides; doctrine divides; thank God Almighty, doctrine divides!

– The Pilgrim

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Rudeness, vulgarity, and profanity. The ‘next big thing’ in church.

This announcement video is actually from a church. Thank you Mark “The Cussing Pastor” Driscoll for blazing new trails in the area of crude and carnal speech in church. The trickle-down effect of your example is bearing much fruit.

Don’t worry, Josh (on the right) and the folks at The Journey Church had a vestige of decency to bleep out the cussing.

HT:  Slice of Laodicea & A Little Leaven

Apparently Josh is a motivational youth speaker (imagine that) who literally believes that in our words we hold the power of life and death (see this video). This really makes me wonder what he was thinking when he said the things he said in the above video. Oh, and Josh also has an opinion on homosexuality (see this video). I bet you’ll never guess what a hip, cool, relevant, and culturally vulgar youth speaker thinks about homosexuality.

This guy reminds me of Ignatius the fictional youth pastor.


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Letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing.

humility

The following is an excerpt from a thought-provoking article from Daily Discernment entitled Right Hand Publicity Inc.:

Since leaving a “church” where corruption was fully in bloom, I have become fascinated with the anatomy of how a church becomes corrupted. It happens much the way cancer happens.

It is estimated that 90% of the population has “cancer” at any given time. Cancer is merely cells that have divided incorrectly resulting in two dysfunctional cells. In those with healthy immune systems, those errant cells are recognized and destroyed. In those with broken immune systems, the cancer cells go unrecognized and unaddressed are allowed to keep dividing until they eventually form a tumor and metastasize, killing the body.

So by the time someone is diagnosed with cancer, they have actually had it for many months or even years, but the symptoms were not seen on the surface.

So too, when a church is discovered to be corrupt, it can be traced back months and years to a time when the actual break down in the system of accountability. When confronting sin and exercising church discipline stops, the cancer starts to grow, and it is only a matter of time before the body is dead, and just becomes a social club, civic organization or entertainment arena.

So while there are endless examples out there of full blown apostasy, let’s look at a more subtle example of outright sin that gets skipped over. Usually because this kind of thing is now ubiquitous in the “church” as it has become deaf to God’s wisdom and replaced it with the wisdom of the world.

To read the entire article from Ginger Taylor, click here.

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Quotes (500)

j-gresham-machenMen tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end . . . . It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of the truth.

– J. Gresham Machen

1887 – 1937

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Sola Scriptura (64)

bible-page.jpg Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

– Deuteronomy 8:11-14

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Quotes (499)

ryle.jpg To say that reunion with Rome would be an insult to our martyred Reformers is a very light thing; it is far more than this: it would be sin and an offense against God!

– J.C. Ryle

1816 – 1900

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Sermon of the week: “Programs, Get Your Programs: Exposing the Flaws of the Fad-Driven Church” by Phil Johnson.

Your Wednesday sermon of the week is Programs, Get Your Programs: Exposing the Flaws of the Fad-Driven Church, by Phil Johnson. This is a great follow-up to last Wednesday’s sermon of the week (found here).

Those who hold dear to such fads as The Prayer of Jabez, the WWJD junk, the Left Behind craze, and those who adore the likes of Christianity Today, TBN, Jan Crouch, JI Packer, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, TD Jakes, George Barna, Ted Haggard, Joyce Meyer, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, James Dobson, and the can’t-do-no-wrong, practically-walks-on-water evangelical favorite Billy Graham, may take issue with this message. But for the rest of us, it’s a breath of freash air to finally hear someone call a spade a spade.

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The Hell-bound false prophetess Helen Ukpabio of Liberty Gospel Church in Nigeria.

So who is this Helen Ukpabio and why has she rightly reserved her spot in Hell lest she repent? She’s a self-proclaimed “prophetess” who is becoming rich on the abandonment, abuse, and murder of innocent children. She runs Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries and is responsible for much of the false teaching in Nigeria.

helen-ukpabio

You can learn much more about her from the documentary exposing the wickedness that she’s up to her neck in. If you haven’t seen it, you can check out the fruit of Helen Ukpabio’s false, Hell-spawned “gospel” in the six-part video on the post Charismania Unrestrained: Africa’s Witch Children. You cannot remain unchanged or at least unaffected after viewing it.

The secular organization Stepping Stones is one of the very few in Nigeria trying to help the victims of the millstone-wearing Ukpabio. On their website they write:

Stepping Stones Nigeria does not wish to denounce any faith organisation. However the role of the church, especially some of the new Pentecostals, in spreading the belief in child witches cannot be underestimated. There are numerous so-called pastors in the region who are wrongly branding children as ‘witches’ mainly for economic self gain and personal recognition.

Ukpabio, who claims to be anointed to cast out witches, is making her living on preaching a false gospel. Below is one of the propaganda videos she produced to indoctrinate the naive into believing that their own children are witches, thus leading to their abandonment and even murder. Viewer discretion is advised.


