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Locked on 04/28/2006 7:28:28 AM PDT by Religion Moderator, reason:
Toxic thread turned personal |
Posted on 04/25/2006 6:19:21 PM PDT by Full Court
He actually recommends several thousand different churches all over the world on his website.
"If they would of told me that Bambi would keep me out of Hell I would of walked the aisle and asked Bambi into my heart."
But they didn't, they told you salvation was in Jesus and you, as a child, made a profession based on the knowledge you had at the time and God accepted it. Just because you or Bro. cloud strayed or backslid does not affect your salvation just your communion with God that is restored by confession and repentence, not a new salvation experience. Based on what Bro. Cloud has written, how does anyone know he/she is saved, especially if they fall into sin after they have made a profession of faith?
I think his error in thinking you can make a profession of faith and sin and lose your salvation or worse, not knowing if it took or was just an emotional experience is as bad if not worse than what he is accusing BG of.
They preached the Gospel too and fell away. He has become to full of himself and is out of line. Just like the Scriptures say. He has made his threshold too high and is inviting broken bones. He is slandering men of God and many in the Body of Christ who are works in progress. He is judging the hearts of men that do not fit into his perfect Baptist World like many other misguided people do . And what David Cloud is doing is a SIN!!! There is some truth in what he says but some of it borders on or is bad teaching too. Marion Aldridge one of your own wrote a wonderful piece on what is going on in the Church right now. This meets the Biblical smell test and its wisdom is profound. Read and heed and this debate is over.
Is CBF a false prophet?
By Marion Aldridge
April 30, 2003
The only possible excuse for the misbehavior, the unbiblical, unloving, unkind, hateful attitude and actions by some members of the Christian community toward other believers is that they judge their enemies to be false teachers or false prophets, heretics outside the will and the kingdom of God. These self-appointed judges believe the offending party is so far off base as to be utterly or nearly irredeemable.
Some of the Web sites you will discover online about heresy even condemn Billy Graham as a false teacher. Other Web sites focus on what they believe to be the evils of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
It is time for Baptists and other evangelicals to think these accusations through with discernment. Too much is being said and done that is neither biblical nor Christian, all in the name of maintaining a pure religion and a holy church. The conclusion I draw is that the accuser may be more off base than the accused! “Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him…” (Matthew 22:15)
A pastor friend’s church was just booted out of the Baptist association of which he and his congregation have been members for decades. My friend says they were dis-membered. That is an appropriate phrase, because it was the intention of the association to lop them off the body of Christ. Of course, they did not succeed in that objective.
The idea of false testimony, false prophecy and false teaching has an ancient history, dating back to the Ten Commandments: “You shall not give false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:16) In over 100 different verses from the Old and New Testaments, the Bible mentions a variety of ways to be false, from false words to false visions. There are even false Christs! (Matthew 13: 22) It is a valid enterprise to want to be discerning, to rightly discriminate between good and evil.
False teaching is not about someone who makes a mistake at the boundary of faith occasionally and ends up with a broken spiritual tooth. False teaching is about someone who misses the very center of the Christian faith, someone who has a bad heart, someone whose very soul is defective.
The questions that beg to be asked are, “Who are the false teachers and why are they false?”
The person or group who delivers the opening volley in a religious conflict is not, just because they were first, or just because they use spiritual words, or just because they used Bible texts, correct! Some people are intimidators by nature. They will bully you to win the day. That does not make them right. Those who do the accusing, the condemning, the blaming, the shunning, -- they may be the ones in error. They have turned upside down and inside out the very scripture they claim to believe.
The identity of the false teachers in the Bible may surprise naïve Christians who grew up assuming that the conservative, fundamental, evangelical wing of Christianity was always correct. The key word is “always.”
According to Holy Scripture the false teachers of scripture were those who added unnecessary burdens to Jesus’ message of good news and grace. Read the words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew 23:4: “They tie up heavy loads and put them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”
Read Acts 15 where the first conflict in the New Testament church had to do with how much was to be expected of new Gentile Christians (“Unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved…”) Did new Gentile Christians have to become Jews first? No! Worshiping Jesus was enough. Christian discipleship did not require two conversions, first to Judaism and then a second one to Jesus. Jesus plus anything was rejected. Jesus was adequate. Jesus is adequate. Hymn writer Edward Mote expresses my theology: “My hope is built on nothing less [and nothing more] than Jesus’ blood and righteousness… On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.”
Read Paul’s letter to the Galatians (2:4): “This matter arose because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.” (3:10): “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse.” (5:4): “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”
Read I John 9: “Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God.”
Read I Timothy 1:3-5: “Command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work -- which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” Do you see that? THE GOAL of this command is LOVE. The goal is not purity of doctrine.
If you want some clues about how to deal with those who add to the message of Christ, why not turn to Jesus? In Matthew 13:28-29, the question is asked (in the parable of the wheat and the weeds) about whether the crop should be weeded to get rid of the bad stuff. No, says Jesus, let them both grow until the harvest. Then, the Master Gardener will oversee whatever separating needs to be done in his own good time.
The Bible does not teach us to attack or maul heretics, to demean or abuse them. We do not need Inquisitions, witch hunts or heresy trials. We do not need to sign documents sent to us from denominational headquarters. We are advised to be on our guard (Acts 20: 30-31): “Even from your own number, some will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard.”
We are also to pray for our enemies and to forgive them. In Acts 7, there is an episode in which the adversaries of the early Christians “ground their teeth with fury.” Stephen’s prayer (v. 60) was, “Lord, do not hold their sin against them.”
