Posted on 07/07/2006 12:59:52 PM PDT by The Lumster
While North Korea was gearing up to launch a long range missile and five rockets into the Sea of Japan this week, sending a grim message to the entire world, out at Saddleback Church Rick Warren was announcing that he will soon be bringing his message of purpose to North Korea where he reportedly will be addressing an audience of 15,000.
“God is using Rick Warren to be a messenger of peace!” gushed one Saddleback member. There is great hope in Lake Forest that Rick Warren's message in that stadium will cause Kim Jong II to drop his nuclear purposes and embrace some kinder, gentler ones.
But who exactly will be sitting in that stadium when Mr. Warren steps up to the podium? Given the level of government induced starvation in that country, the average North Korean would be lucky to have the strength to walk to the stadium to hear him in the first place.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldviewweekend.com ...
I've heard and seen JESUS quite a LOT in Warren's stuff and in his interviews.
Hmmmmm . . . must be one of those eye of the beholder things.
Very well and accurately said.
HELLO????
From long personal experience . . . I'll take the average Christian life and testimony in China . . . the average congregation . . .
over those in the USA any day.
They have been purified by suffering very extensively. I have shed many tears with those precious saints. I've been humbled and honored by their Love and affection and attentiveness.
They are not perfect. But God is honoring their love, awesome prayer lives and sacrificial servant hearted service to one another and the lost around them with many miraculous signs following--including bona fide resurrections from folks dead for days.
But a whole raft of people hereon would rather throw rocks than praise God for the truth in such matters. Anything not fitting their personal scripts and scenarios; their private interpretations . . . gets rocked to death if they are able.
I don't think God is amused.
You can have the average Western playing church congregation, thank you. Even a lot of the Pentecostal groups are hollow husks these days.
IN short, you are simply wholesale and thoroughly WRONG about Christianity in China. I say that from extensive PERSONAL EXPERIENCE with it from living there.
Those saints are tried and true--powerful in prayer and powerful at loving the lost into The Kingdom and at discipling them to walk like Jesus.
I don't see a lot of that hereon and virtually none by the rock throwers.
All Rick believes in is Rick.
From my perspective, I have found extensive, persistent evidence on almost every page of Rick's materials to prove that assertion to be 100% of a . . . from the pit of . . . .
I'm slightly shocked even you would engage in it.
Well put.
Well said. (Plus the use of drums and guitars in worship, and not using the King James Version, etc.)
And what horror if everyone in the congregation prays at once! All the more horrid if many do so in tongues!
I guess they have the affrontery to imagine they are confusing God?
/sar
Seems like clucking tongues are as much of an abomination as a lot of other things.
Sometimes I think God could easier deal with satanic homosexuals than He can with some RELIGIOUS types.
Actually, that isn't true. This has nothing to do with a personal dispute, it has to do with rescuing people from entering an orchard of poisonous fruit. Suppose there is a vineyard, owned by a guy who went out of his way to find out what people like in the personality of a vineyard owner and workers. Let's say the vines are a mixture of oh, about 40% good and 60% poisonous fruit producing vines. And where the poisonous ones are by far the most tasty. Yet, over time, the poison will kill you, especially if you don't eat any of the good fruit with it.
Now, you see someone or some people who are hungry and about to enter that vineyard to pick of the fruit. What do you do, knowing that there is better chance of getting sick and of dying than there is for real nutrition.
Do you go and nicely, or not so nicely tell the owner and sower of the vineyard to not sell his fruit because it contains poisonous fruit? And you also know that in his public and publichsed employee handbook his employees and friends are armed contain his directions of how to deal with you - by using propaganda against you, are trained to escort you off the premises and quite you and discredit you, perhaps even destroying your reputation. And you know that many, many, scores of others have made it abundantly clear with much evidence that his vineyard contains poisonous (yet very tasty) fruit. And you watch how instead of ripping out the bad fruit, he actually is planting more - varieties even more tasty but more deadly and is now peddling them?
Or, do you try and tell unsuspecting trusting people who go to the vineyard because it is surround by other vineyards of good fruit and has nice people running it and keep hearing the commercials about how much more tasty it is? Do you warn those people, knowing that most of them will revile you and call you a slanderer or worse, knowing that you could lose friends and family over because you have told them that what tastes so yummy from such a friendly guy who sells below cost is deadly to those? Do you warn them, knowing they will get angry and emotional with you and call you names more likely because they are defending their own purchase of the poison? Do you love them that much as our Lord loved us - can you love them that much through the Lord? Do you want them to be happy and getting along with you or do you want them alive (in Christ)?
Or do you just shake your head and say there is nothing you can do, or worse yet, put your head in the sand? What does your Lord tell you to do when a major portion of His handbook - the Word is about watching out for and exposing and telling us to expose the tasty but poisonous fruit?
Believers have the choice of whom to follow - and the consequences of that choice.
Again, you have evidence for this slander? Hard evidence?
Jesus said it best (as He always did) when the disciples were carping about some preachers who weren't in their "denomination," but who were clearly Christians (i.e., the seven sons of Sciva): "Those who are not against us are with us."
Again, we have no idea---and will have no idea until Jesus comes---of the tremendous impact Billy Graham's crusades had in Soviet Russia, all as part of undermining that evil empire.
I was gonna avoid this thread, but that's just a flat out LIE.
I'm not a big Warren fan either. I've read PDL. It's not heresy, just "xian-lite."
But for all of Warren's faults, at least he gets up off his keister and tries to make a positive difference. Unlike some who just wish to sit in judgment.
Whoa, I would question someone elses Christianity when they are so quick to take my words out of context. I said I Question the growth of Christianity in China, you took that to mean I believe it to be a false Christianity.
I know you from other threads, and for those others that don't know you all they have to do is look at your about page and they would probably come to the conclusion that if they had to choose between Rick Warrens Christianity and yours they would probably choose Rick's even with all the bad mouthing they give him.
How do you know who has done what on this thread?
The way people worship this man is stunning. Rick Warren gives himself the credit. MY book. MY method. I, I, I. I’ve never seen him give any of the glory to Christ. Anytime we pat ourselves on the back & praise ourselves & don’t give the honor & praise & glory to the only One Who deserves it, we place ourselves above HIM. It ain’t that hard to understand.
I learned to read in first grade. You?
Nice Personal Attack
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