You can sign a petition to stop this madness by clicking here.

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Raise your hand.

raise-your-right-hand

Ingrid Schlueter has given three cheers to the Catholics for their valiant fight against the billion dollar baby butcher business (while evangelicals are becoming increasingly silent on the issue of abortion).

I too would like to chime in on this issue: I wholeheartedly disagree with the soul-damning false gospel of the Roman Catholic institution, but I have to ask why they continue to fight for the unborn while evangelicals have fallen silent? I believe part of it is that Roman Catholicism is a works-based false religion and thus, its adherents must strive to win God’s favor by their works and what’s more “favorable” to God than protecting the unborn? I believe that the problem on the other side of the coin is that many evangelicals have become so relevant and accommodating to the world that they’ve absorbed the world’s standards, morals, wisdom, and ways and can no longer be distinguished from the world.

As the Catholics continue to take a stand against this murderous rampage perpetrated upon the most defenseless class in our society, many evangelicals have begun to support the shedding of innocent blood by their collective silence and some even voted for our current pro-abortion commander in chief. By abandoning the fight for life, evangelicals actually lend support to the heinous act of abortion.

The church that remains silent on the issue is no better than those whose murderous ways are furthered by such silence.



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Quotes (498)

voddie-baucham Modern American dating is no more than glorified divorce practice. Young people are learning how to give themselves away in exclusive, romantic, highly committed (at times sexual) relationships, only to break up and do it all over again. God never intended for His kids to live like this. And instead of stepping in and doing something, many Christian parents simply view these types of relationships as a normal and necessary part of growing up. Unless your child is wiser than Solomon, stronger than Samson, and more godly than David (all of whom sinned sexually), they are susceptible to sexual sin, and these premature relationships serve as open invitations. . . . Being involved in such exclusive relationships before you are ready to be married is like shopping without any money; either you will leave frustrated, or you will take something that doesn’t belong to you.

– Voddie Baucham

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Quotes (496)

Our holy Lord requires absolute submission and obedience in all things, both in the inward life and the outward, even to “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Alas that this is so little insisted upon in a day when the high claims of the Savior are whittled down in an attempt to render His Gospel more acceptable to the unregenerate.

– Matthew Henry

1662 – 1714

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Update on the post: “Proof That There’s a Hell and a Loving God Will Send The Wicked There.”

belkis-gonzalesThis is the face of a cold-blooded murderer of innocent, defenseless children.

DefCon first reported on this horrendous story here. Now, not only do we have a picture of this evil monster who has the blood of the innocent on her hands, but we also have an update on the story.

Belkis Gonzalez was finally arrested in relation to the murder of a child in 2006 after the baby–intended to be murdered in the womb legally–was born alive and was then murdered outside the womb illegally (if that makes any sense).

The mother of the child was 23 weeks pregnant.

Unfortunately, Belkis Gonzalez is not being charged with murder, infanticide, child abuse, child neglect, or even battery. She’s only being charged with practicing medicine without a license and tampering with evidence. Why? Because:

Authorities were unable to definitively determine the cause of death — and Gonzalez’s role in it — preventing the State Attorney’s Office from charging her with murder or manslaughter, Griffith said.

I think there’s enough reasonable suspicion to charge her with murder based on this quote:

The teenage mother, Sycloria Williams, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gonzalez knocked the infant off the chair where she had given birth, and then scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag, and threw it out.

Read more of the update here.

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National Youth Ministry Conference.

In contrast to the other videos out there produced by “churches” (like these and these) and especially those produced for youth “ministry,” the following videos are rather mild. However, Ingrid Schlueter really hits the nail on the head with the following quote on the state of perpetual adolescence in church leadership. It begs the question Who’s pastoring the youth pastors?

The problem with a lot of youth “ministry” today is that it is all youth and no ministry. With the collective emotional age of a lot of youth pastors not exceeding 12, it is difficult to know what these youth events accomplish aside from furthering the cause of permanent adolescence. Remember Scripture’s injunctions that the older teach the younger? What happens when there is no “older?” What happens when nobody matures mentally or emotionally past childhood? What happens when the supposed “men” are flabby, undisciplined kids who spend their time posting videos of themselves on YouTube? Here’s what happens.

The above video was produced for an announcement segment plugging the 2010 National Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago.

The following video (produced by the same folks) is definitely catering to the lowest common denominator. Violence, youth rebellion, disobedience to authority . . . all the elements you’d expect to see in a video for youth ministry in American Christianity. And by the way, (at the 39 second mark of this video) does the kid’s shirt on the left say what I think it does?

There’s a name for this type of behavior. It’s called Rejuvenile.

Additional worldly and childish “youth ministry” antics:

A story of injured clowns and evil chickens: When the gospel is so watered down that you get no gospel at all. But hey, the kids are entertained!

The problem with youth ministry today: God’s laxative? Because every Christian needs a spiritual bowel movement?