Posted on 01/02/2010 10:42:48 AM PST by troy McClure
At least she got scared straight.
Here is the “What We Believe” page.
It clearly refutes some claims made throughout this argument.
http://www.saddleback.com/aboutsaddleback/whatwebelieve/index.html
from the page:
ABOUT SALVATION
Salvation is a gift from God to man. Man can never make up for his sin by self-improvement or good works – only by trusting in Jesus Christ as God’s offer of forgiveness can man be saved from sin’s penalty. Eternal life begins the moment one receives Jesus Christ into his life by faith.
“There is one born every minute”
yep, suckers every one of them! I thought there wasn’t something quite right with Warren when he first came on the scene, now I know for sure.
Not Biblicist Christianity——simple as that.
I have torpedoed the independent Baptist movement in the same way when they go into debt for their bus programs and huge facilities.
I have watched many of the “soul-winning,” bus-running, facilitiy-worshiping Baptist churches go into receivership because they super-sized using worldly business tactics (bonds, etc.) instead of faithfully just doing spiritual New Testament work and watching the Holy Spirit honor it.
The Baptists come back on me with, “Hey! Brother, we’ve won thousands to Christ and that’s the point-—so quit knocking us.” My reply is: “Where are all those you claim to have won to Jesus Christ???”
If you add together all the numbers that the super churches of all denominations claim to have won to Jesus Christ over the last 15 to 20 years, and just consider the difference the New Birth makes upon the mind, .....
NO WAY COULD THIS PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS HAVE BEEN ELECTED!
needs to write another book to reverse tithe I guess
I’m not sure what this woman is doing now, but I hope this experience truly did put her on a journey to find God - but highly unlikely she’s gonna find Him in the Purpose Driven message.
Another part of the story you don’t hear is that the man became a Muslim when he returned to prison.
I can confirm that I saw the interview where she said she gave the man drugs. Not a lot of detail on how or why she had them, but she did discuss this in an interview.
Another news item that was not highlighted that the man became a muslim when he returned to jail. Most news stories intimated that Rick Warren’s book was responsible for saving this woman’s life and changing the course of this escaped killer. It probably sold a lot of books.
God is the author and finisher of our faith, and he can use ANYTHING to reach into a person’s life and put them on the path to eternal life. I pray that is the case with this woman.
Question:Was there a discrete moment when, given the issues you've been focused on lately, you said to yourself, "I'm no longer part of the Christian Right?"
"I never was a part of it. I'm trying to stake out what I call a common ground for the common good ,and that for all these people who are disenfranchised by both sides, disaffected. A lot of people would say, "I'm not blue or red. I'm not secular left and I'm not Religious Left. I'm not secular right and I'm not Religious Right. I'm somewhere in the middle. I happen to like some of the things from that platform and some from the other platform, and I like some about that candidate and some about that.
But there are some things I don't like about this guy and some about that guy." That's healthy. We're trying to create a new area of people who are not going to get polarized either way.
All the polls say that young evangelicals are more committed to pro-life than their parents, but what they're against is the Religious Right. They don't want to be part of the Religious Right, and they're not going to automatically pull the Republican lever."
_______________________________________________________
Get-R-Done for God"?? Hardly.
sw
No, she won't find him there.
Excerpt:
Here’s the lead: “Ashley Smith, who was held hostage in her apartment in March by the man now charged with murder in the Atlanta courthouse shootings, was hailed as a hero after she disclosed how she had persuaded her captor to surrender, partly by reading to him from the spiritual best seller The Purpose-Driven Life. But in a memoir released yesterday, Ms. Smith also recounts that she gave the kidnapper some of her supply of crystal methamphetamine during her captivity …”
Now there’s a combination — hostage soothes hostage-taker with spiritual wisdom and crystal meth — that few novelists would dare put on the page. Ashley Smith’s memoir, by the way, is called Unlikely Angel, and I would say that the crystal-meth part of the story is indeed unlikely. (Her hostage-taker first asked her if she had any pot, which she didn’t, but she did happen to have the crystal.) The book, by the way, is published by William Morrow/HarperCollins, the publisher of Freakonomics, but I hope you will agree that my discussion of said book is not unduly promotional.
The story did get me thinking a bit about crystal meth. Estimates of crystal meth use have been wildly divergent, with some law-enforcement agencies pronouncing it a massive scourge while other groups say the media is overblowing its prominence. So here’s the thing: The Purpose-Driven Life is one of the biggest-selling books in the past decade; Ashley Smith, a devotee of the book was also a devotee of crystal meth; might it be possible to conclude from this admittedly tiny (and unlikely) correlation that crystal meth is indeed a vastly popular drug? If only one-tenth the fans of Purpose-Driven Life are, like Ashley Smith, using crystal meth, that’s an awful lot of crystal meth.
...
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2005/09/28/the-crystal-methpurpose-driven-life-coefficient/
I was curious to see what happened to her after her 15 minutes of fame. Well, like ole Rick, she wrote a book.
According to Wikipedia
;;;
During her ordeal, Smith read to Nichols from the Bible and from Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. She also cooked him pancakes and gave him crystal methamphetamine, an illegal stimulant, from her personal supply, although she maintains that she did not use the drug along with him. Smith later revealed “that she had been struggling with a methamphetamine addiction when she was taken hostage, and the drug problem had even led to time spent in a psychiatric hospital and the loss of custody of her 5-year-old daughter.”[3] Smith said the last time she used crystal meth “was 36 hours before Nichols held a gun to her and entered her home. Nichols wanted her to use the drug with him, but she refused.” Smith also revealed that she had “a five-inch scar down the center of her torso — the aftermath of a car wreck caused by drug-induced psychosis. She says she let go of the steering wheel when she heard a voice saying, ‘Let go and let God.’”[4]
(Of course she was TIED UP when she did all this and o curse SHE never used meth - LOL! Lies too.
