Posted on 07/08/2010 2:30:43 AM PDT by xzins
True enough, but if you really loved your neighbor, wouldn't you want to bring them to the realisation that fulfilment is only reached through appreciating that God loved them, and in responding to that?
The ‘arrogance’ he describes is suggesting that the Good News is only for SOME people.
Withholding the gospel from your neighbor is not loving them in any way that I can think of.
It is not possible for a biblical Christian to arrive at the conclusion that this man has reached.
Again, true enough. However, although sincerity of belief is certainly important, Christian thought is based on factual truth as well. Religious belief is a matter of personal inward experience, but it is also an account of what is objectively true. The two contentions are not neccesarily mutually exclusive.
Does his Bible not include the last three verses of Matthew? Perhaps he blinks every time he reads through Acts 1, thereby missing verse 8.
Every Christian is a missionary, we’re just either good ones or bad ones or somewhere in between.
The death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus witnessed by many and proclaimed in obedience to His instruction is what makes Christianity unique.
Not that I have a feel-good session after singing kumbaya.
Translation: He has been OBAMATIZED!!!
He will likely show up as a new CZAR of Religious Tolerance and Understanding.
I would rather stand with Patriotic Atheists like SE CUPP than this Slug.
Its just what happens when people follow one strand of theology too narrowly and too deeply. They forget to refer their conclusions back to the rest of Christian thought.
This guy was a heretic long before Obama hit the scene.
You are correct, though, he has serial heresies.
You are too kind when you suggest he simply “forgot” to refer back.
I think he purposely has rejected scripture.
Bang on. I’m a very poor missionary. But at least I recognise the essentiality of being one.
Well, I don’t know the guy. I’d need to know more before I judged accurately. Its just that I have seen this kind of thing before. People concentrate so hard on one particular aspect of faith/truth/scripture that they neglect other parts, and end up perverting the whole of the message. Its a snare to intellectual believers.
I do think you have a point. It’s just that I’m ordained in the guy’s denomination and I know his sort.
I am also a very poor missionary, but, praise God, it doesn’t depend on me. Successful evangelism is sharing Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and leaving the results to God. We are the mouthpiece but the message and impact are from god.
Look at any commercial today. Many of them have a character telling other people how happy she/he is with the product. Christianity is a bit like that. Christians are overjoyed that Christ has saved them. It’s a good news! And now, this person is saying that Christians cannot do that?
Not unless you tear a page out here and there, and use a Sharpie to mark up what's left to your liking. Although just that procedure seems to be in vogue these days.
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life", said Jesus Christ in John 14:6. "No man cometh to the Father but by Me."
Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 4,
"2Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables."
My first response to the article title is, If God the Holy Spirit moves within a believer to communicate to an unbeliever His Word and the gospel (def’n of evangelism), what concern is it of any other if that believer submits to the will of God?
The more I read, I now understand the advocate of the position is a woman teaching associated with a seminary.
While many such positions might advocate academics, they unfortunately fail quite miserably in education, or teaching the students in ‘how to think’.
Evangelism in Scripture is simply a spiritual gift of communication, and specifically a spiritual gift in communicating the Gospel to unbelievers. It parallels the spiritual gift of Pastor-Teacher as a spiritual communication gift to teach the Word to believers.
These gifts are of the spiritual domain, just as a gift to leap in the air assists a runner in the high hurdles, the spiritual gift of evangelism is a gift which provides perception in one’s thinking as to how to communicate to another person. It is closer to a supernatural ability wherein the gifted person perceives a situation supernaturally, understanding how to communicate to their audience, personally and impersonally in a particular area.
Those without the gift, and even some with it, don;t always recognize or identify with the gift, which is given to a believer either immediately upon faith in Christ or later per His Plan, but never to an unbeliever who lacks a regenerated human spirit.
The gift in Scripture is only referenced as being given to men and not ever mentioned of women, although all believers are to provide a witness and ministry to their fellow man of the Gospel.
Whenever I read or hear of a woman teaching in a seminary, I can fairly easily dismiss her abilities to teach spiritually er His Plan, and might recognize she simply has advanced either in a worldly fashion to her position, perhaps through academic excellence, but more than likely not even cognizant of the significance of the spiritual domain in the anthropology of man.
If cognizant of the spiritual domain, then an even scarier possibility arises of those who are involved in witchcraft who are lured to provide deception within the body of Christ would be attracted to such a position from a worldly perspective to not only grieve the Holy Spirit, but quench the Holy Spirit from within the incubator of a seminary.
While an article provides insufficient evidence to judge such a person, the situation posed strikes me with exercise more caution in the advocate’s veritability than confidence in their faith.
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