LaVrai – The Truth

This video is so awful, but oh so true. This is what some folks seem to prefer…

And here’s an excerpt from a LA Times story called “A closer, faster walk with thee”:

So you’re racing through another jam-packed day, late picking up the kids from basketball practice because you got stuck at the office. You still have to pay the bills, walk the dog and perhaps grab cold pizza before collapsing into bed.

When do you ever find time for God?

One publisher has the answer: “The One Minute Bible, Day by Day,” whose brief readings promise to inspire your “daily walk with the Lord.”

Or check out “5 Minute Theologian: Maximum Truth in Minimum Time.”

Because man does not live by bread alone — and might be tempted to eat on the run — there’s “Aunt Susie’s 10-Minute Bible Dinners: Bringing God Into Your Life One Dish at a Time.”

The American style of worship, like everything else in people’s overloaded lives, is speeding up.

This hurried search for the Almighty partly explains the rise of a niche industry of books, DVDs, podcasts, text messages and e-mail blasts that distill the essentials of faith, from creation to the crucifixion.

The materials offer bite-sized spiritual morsels that can be digested in minutes, or even seconds, on the daily commute, aboard airplanes or at the dinner table. As “7 Minutes With God” advises: “Take 7 minutes each day to: build your faith in God, grow closer to the Father, make progress in your spiritual life.”

And what about your over-programmed 10-year-old? Again, religious publishers have an answer: “The Kid Who Would Be King: One Minute Bible Stories About Kids.”

“The audience is definitely anyone who’s interested in a ready-made, quick little devotion they can do every day,” said Tim Jordan, an editor at B&H Publishing Group in Nashville, which produces the “The One Minute Bible.”

“It’s not meant to replace the Bible,” Jordan added. “It’s meant to whet your appetite.”

It’s not a bad idea, these things, but if people start preferring them to actually reading the Holy Bible, then we’re in trouble. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to our Walk with Jesus the Christ.

Read the full article here..

[HT: The GOD Blog]

I was minding my own business on the way to work this morning, when a woman came along handing out what I thought were gospel tracts. After I took one and gave it a good look, I realized it was delusional nonsense from Harold Camping’s Family Radio — “a Bible-based Christian Ministry with no church affiliation” that has apparently been in business for half a century.

Before I became familiar with Camping’s heretical teachings, I used to listen to Family Radio as some of the other programs are worth listening to — when they’re not ripping the Holy Scriptures apart to suit their own needs. There is also a segment called The Open Forum, in which Mr. Camping takes calls from listeners who have questions about the Bible. Once in a while a caller will come through challenging Mr. Camping’s heretical teachings… and usually when the caller makes a truthful point, Mr. Camping gets in a tizzy and starts blurting “Excuse me, excuse me!” so he can but in and spew more nonsense.

In case you can’t make out what it says: GOD has lead us in these last days to discover Biblical evidence that judgment day for the unbelievers and the rapture of believers will occur on May 21, 2011.

It’s not even difficult to prove that Mr. Camping is a misguided, deceived individual. However, I have no doubt he loves GOD and believes he’s serving our LORD and SAVIOR Jesus the Christ. I am sure he also believes that he’s found something in the Scriptures that just about everyone else has missed — despite the OBVIOUS evidence showing otherwise.

How do I know Mr. Camping is seriously mistaken? I don’t have to dig through the Book of Daniel, Revelation or the Prophets. I don’t have to chart a time line of end time events. The LORD Jesus Christ explained to the disciples and the future followers who would hear and understand what HE was telling us beforehand.

Matthew 24:36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. 37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. 38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. …”

In this same passage Christ Jesus says heaven and earth will pass away but HIS words will by no means pass away.

How does Mr. Camping and all others claiming they have the Day of the LORD down to a date really believe they know something that not even the angels of heaven know? You mean, Mr. Camping, that it’s just you and GOD the FATHER who know when Christ Jesus is returning to earth? Or that GOD has unlocked the Scriptures for you…but for none of HIS other children?

I’m getting tired of these delusional so-called religious men leading people astray and giving them false hope. I say false hope because someone who really believes that the world is going to end — or that they will be headed to heaven — on May 21, 2011 will plan their whole lives around that date… and would likely be tempted to be slack concerning their spiritual life, thinking they have time to “get right” before the time.

Mr. Camping, I say this with both love and exasperation… you are besides yourself, perhaps too much learning has made thee mad.

Stop avoiding Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32.

Inaugural Pastor: The Two Faces of Rick Warren
By Amy Sullivan, Time Magazine online

Rick Warren has spent his entire career building a reputation as an Evangelical who doesn’t cause the kind of outrage and protests that have greeted his selection to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama’s Inauguration. Warren wasn’t a polemicist like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson; he was the one who talked about a loving Jesus, who promised that God had a purpose for your life. “Pastor Rick” took on progressive causes like third-world poverty and sex trafficking and implored evangelicals to care about HIV/AIDS. Both Obama and John McCain were comfortable enough with Warren that they agreed to join him for a presidential forum at his Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.

But there has always been the other Rick Warren, who sounds for all the world like the new leader of the Religious Right. The one who proclaimed a week before the 2004 election that the five “non-negotiable issues” for Christian voters were abortion, gay marriage, human cloning, euthanasia and stem-cell research. The one who bragged about taking Obama and other Democrats to task over abortion but said he “didn’t have the opportunity” to ever talk with George W. Bush about his opposition to torture. (See TIME’s Cover Story “The Global Ambition of Rick Warren)

In short, Warren wants to be both the universally admired pastor who speaks to the nation and the influential leader who mobilizes religious conservatives for political ends. But those are two inherently conflicting roles, and he cannot be both, no matter how hard he tries.

