Till men are weary and heavy laden, and pricked at the heart, and quite sick of sin, they will not come to Christ for cure, nor sincerely enquire, “What shall we do?” They must see themselves as dead men, before they will come to Christ that they may live.
– Joseph Alleine
1634 – 1668
I came across In Jesus’ Name Ministry today and it appears that they are doing a wonderful work to help the poor and persecuted Christians who live in the most hostile regions opposed to Jesus Christ and his word. These being our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers whom we are to love not in tongue only but in deed and in truth.
Below are some facts posted on their website that I hope will prick all of our hearts to reach out more and more to those who are in such great need. Please reach out and help and share with others.
We have a tragic situation today when men in the pulpits say that they believe the doctrines of grace but they refuse to preach and teach them to their people.
– William Payne
1938 – 1997
The following is food for thought from a post on Pyromaniacs by Phil Johnson:
. . . in which I (kind of) disagree with Tim Challies
by Phil Johnson
“They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil” (Jeremiah 23:14).
was writing something to agree with and embellish a comment left by Gilbert under Frank’s post yesterday, but it got long, and I decided to make this a full post. I’ve got to say this, and I don’t want it buried at the end of a 120+ comment-thread.
First, some background: The venerable Tim Challies set our little corner of the blogosphere abuzz earlier this week with a post on the dangers of “watchblogs.” There’s quite a lot to applaud in what Tim said, but I don’t think he said everything about the subject that needed to be said. As a result, I thought his post was (quite uncharacteristically for Challies, of all people) lacking in balance.
One of the unintended side effects of Tim’s post has been a widespread and sometimes lively discussion about whether PyroManiacs qualifies as a “watchblog” or not. In the midst of one of these conversations, Gilbert (a long-time reader and commenter here, and a skilled meteorologist to boot) came very close to identifying what I see as the key difference between healthy discernment and the obsessive/compulsive peevishness some of our fellow critics seem to think is the mark of real orthodoxy. Gilbert said:
Gilbert: “Without putting words into [Phil Johnson’s] mouth, he’d rather spend his time building up believers and himself in the Word rather than calling people out for damnable heresies that are causing people to drift away from the true faith and send[ing] them to hell.”
Quite right. But let me add this: It needs to be said that “calling people out for damnable heresies that are causing people to drift away from the true faith” is a shepherd’s duty, not an option—and it can be quite edifying if done well.
It is not one or two good actions, but a consistent conduct, that tells whether a man is a true Christian. . . . Sheep may fall into the mire, but swine love day and night to wallow in it. A Christian may stumble, he may even fall, but he gets up and walks on in the way of God’s commandments; the bent of his heart is right, and the scope of his life is straight, and thus he is considered sincere.
– George Swinnock
1627 – 1673
An insider finally admits what we’ve known all along.
Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.
Check out the news piece from The Times Online.
Under the law, if a man who was unclean by a dead body, carried a piece of holy flesh in his lower garment, the holy flesh could not cleanse him, but he polluted it (Hag, 2:12-13). Till the kingdom of grace is in our hearts, ordinances will not purify us, but we will pollute them. . . . In what a sad condition is a man before God’s kingdom of grace is set up in his heart! Whether he comes or comes not to the ordinance, he sins. If he does not come to the ordinance, he is a condemner of it; if he does come, he a polluter of it. A sinner’s work are opera mortua, dead works which are dead cannot please God. A dead flower has no sweetness.
– Thomas Watson
1620 – 1686
Your sermon of the week is What Every Catholic Should Know by Mike Gendron. This is a good message on the soul-damning errors of the Romish system.
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Also download John MacArthur’s sermons Unmasking the Pope and the Catholic System from this previous post and Exposing the Idolatry of Mary Worship from this previous post.
The worst of the heathen, who never had Christ preached to them, and salvation offered Him, shall fare better in the day of judgment, than those that continue impenitent under the Gospel.
– Matthew Barker
1619 – 1698
The doctrine of Salvation by Sacraments is a deadly delusion, the overthrow of the gospel, the destruction of souls and the path to perdition.
–John Campbell
Love for sin makes men impatient under reproof. When a person’s sin is to him as “the apple of his eye,” no wonder he is offended at any that touches it.
– George Swinnock
1627 – 1673
At DefCon we have dealt with The Manhattan Declaration in previous posts (see here, here and here) speaking to its ecumenical postering and Evangelical signatories. Just recently, Richard Benett from Berean Beacon has published a paper looking into this important matter. Here, Mr. Bennett has highlighted how this declaration is rife with Rome’s agenda. An agenda that can be summed up wth the following quote where we read,
In order to soften up the Evangelicals in their separation from the Catholics on biblical doctrinal issues, particularly the authority of the Bible alone and the Gospel, the Catholic modus operandi calls for using social issues on which both Evangelicals and Catholics agree as preliminary common ground.
To read the rest of this very important paper, please go here.
