Pope Francis Says All Major Religions Are ‘Meeting God In Different Ways’
A new video has just been released in which Pope Francis very clearly expresses his belief that all of the major religions are different paths to the same God. He says that while people from various global faiths may be “seeking God or meeting God in different ways” that it is important to keep in mind that “we are all children of God”. This is the most recent example that shows that the Pope has completely abandoned any notion that a relationship with God is available only through Jesus Christ. In fact, he has warned that seeking a personal relationship with God is dangerous.
As he has done throughout his papacy, he continues to lay the groundwork for the coming one world religion, and yet hardly anyone seems upset by this.
The Pope’s first-ever video message on his monthly prayer intentions was released Tuesday, highlighting the importance of inter-religious dialogue and the beliefs different faith traditions hold in common, such as the figure of God and love. Pope Francis said in his message, released Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany:
“Many think differently, feel differently, seeking God or meeting God in different ways. In this crowd, in this range of religions, there is only one certainty that we have for all: we are all children of God,”
Paul Nelson and Del Tackett explore the complexity of languages and compare it to DNA
Proof indeed of the complex design in this universe that cannot be explained by any naturalistic method. Watch this four minute video and be astounded at the level of complexity in DNA as compared to complex computer software programmes.
Francis Chan does His best to try and answer that question. His walking away from a church of 5,000 to seek God’s answer to that question, demonstrates his heart and desire to know what God wants for His church.
Francis admitted in an interview about his new book “Letters to the Church”(available later this month), “I spent years doing “whatever works” to get people’s attention. I had joined millions of Americans in being too quick to speak and too sure about my opinions. Over the last few years, I have spent time crying in the presence of God, confessing my arrogance. 25 years after launching that first church, I’m asking myself, “Who cares what Francis Chan wants?” Is there anything less significant than my opinion of what church should be? Could anything matter less than the kind of church I want to create? The good news is that by the grace of God, some of us are seeing our failures now and are training ourselves to prioritise His desires. Scripture is our starting point, not desire or tradition. Rather than thinking of what we would enjoy or asking others what they would like, we ask the simple question: What would please God most?”
Q & A with Francis Chan – By Voices Contributor to Christian Post,
Q: Fans of your books may not be aware that you are in a new season of ministry and church planting. How are things going?
A: Things have been going great. Do we have the perfect church? No way—we’re people. But I think we are on to something.
While I believe I have loved Jesus for years, it feels totally different now, and I love it. The strangest part about this season of my life is that my intimacy with God has been directly tied to my connection with the Church. This is really weird for me because for years, I felt closest to God when I was away from people and alone in my prayer room.
For the first time in my life, I actually feel closer to God while praying alongside my church family! It’s like I can sense His actual presence in the room with us. It makes me want to stay in a room with them all because I want to get as close to Jesus as possible. Just the other day, a one-hour teaching session spontaneously turned into thirteen hours of prayer! We were enjoying His presence together so much that no one wanted to leave! It is an awesome thing to experience God’s presence in a room full of people who truly love Him.
Q: You write passionately about God’s desires for His church. Does 30 years of ministry change your sense of urgency?
A: Yes, I believe it does. I’ve seen a lot and experienced a lot over these 30 years of ministry. I became a grandpa recently. (It’s weird to say that sentence.) The older I get, the more aware I am that the end is near. There is no time to care about what I want in Church. There’s no time to worry about what others are looking for in a church.
Typically, when I speak at a conference, there is a countdown clock letting me know how much time I have remaining on the stage. Sometimes I pretend that the clock is a countdown clock of my life. I imagine that I’ll be standing face to face with God when that timer expires, and I try to say everything I think He would want me to say. If I really was going to die, I would care very little about people’s complaints.
I have the same thought now. If I knew I was going to die right after writing this book, what would I write? But even more than that, the warnings in Revelation are very real and we need to take them seriously. Over and over, His message was repent or else. Repent or else.
Jesus is coming. We should be urgent about eternal things. I tried to write the book from this perspective.
Francis says that the pattern for an effective church is given in the Book of Acts and it is simple: God is present in His Word: As we read, we encounter God and allow others to do the same. God is present in fellowship: As we join together for the mission, people see God. God is present in Communion: As we break bread together, we proclaim the sacrifice of Jesus. God is present when we pray: As we cry out on our knees, we will see God act.
