Posted on 06/01/2006 8:41:05 AM PDT by Theoden
Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians.
(Excerpt) Read more at talk2action.org ...
Thank you, thank you, thank you! More and more people are starting to finally notice!
And let me just put my little slam in here against the Evangelical Covenant Church which has been almost completely subsumed and subverted by this church growth, anything-goes- under-the-banner-of-freedom-in-Christ apostasy.
Yet you can play as the bad guys... hmmm....
And you can recruit soldiers to fight the forces of evil... one would think that soldiers might do some killing. You can buy and sell. how, if you haven't received the mark of the beast? And it's up to you to make sure no one falls away? Boy the Holy Spirit must be on strike!
You might want to try other more neutral sites then. I didn't see them as much better.
This is absolutely incredible. Just when I think I've seen it all. I thought there surely had to be something wrong in this article but nooooooo......
And when the media reported this, the "Purpose Driven" guy abruptly resigned from the board of this computer game company. Hey, what's up with that? Was he embarassed, or just caught with his hand in the cookie jar? Will he remain with the Rick Warren organization?
The wheels have fallen off the Purpose Driven wagon, eh?
Surprise, surprise - someone's making a (non-existant) connection between the LaHaye crowd and the Reconstructionist crowd. If ever there were two Christian groups that didn't see eye-to-eye on anything, it's these two. The pre-trib, pre-mil Left behind series has a secret "Dominionist" agenda?? BWA HAHAHAHAHA!
The Purpose Driven movement never had real wheels on it. It has always been a product of the Wizard of OZ - nothing real, all made of and for sinful man.
Scanned the Talk to Action website...i think you may be drilling a dry hole here Terriegal. This looks like a "sour grapes hit piece" on Warren and Purpose Drivel (alleged) ministries. Note the section quoted below:
The international director of Mr. Warren's Purpose Driven Church, Mark Carver, is a former investment banker who serves on the Advisory Board of the corporation created in October 2001 to develop and market this game. The creators plan to market their game using the same network marketing techniques that Mr. Warren used to turn The Purpose Driven Life into a commercial success. For example, they plan to distribute their merchandise through pastoral networks, especially mega-churches.
[Update: Mark Carver, a top aide to Mr. Warren, resigned as an adviser to Left Behind Games on June 5, 2006, and asked that the game developer remove the Purpose Driven Ministries name brand from its web site. These abrupt moves came in response to pressure from Talk to Action, as reported in the third essay in this series, "Revelation and Resignation (Part 3)". Here is a screen shot from the Left Behind Games site taken before June 5, showing Mr. Carver's name and invoking the name brand of Purpose Driven Church, which the site describes in some detail. -- JH]
There are plenty of reasons to criticise Warren and the Purpose Drivel movement, but this does not appear to be legitimate. The article quoted above claims that "These abrupt moves came in response to pressure from Talk to Action..." and i believe that some investigation might find that Carver was probably misled as to what was being created. What ever may be said of Warren, Carver, Purpose Driven, et al, they're NOT that stupid. They do understand marketing.
i'd like to see some more information on the circumstances behind the creation of this game before i rush to judgement.
I don't feel like getting into it, but I appreciate Warren, his ministry, and his call to understand our purpose as Christians. Not many can fault that we are to "glorify God and enjoy Him for forever." At least, Westminster Christians can't.
It's what comes afterwards in Warren's book that some might want to quibble over.
Good to hear from you CDL. I finished the Delphi reading. It is extremely interesting. Any more freepmail thoughts on it relative to international markets?
This isn't about Warren. Read the original article carefully. This doesn't pass the "smell test".
i really think that the article and author has an axe to grind against Dominionists and Reconstructionists, and is being a coward about coming out and being blatant about it.
Warren, Carver, et al are at best were decieved by people involved in this, or at worst severely slandered.
Good to hear from you CDL. I finished the Delphi reading. It is extremely interesting. Any more freepmail thoughts on it relative to international markets?
