Vaguely Defined Concept Has Risen Today

Lord, forgive these people and this woman, Ms. Vosper, who truly do not have any idea of what they do and the harm that will come from their new age ideas and new thang religion and have sought to remove you the Truth, the Way, and the Life from their teachings.
Lord have mercy! Amen.

Well the United Church and the Anglican Church of Canada have been in serious competition for who can shed the most members. Right now they are neck and neck.

I fear His Justice. I pray for His Mercy.

BTW, the United Church stands as the poster child for how not to reunite ecumenically. I’m a huge fan of ecumenism, but anyone considering it needs to study the United Church long and hard before offering any suggestions for change.

There is no space so small that my God can not enter and no expanse so vast that He can not overflow.

Greg - I wish you hadn’t posted this on Easter Sunday—somehow it has cast a blight on me as I head off to church. I know these people exist, I even share a church with some of them, but on Easter Sunday we should not be thinking of them. It is soon enough to do that on Easter Monday.

She not only does not believe in God—she hates God.  If she were a mere unbeliever, she would have become a social worker and tried to help others in that way.  But because she hates God, she has to defy and oppose him.

Of course, there is always St Paul as an example of someone who began by hating Jesus…  I pray that her path imitates his.

Tell you what.  If I ever feel the need to throw in with a fake deity, it certainly isn’t going to be Miss Vosper’s Spongian wuss.  I’m going with Thor.  Be a lot more lucrative, what with sailing the seas with my friends, sacking monasteries and Miss Vosper’s “church too while we’re at it, discovering America and such.

Getting up early in the morning and assembling with a group of people to celebrate our splendid wonderfulness has never been my idea of a great way to spend a day off.  The smug would be unbearable, for one thing.  For another, any good bourbon will achieve the same effect and I wouldn’t even have to leave my home.

And the article also shows why Matt+‘s “Arguing for the Infallibility of Scripture” thread is so important:

She says there’s been virtually a consensus among scholars for the past 30 years that the Bible is not some divine emanation – or in Ms. Vosper acronym, TAWOGFAT, The Authoritative Word of God For All Time – but a human project filled with contradictions and the conflicting worldviews and political perspectives of its authors.

And yet, she says, the liberal Christian churches, including her own, won’t acknowledge that it is a human project, that it’s wrong in parts and that, in the 21st century, it’s no more useful as a spiritual and religious guide than a number of other books.

She says now that the work of biblical scholars has become publicly accessible, the churches and their clergy are caught living a lie that few people will buy much longer. “I just don’t think we can placate those in the pews long enough to transition into a kind of new community that doesn’t keep people away.”

Canada is becoming a fearful place for Christians.  Note this article posted today about a Christian ministry losing its non-profit status because it refused to stated all religions are equal.  http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=59600
Will the US be far behind?

Like Bishop Holloway, Ms. Vosper does not want to dress up the theological detritus – her words – of the past two millennia with new language in the hope of making it more palatable. She wants to get rid of it, and build on its ashes a new spiritual movement that will have relevance in a tight-knit global world under threat of human destruction.

  The fact that these folks are not inhibited by their immediate superior is ample evidence that the Anglican/ Episcopal church is rotten to the core and has nothing to offer a sinful and hurting world.

And many think it was only the people of Jesus’ day who crucified Him.  I honestly don’t know how He can contain His tears or an even greater mystery - why He doesn’t just wipe us out with the swipe of His hand.

MargaretG,

You have to use things like this as fuel for your Easter fire.

The treason of these faithless clerics is monstrous.  I see Chris Johnson has paired this story with another from the WaPo about Spong and his push to drain Christ of any meaning.  Fitting.

Having read this story just after the story of the Turkish convert, I was reduced to weeping for what was once the Church in the West.  I believe that God spares us because of those in other lands who live with the reality of the Gospel in the face of real persecution.  Let Ms. Vosper experience true loss or suffering and her (& several other tel-evangelists’) “gospel” would lie in tatters on the floor of reality.  A Christ-less Christianity is the perfect religion for those who are “the lucky and the strong,” but it has no appeal for those of us who know so well that we are “losers” before God and the world. 

Still, as Fr. Zossima tells Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, “We are
guilty of all and before all.”  “We are [all of us] guilty of all [things, apostasy included, if even in our hearts] before [and on behalf of] all.”  I thank God that Christ died for us while we were [and are] yet sinners.  Between the honest witness of the Turkish convert and the honest apostasy of Ms. Vosper, I stand ashamed that I am a “mere sinner” and not even close to being worthy to be a martyr/witness. 

