Posted on 07/19/2004 10:54:02 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
I have argued in this column that the greatest sin is committing evil in God's name. As bad as the evil committed by secularists, such as communists and Nazis, has ever been, the most grievous evil is that which is committed in the name of God. For not only do religious evils harm their victims, they also do lasting damage to God-based morality, which those of us who believe in God and religion consider the only viable antidote to evil.
That is why Islamic terror is so evil. Not only because it targets the most innocent of people for death and torture, but because it does so in the name of Allah and Islam.
Incredibly, The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) joins the list of religious groups committing evil. In the name of Jesus, it has called for the economic strangulation of Israel. They have equated the Jewish state with South Africa during apartheid and called for a universal divestment from it.
The Presbyterians are the first Christian church to do this, and, ironically, the divestment campaign came the very week that the Roman Catholic Church signed a document equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
It takes a particularly virulent strain of moral idiocy and meanness to single out Israel, not Arafat's Palestinian Authority, or terror-supporting, death-fatwa-issuing Iran, or women-subjugating Saudi Arabia, for condemnation and economic ruin. One of the most decent societies, one of the most liberal democracies in the world, is fighting for its life against Islamic fascists who praise the Holocaust and publicly call for the annihilation of Israel -- and the Presbyterian Church calls for strangling Israel!
Apartheid state? This Goebbels-like Big Lie, concocted by the world's anti-Israel and anti-American Left and by those who want Israel destroyed, is now an official doctrine of the Presbyterian Church. Israel is a nation whose population is one-quarter non-Jewish Arab, with the same rights, including voting and its own political parties, as Jewish citizens; a nation whose second official language is Arabic, the language of those who wish to annihilate the Jewish country; a nation that occupies a tiny sliver of land known as the West Bank only because Jordan, overwhelmingly composed of Palestinians, invaded Israel in 1967 in order to destroy it and thereby lost its ownership of the West Bank.
As an American who fights to preserve Judeo-Christian values as America's primary value system and preserve Christianity as the specific American faith that embodies those values, I can only say this: the God that the 431 leaders of the Presbyterian Church worship is not my God, any more than the Allah of the Islamic fascists that Israel and America fight is my God.
The Bible that these Presbyterians read is not my Bible.
The religious values that these Presbyterians hold are not my religious values.
This is not a difference about immigration policy, affirmative action, taxation, bigger or smaller government, welfare policies, gun control, or a myriad of other moral issues over which decent, God-fearing people can disagree.
This is one of the morality-clarifying issues of our time. To single out Israel for economic strangulation while that good nation fights for its life is an act of such immorality that holding that view precludes one from the title "good" or "God-fearing," for if they are true to God, I am false to Him. If they are good, I who support Israel am bad. If their Bible teaches them to strangle Israel and support Yasser Arafat, I am guided by a different Bible.
They have drawn a line. It is now time for good people, Presbyterians specifically, Christians generally, to distance themselves vigorously and publicly from this morally sick church. And it is time, once again, for Jews to realize that the enemies of the Jews in our day are to be found on the Christian Left while their friends are far more often on the Christian Right.
Many serious Christians ask, "What Would Jesus Do?" If Jesus were here, he would probably be at Israeli hospitals comforting fellow Jews who were deliberately blinded, paralyzed and brain-damaged by Jew- and Christian-hating Palestinian terrorists. He would surely not be with the Jews' enemies, among whom are now the leaders of the Presbyterian Church, USA.
ping
Please, please, please... When refering to these idiots, remember it is the PCUSA, the LIBERAL Presbyterians we are talking about. I am in the PCA, we are very conservative.
I did not know your college was PCUSA.
That gives me some hope
I am RPCNA, so I am used to singing Psalms only (used to be PCUSA though, but am a hard-ribbed Calvinist, so I am not diluting the RP church any....lol).
I have personally struggled with Christmas. I have come to the conclusion that I don't see anything Biblically wrong with celebrating it as long as you don't sinfully engage in greed etc. But, I could be wrong. Presbyterians used to be staunchly opposed to it. Heck, even Massachusetts did not legalize the celebration of Christmas until the 1850's.
You may rely upon me to do my best to remember that.Good luck.
No, this is untrue. Any Lay Member who has publically confessed the Four Vows, and is not excommunicate, is as much a Presbyterian as the guy behind the pulpit himself. To maintain otherwise is to defame the Canon Law of the Presbyterian Church.
Ergo, BibChr is indeed a Presbyterian.
Total adherence to the Westminster Confession is not required of Lay Members, but only of Elders (whose job it is to correct theological errors amongst the Laity with good preaching). As BibChr has noted, he is not confessionally qualified at this time to be an Elder. That does not make him, as a Lay Member, any less of a Presbyterian.
best, OP
I went to the annual synod meeting last year & thought I was a t a liberal freak show. The conference was nothing but anti war speeches and gay issue discussions.
As I stated earlier...that is just scratching the surface.
Well, it could well be both. We understand Christians stand on opposite sides on a lot of these issues which aren't directly discussed in the Bible. But God has given us logic in determining whether these issues are right or wrong.
Ping to post 48!
