NZ Anglican Church's Billboard Mocks Mary, Joseph and Virgin Birth

St. Mathew In The City ^ | 13 Dec 2009 | Glynn Cardy

[PanzerKardinal]

A "Progressive" Anglican church in Auckland New Zealand paid to have this billboard placed near their parish.

Here are some excerpts written by the Vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy on the church's website touting what he did.

________________

To make the news at Christmas it seems a priest just needs to question the literalness of a virgin giving birth. Many in society mistakenly think that to challenge literalism is to challenge the norms of Christianity. What progressive interpretations try to do however is remove the supernatural obfuscation and delve into the deeper spiritual truth of this festival.

Christian fundamentalism believes a supernatural male God who lived above sent his sperm into the womb of the virgin Mary. Although there were a series of miraculous events surrounding Jesus’ birth – like wandering stars and angelic choirs – the real miracle was his death and literal resurrection 33 years later. The importance of this literal resurrection is the belief that it was a cosmic transaction whereby the male God embraced humanity only after being satiated by Jesus’ innocent blood.

Progressive Christianity is distinctive in that not only does it articulate a clear view it is also interested in engaging with those who differ. Its vision is one of robust engagement. If every Christian thought the same not only would life be deadly boring but also the fullness of God would be diminished. This is the consequence of its incarnational theology: God is among us; even among those we disagree with or dislike.

[Elsie]

The Mashiach must be descended from David through Solomon (not any of David's other children) through the male line ...

MUST be?

[Tennessee Nana]

Actually, I found the ‘message’ of St. Matthews-in-the-City just as shocking and saddening as the billboard itself:
___________________________________________________

Yes not something that would attract a Christian to attend a service there...

“His death was a consequence of the offensive nature of that hospitality and his resurrection a symbolic vindication”.’ “

Say what ???

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Now you were born in China was it ???

No, born in Canada to British parents. Emigrated as a young adult to New Zealand. Middle aged now.

> Along with that Australian practice of saying “Gidday mate”

Said here all the time, common usage, has been for a hundred years or more. Our Aussie cousins say “G’dye Mite”, very differently to us.

> As a born and bred New Zealander, I never did see that happen...

As a born and bred New Zealander you have obviously missed the past 50 or so years of Our Nation’s history. Or you have had your head buried deep in the sand.

New Zealand is a Nation of stirrers: the Springbok tour, the Mururoa Atoll protests, No Nukes policy for US Warships &tc &tc &tc. You have been away from Godzone for a very long time, obviously.

And so I gotta be brutally honest:

The country you once knew and loved may not be the country that is now. In which case, you would probably do better to spend more time listening and less time lecturing us Kiwis and your fellow Americans about a country which you may well feel a stranger in today. I mean that kindly. The same would be said for me of Canada. I would not recognize the place anymore.

Your New Zealand has changed. Maybe not for the better, either.

[Elsie]

He will be a literal Davidic King, defeat `Amaleq and all Israel's enemies in battle, regather the Jews to Israel, rebuild the Holy Temple and restore the Temple Service, and inaugurate a period of literal (not "spiritual") peace. All false religions and false "gxds" will be disappear and the entire human race will acknowledge and worship the One True G-d.

Luke 2:25-32

[25] Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
[26] It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
[27] Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required,
[28] Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
[29] "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.
[30] For my eyes have seen your salvation,
[31] which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
[32] a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

---

Is this what Simeon was talking about?

[Elsie]

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Just what IS that 'will'?

[Elsie]

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Just what IS that 'will'?

[Elsie]

I see it.

[Elsie]

Only meeting the exact criteria of the Torah and Prophets as they themselves describe them makes one the messiah.

I hope the EXACT requirments did not get messed up over the years with all of the re-telling and not writing down!

[Tennessee Nana]

Then if what you say is true...

God was merciful to me...

and rescued me out of there and back to the land of my ancestors...

Tennessee Nana UE

[restornu]

Just EXACTLY what did the HOLY GHOST tell you?

***

Thank you Elsie for acknowledge that it slip your mind!

When I was younger and read the Bible I have felt the presents of the Holy Spirit in many passages especially in the NT.

When I inquired about the Book of Mormon it was the Holy Spirit that was also present and I have felt the spirit of the Lord when reading the Book of Mormon.

...and such love when I would cross reference between the two Testaments it would bring tears of Joy.

[Elsie]

G-d had already warned Israel in Deuteronomy 13 that if anyone worked miracles as "proof" that Israel should stop observing the Torah they were to pay it no attention whatsoever, because G-d was merely testing them.

Here it is - to what are you referring?

---

Deuteronomy 13

 ¹If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,

 ²And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;

 ³Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

 ⁴Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.

 ⁵And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.

 ⁶If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;

 ⁷Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;

 ⁸Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:

 ⁹But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

 ¹⁰And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

 ¹¹And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you.

 ¹²If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,

 ¹³Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;

 ¹⁴Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;

 ¹⁵Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.

 ¹⁶And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.

 ¹⁷And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers;

 ¹⁸When thou shalt hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep all his commandments which I command thee this day, to do that which is right in the eyes of the LORD thy God.

[B-Chan]

To which inquisition do you refer? There were several, you know.

And the Church never sold indulgences, though many of her members did. It was to curb such abuses that the Council of Trent was held and the practice of granting indulgences reformed.

[Elsie]

Resty; you have a PROBLEM!

In #290 you said: "I have told you and others I have recieve a witness by the Holy Ghost before I ever knew about the Church or missionaries etc!"