Your sermon of the week is a three-part series on the controversial issue of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. If you have ever wondered what it is or if you’ve committed it, then this series is for you.
Part 1: The Unpardonable Sin
Part 2: The Blasphemy Against the Spirit
Part 3: A Plea to the Halfhearted
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the pied pipers of the mile-wide, inch-deep church in America drop one rung lower on the ladder as they continue to lead the masses of goats down the broad path of destruction.
I thought the pragmatism of Laodicean evangelism techniques couldn’t shock me anymore but this article from the New York Times has left me speechless. Here are a few quotes form the article:
Recruitment efforts at the churches, which are predominantly white, involve fight night television viewing parties and lecture series that use ultimate fighting to explain how Christ fought for what he believed in. Other ministers go further, hosting or participating in live events. The goal, these pastors say, is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter.”
The sport is seen as a legitimate outreach tool by the youth ministry affiliate of the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches.
Nondenominational evangelical churches have a long history of using popular culture — rock music, skateboarding and even yoga — to reach new followers. Yet even among more experimental sects, mixed martial arts has critics.
I can’t even begin to imagine what will come next in the name of “evangelism.”
For more, checkout this post too.
It appears that the Catholic church is continuing to resort to marketing schemes to draw people back to the oppressive, dead religion of Rome.
It was only a few weeks ago that I posted a video highlighting this new trend and–if you thought it was only an isolated incident–I submit for your consideration another example of this Roman Catholic pragmatic approach to church growth found over at A Little Leaven where Chris Rosebrough aptly introduces the video by saying
If you know your Bible this video will give you several more reasons to not return to Rome.
Personally, I think for their number one reason they should have cited Proverbs 26:11
Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.
Please watch the video below where James White from Alpha and Omega critically analyzes Catholic Answer’s Tim Staples’ purgatorial arguments. He also shares about the Catholic doctrine of purgatory which statues that nearly all Catholics must endure the purging flames of purgatory to make full expiation for their sins. Sins that the Catholic Jesus was unable to remove from his work at Calvary.
From the works of Martin Luther (1483-1546)
What is the whole papacy but a beautiful false front and a deceptively glittering holiness under which the wretched devil lies in hiding? The devil always desires to imitate God in this way. He cannot bear to observe God speaking. If he cannot prevent it or hinder God’s Word by force, he opposes it with a semblance of piety, takes the very words God had spoken and so twist them as to peddle his lies and poison under their name. (What Luther Says, II: 10007)
Since the papal church not only neglects the command of Christ but even compels the people to ignore it and to act against it, it is certain that it is not Christ’s church but the synagogue of Satan which prescribes sin and prohibits righteousness. It clearly and indisputably follows that it must be the abomination of Antichrist and the furious harlot of the devil. (What Luther Says, II: 1019)
The negotiation about doctrinal agreement displeases me altogether, for this is utterly impossible unless the pope has his papacy abolished. Therefore avoid and flee those who seek the middle of the road. Think of me after I am dead and such middle-of-the-road men arise, for nothing good will come of it. There can be no compromise. (What Luther Says, II: 1019)
Read the rest of the article here.
Chris Rosebrough is tackling an unbelievable issue that has crept into the church: The continued march backward into Romanism by supposed Evangelicals (some of which are the golden calves of Americanized Christianity) through the use of monastic meditation practices. He addresses this in his post Purpose-Driven Roman Catholic Monastic Mysticism (which is where I obtained the quotes below).
Roman Catholic Monastic Mysticism is becoming all the rage among innovative post-modern purpose-driven pastors. Practices developed by Roman Catholic Monks such as the Lectio Divina, The Practice of the Presence of God and the Prayer Examen which was created by on [sic] of the arch enemies of the Protestant Reformation, Ignatius Loyola are openly being promoted by an alarming number of seeker-driven / Purpose-Driven pastors. These so-called ’spiritual disciplines’ are being featured at Willow Creek, Saddleback, and Mars Hill to name just a few.
Rosebrough examines an absolutely astonishing sermon from seeker-sensitive pastor Scott Hodge who teaches his whole congregation that practicing the mystical Lecito Divina (like eating at a five-star restaurant) is somehow better than reading the Scriptures for yourself without the magical formula (like eating McDonalds). This is unbelievable when you consider Hodge is considered an evangelical protestant. What in the world did Luther break from Romanism for if this guy is directing his people to place the yoke back upon their necks and return to the bondage of Rome’s dead religion?
Let me be clear here, Pastor Scot Hodge is not promoting meditative practices similar to Lecito Divina, he’s promoting Lecito Divina itself. He spends the overwhelming majority of his sermon singing its praises and he even walks his whole congregation through a Lecito Divina session that will make your hair stand on end (for those familiar with Eastern mysticism and New Age practices).
To hear this unbelievable “sermon” and Rosebrough’s commentary with it, you can download it by right clicking here. It starts at 1:08:08 into the podcast.
