Would Jesus be involved in politics? What would Jesus say about the TEA Party? That is one of the questions we have been kicking around here as we are talking about the politically incorrect Jesus. Many groups have differing views on this and of course reasoning that to them makes sense. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach non-involvement. They point out that Jesus and his immediate disciples were not involved in politics and therefore, we should not be either. Some Christians and Christian groups hold a similar view. Political office is often seen as compromising with a corrupt system and includes the sorts of compromises they don’t believe Christians can make. Some, such as Islam, are of the view that their religion should take over the government and subject citizens to Sharia Law. They would argue that Jesus would support such a thing because he was a prophet who was a Muslim. They assert that Jesus is important in their religion and even agree that he is sinless. But then they also teach that all prophets are sinless. Of course, they also teach he is not God, was not crucified and therefore not resurrected. There are some Christian groups which hold to a similar view that it is our task to create a Theocracy which subjects society to the Old Testament Laws and regulations. Some, such as Barack Obama’s home church for 20 years, hold to views rooted in Black Liberation Theology as we pointed out in Barack and the Borg. Black Liberation Theology is essentially Marxism using Christian terminology and promotes Continue reading …

Since all three of the previous movements largely disregarded Francis Schaffer’s concerns, believers were becoming increasingly more biblically illiterate. The focuses were primarily on the use of psychology and Madison Avenue marketing to bring unbelievers into the church or to get politically involved in an attempt to “Christianize” the culture through legislation. While this was going on the fourth movement, The Prosperity Church Movement, had a wide birth open for growth. This emanated from what had been, and largely continues to be, the theologically orthodox and conservative Pentecostal and Charismatic element in the church. The late Kenneth Hagin had been proclaiming his Word Faith theology through the 1960s and 1970s with marginal success. In 1976 he launched his first television program.

In capitalizing on the availability of mass media and the progressive trend away from doctrine and sound teaching, Hagin advanced his heretical doctrines cross denominationally through the “Charismatic Renewal Movement.” It is true his “strange doctrines” (1 Timothy 1:3) predated Hagin but prior to this time were fairly well kept in check through denominationalism. Now, the average church attender would spend one to three hours each week in their local church and have the rest of the week to fill up on other popular teachers who had a much larger congregation via the radio, television and bookstores. Although some television and radio preachers were very solid, others, like Hagin, were slowly introducing witchcraft using Christian terminology into the church.

One of Hagin’s heroes was the late William Branham, a popular healer who denied the doctrine of the Trinity and claimed that it was of demonic origin. Sound doctrine was clearly not something with which Hagin was concerned. He adopted from E.W. Kenyon (someone very impacted by New Thought metaphysics) the idea that faith is a force which allows one to control the world around them. In essence, faith is more powerful than God and is something that even He has to tap in to. There are just four steps in the magikal incantation which if learned and carried out correctly, requires God to perform according to our whim. Like a magic genie, God is let out of the bottle so to speak, to grant our command if we but say it, do it, receive it and tell it to others.

Kenneth Copeland came on the scene and took Hagin’s false teachings farther. Once Scripture was no longer the final authority for faith and practice, anything could be proclaimed as “Christian,” and the untrained and undiscerning had no defense against the onslaught of false teachers.

Kenneth Copeland got his start in ministry as a direct result of memorizing Hagin’s messages. It wasn’t long before he had learned enough from Hagin to establish his own following. To say his teachings are heretical would be an understatement — blasphemous is more like it. Copeland brashly pronounces God to be the greatest failure of all time, boldly proclaims that “Satan conquered Jesus on the Cross” (emphasis in original), and describes Christ in hell as an “emaciated, poured out, little, wormy spirit.”(1)

He has also taught that we don’t have a god in us but that we are one.(2) Adam was God manifest in the flesh:

God’s reason for creating Adam was His desire to reproduce Himself. I mean a reproduction of Himself, and in the Garden of Eden He did just that. He was not a little like God. He was not almost like God. He was not subordinate to God even. . . . Adam is as much like God as you could get, just the same as Jesus. . . . Adam, in the Garden of Eden, was God manifested in the flesh(3)

God and Adam were the same exact size:

God spoke Adam into existence in authority with words. These words struck Adam’s body in the face. His body and God were exactly the same size.(4)

God lives on a planet:

You don’t think earth was first, do you? Huh? Well, you don’t think that God made man in His image, and then made earth in some other image? There is not anything under this whole sun that’s new. Are you hearing what I’m saying? This is all a copy. It’s a copy of home. It’s a copy of the Mother Planet. Where God lives, He made a little one just like His and put us on it.(5)

And a myriad of other false and occultic teachings.