One response does not fit every occasion. When we come into the Christian faith, we bring our personality with us. Some people bring their competiveness, their obsessions and compulsions, their stubbornness, their passions and their prejudices with them. If they are right, they believe you must be wrong. If they are the arm of Christ, they believe there is no need for a leg! Either never having heard, or never having understood, the parable of the six blind men examining the elephant, they obtusely believe that the way they see something must be the only way it can be seen.
One of the ironies of which I have become increasingly aware in the past dozen years of denominational conflict in Baptist life is that the faction which sets themselves apart as superior Christians, the fundamentalists, are turning out to be the ones who least understand and submit to the full richness of the Bible. Those who claim to be most pious regarding the Bible sometimes turn out to be the ones who pick and choose only selected texts, ignoring those which challenge their own personalities and biases, all the while denying that they are doing so.
That is the way cults begin.
Indeed, their approach of eradicating sin in others while ignoring their own is the very kind of hypocrisy to which the prophets and Jesus spoke so often.
Men and women of faith cry to God for protection from these plotters and schemers.
“Rescue me, O Lord, from evildoers; protect me from the violent, who devise evil plans in their hearts, and stir up war every day. They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s; the poison of vipers is on their lips. Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from the violent who plan to trip my feet. The proud have hidden a snare for me; they have spread out the cords of their net and have set traps for me along my path.” (From Psalm 140)
“Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something… He saw through their duplicity… They were unable to trap him…” (From Luke 20)
One of the “popular” passages used by Christians to deal with the matter of “error” within the church is Matthew 18. Ecclesiastical conflict resolution is usually thought of as a three-step process: 1) private conversation between the offender and the offended, 2) a follow-up meeting between the offender and two or three other believers, and finally, 3) a meeting between the offender and the church. But there is a fourth phase in the process that is often ignored: forgiveness and grace. Read the entire chapter. Jesus tells about someone who has been forgiven a grave offense who is, in turn, unwilling to offer forgiveness to those with whom he is in conflict. He comes to a sad, tortured end, and Jesus concludes the story with this remark: “This is how my heavenly father will treat each of you unless you forgive one another from your heart.”
God help me to be discerning of others who teach Christianity falsely and unwisely, of those who add to the faith of the ages their own ideas of what it means to be a Christian. But even more importantly, help me to be loving to all of your children, including those with whom I disagree. Amen.
Marion Aldridge is coordinator of South Carolina CBF.
Being "interested" in my views, would demand at least some recognition of the submitted answer...even if it were only to be a "thanks for your reply".
I think the point is that there was not a recognition of self as a sinner, so there was no repentance. Just a desire to avoid Hell.
So it's wasn't a matter of a backslidden Christian, it was a matter of a person who did not fully understand salvation.
All BAPTIST ones?
I probably meant to.
he does not believe that one can lose your salvation.
Some are Bible churches.
That's good stuff. Sadly, likely to be ignored by those who need it most.
The road to HELL is paved with good intentions.
The 1971 Rose Parade in Pasadena--I was sitting in the gutter on Colorado Blvd.-- Billy Graham drove right in front of me--my friend jumped out into the street and shook his hand.
7 years later I read a book by him: "How To Be Born Again"--and I was.
Whatever legitimate criticisms of Billy Graham exist--The Lord has used his ministry--I only wish he had left the stage a decade ago...
Hi Darth, thanks for taking the time to peer into Bro. Cloud's heart and judge his motives.
And thanks for posting the article from the CBF, but I do not follow anything they say.
A CBF church here in Birmingham recently had an interfaith conference with a Muslim preacher.
I just can't go along with inviting those in to preach who reject Jesus Christ.
Also, the CBF has been one of the leading attack dogs against Biblical Christianity to come along in the past few years.
Never mind...I'm done here; once again reminded why I don't come to this section. I only clicked onto the thread, because it was about Billy Graham.
Yes! That is the picture!!
Aw, come on, don't go. YOu have a nice vocabulary and I enjoy reading your posts! We don't have to agree on everything just to have a good thread going. :-)
The cool part about it is the Holy Spirit was teaching these things to me for months. Then I found it on a Google search one day. My jaw dropped open with amazement when I read it. Those that ignore will have to learn just like the unjust servant did in Matthew 18. I've been seeing many judgemental Christians like this getting taken to the woodshed by the Lord. And one of them used to be me.
CBF A MENAGERIE OF DISGRUNTLED BAPTISTS?—
That is how the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship seems to see itself today, according to a 9/01 Baptist Banner writer. He writes, of the recent CBF Atlanta General Assembly:
"In one room, you'll find radical feminists worshipping 'Mother God' and talking about how hard it is to call God 'Father' or 'Lord.' In another room, the dean of a CBF partner school joins with a Jewish rabbi to argue that Jews don't need faith in Christ to be saved.
Walk to the next room and you'll find the head of another CBF partner school arguing that Baptists shouldn't try to 'convert' Jews, Muslims and Hindus since non-Christians can 'experience the divine' without Jesus.
And, don't pray in 'Jesus name' in mixed company." The CBF is a breakaway, denomination-like group, the former SBC "moderates," but are increasingly being seen as liberals.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~contendr/2001/10-1-2001.html
GRAPEVINE, Texas (ABP) -- The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship approved revisions to its constitution and bylaws July 1, turning aside a move to make a commitment to Jesus Christ and evangelism explicit in the CBF purpose statement.
http://www.abpnews.com/www/416.article
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