On this most holy night, God have mercy on us all, faithful and unfaithful alike, and somewhere between them, on us “mere sinners”.
RNW+

I am actually finding myself in agreement with Obama’s Pastor Wright ... God’s judgment is imminent on North America.  How can we contenance this abomination and desecration of God’s Word and doctrine without expecting judgment is beyond me. 

Only His infinate mercy and the prayers of the faithful remaining in the country* are, I believe, holding back the floodwaters.

Yet, oh how He must weep!

Jim Elliott <><

(*Like the promised “If I find 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 godly men in the city, I will spare it” from Genesis.)

librayjim,
that isa dangerous thought to entertain…but it is for you to entertain if you see fit to do so. However, let us not forget that God gave a Rainbow as a sign to Moses that He would not destroy the earth again with flood waters.  I beleive we will all be judged soon enough and I pray hard daily that I can keep my accounting sheet low. That can only happen with God as my pilot and my willingness to admit & confess daily my sins and that I am a sinner in need of His forgiving grace and redemption and to constantly be seeking His will not my own.

I wonder whether this is really the case with Scottish Episcopalians.  I think there are only 30-40 thousand of them and I see the ACO website no longer lists their numbers.  The current primate is +Idris Jones.  Someone like Prof. Seitz may know more about this but I heard there are some churches in the province which are growing.

I’m glad you are seeking His will and way, as am I.

But, yes, it is a dangerous thought to entertain. but entertain it we must!

Do you think that to those to whom much is given much will not be required? OR that those who lead others astray will not bring judgment down upon themselves?

The Israelites were CHOSEN by God, yet He did not hesitate to send judgment upon them in the forms of exile, famine, pestilence, false rulers, etc. (well, maybe He did hesitate, but it did not stop Him from sending it) to call them back to the right path.  And we certainly have more than they did in terms of promise and covenant.

Frankly, when I used the term “floodwaters” I was not refering to a literal flood of water, it was a figurative term.  (By the way it was to NOAH that the sign was given, not Moses.)

So, again, it may be dangerous, but if we do not contemplate it, we may risk that very thing.  Frankly, I hope the church leaders in North America will wake up and repent of their heresy and turn back to the true teaching of the Lord.

What did God say: Behold I set before you life or death, blessing or a curse. Choose Life that your children may live.

I pray we will choose blessings and Life! 

Peace
Jim Elliott <><

Sasha,
I agree with you, but let us remember that God has put forth His Judgment on the earth many times in the past, which people read as ‘the end times’ only to find that it was not to be so, yet.  There is a great album out by the group “Anonymous 4” called 1000: mass for the end of times, a work discovered when people living in the year 999 - 1000 thought that the end of the first millennium would herald the end of the world.  Of course, the people who lived through the Black Plague thought the same. Even WWI and WWII were interpreted by many to be the last battles before the end.

His time for the end is coming, we are 2,000 years closer than we were when John had his vision, but ‘no man knows the hour or the day’.  We need to treat time as if it were the last days (for us it is, this is the only time we have!), but also as if the soon return were a thousand years in the future yet, and thus safeguard the deposit of faith for our children and they for their children.

Thus no laissez-faire attitude that we need not be concerned, because after all, these are the end times, and we don’t have to contend for the faith once delivered.

Peace to you, as we wait in joyful hope!
Jim Elliott <><

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Thank you libraryjim,
I had just finished some scripture reading in my afternoon devotional regarding Moses and I just went there with out thought of what name I was actually typing. My bad!

I do believe in the scriptures that state that thsoe who lead beleivers astray will be judged harshly and all the scritpures in regards to God wrath and wrath of judgement for:

Ephes. 5:6
  Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
1 Thes. 4:6
  that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.
Romans 1:18
  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

And a host of many more. My warning in the entertaining comes only to the extent that we do not get to the point that Rev. Wright as gotten.  That is most dangerous.

Have a blessed Easter libraryjim.

Well the United Church and the Anglican Church of Canada have been in serious competition for who can shed the most members. Right now they are neck and neck.

Oh, I think we can give them a good run for their money.  Wait for it…

Rev. Wright is someewhat correct in that our nation is ripe for judgment even if only for the abortion holocost and the churches that support it.  He is wrong that it is because we are slave holders, not sharing the wealth with the welfare queens, being white,  on and on. IMHO

PM,
agreed.
JE <><

MargaretG,

You have to use things like this as fuel for your Easter fire.

Dear Greg
I hope you and the others truly found the blessing in it that I could not.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Sasha,

I studied the end times big time in high school, when a friend told me about the most definitive book on the subject “the Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsay.  After he had to revise it several times to take into account world events that shattered his theories (such as the collapse of the Soviet Union), I came to the conclusion that only God knows the time, and that we would be better off spending our time working for the Kingdom we have here and now, that is, in evangelism, etc. rather than worrying about interpreting times and seasons.