California’s controversial AB 2943 has been withdrawn by its author, Assembly member Evan Low.
This is an answer to much prayer. The consequences of this Bill becoming law would have been catastrophic for Christian leaders as I pointed out in recent posts, particularly the post that included this video of Dr Michael Brown addressing the issues raised by Senator Ricardo Lara in support of the Bill.
Assembly Bill 2943 would have made it illegal to sell any service intended to change an individual’s sexuality or gender identity.
“I knew this was an emotionally charged issue, so I spent the past few months traveling up and down the state meeting with a wide variety of faith leaders,” Low said in a statement released on his website. “I was heartened by the conversations.”
Luis Javier Ruiz, a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in June 2016 and a former member of the LGBT community, has served as a staunch opponent of AB2943 in recent months.
“This allows people to become aware that change is possible,” says Ruiz, now a spirit-filled Christian. “All the false narratives about conversion therapy camps and their horror stories are not who we are. For me, nothing was forced. I can speak for many that it was a love story. It has allowed our voices to be heard and prayers to be answered. It’s time to come out of silence for what we believe in. We know that the battle is already won.
“I just want to thank Evan Low. We are praying for him and we know how big of an impact this will have and the backlash he might get. We want him to know that we are by his side on this.”
Bethel Church in Redding, California, released this statement, praising Low for his change of heart:
“We are grateful for Assemblyman Low’s courage and humility in his willingness to dialogue with California pastors and once-gay people these past months. He took time to hear how AB2943 would impact people of faith and particularly once-gay people, and has shown commitment to creating opportunities for further dialogue.”
After meeting personally with pastors, professional counsellors, and former homosexuals who lead ministries to others in the LGBT community, Low decided to continue the dialogue beyond this legislative session.
You need to watch both of these videos, particularly the second video,”I Am Second”, the story of how Michael and his wife Ivey took on five foster children and how their faith in God has grown through God’s miraculous intervention in their lives. This will bring tears to your eyes and your faith will be inspired but also challenged.
More on God’s intervention in the leadership of Australia as an answer to much prayer going on in this nation. A time for rejoicing, YES! but also a time for us share the good news and expand our efforts with renewed prayer and fasting. Listen to what Warwick Marsh of the National Day of Prayer and Repentance had to say.
Brief summary: “We believe we have had some amazing answers to prayer over the last two weeks. Firstly the Senate rejected Euthanasia on 15 September and a new Christian Prime Minster & Jewish deputy Prime Minster were both unexpectedly elected to lead the Coalition Government on Friday 24 September. We also need to pray that God would intervene to block the Queensland government introducing legalised abortion in Queensland. Please tell your friends to pray, fast and repent for breakthrough in our nation on these dates.”
One article in The Weekend Australian mentions Scott Morrison’s maiden speech in the Federal Parliament in 2008. He described his family and his faith as “the most significant influences in my life”. In that speech he also boldly stated that “our task is not to claim whether God is on our side but to pray earnestly that we are on His”. Consistent with this, we read that “In December Mr Morrison stepped up his role as a leader of the conservative right in the Liberal Party. … He also promised to play a leading role in the push to enshrine further “protections” for religious freedom in law.”
THE LORD’S PRAYER – Our Lord Jesus gave us the pattern for our prayers.
ADORATION (He is in heaven, He is personal, He is majestic, He is holy, He is sacred) – ACCEPTING (Your will be done) – ASKING (Give us this day .. We need to ask, specific and repeated) – ADMITTING (we don’t forgive until we repent, we need to forsake our sin) – REBELLION (need to come against evil with prayer)
Great exposition on prayer by Tim Keller to a bunch of pastors. A must watch. I was challenged afresh, maybe you will be too. Let me know, love to get a response occasionally. Not that I will stop posting on this site if I don;t get it. I do it because I please God when I do. It His will not my will being done. Make sure you listen to ALL the questions so you hear Tim’s answers.
Whilst I love Tim Keller’s teaching on prayer, I need to say that I categorically reject his acceptance of theistic evolution which has death and suffering before man and The Fall.
Alan Kurschner on the flaws of a Pretribulation Rapture
Prewrath eschatology has exposed a fatal flaw in pretribulationism. It has shown that there are clear passages in the Bible that teach that certain, discernible, prophesied events will occur before the day of the Lord: the Antichrist and the apostasy (2 Thess 2:3), celestial disturbance (Joel 2:30-31), Elijah will return (Mal 4:5), the wicked saying “peace and safety” (1 Thess 5:2–3).
