Posted on 06/30/2016 7:19:38 AM PDT by aimhigh
After a series of messages over several weeks encouraging the listeners to respond to the ‘fire of God’, Pastor Bates waded into the controversy over homosexuality, highlighting it’s sin as compared to Scripture:
“I was literally shocked, personally, when I began to see people get up, move out, walk out the door kinda shaking their heads. “
Bates says that the people who were most likely to walk out on a message on the Biblical stance of homosexuality are those people with relationship connections with those in the LGBT community. Be it a son, daughter or parent, many going to traditional churches that seek to maintain Biblical standards are being actively challenged by the LGBT agenda in our nation.
(Excerpt) Read more at trunews.com ...
Your opinion does not match up to the opinion of the teachings of the New Testament.
The church is not a place for saints to gather and hear good things about themselves and bad things about unbelievers. The local body of Christ is compelled to reach out and save their community, to send out those who will invite those outside of the body of believers to come in and hear the good news of Christ.
Jesus himself showed us the method of reaching out to others:
When Jesus traveled to Jerusalem, he was met at one point by ten lepers who called out to him from a distance.
"When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
He gave his attention to ten and only one came back to thank him. And that one was a Samaritan, one who was reviled among the Jews.
Can we do no less? Invite people into our churches and preach the Gospel to them? Even if nine out of ten never return? That is what the church is for: to compel sinners to come in and hear the Gospel.
Churches who do not call sinners in are just as bad as churches who do not preach the Gospel.
One is a locked doorway, closed to those who need the message the most. The other is a hollow chamber, void of life to any who find themselves there.
Neither are acceptable nor laudable.
Where do you conclude that he is “staying true to the word”? You can paint a very false picture by making selective quotes from the bible.
Many of today’s notorious problems do NOT exist of themselves in a vacuum either.
Could it be that the psychologists were right after all by identifying “complexes”? Or to put it in gospel terms, the name of the demons is legion.
One can’t slap a band-aid on a cancer problem and call it cured.
I’d sure say, for starters, a gospel presentation should at least embrace all the things that are stated in Isaiah 53. There is a contingent in Christendom today that isn’t very comfortable with “He bore all our diseases.” Everything has to be an immediate palpable moral issue. But we said good bye long ago to being able to deal with our sick and sinful lives at that level — in fact it was in the Garden of Eden.
Diseases are often ameliorated before they are cured. Knowing what eggs on a homosexual mindset, for instance, is very helpful in helping someone leave it.
I am theologically closer to Baptist than anything else, so this may impose its own biases, but it also makes it easy to see where Methodist-derived followings are leaving out essential parts of the gospel.
This conversation has run its course. However, I must confess to being baffled as to how my statement that "the main purpose of a church is to serve as a meeting place for people to worship God" became "hearing good things about themselves and bad things about believers".
He won't.
If you check his posing history you note that he is always against Christianity.
It is always voiced in a "oh so concerned that they are not doing it right" or "they need to stop posting stories about abortion evils and post happy adoption stories" or "it is ok that Christian opinion is being suppressed by the government because there are other ways of sharing the Gospel" or "It is the children's fault that there is no prayer in schools because they watch "Frozen".
The roaring lion he embraces is that one roaming to and fro seeking who he may devour.
You suggest that those who don’t agree with the church should not find a welcome in the church. Where else are they going to hear the word of God?
Evangelism should occur when the members go out and live among the heathen. If a local church ibuilding s the only place an unbeliever hears God's word, then that church has failed already.
Oh, you don't own a TV, do you?
I implore you to go to a friend's house and watch a full hour of network television (with commercials) anytime between the hours of 8:00 and 11:00 and then come back and reiterate what you just said.
“Christians who cannot follow the word of God have no business being in church in the first place.”
Churches that don’t preach the word of god are in the business of money collecting and socializing.
You referenced my quote about a church being a place to gather and worship God. You would have done better to reference one of my other quotes.
And people who are rejecting the word of God should not IMO feel welcome in a church. If they don't want to listen, they don't need to be there. Likewise, if they go to a chamber music concert and bring their boombox so they can listen to the Rolling Stones, they probably didn't belong there, either. Getting back to the original story, the people who bolted apparently did not "want to hear the word of God" badly enough to stay.
"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires"(2 Timothy 4:3).
It is pointless to chase after those people who don't want to hear what they don't want to hear. "Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet". (Matthew 10:14)
Do you think that the church should be a sanctuary for Christians to be able to be apart from those who are not believers, or do you believe it should be a place for those who are not believers to hear the word of God preached?
That is what the discussion was about.
I agree that witnessing and evangelizing is the responsibility of all Christians in day to day life, but people in a church should never say that unbelievers are not welcome in their building.
(Paul did say, however, to remove those in the congregation who stir up trouble. But I have seen more believers do that than unbelievers. His instruction was about behavior in the church not about the faith of people in the church.)
There is a marked difference between what Paul faced and what (if the article cited at the head of the thread is accurate) this minister is facing.
You lie, but that’s because you never actually effectually met Jesus. Jesus to you is apparently not a savior who loves into an ever-better form of His image — He is a bunch of rules that have to be met to the affirmation of men.
I.e. the only thing I want to see devoured is your pretense to doing Christianity according to the flesh.
Some people see the cracks in the window; some people see the window.
Unlike the windows we know, however, living windows can be healed, which eventually gets rid of the cracks, and it’s the only thing that could.
I tell you true, the first Christian preacher in modern times to effectually address the healing aspect of turning from such sins, is going to gain an enormous heap of crowns in heaven.
I have met a bunch of AOG people who are very adamant that it’s really simple, just “don’t do” (whatever) and voila you’re saved.
That always struck me as ineffectual and incomplete, but I never truly understood why until recently. You can’t tell that cracked window not to be cracked — not until you come up with a way to heal the glass. You can putty the cracks, you can scotch tape the cracks, you can whatever. But until the cracks are healed with real glass, just like the rest of the window, nothing permanent results.
... and this is why it takes a Creator to be a Savior. Who else is the Potter who made you in the first place?
Why does a liberal like you continue to pollute FR. This pastor was 100% correct and you doubt him like a good liberal who is worried about hurting someone’s feelings.
Of course greed, fear and gluttony are serious sins as are many other sins listed in scripture, however those sins haven't receive as many strong admonitions in so many books in scripture as sexual sins. The first 4 sins listed in the 10 Commandments are sins against God, the rest are sins against men however sexual sins are against both God AND man!
By committing sexual sins, we not only offend our fellow humans, God but also, harm our own bodies, trading our healthy bodies and minds for sick bodies (trading normal sexual interactions for perverse, unnatural ones) and sick minds,
From your comments, I'm thinking you're more offended by hearing or reading about God's judgement against homosexuality (and those who condone, approve or by their silence on the subject, approve, according to how scripture characterizes it) than you do, say, lying, stealing or not honoring parents.
He supports men with sexual identity issues. He reaches out to them with love, understanding and support, having struggled with most all of their issues.
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