While listening to this sermon, keep in mind that this Roman Catholic mystical practice was developed by men who did not believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone by Christ’s work alone. These monks were trying to earn their salvation through their monkery. These practices are not taught in the scriptures. Neither Jesus, his disciples, the prophets nor the patriarchs practiced Lectio Divina. This Roman Catholic practice is pure monastic mythology and spiritual fantasy and rather than helping you experience God, it is more likely that you will experience self deception or demonic spirits.
For those unfamiliar with Scott Hodge, DefCon dealt with him back in 2007 when his video mocking the sacred ordinance of baptism was making its rounds on the internet. You can check out our previous post on Scott Hodge in the post Narcissism Gone Wild.
The fact that seeker-driven and Purpose-Driven pastors are adopting Roman Catholic Monastic practices in droves proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that chasing after relevance has caused them to abandon Biblical truth and they are now being blown about by every wind of false doctrine. (Eph. 4:7-19) Sadly, this is what happens when you try to marry the church to the ’spirit of the age’.
As we all know Haiti has suffered a catastrophic earthquake that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, where countless additional lives hang in the balance due to lack of water, food and medical care. What many may not know though is that Haiti is a nation in darkness, spiritual darkness as it is largely given over to Voodoo and has been for years.
Before continuing, what exactly is Voodoo? According to Dictionary.com, it is said to be:
A religion practiced chiefly in Caribbean countries, especially Haiti, syncretized from Roman Catholic ritual elements and the animism and magic of slaves from West Africa, in which a supreme God rules a large pantheon of local and tutelary deities, deified ancestors, and saints, who communicate with believers in dreams, trances, and ritual possessions. Also called vodoun.1
From the same source, animism is said to be:
1. The belief in the existence of individual spirits that inhabit natural objects and phenomena. 2. The belief in the existence of spiritual beings that are separable or separate from bodies.2
So we can see that “Voodoo grew out of the animist religions [which were] brought to the country by [African] slaves.” This religion “…was then overlaid by the Catholicism of the plantation owners … [which] led in many places to syncretism, or fusing, of the two belief systems.” 3 A fusing that has given Haiti its dominant syncretistic religion that mixes Catholicism and Voodoo; a religion it has practiced for hundreds of years.
But Voodoo was never a recognized religion in Haiti even though most practiced it in one form or another. All of this changed in 2003 when Voodoo was “…recognised as a religion on a par with others worshipped in the country.” 4 This formal recognition was done by Haiti’s President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
A godly nation would have wept at such a decision, but not so in Haiti since it is said that “…over 90% of Haitians are voodooisant.”5 Voodoo being a religion that is practiced in the open and in the home “…where each family has their own collection of household gods, many of them Catholic saints. In many households, it sits comfortably alongside a family’s Catholic observance.”6 Catholic observance that is not merely winked at but supported as the “…Catholic church officially backs the right of families to practise voodoo.”7 How accommodating of the Vatican!
Yet there is hope for the people of Haiti even in the midst of such unimaginable suffering. Hope that will not be found in Voodoo any more than it will be in Catholicism. Rather, the hope is in Jesus Christ, the light of the world that came to destroy the works of the devil and darkness; the very works that Voodoo glorifies and embodies. Jesus can set the people of Haiti free but it must be the Jesus as revealed in the Scriptures and not the idols of Catholicism or the “Eucharist Jesus” which lead not to freedom but more bondage.
Thankfully, the gospel message is being preached in Haiti as there are believers and missionaries there. Individuals who obviously need our prayers and support not only due to their physical sufferings, but also the spiritual darkness that covers their land. We can only hope that the earthquake will engender godly fear in the people whereby they repent lest a worse thing happen unto them.
Below I have included a few videos for the readers of DefCon to get better educated on Haiti so you can properly pray for the people of this land. Note that the first two videos show demonic posession. If you only watch one video, please make sure it is the last one.
Footnotes
1 – “voodoo.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 29 Jan. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/voodoo>.
2 – “animism.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 29 Jan. 2010. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/animism>.
3 – Gledhill, Ruth. “Voodoo faith ‘could hinder Haiti’s recovery from quake’.” TIMESONLINE January 15, 2010. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6990002.ece
4 – BBC News. “Haiti makes voodoo official.” BBC News April 30, 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2985627.stm
5 – Ibid.
6 – Gledhill, Ruth. “Voodoo faith ‘could hinder Haiti’s recovery from quake’.”
7 – Ibid.
So what do you do when you’re preaching to a church full of people and you want to persuade them to believe that a sin (that’s clearly defined in Scripture) isn’t really a sin?
Well, if you’re Jay Bakker, you first go for the shock of it all then follow it up with making the congregation feel stupid. If that doesn’t work, make them feel guilty. And if that still doesn’t work turn on the tears to manipulate their emotions.
And what do you do if none of this works? If you’re the Sundance Channel you make a short video of the incident, insert some sentimental music at just right spot, and make it available to upload to YouTube.
Christ Alone Wyoming 