God will take care of when the end will be, but our duty is to be faithful to His command of working in the fields while it is yet day, that He find us in the employ of bringing about His kingdom (story of the sheep and goats).

That said, I also don’t see anything wrong with a study of the end times, as long as we don’t get too set on one theory on the subject (remember the book “I predict 1980”?).  God has a way of foiling the predictions of many ‘interpreters’.

Oh, when I was into my studies, I hit upon a number of books written in the 1890’s, who spelled out in great detail why the end would come before 1900; books that spelled out in great detail why WWI would be the last battle, and that the Kaiser was the anti-Christ; WWII—Hitler the anti-Christ; Stalin the anti-Christ; the 1980s with the Soviet Union as the great Army of the North, China as the army of the east, etc.; some who said Ronald Wilson Reagan (each name has six letters) was the anti-christ; some with Kissinger the anti-Christ; others and though it all, the Pope the great W. of Babylon.

Frankly, it’s all speculation, prophecy is never clear until it’s been fulfilled.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come!

Peace and all the blessings of a Happy Easter!

Jim Elliott <><

PS, to try to get back on topic:

I do still hold to this though:

as long as we have ‘ministers’ like this who keep taking Christ and God out of our liturgy and our worship songs and hymns; who keep on redefining the words of the Creed to take away their plain meaning; who keep on insisting that the Bible is just another collection of pre-literate rantings on a tribal notion of a diety; who insists we have no ‘core doctrine’ then

God is going to call us to account. 

Which is why we NEED to remain faithful. Our intercession CAN forstall God’s judgment.  “The fervernt prayer of the righteous produces fantastic results!” (My paraphrase).

The center of Christianity and evangelism once was the US.  Today it is no longer so.  Which is why we find so many Anglican parishes going to Africa for oversight.  May it be that God once again uses the US to bless the world though us, and sends revival among us.

Peace on this holiest of days!

Jim Elliott <><

Now I’m done.

The story of the Canadian charity referred to in #8 is frightening. But it also looks like the charity gave up much too easily. The government agency that wanted to shut the charity down was (as I understand Canadian law) overreaching. This looks like it would have been a good test case—-a case in which the government is penalizing the organization purely for the content of its speech. I’ll bet there are good lawyers who would have donated their time.

In any event, thank God for the First Amendment!

...she argues that the Christian church, in the form in which it exists today, has outlived its viability and either it sheds its no-longer credible myths, doctrines and dogmas, or it’s toast.

This is just nuts.  One reason St. John’s Shaunessey, became the largest parish in the Anglican Church of Canada is that it boldly proclaims those same doctrines and dogmas that Ms. Vosper says churches ought to throw out. 

The evangelical congregations in the CoE are practically the only ones with viable congregations.  The American scene has countless examples of dying liberal churches and growing conservative ones.  Why can’t these people see that the very thing they want the church to do to be more “relevant” is killing it?

I must say, I like the honesty of Ms. Vosper’s approach.  At moments when I take a more dreary to TEC, as TEO, I wish that its leadership espoused this type of spiritual movement instead of the one now in place.
God is pleased with honesty and this approach does not twist or compromise His Word - many need to honestly abandon a faith they believe themselves to adhere to before they can truly rediscover it.

That’s why in Canada we referred to this denomination as the Untidy Church.

OK, after we have excised Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection and his act of salvation for us - what’s left? WHAT’S LEFT?

Buddha?

Omm

The Millennium Development Goals of course, silly!!

“You are like little children sitting on the curbstone searching the gutter for things: behind you is a king’s palace, finer than Buckingham. In it sits your Father, but you won’t listen, you won’t even turn around to look. You just keep on hunting in the gutter for things; and it doesn’t matter whether it’s rotten vegetables or pennies or shillings you find there, they can never make you happy without your Father”
—-George MacDonald

Richard Neibuhr, who taught at Yale Divinity School, itself a bastion of liberal Protestantism, in his most Neo-Orthodox period, summed up the failings of liberal theology perfectly in one pithy sentence.  Neibuhr castigated liberal Protestantism as being about “how a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

If you take Christ out of Christianity, what do you have?  Nothing.  Just another philosophy like all the others…and this is what it appears Satan is up to these days…trying to take Christ out of Christianity.

Humanism:  A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth.

Not to be confused with a religious belief.

Here’s vague for ya!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NaSROohLzs

The Father certainly wasn’t vague about the whole Incarnation thingy…