Evangelical Apologist Hank Hanegraaff Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy

religiousresearcher.org ^ | 4-10-2017 | Rob Bowman

[fishtank]

Evangelical Apologist Hank Hanegraaff Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy

Posted by: Rob Bowman

On Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017, Hank Hanegraaff formally joined the Orthodox Church. Since 1989 Hanegraaff has been the President of the Christian Research Institute (CRI) and (since ca. 1992) the host of CRI’s Bible Answer Man radio program.[1] Hank, his wife Kathy, and two of their twelve children were inducted by a sacramental rite called chrismation into the Orthodox faith at St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, near where CRI is based. In chrismation, a baptized individual is anointed with oil in order to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.[2]

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thank you for these excellent quotes.

[metmom]

Satan Hates the Latin Mass

Chapter and verse?

Or is that just RCC apologist opinion?

(Like I even have to ask).

[metmom]

What part of “unbloody sacrifice” do you not understand?

NO such thing as an *unbloody sacrifice*.

Hebrews 9:22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Your comment is also an admission that the sacrifice of the mass is not the same sacrifice as Calvary, Jesus' atonement, as His death was EXTREMELY bloody.

ALL His blood was poured out.

[metmom]

I regard Luther as a genuine religious genius, on a par with Joseph Smith and Muhammad: able to smash through older existing forms and harness religious ideas skillfully to the drives and tendencies of a changing society. Like them, he was a borrower, a fixer -— a brilliant breaker/remaker.

Luther was light years ahead of Smith or Mohammed.

To even think of putting them into the same category is disingenuous.

Smith and Mohammed were both frauds who made up religious writings and claimed they were given from God. Luther never did that.

Plus Mohammed and Smith were serial adulterers and murderers. A charge that cannot be laid at Luther's feet.

Your post is a subtle attack on the character of Luther by placing him in the same category as the other two and has not gone without notice.

[MHGinTN]

How sad that you lack the discernment necessary to see Mo ham head and Smith without seeing the demonic inspiring them. ... I suppose you would consider Luther as inspired by satan?

Have you gotten any help yet, to address the question I asked of you regarding the Catholiciism Mass?

[metmom]

I think the Reformation was going to happen at some point with or without Luther. Once you get the Word into people's hands and let them read it for themselves the Gospel is pretty easy to understand.

The seeds of the Reformation were planted before Luther came along.

There were already other men willing to risk their lives by printing Scripture in defiance of the Catholic church and under threat from it.

Luther was the tipping point, but hardly the catalyst of it all. It had been building for a long time. He just happened to have courage enough to do his 95 thesis and the rest was history.

And if Luther hadn't done what he did, someone else would have come along and done something else that would have caused the same result.

[Elsie]

What was the temperature of the oil?

IIRC, it was a wee bit higher than room.

[Elsie]

Where do you find “blessed oil” in scripture?

Well...

---

Genesis 27:38  New International Version
 Esau said to his father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!" Then Esau wept aloud.

 

 

Exodus 30:23-25

²³"Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant calamus, ²⁴500 shekels of cassia-all according to the sanctuary shekel-and a hin of olive oil. ²⁵Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil.

[Elsie]

100% of the time?

[Elsie]

Yeah, Acts 15 is good!

Thank you for these excellent quotes.

You spin away wonderfully!

[Mark17]

IIRC, it was a wee bit higher than room.

I would say it was WAY higher than 212 degrees. ☝️😱

[ebb tide]

You conveniently ignored the “almost” in Hebrews 9:22.

Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights.

That was an unbloody sacrifice.

Melchisedech's sacrifice was also unbloody

[Mrs. Don-o]

And the same to you, dear Elsie! Happy third day of Easter Week.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You have misinterpreted me. I consider both Joseph Smith and Mohammad to have been either conscious religious charlatans, delusional or demonic.

As for your question about the Mass, I guess you must have missed my reply. Please check your queue. Thank you.

[editor-surveyor]

.
The point is that you constantly twist the meaning of the passages that you post.

It gets old.

[MHGinTN]

Post. 543 did not answer nor have you substantiate your acccusation at me.

[ealgeone]

Keep trying ebb....the NT is clear. His was a one time sacrifice. He is not resacrifed over and over and over again as claimed by Roman Catholicism.

The Mass as practiced by the RCC is in contradiction of the NT.

8After saying above, “SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them” (which are offered according to the Law), 9then He said, “BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. 10By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; 12but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, 13waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. 14For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying, 16“THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THEM AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL PUT MY LAWS UPON THEIR HEART, AND ON THEIR MIND I WILL WRITE THEM,” He then says, 17“AND THEIR SINS AND THEIR LAWLESS DEEDS I WILL REMEMBER NO MORE.” 18Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin. Hebrews 10:10-18 NASB

[Mrs. Don-o]

I certainly never said or thought that Martin Luther was a purveyor of fabricated scriptures (like Muhammad and Smith) or a lust-driven adulterer or personally a murderer.

He did want to throw books OUT of the Bible -— on a rather expansive view of his own authority -— a view which influenced many other men and eventually stripped the Deuterocanonicals and almost the Book of Hebrews, the Revelation of St. John, and the Epistle of James, as well.

He did spark a century of continent-wide religious warfare (including his famous call for the extermination of the rebellious peasants), and trumpeted an aggressive and vicious policy of Jew- hatred which gained long-lasting traction in German culture as well.

I sometimes wonder whether, if he knew what the long-term results of his actions would be, he would have followed the same church-splitting course. There’s no way to know. I hope he would not.

[Mrs. Don-o]

What accusation?