Pretribulation theology has traditionally taught that the rapture will occur on the same day that the day of the Lord begins, then any event that occurs before the day of the Lord will also have to occur before the rapture. This, of course, is problematic for the pretribulation position, because their entire theological pretribulation system is based on imminence, the belief that no prophesied events or signs can happen before the rapture.
Because of this crack in their system, untold numbers of pretribulational Christians in the last two decades have become prewrath in their eschatology and have rejected their previous pretribulation belief system. To be sure, there are many “pretribs” who have attempted to explain away this biblical contradiction to their system in various ways. One of the most common attempts to do so, and one that is growing in more popularity, has resulted for them needing to create a new dispensation and forcing it between the rapture when the church age dispensation is completed and the seven-year tribulation dispensation. So in essence they are creating a “gap” between the rapture and the seven-year period, a gap of time they claim that these “before the day of the Lord” events will occur. In this way, they attempt to maintain the doctrine of imminence. To place these events before the rapture in their system would be fatal to their theology.
Here is the problem: Their claim that the rapture is disconnected from the day when the day of the Lord’s wrath begins is without support. In fact, Scripture is quite consistent that the rapture and the beginning of the day of the Lord’s wrath occur on the same day, they are back-to-back events, not separated by days, weeks, months, or—I have even heard some pretrib teachers claim—years. I have covered this before here, here, and here.
Their interpretation is a deus ex machinain order to protect their imminence theology, so much so they are willing to grab out of thin air and inject a whole, new, distinct dispensation into God’s redemptive plan. Their dispensation-itus condition exposes their flawed theology when they feel the need to contrive a new dispensation in God’s plan when a contradiction is pointed out to them.
Let me give a plug for Alan’s book Prewrath: A Very Short Introduction to the Great Tribulation, Rapture, and Day of the Lord
I was reminded by this verse in Judges 6:1, “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years“, just how often Israel was delivered by God into the hands of some foreign nation for judgement.
What about the church in our day? Is God delivering an apostate church into the hands of the enemy for judgement? God’s word reveals that there will be apostasy in the “last days” church and that certainly is the case with many of the denominational churches compromising with the world’s values.
However, just as in the days Israel was delivered into the “hand of Midian”, God had his redemptive plan prepared and He chose Gideon a most unlikely candidate to achieve His purposes.
Who are the Gideon’s, God has chosen in our day?
When Gideon was called into action, Israel was in dire straits. Gideon had to winnow grain in secret just so the Midianites would not steal every little bit of food and sustenance from them. “Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.“Judges 6:11(b)
Just as Gideon winnowed the wheat from the chaff, God winnowed Gideon’s army. God winnowed down a fighting force from 32,000 to three hundred. Those who were “afraid and trembling” were asked to leave first. Cowards go first in Revelation also. 22,000 departed leaving Gideon with just 10,000 now to fight 120,000…outnumbered 12 to 1. God still said, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there.” Judges 7:4. God then rejected another 9,700 men with only THREE HUNDRED remaining. What a crazy story but we are meant to learn from it.
God winnowed for two main reasons:
1.So we know, we can’t save ourselves. “And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people who are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel claim glory for itself against Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’ Judges 7:2
2.God wants us to develop our faith and trust in Him as did Gideon. David is another great example. Listen to David, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song I will praise Him.” Proverbs 28:7 When your heart trusts in the Lord, you can expect help. God only needs 1 person to make 1,000 flee and 2 people to make 10,000 flee. It’s never been about “numbers” with God.
Who are the leaders in the church today who are bold and courageous, who understand that the battle is the Lords and numbers aren’t a problem? They are those who believe God’s inerrant Word, know we are in the “end times”, know God’s call on their lives and get on with the job, trusting God for the outcome. We need to work with these anointed leaders, confident in our own role in God’s “end times” plan.
Let me name a few humble leaders that I have identified as Kingdom warriors who understand the times: Francis Chan, http://www.wearechurch.com; Torben Sondergaad, http://www.thelastreformation.com; Nelson Walters, http://www.gospelintheendtimes.com; Don Batten, http://www.creation.com; Joel Richardson, http://www.joelstrumpet.com; Alan Kurschner, http://www.alankurschner.com, Jeffrey Daly, http://www.dayofrepentance1.org
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 