NOW you've said...

When I inquired about the Book of Mormon it was the Holy Spirit that was also present and I have felt the spirit of the Lord when reading the Book of Mormon.

So; how can you INQUIRE about the BoM if you never HEARD about the CHURCH?

[fatima]

Big empty words.

[reaganaut]

How do you KNOW it was the Holy Ghost?

Even Satan can appear as an angel of light. And he who testifies of another gospel than the bible is not of God.

[DieHard the Hunter]

I was puzzled in your earlier post about your reference to China re: my migration path to NZ. On reflection it occurs to me, Nana, that you might have had me confused with NZERFROMHK, who is Chinese, posting from the South Island.

> and rescued me out of there and back to the land of my ancestors...

Twenty years ago when I first came to NZ, it was on the cusp of some really fundamental social changes. Two years later, those changes were more-or-less embedded, and since then they have well-and-truly gelled.

Twenty years ago there was no need for the Guardian Angels here. Now there is, and we are getting busier.

I became a Guardian Angel, in part, because my wife got stuck as an innocent bystander in the middle of a knifing / gunplay incident in Henderson — unheard of in NZ not so long ago. I had never felt so helpless in my life as that time, listening in on my cellphone — I was in Taupo on business — to her blow-by-blow report. Terrifying.

NZ is certainly still Godzone, but it isn’t the same wonderful place that I remember when I first got off the aeroplane. Doubtless the change would be even more noticeable for yourself.

Happy Christmas
DieHard

[restornu]

No matter how much you want it to be Satan I can only think ye are of little faith.

You have asked me this many times somehow you ignore what the Lord has said many times teh Holy Ghost will witness

I know what I have with me as child reading the Bible that sweet taste in many passages of the scriptrues it was the Holy Ghost testifying these words are of the Lord!

Gal 5

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law

The Oppostion has none of these qualities nor could he mimic for they are not with in him.

[kosta50]

If J*sus was indeed the "Jewish messiah," he had to have fulfilled the criteria set forth above all by the Torah and secondarily by the Prophets and Hagiographa. If he did not have to do this, if his own claims were self-authenticating, then take the "old testament" out of your bibles and leave it alone.

Precisely. However, the Old Testament is subordinated to the New. It is said to be "pointing" to, or "prefiguring" the "real thing." Jesus even says that Moses wrote about him but he doesn't tell us where. Some diligent scholars have "found" the verse which, just as Isaiah's verses, requires a lot of out-of-context imagination.

To the Church, the Old Testament is a pedigree, a claim to inheritance and a certificate of authenticity. Without it, Christianity would be just another new revealed religion with nothing to fall back on. Christianity was a messianic Jewish sect that used OT prophesies as "proof" that Jesus was the anointed warrior king who will fulfill the OT messianic prophesy of reestablishing God's Kingdom on earth—another name for Israel. [See Acts 16]

[Elsie]

No matter how much you want it to be Satan I can only think ye are of little faith.

No matter how much you want it to be GOD I can only think ye are of little understanding of the BIBLE; which SPECIFICALLY warned of it.

[Elsie]

 

I know what I have with me as child reading the Bible that sweet taste in many passages of the scriptrues it was the Holy Ghost testifying these words are of the Lord!

Then what kind of a 'taste' do THESE  Bible Verses give you??

 

---

---

Acts 2:42
  They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

 

 

 Acts 4:2
 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

 

 

Acts 5:42
  Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.

 

 

Acts 13:1

  In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.

 

 

 Acts 13:12
   When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.

 

 

Acts 17:18-19
 18.  A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
 19.  Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

 

 

Acts 18:11
    So Paul stayed for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

 

 

Romans 15:4
 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

 

 

Romans 16:17
   I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them.

 

 

1 Corinthians 4:17
   For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.

 

 

1 Corinthians 11:2
 2.  I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings,  just as I passed them on to you.

 

 

Ephesians 4:14-15
 14.  Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.
 15.  Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

 

 

2 Thessalonians 2:15
   So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings  we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

 

 

2 Thessalonians 3:6
  In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching  you received from us.

 

 

1 Timothy 1:3-4
 3.  As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer
 4.  nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work--which is by faith.

 

 

1 Timothy 1:7
  They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

 

 

1 Timothy 2:7
   And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle--I am telling the truth, I am not lying--and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.

 

 

1 Timothy 4:1-2
 1.  The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
 2.  Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.

 

 

1 Timothy 4:6
   If you point these things out to the brothers, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, brought up in the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed.

 

 

1 Timothy 4:11
  Command and teach these things.

 

 

1 Timothy 6:3-5
 3.  If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching,
 4.  he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions 
 5.  and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

 

 

2 Timothy 1:13
  What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus.

 

 

 2 Timothy 2:15-17
 15.  Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
 16.  Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.
 17.  Their teaching will spread like gangrene.

 

 

2 Timothy 3:16-17
 16.  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
 17.  so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

 

 

 2 Timothy 4:3-4
  3.  For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
  4.  They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

 

 

Titus 1:11
   They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach--and that for the sake of dishonest gain.

 

 

Titus 2:1
  You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.

 

 

Titus 2:15
  These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

 

 

 Hebrews 13:9
 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings.

 

 

 2 Peter 2:1-3
 1.  But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them--bringing swift destruction on themselves.
 2.  Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.
 3.  In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

 

 

2 John 1:10
  If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him.