[boatbums]

He did want to throw books OUT of the Bible -— on a rather expansive view of his own authority -— a view which influenced many other men and eventually stripped the Deuterocanonicals and almost the Book of Hebrews, the Revelation of St. John, and the Epistle of James, as well. He did spark a century of continent-wide religious warfare (including his famous call for the extermination of the rebellious peasants), and trumpeted an aggressive and vicious policy of Jew- hatred which gained long-lasting traction in German culture as well. I sometimes wonder whether, if he knew what the long-term results of his actions would be, he would have followed the same church-splitting course. There’s no way to know. I hope he would not.

I sometimes wonder if Catholics ever read anything OBJECTIVE about Martin Luther or if everything they know or think they know is what Catholic polemicists tell them?

You should know - by now at least - that Luther didn't throw/cut/delete/toss/get rid of/strip ANY books from the German Bible he translated. Even the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books were translated and included. That the Deuts/Apocrypha were placed in a section between the Old Testament and the New Testament was certainly not a novel thing Luther started but can be traced back to Jerome (1200 years BEFORE Luther) as well as others.

Nor did Luther "spark" a continent-wide religious war. His call against the Peasants was neither the impetus that started the war nor the excuse to continue it. In fact:

One can conclude that Luther believed seditious peasants should be killed, and held that the governing authorities had the right to do so. As to Luther's actual writings being the cause of the peasants being killed, one must consider all the facts. The peasants were already being killed, and his intended book on this subject was popularly printed out of balance, leaving out the Admonition To Peace, thus serving as a tool of for ruthless rulers. My own opinion is, whether his book (or books) came out or not, the peasants would have been killed. Rulers intending to protect their lands and their power generally will take and use whatever they want to, and ignore whatever they want to. In fact, some Catholic lords used the peasants revolt as an excuse to kill the Lutherans working in their lands.

Richard Marius stated in his book Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death, "The nobles did not require Luther to urge them to massacre; they were entirely capable of inspiring themselves to the bloody business that they pursued for several months" (p.432). Marius goes on to state, "Luther was not responsible for these atrocities. Yet to many people, the timing of his diatribe against the peasants made him seem a cause of the slaughter that followed." (p.432). Marius also points out that in Luther's follow-up defense of his harsh book, he condemned the killing of both the guilty and innocent together after the princes were already victorious. "Luther raged against the tyranny of the nobles in books and pamphlets over the next year or so and blamed their merciless conduct for continued peasant unrest" (p.433).

That Luther's Admonition To Peace is rarely brought up by cyber-criticizers of Luther is a good indication of bias. That is, why don't rulers get blamed for not following Luther's points in this earlier treatise? If Luther's words had the power of life and death over the peasants, why was the Admonition To Peace so ineffective in controlling those rulers who are said to be so motivated by Luther words? Obviously, Luther's words were not as crucial and important to the rulers as some make them out to be.

If one wants to chastise Luther, it would be for the harshness of his words against the peasants. Yes, I'm sure certain rulers found it comforting that Luther agreed with their cause to suppress the peasants (like Philip of Hesse). On the other hand, one must seriously ask what would've happened to the peasants had not Luther wrote against them? My gut feeling is they would've been slaughtered all the same. So, if they were to be killed anyway, what then was the actual force of Luther's harsh book?

Some argue, guilt by association. Luther agreed the peasants should be suppressed, and they were, so Luther was part of the problem, rather than the solution. It's a bit naive though to think somehow a person living in a peaceful country, hundreds of years later, can actually determine the guilt of Luther's writings in the entire peasants revolt. I would love to have the ability to stick these people back in 1524-1525, to see what they would think of the peasants while the peasants ransacked their house, or killed their family members, and threatened the stability of the land. I would posit the same people criticizing Luther now, would be the first to buy his book Against the Robbing and Murdering Mobs of Peasants, and ask Luther to autograph it. It is indeed ironic that we can be extremely critical of a situation we have never faced, but then, thrust into such a situation, we learn what it is to actually be in that situation.

Final ironies:

1. Roland Bainton points out, "Catholic princes held Luther responsible for the whole outbreak" of the Peasants War. Figures, doesn't it? Nothing has changed, except we're not dealing with princes anymore.

2. Luther actually went on to chastise the Princes for being too harsh on the peasants. Bainton notes, "All the devils, he declared, instead of leaving the peasants and returning to hell, had now entered the victors, who were simply venting their vengeance." http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/search?q=luther+and+the+peasants+war

As for Luther being the scapegoat for Germany's antisemitism, simply look to the Roman Catholic church which carries the lion share of that blame in perpetuating anti-Jewish thoughts and actions. Though Luther was not a perfect man - no one is - his animosity towards the Jews who rejected the gospel of Jesus Christ happened late in his life (the last eight years before his death). Should you desire to learn facts about Luther's view of the Jews, read https://web.archive.org/web/20140803220115/http://tquid.sharpens.org/luther_Jews.htm.

Something tells me, though, that the demonic hatred of humanity and the Jewish people in particular - as the lineage of the Messiah - originated with Satan and his influence on those bent towards evil, as was Hitler as well as Pharaoh, King Herod and, finally, the Antichrist. Luther's views were wrong and I am positive that in hindsight he WOULD NOT have said what he did. But, why I wonder is Luther ALWAYS traipsed out whenever Catholics argue against those they call Protestants as if EVERYTHING the man taught can be discounted and ignored because of his views about the Jews? He isn't the Pope of Prots, he was never considered infallible, nobody worships him, everyone acknowledges he was an imperfect person - who among us isn't - and nobody even sets him up as the number one Reformer (except Catholics, it seems). Rather, I think he is a type of bludgeon some really believe can be used to defeat whatever a non-Catholic Christian might say. That tactic seldom works very well, does it? It shouldn't.