I am also a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. My pastor is horrified at what is happening with the "gay agenda" and other liberal revisions. The EPC is quite conservative.
Thanks. (Though it has been chucklesome at our church to see me struggling to switch from referring to Presbyterians as "them" to "us"!)
Also, there were chuckles when in a sermon I preached at some length on part of Revelation 1, and remarked, "Yes, I'm about to preach on Revelation in a Presbyterian church!"
I just don't find it hard to focus on the ninety-whatever percent of things we do agree passionately on, and leave the rest for another time, another place. Sometimes, it's true, I have to "vet" my remarks, to express some things differently than I might in another church. But it's never risen to what I'd categorize as a problem. That just happens to be the healthiest, most God-centered and God-honoring church I've ever been pleased to be a part of. It's done me a world of good. No way I'll be a cause of divisiveness in it.
In a Men's Fellowship one brother asked me nicely but frontally, "You used to be a Baptist, Dan. How did you come to change your mind on that?"
To which, after a pause, I replied, "Oh, look! A comet!"
And that was pretty much that.
Dan
In the name of Jesus, it has called for the economic strangulation of Israel.
Simply a PC PR move. A respectable church would instead be calling for the economic strangulation of the U.S. government, or the State in general.
Did the denomination go with PCUSA or PCA/Reformed Presbyterian churches? Just because a large body went over the dam, doesn't mean their aren't remnants. I'm sure their are remnant churches that would surprise me in the Methodist and Episcopalian camps. So the same is true for the PCA from the PCUSA.
We had enough, in the 70s, being forced to pay for abortions and seeing ministers who didn't believe in the resurrection, ordained. So we went back to the Westminster confession wholeheartedly, engraved in our constitution the in-errancy of scripture, became pro-life to the core, took up the five points of Calvin and so much more.
That's why I love the GPRL, to us PCA folks, this is like home. Just like having bible studies with those who haven't quite embraced the harder implications of scriptures. It is a real pleasure being here.
When the Gy marriage issue stuck it's ugly head out, there was no big controversy in the PCA. We rallied quickly to support Traditional Marriage - it was a no-brainer.
Oppose Israel's need to defend itself? Give me a break! We love Israel - "They will prosper that love thee". Being forced to support 'revolutionaries' is part of the same reason we split off in the first place.
I stand corrected. BibChr is not a Completed Presbyterian. :-)
If the Pastors do not preach it from the pulpit it becomes a secular issue in the minds of most people.
Our Pastor did a series of sermons on "families" . In it he Biblically condemned those that live and have children outside marriage and the "Homosexual marriage".
The word says "My people perish for lack of knowledge"
Those Shepherds that refuse to lead their flock with the word of God, will at some point have to give an accounting.
But would you agree with me that it is wrong to characterize the church in terms of these extra-biblical issues?
E.g., what does "Pro American" mean in this context? Does it mean the same thing within the church as it would at the local Republican committee? And how does the phrase "Pro American" come across to the rest of our brothers and sisters in the universal church.
Are Presbyterians, or any other Christians for that matter, required biblically to believe that modern Israel is identical to biblical Israel?
I think you might get some opposition to that proposition from many confessional Presbyterians.
I am afraid it might be much worse than that. I.E. our nation given over to depravity and a scourge upon our families.
Since Christ came, the biblical Israel, or old testament Israel is no more. The sacrificial atonement system is done away with due to the superiority of Christ's sacrifice of Himself on the cross (Once for all time).
Yet the scriptures clearly state that God is concerned with Israel and I think the scriptures clearly point out that our treatment of those of the Jewish faith is clearly on God's heart. The scriptures say that we have been 'grafted' onto the 'tree', we are the 'dogs' that get to 'lick up the crumbs' right now, and pretty good crumbs they are.
But I don't think God is through with Israel, there are a lot of 'forever' promises to Israel. So I think we should treat Israel gently and carefully. The nations that have done otherwise have been dealt severe blows (Babylon, Egypt, Germany - others).
How Israel survives today is a 'miracle' by any stretch of the word. Israel has been written off multiple times in the press, by the then Soviet Union and many others. I would take a closer look. God may be doing more with Israel than meets the eye.
Yet the scriptures clearly state that God is concerned with Israel and I think the scriptures clearly point out that our treatment of those of the Jewish faith is clearly on God's heart.
I guess the problem I have is that there appears to be an disconnect. If biblical Israel no longer exists, how can you say that "God is concerned with Israel"?
By definition, all the references in the Bible to "Israel" are referring to biblical Israel which, as you say, no longer exists. All references to "Jews" in the Bible are those Jews who were born under the terms of the old covenant. But the old covenant no longer exists, and has not for almost 2000 years. How do you relate modern Jews to old covenant (biblical) Jews? Does this include all Reform/Conservative/Orthodox Jews? How about atheist Jews? Does a fellow who was raised Roman Catholic or protestant and converts to Judaism count?
In my mind the operating principle of the new covenant is be at peace with all men regardless of race, ethnicity, language, nation. We are to pray God's salvation for all men. No one nation is more holy (divinely set apart) than any other. So we are to promote God's justice in all nations.
The church gets in trouble theologically and practically when it sides with one group of men over and against another on the basis or race or ethnicity.
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