Warren would say that there is no tension between his two goals, that he never pretended to be anything other than a conservative. It’s not his fault, after all, if other people forget that he is a theologically conservative Southern Baptist whose concern about issues like abortion and gay marriage have not been displaced by a recent focus on more traditionally progressive causes.

But Warren himself encourages the confusion about his politics and agenda. When the Saddleback Presidential Forum was announced in July 2008, the pastor seemed eager to emphasize that he was not an old-school Evangelical leader obsessed with social issues. “There is no Christian religious test,” he told TIME in the days before the event, vowing that questions would center on four areas: poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights. On the night of the forum, however, Warren hewed closely to a conservative script, asking the candidates about gay marriage, judges and abortion and only briefly touching on poverty and climate change.

Read the rest of the article here…

In a previous post, I highlighted a video (audio really) from an April 2005 event Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren held for his congregation. In the video, Mr. Warren calls on Christians to be as dedicated to Christ (presumably, he’s talking about Christ) as Nazi youth were to Hitler. Yes, the same Hitler, who undoubtedly served Satan. The same Hitler who killed millions of people because they were Jews (just like Satan has ALWAYS targeted the Jews, as he still does to this day) — this is the standard Warren holds up in the video. He also champions Mao’s ability to capture the Chinese youth’s fanatical dedication. If only Christians could get that crazed, Warren essentially waxes, there would be nothing in our way of conquering the globe and eradicating poverty and shoving peace down everyone’s throat (nevermind that Christ Jesus says there will be wars and rumors of wars; that the poor will be with us always; and that HE is the true PRINCE OF PEACE).

Here’s the video again. And also this link to a prophecy a sister published on her site on March 20, 2008. In addition, there is also an article excerpt which reveals Warren’s real drive and purpose in all of the work he’s doing. It all begs the obvious question: does Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren serve Jesus the Christ or does Warren serve the ruler of this world, Satan?

Anyway, this one particular article echoes the prophecy:

“During his Anaheim stadium speech Warren, sometimes called ‘pastor Rick’ talked about a number of visions and communications he had received from God. By calling on his church members to follow Jesus with the fanatical dedication with which the Nazis, or Hitler Youth, gave to Adolf Hitler, Rick Warren appeared to be in effect asking his Saddleback members to be fanatically dedicated to Warren’s own leadership, given his role in divining God’s intent for the Saddleback church flock. During his speech, Rick Warren also explained that God had personally instructed him to seek, for the good of the world, more influence, power and fame.”

…During his Anaheim speech, Warren revealed that he’d received a message from God to seek more influence, power and fame. God, Warren narrated, led him to Psalm 72, “Solomon’s prayer for more influence… in Psalm 72 [Solomon] says ‘God, I want you to make me more influential. God, I want you to give me more power. I want you to bless my life more. God, I want you to spread the fame of my name through other countries.’”

“It sounded pretty selfish,” mused Warren but, as he explained to the crowd, God had led him on a path towards solving the five biggest global problems.

Beyond ‘spiritual poverty’, egocentric leadership is the next most oppressive ‘global giant’, according to Rick Warren, and thus a higher priority than HIV/AIDS, poverty, and other material afflictions. “The world is full of little Saddams,” he observed, “they’re in every country, they’re in every church, they’re in every business, they’re in every homeowner’s association. They’re everywhere. You give a guy a little power and it goes to his head. “

Besides sounding like a fanatical cult leader (um, like Hitler and Mao), Warren lies (or is mistaken?) about the Scripture. Please read Psalm 72. Solomon is not asking anything for himself. HE is declaring, through inspiration of GOD’s Holy Spirit, the divine rule of the KING of KINGS and LORD of LORDs Christ Jesus: 8 He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, And from the River to the ends of the earth. 9 Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before Him, And His enemies will lick the dust. 10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles Will bring presents; The kings of Sheba and Seba Will offer gifts. 11 Yes, all kings shall fall down before Him; All nations shall serve Him.

Please tell me where in the Holy Bible the LORD our GOD encourages HIS people to seek power and fame? Not even Christ Jesus came into the world as HE IS — the KING of KINGS and LORD of LORDS. And doesn’t Christ Jesus say seek ye first the Kingdom and all of these things (our needs and desires) will be added to us by the LORD our GOD? But who encourages mankind always to seek such worldly things?

Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

The Devil sure is very busy nowadays, but I thank the LORD our GOD that we are not all deceived and seeking after things that have NOTHING to do with the Great Commission — telling the world about Salvation in Jesus Christ. Has anyone found how that fits into Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. Plan?

Wow. When I came across this video at Alan’s Real Christianity blog, I thought I would be watching just another scripture-twisting “sermon” or pep speech on reaping and sewing… or prosperity, as it’s often referred to. But this is another mess entirely. I have never seen anything like this in my life. I have absolutely no doubt, no hesitation in declaring that THIS IS IDOLATRY. This is just an excerpt, of course, of the whole money church service… but if I walked by this church and poked my head inside (if I happen to pass  security’s screening test) and saw this going on in the house of the LORD… um.

You be the judge. And yes, you are allowed to declare a thing, act or word as un-Biblical… if there is no support for it in the Holy Bible — the only infallible WORD we have from the LORD our GOD on HIS will and HIS way.