Another popular teacher, Benny Hinn, joined the circuit with his frequent “revelations” which are anti-biblical such as that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit each have a body, soul and spirit and that there are “nine of them.”(6) In addition Hinn has taught that Christ ceased being God and became one with Satan and had in place of His divine nature a Satanic nature.(7)

According to Hinn, there were two deaths of the cross: a spiritual death, then a physical one. Jesus died first spiritually. At that point He literally took on the nature of (or became one with) Satan. Also, at that point, Jesus lost His deity and God the Father deserted Him. Then Jesus died physically and His spirit (which at that time was only the spirit of a man) was taken to hell.(8)

In 1979 a young oneness Pentecostal and Word Faith teacher by the name of T.D. Jakes founded his first church in Montgomery, WV. Within ten years he was a widely accepted and sought after author and speaker. He is now the pastor of one of the largest multiracial churches in the United States in Dallas, TX. Oneness Pentecostal pastors, Phillips, Craig and Dean are a very well known and accepted “Christian” contemporary musical group who have performed in many Evangelical venues including Willow Creek Community Church and Moody Bible Institute. Their music can also often be heard on Moody Bible Institute radio stations.

The 1980s also saw the acceptance of the “Signs and Wonders Movement” as Vinson Synan points out:

Added to these is the newest category, the “Third Wave” of the Spirit, which originated at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1981 under the classroom ministry of John Wimber. These consisted of mainline Evangelicals who moved in signs and wonders, but who disdained labels such as “pentecostal” or “charismatic.” By 1990 this group numbered some 33,000,000 members in the world.(9)

In turn this birthed Rodney Howard Brown’s “Holy Laughter” revival, the “Toronto Blessing,” “Brownsville Revival” and a number of variations which further substituted the experiential at the sacrifice of Scripture, truth and orthodoxy.

Make no mistake, many well intentioned people are involved in each of these four movements (the Protecting, the Popular and the Political and the Prosperity Church Movements), but the death of sound teaching in deference to pragmatism, has had a devastating effect on the Body of Christ. Left virtually unchecked we are now dealing with the exponential growth of false teachers seeking to profitably fill the self interest of the human psyche.

The church has made major shifts in focus which obvoiusly impacts its view of itself and its place in the world. Over the next couple of weeks Jonathon Miles will pick up with a sort of recap of the last few blogs to show how this has impacted the church and individual beleivers.

1 Hank Hanegraaff, CRI Statement DC755-1, “What’s Wrong With the Faith Movement (Part one): E.W. Kenyon and the Twelve Apostles of Another Gospel,” http://www.equip.org/free/DC755-1.htm
2 Kenneth Copeland, “The Force of Love” audiotape
3 “Following the Faith of Abraham I”, 1989 audiotape #01-3001 side 1
4 Holy Bible, Kenneth Copeland Reference Edition 1991, 45, emphasis in original
5 “Following the Faith of Abraham I”, 1989 audiotape #01-3001, side 1
6 Benny Hinn, “A New Spirit,” Orlando Christian Center Broadcast, Trinity Broadcasting Network, October 13, 1990.
7 Benny Hinn, Orlando Christian Center Broadcast, Trinity Broadcasting Network, December 9, 1990
8 G. Richard Fisher and M. Kurt Goedelman, The Confusing World of Benny Hinn, Personal Freedom Outreach, Eighth Edition, May 2001, p.20.
9 Vinson Synan, Phd., The Origins of the Pentecostal Movement, The Holy Spirit Research Center, January 4, 2002, p. 14; http://www.oru.edu/university/library/holyspirit/pentorg1.html

Although the Conservative Intellectual Movement had been working and gaining ground in the thinking of American culture, Evangelicals and Fundamentalist had remained steadfastly and intentionally removed from political involvement and policy making until the late 1970s. The reason might be best understood in the person of Jerry Falwell who publicly denounced political involvement on the part of church leaders in his sermon titled, “Ministers and Marchers”:

…March 1965 sermon, “Minister and Marchers,” in which he leveled a broadside at King, his black ministerial colleagues, and the Northern clergy whose liberal theology made them fully as suspect as their politics. Although he acknowledged that “many sincere persons are participating” in the movement, he questioned “the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations. It is very obvious that the Communists, as they do in all parts of the world, are taking advantage of a tense situation in our land, and are exploiting every incident to bring about violence and bloodshed.” Speaking of the role ministers should properly play, he declared that “our only purpose on this earth is to know Christ and to make him known. Believing the Bible as I do, I would find it impossible to stop preaching the pure saving Gospel of Jesus Christ and begin doing anything else – including the fighting of communism or participating in the civil rights reform…. Preachers are not called to be politicians, but to be soul winners.”(1)

As noted earlier, Falwell apologized for this talk. In part that was necessary as he was moving into the political Continue reading …

In 1975 a second movement was born with the founding of Willow Creek Community Church in the suburbs of Chicago. The founding pastor, Bill Hybels, had been strongly influenced in his thinking, which gave birth to WCCC by two individuals. The first, Gilbert Bilezikian, a professor at Trinity College in Deerfield, IL, where he taught for two years, (1972-74) before moving to Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. Bilezikian was dissatisfied with the current protectionist state of the church.