Not particularly, but it does appear to have ties to globalism, and some present political situations in this country. Perhaps i'll post a thread on the subject when i have more time.
Agreed CDL. You can tell that by just clicking the link.
If what they say about the game is correct, then I'd probably agree with their criticism. But from an initial scan it appears they're more concerned with trashing Warren. If not this game, they'll find something else to blame him for.
It isn't just Warren. The article does clearly identify their real target. That target is the general Evangelical culture, and anybody who doesn't subscribe to their opinion of Christianity.
SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM CDL:
i have recently noticed an upswing of articles on this forum, and on other boards that have been rather critical...often to the point of alarmist of "Reconstructionists/Reconstructionism", and/or "Dominionists". i can recall about a year ago a thread posted by Chancelor Palpatine on the subject. Our colleague OrthodoxPresbyterian disposed of Palpatine's arguments expeditiously and with extreme prejudice.
This was merely the first such thread that i recall. Others have since appeared. These articles have a common motiff. They all seem to be casting a net of increasing size. To include the likes of Rick Warren, andTim LaHaye as Reconstructionists or Dominionists, is laughable. i would not be surprised to soon see an article describing Dave Hunt as a Dominionist ~Hunt's criticisms of Dominion theology and Reconstructionism should be well known to just about everybody on this forum.~. The tipoff was the mention of LaHaye and Jenkins in the article. Their theology is about as removed from either Dominionism or Reconstructionism as one can be.
i took a look at the author of this piece, a fellow named Jonathan Hutson. Hutson's biographical blurb is written below:
Jonathan Hutson is a writer who holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law. He is the co-author of a groundbreaking study of intergroup dialogue, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Bridging the Racial Divide: Interracial Dialogue in America (1997).
i then took a look at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, who funded Hutson's work. Some interesting things on their website. Below is the Mission Statement of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
i have underlined the appropriate section. From what i can tell, this author is merely another shrill for yet another organisation (such as the Ford Foundation, or the John D. and Catherine T. McAuthur Foundation) that has the goal of transforming humanity into their pre-concieved image of what they think it should be.
Looks as if they are trying to preempt the "competition".
Whatever the Foundation or author's goals are, one thing for certain is that the author does NOT have the requisite qualifications to make judgements concerning the theology of Warren, LaHaye, or anyone else mentioned in the article.
Corin, i have followed some of the links in this article, and will post the links here for your consumption, and the consumption of anyone else. The links will be posted with a brief explanation of what they describe.
Hutson admits that Warren, Carver, and Purpose Driven Ministries are not associated with this game: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/7/41835/37829
Under the heading of RELIGIOUS MILITARISM in the article was this article, authored by a Joan Bokaer.
Here is Joan Bokaer's bio sketch. Real informative, eh?
There is a discussion forum towards the end of the article on the link given in the thread. That discussion is very informative. It gives insight into the author(s) of the piece(s), and the audience that they write for.
Those who would criticise Warren (and i number myself among you), look to legitimate sources and criticisms. This was, as i suspected all along, a hit piece by rabid fundamentalist bashers who are dogmatic about converting you to their belief system, while denying you the same. ~In the time that Jesus walked the earth, they would be called Hypocrites.~
It was three years ago - and OP never showed up on that thread (not that we needed him, in this case). It was RnMomof7 and I (not OP) that disposed of Palpatine, in more ways than one.
"May I call you Darth Sidious?"
The Founding Fathers - Calvinists
And here's a couple of more recent times that the topic has (disingenuously) come up. In every case it's come up, the trail leads back to liberal Democrats stoking the fires of hatred with misinformation....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1395264/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1602665/posts?page=17#17
Then why can't Warren denounce this game as opposed to just saying "we don't endorse it nor are we connected with it" (anymore).
Why hasn't Mark Carver issued an apology or explanation for his inability to properly advise the makers of this game? Sure they decry violent lusty video games, but do they decry violent spiritual video games?
Rick Warren's global peace plan plays right into the Dominionist theology.
