Antichrist

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

(John 14:6 - ESV)

She has said it before, as we have documented, and now she is at it again, in official capacity, denying the supremacy and sufficiency of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. By stating that there may be other roads to God, she is not lifting up the name of Christ, and so she is, in the very real sense of the word, anti-Christ, or against Christ as being all in all. You can say you are for Jesus all you want, but Jesus demands total allegiance. Now I will agree with her and all other apostates in this sense: As we said in our last sermon all roads do lead to God, but only ONE road will lead to God justifying us, all the other roads lead to God condemning us. Here are some of the details and a link you can follow to the video of the webcast.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, USA, Katharine Jefferts Schori made another statement not supported by the Bible, saying that Jesus is the Christian way to God, but perhaps not the only way.

Schori told members of the Episcopal Church in a live webcast that for "Christians to assume that God may not act in other ways is to put God in a very small box."

Adding to her assertions, Schori remarked, "Our call is to be invited into conversation with people who have different understandings, and perhaps to see a larger vision of God in the midst of that."

Source: CBN News

Now God put Himself in that wonderful “box” called the Bible, and to deny the exclusivity of Christ, especially after Christ Himself declared it (John 14:6), as well as the Apostles (Acts 4:12 / 1 Timothy 2:5), is to diminish Jesus and His preeminence (Colossians 1:18). All this talk of God without the mention of Jesus Christ shows that she has not the One True God, for she dismisses the Savior, the ONLY savior, and places God in a role that He does not assume, one of saving people without His Son.

Now just think about it for a second: what is going on here? Think, think, think…when you say that perhaps there are other ways, what you are doing is diminishing the fact that Christ is what it is all about, you are saying that something less than all the people that will be saved will be saved by a knowledge and belief in Him, and this diminishes the glory of Christ for something else. Even if intended to be compassionate, our compassion for humanity is superceded, well it should be, it must be, superceded by a passion for the glory of God in Christ.

I ask you; does this type of statement give more glory to Christ, or less? This woman might answer that it gives more glory to God, not less, but indeed, it gives less glory to His Son, which is giving less glory to the true God. By not ascribing all glory to Christ, she is antichrist, and her denomination, if it accepts this declaration as given in an official speech, is also antichrist. She either does not know God, or she has turned away, I fear forever.

We have been covering the ECUSA and their descent into apostasy, and
here,
here,
here,
and here

are our previous updates from several months ago.

Crucify Him!

And after saying this he said to him, "Follow me."
(John 21:19 – ESV)

As Romans 8:13 declares, if you through the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. We think this means that the Spirit gives us power to put those deeds to death, but the reality is not that we put to death the flesh, but that through the Spirit we are to do it. This may seem subtle but it is important, very important. Now, what does this mean, through the Spirit?

Well let’s think about that for a second. Those led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God (Romans 8:14). The Spirit is leading to the cross and all the sons of God are to follow Him there to their own cross. We think to put to death the deeds of the flesh means to do it ourselves, that we crucify our flesh ourselves, but again, let's begin to think more clearly.

When we think of going to the cross, of taking up our cross, of following Jesus we think we do it, like we go running to it, but that winds up having us just bring those things we want to end to the cross, and not all of us, or not those things Jesus wants dealt with first. We pick and choose which part of our flesh will die. That isn’t what the “crucified life” is all about.

Now some of us know better than that and we think we let Him do it, but this winds up just being us praying harder and going up to the altar every week and wondering why we still want to do those same old things. With both scenarios it is still we doing it in sense.

However, the bible says we have already crucified the flesh, and that we just need to walk in that (Galatians 5:24-25). That is where the misunderstanding takes place, going from the position in Christ to the condition in life, and beginning to realize, to make real this crucified life in our daily walk. The truth is that this should be a daily walk to the cross.

Now consider this about crucifixion. Crucifixion is not putting yourself to death. Rather, it is yielding yourself up to death at the hands of others. The crucified victim doesn't get to choose his own death (John 13:37-38, 21:18-19). You don’t kill yourself, you let yourself die; you let yourself be killed. The truth is that you are already dead (Colossians 3:3); the role of others whether they realize it or not is to help you to reckon it so (Romans 6:11).

This is a big difference that people just don’t seem to get. When Jesus says follow me He means to the cross and into the hands of people who want you dead, it is the other people and other situations that kill you, but of course this is used by God to bring resurrection life.

Just as it was with Jesus, to be able to see and understand the resurrection power there must first be the cross, and before the cross there must be the garden. The question is in that garden will you plant the seed of surrender (not my will but thine be done) or the seed of self. You surrender and suffer death in the church community, or you barricade yourself in your own flesh at home. You visit the garden every day, friends. There are always new crops to harvest.

Consider John 21:21-22 – looking at others and their cross is not the Way in it is looking for a way out. Live out the truth of 1 Peter 4:1 – believe it and receive that cross when it comes, carry it, follow Him, and have life. If we win the battle of the mind we will win the battle with sin. It is time to stop sinning and start winning.

American Idol

…worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…
(Romans 1:25 – ESV)

First off, I would like to thank the Christian Research Network for linking my last post. I hope you are edified by this one as well...God bless you in your Christian growth...

It is part of the sinful nature to love ourselves more than we love God (2 Timothy 3:1-5 / Romans 1:30). Just as in Paul’s time, it continues today, but to love self more than God is to hate God, and ourselves. When we value what God has made more than we value God, we devalue God and we will inevitably devalue man. It backfires on us; we don’t even love ourselves.

We may not be doing some of those things the pagans are doing, but we have exchanged our heritage as God’s special creation and traded the value of God for less so often that in Christian circles we have bought into the secular/spiritual divide. In so doing we think we can pick and choose things out of the world such as gothic fashion or “Christian yoga” and say that it is harmless, without examining what the roots of these practices are.

The root is Mother Nature or our own nature, but we don’t recognize the source of the idolatry and so we don’t realize the scope of the sin. Why do we feel the need to do these new things? Perhaps it is because we are not comfortable with how God really is, and we must invent a god who is like us, instead of becoming like Him.

We want to worship a god who worships us. We think things have no spiritual significance because we have limited our spirituality to our quiet time in the morning and once a week at church. Of course that also goes for the thinking that we can “do” church any old way we want to, or not at all, and still call ourselves Christians.

We have made an idol of God, and often we rationalize our behavior in light of what we think are good intentions, but we are actually trying to carry out our own will without truly knowing the big picture. We might do some small good, in order to bring about our own desired end, we help others because of what they can or will do for us. All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit (Proverbs 16:2 – ESV).

We must yield to God, and know His Word in order to have true judgment. The key is to know “I the Lord search the heart” (Jeremiah 17:10). Then we can pray, like David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

Are you making the right exchanges in your life? Is Christ being formed in you (Galatians 4:19) or are you making an image for/of yourself?