Bilezikian recalls two aspects of his teaching about the church that were particularly influential on Hybels:

He resonated with the concept of the church as community – rather than as an institution or organization – as body, as community, as organism.

And then the second thing was the mission of the church, not to be just self-sustaining, or self-perpetuating, but to reach weekly into society and claim it for Christ.(1)

Bilezikian and his young protégé, Bill Hybels, recognized that the church had largely walled itself off from the culture around it. As a result it had marginalized itself and in so doing was perceived as having nothing to offer and therefore was simply boring and irrelevant to life.

The second major influence was a very well known and highly successful pastor in California by the name of Robert Schuller. Continue reading …

Like Robert Schuller (as we pointed out last week in : Thu 13 May 2010
Age of Aquarius), Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer also had concerns about the church and culture but took a very different stance on how to address the problem. His solution was not to hide from culture in a sort of Christian Ghetto as had been the predominate practice since 1930, nor as Schuller was promoting to simply gather around hand in hand self-actualizing and singing Kum Ba Ya:

Some Christians have supposed that the choice is between a revolutionary stance and some kind of reconciliation. The Christian, it is assumed, is to choose reconciliation. But we cannot have reconciliation in a world like ours unless something happens first. We are headed for the disaster I have described above, and no nice soft talk of reconciliation and the contentless word “love” is going to have any meaning in such a setting. We must have something stronger.(1)

He was clear that there was a difference between being a cobelligerent and an ally. He was also very concerned about the churches abandonment of truth and the Scriptures: Continue reading …

When the moon is in the seventh house And Jupiter aligns with Mars Then peace will guide the planets And love will steer the stars. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, The age of Aquarius, Aquarius, Aquarius.

Harmony and understanding, Sympathy and trust abounding, No more falsehoods or derisions, Golden living dreams of visions, Mystic crystal revelation, And the mind’s true liberation. Aquarius, Aquarius
(1)

The entrance to the 1970s seems to have the word “crisis” written all over it. The Conservative Intellectual Movement had been strengthened as a force to be reckoned with through the election of Richard M. Nixon in 1968. All of this would be called into question a few years later with Nixon’s presidential scandal called “Watergate.” The word “cult” had taken on new meaning with the arrest and trial of Charles Manson and his “family” for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1968 and 1969. Although the horror of this crime rocked the nation it didn’t seem to occur to many that the Mason Family actions were just consistently carrying out the world view which most of the educational system had been teaching for over 30 years. It is probably unfortunate for Charles Manson, “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins and the others that the inimitable Clarence Darrow wasn’t alive to defend them. He may very likely have been able to defend them to an acquittal with exactly that defense:

In a widely publicized case a year before the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial,” Clarence Darrow successfully defended two university students against the capital offense of murdering a boy for the intellectual experience of it. Argues Darrow, “Is there any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche’s philosophy seriously and fashioned his life on it?… Your honor, it is hardly fair to hang a nineteen-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”(2)

As author Philip Yancey points out: Continue reading …

One of the age old questions that most of us wrestle with is, “Why do I do the things I do?” The worldview one holds will to a large degree answer that question. The Apostle Paul in writing the book of Romans, systematically addressed the plight of man as compared with the holiness of God. For those who think they are pretty good or at least good enough to be acceptable to God on our own, he minced no words when he wrote, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10) and to make sure the reader got the idea he followed up a few sentences later with, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). In Romans chapter 7 he wrestles with the question of why he does the things he does and demonstrates that the fundamental problem is our sinful nature. But then again, the only real information Paul had about the nature of man came from postmoderns today consider his uninformed theo-centric worldview developed from Scripture and revelation. In other words, he only knew what God had revealed and we would simply have to wait until the 20th Century to get the “real truth” on these matters. The “real truth” would come from psychology, occultism, Eastern religions and ultimately ourselves.

Pushing the envelope on peak experience through drugs and Eastern religions, Timothy Leary founded his own church in 1966: Continue reading …