They got caught with their lack of discernment showing again. And that's all I'm saying -- the HUGE lack of discernment empowers the dominionist agenda. There *will be* (as foretold in Revelation) a dominonist takeover someday, and I am sure that those who hold to this dominionist theology will be surprised to find themselves fighting on behalf of antichrist.
And modern evangelicalism with its "let's fix the world and make ourselves heroes" mentality plays right into it.
Discernment is totally lacking in most churches these days. That is really the main problem, and all these people follow blindly over the cliff to their own destruction.
I would strongly - strongly - exhort you to take a look at the links in my post #54, above. I'd also exhort you to stop reading Hal Lindsey books, but IMO that goes without saying.
The publication in 1973 of Rousas J. Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law and in 1977 of Greg L. Bahnsen's Theonomy in Christian Ethics created still another controversy. These books revived a position often held in Reformed history (but never unanimously) that present-day civil states should be governed by the Law of Moses. Specifically, the theonomists argued, the penalties for crimes in Old Covenant Israel should be applied to the same crimes today. So, now as then, adultery, homosexuality, and blasphemy should be capital crimes. The theonomists were very militant in promoting their positions, and those in opposition were equally militant, if not more so. Churches and presbyteries were divided over this issue.Hardly the "dominionist takeover on behalf of antichrist, predicted in the book of Revelations" that you make it out to be. Unless you think that the New World Order / One World Government is a very limited representative civil government, funded by a cumulative non-confiscatory taxation not greater than 9%, and a decentralized monetary system with no "fractional reserve banking" whatsoever. Are you going to argue that "bartering with farm animals for goods and services" should be considering "buying and selling with the mark of the beast" (Rev 13:17)?Opponents argued that God's relationship to Old Testament Israel was unique and that the specific laws given to Israel were not intended to rule all other nations. A moderate position is that we must look at each of the laws God gave to Moses, to determine the function of each in redemptive history and civil society, and thus to determine the precise relevance of each statute for our society.
The theonomists, also called Christian reconstructionists, sometimes seemed to be offering a political program for immediate implementation. Opponents were rather horrified at the idea that someone could take over the government and immediately institute death penalties for any number of actions that had until that time been treated lightly in society. As the discussion proceeded, however, it became evident that the theonomic thesis was actually somewhat more moderate, because (1) in their view, the Old Testament laws could not, and should not, be implemented in modern society until, through preaching of the gospel, those societies were dominated by regenerate people who loved God's law. Since most reconstructionists were postmillennial, they believed that one day Christianity would dominate human culture, but that that might not happen until many centuries into the future. And (2) they believed in a very limited state government, incapable of instituting anything like a reign of terror. In their view, the dominant government in society should be that of the family and the self-government of regenerate individuals.[all emphasis mine - AM]
You're quite correct. My memory was faulty. What i was recollecting was this particular post in a thread that had nothing to do with Reconstructionism or Dominionism. It does however appear to be remarkably similar to your #59 on this thread. i do concede that you and Mom did the lion's share of work on that particular thread.
And here's a couple of more recent times that the topic has (disingenuously) come up. In every case it's come up, the trail leads back to liberal Democrats stoking the fires of hatred with misinformation....
Read them, laughed at them. Wish these people speaking of the Eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiillllllllllll Dominionists knew what they were taking about. i was part of that group in the 70's-early 80's. Part of the charismatic wing in the Shepherding Movement. Such plans would be news to us...neither we nor our leadership had any such plans, and a cursury examination of their writings would set the issue to rest. However, being a product of the "publik skoolz", i guess the leftists can't read words of two sylables and above.
Funny though, the links i posted in #53 demonstrates that the authors of this hit piece and their ilk are proponents of exactly the same thing that Terriergal is accusing Warren and his ilk of. i wonder, does that make them Dominionists? If so it appears to be a politically broad spectrum, eh?
It was as i posted...these people are nothing more than religion haters who want to eliminate the competition.
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