...
It was announced in June 2005 that Smith had inked a book deal with HarperCollins Publishers. She collaborated with writer Stacy Mattingly on her memoirs, Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero. The book came out in September 2005, and Smith revealed her methamphetamine addiction there for the first time. Smith asserts therein that her hostage ordeal awakened her to the fact that she was an addict, and she holds that she has infrequently used drugs since the ordeal.
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Smith
I suppose “infrequently using an illegal drug that totally destroys you, is better than daily usage for a Rick Warren follower.
I wonder if she was ever charged for her drug possession and use? That might have helped her STOP using the junk.
Thanks for the update. So RW’s book helped her use drugs less frequently. There’s a claim for you.
If you were a pastor there I’m sure Chris Rosebrough would LOVE to hear your story. He’s currently dealing with people who have been abused and disillusioned with Perry Noble’s church (another RW wannabe but even more extreme).
you can contact him through any of his websites or on facebook. Many of us would love to hear your story about how the Lord called you out of that. Many of us have similar stories.
BTW almost every denomination has some flavor of Rick Warren or Bill Hybels creeping in and diluting Godly ‘vision’ and replacing it with a man-centered one. These days you can’t go by statements of faith on the website (although it may be a place to start). Churches with solid statements of faith may deny those very statements by not preaching or teaching it from the pulpit or preaching/teaching a contradictory one. Happening all over. Have you ever heard of Bob DeWaay?
Purpose Driven Platte River Gospel Plate Passing.
Well, I'm sure if you asked him he would say "sure I am, sure we are!" But those who dissent (such as those who objected to having heretics and the Obamination speak at Saddleback) are asked to leave, so... put two and two together.
re the jackass part... I would put RW more in the Balaam role than the jackass role.
Been there done that. He just gets really quiet for a while until it blows over. He lied about the whole Syria debacle too.
"we didn't shoot any video" or "we didn't make any recording"
Rick Warren on Syria: 'A moderate country'
Rick Warren's syria assessment disputed
Megapastor Rick Warren's Damascus Road experience He also told me he did not tape anything while in Syria, ''because it was a courtesy call, like I do in every country.''...No sooner had I received this surprising response from Warren, I also got an e-mail providing a link to a YouTube video of Rick Warren in Syria explaining how great the Assad regime treats Christians and Jews and how Damascus ''does not permit extremism of any kind.'' Not one to let lies go unchallenged, I wrote back to Warren with a link to the YouTube video: ''If you didn't tape anything, what's this? Do you really believe Syria does not allow extremism of any kind? There are more terrorist organizations based in Syria than anywhere else in the world!'' It might be that Rick Warren, deep in the bush of Rwanda, never received those last questions, because he never responded – at least not in the last three days. He did, however, within minutes make sure the YouTube video he recorded independent of his meetings with the Syrian brown shirts was removed from the network. Vanished. Kaput. Sterilized. Cleansed.
The Syria Video they never shot.
Rick Warren disciples: Where are you?
It does nothing of the sort. What we argue with is what he SAYS and PREACHES and TEACHES and DOES and WRITES in his books.
Some of the most sickly liberal denominations STILL have orthodox statements of faith. One would think as mature thinking adults, people might understand that what a person or church says they believe and what they actually practice and teach on a day to day basis can be two very different things.
IN FACT... Bob DeWaay and Chris Rosebrough had a face to face meeting with Rick Warren to discuss these very things. IN private, Rick agreed with their very Biblical stance, BUT they were calling him to preach it boldy and publicly. HE won't do that. Which IMO means he doesn't really believe it.
If he is unwilling to suffer the reproach of Christ, to proclaim the offense of the Gospel in its fulness, then he is ashamed of the gospel and has instead substituted something a little more palatable to the world as his message. Therefore he doesn't believe the Gospel actually has the power Scripture says it does to save people. He has a better idea than God's little Instruction Book.
He is treading on spiritually dangerous ground at the very least.
Good for you! Lots of people saw it earlier than I did. For me, I just read PDL and wondered why everyone was so gung ho about it. It was so... fluffy and boring. My thoughts after reading it were “if this is taking the church by storm, what a pathetic commentary about the state of the church.”
Several other pastors who now are vocal critics felt similarly. They read it before the ‘storm’ happened, and thought well ... this unbiblical fad won’t go anywhere. And they admit now they were wrong about that obviously and had to go back and take a closer look at RW’s books and teachings to figure out why everyone was following this pied piper.
But RW’s error is often in what is left OUT rather than what is said. That is what makes it very subtle even for those with above average understanding of Scripture and level of discernment.
Then again he does say some really stupid unbiblical things too, but our human nature is to overlook those things and focus on what we agree with. But when RW says two contradictory things in the same paragraph, half the congregation (the worldly half) goes for the unbiblical thing. Then he says something contradictory that is biblical, and the biblical half says “Oh that’s what he meant!” (even though what he said first really could not be interpreted that way, or could be interpreted the opposite way) and the biblical half of the congregation is placated. SO he creates an illusion of unity around himself and his books. It’s only when the congregation goes to implement the ideas that they realize no one is on the same page, and then they begin to target one another as being ‘divisive’ and ‘critical’ because they can’t agree.
Of course, the divisive ones are the ones who brought in such confusing teaching in the first place.
>needs to write another book to reverse tithe I guess<
Remember he was going to write that one that started “what you think you own is only on loan” (catchy huh?)
he better get crackin on that one!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.