PROPHESIED END TIMES APOSTATE CHURCH

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Parachurch head leaves Church of England because it ‘no longer affirms biblical orthodoxy’

Rico Tice, a well-known Evangelical leader and former Church of England clergyman, has left the denomination in reaction to what he perceives as its growing departure from biblical values, especially concerning same-sex marriage and repentance.

Tice, best known for co-writing the evangelism course Christianity Explored and co-founder of Christianity Explored Ministries, cited the denomination’s recent decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples and its lack of substantive response to concerns laid out by him and five other leaders of CofE-connected parachurch organizations last October.

In an interview with Evangelicals Now, Tice, the former senior minister at All Souls, Langham Place in London, explained that he now worships at the International Presbyterian Church (IPC) in Ealing, London.

“Last October, I was one of six Evangelical leaders of parachurch organizations with connections to the Church of England who wrote to [Archbishop of Canterbury] Justin Welby and all the bishops explaining our deep ‘heaviness of heart, soul and mind’ about the church’s onward trajectory toward affirming same-sex marriage, specifically the new Prayers of Love and Faith,” he said.

“We called upon the archbishop to resist the influence of cultural values when they are in opposition to those of the Bible. We did this because it was harming our ability to work with orthodox people from other denominations — how could they trust us? We received no substantive response from him, and that was a key moment in my decision to leave.”

CofE’s “Prayers of Love and Faith” are new guidelines enacted last December that allow priests to bless same-sex couples but don’t require them to do so, a measure opposed by many Evangelicals within the Church of England amid a growing divide within the Anglican community regarding same-sex marriage and biblical orthodoxy.

Tice said the move to the International Presbyterian Church in Ealing, London, was motivated by a desire to maintain alignment with his values. He has had a longstanding relationship with the church’s minister, Paul Levy. He said the congregation’s emphasis on eldership, Reformed theology and the Westminster Confession appealed to him. Tice still retains his permission to preach, which allows him to speak in CofE congregations.

“But I think it vital that I demonstrated clear separation from a church that no longer affirms biblical orthodoxy, especially concerning preaching repentance,” he said. 

Tice’s role at the International Presbyterian Church includes evangelism and training on evangelism techniques like Christianity Explored, Hope Explored and The Word One to One. But he sees himself as an ordinary member of the congregation, attending services with his family and engaging in fellowship with other church members.

Tice expressed disappointment and sadness, describing the situation in the CofE as “utterly heartbreaking.” “In retrospect, I was naïve about our current culture in the Church of England because I never thought I would see such a clear, pervasive denial of the Christian’s need to repent of each and every sin they commit,” he said. 

What we see happening in the institutional churches confirms end-times Biblical prophecy of a great falling away, the church compromising with the world and its values. Worse is yet to come as Jesus revealed in this Scripture.

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.“ Matthew 24:9-12

AN IRONIC QUESTION: WHO CREATED GOD?

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The author of this article is Marlon De Blasio. He is a cultural apologist, Christian writer, and the author of Discerning Culture: Knowing the Depths of Scriptural Christianity in a Culture of Scriptural Indifference.

The Christian faith claims “The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth … his understanding is unsearchable” (Isaiah 40:28). How can this be verified to the satisfaction of an inquiring mind? Even committed Christian thinkers know that the cliches, “by faith,” “by experience” or “by biblical analyses,” do not necessarily satisfy questioners. Nevertheless, I believe the Eternal God can be known personally and intellectually to satisfy rational thought.

Perhaps some expect me to provide a concrete reference that explains God’s origin. I must genuinely submit that this expectation is not reasonable. Even if I were to prove indisputably that “A” brought God into existence, the skeptic would then ask who/what created “A”? These demands could continue ad infinitum into absurdity. They lead to a fallacious line of thinking.

Knowledge does not require an explanation for its explanations to be true. For example, aviators know how much fuel is required to reach a destination and this workable knowledge is true without an explanation of where the computational values originated. We could attempt to investigate the origins, but only after we have acknowledged the computational values.

Likewise, a questioner must acknowledge God’s existence before asking where He came from. If God does not exist, the question is senseless. “Where did God come from?” is a question that is committed to His existence. In other words, a sincere questioner seeks an answer that informs about God and not about whether or not He exists. The question does have a correct answer, and even if one were to reject it that would not negate the actual existence of God.

Further, the Design Argument is often challenged by the question, who designed the Designer? Note that this question does not refute the argument. The argument is compelling and so the question is an attempt to avoid the conclusion by conflating the issue into confusion. The explanation that something is designed can be true regardless of what we know about the designer. I can understand why such an irrelevant question is asked because the questioner doesn’t like where the conversation is going.

Knowledge of the Christian faith is always rigorously challenged. Unlike other knowledge, concessions to a tenet of Christianity could entail moral accountability. Christian thinkers offer explanations that are often compelling, and so a skeptic who wishes to escape accountability often spins the content. Confusion is then deemed as a warrant for unbelief.

In Christian theology, God is eternal. He is without beginning and without end. He is the ultimate ground of reality. That is why we refer to Him as God. The question of “Where did God come” from is purposeless unless it’s asked with theological curiosity. As a young Christian, I remember asking a pastor what God was doing before He created us and the universe. The pastor explained that we don’t know, and although it was a fair question it had no bearing on our relationship with Him as He has decided to reveal Himself to us. Since then, I have grown to understand that in a human lifetime, there is no way we could understand everything about God.

Limited knowledge of God does not equate to His non-existence. On the contrary, it means that our knowledge of God is finite as we are finite beings grappling with the One whose “understanding is unsearchable.” Theologically and philosophically, it’s reasonable to believe and conclude that reality has an ultimate ground. For a Christian, there is a consciousness of God’s presence within (Holy Spirit) that is also informed intellectually. We experience and understand God exactly as the biblical writers revealed: “Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting” (Psalms 93:2). What was understood and experienced of God thousands of years ago has been real to subsequent generations of believers, as well as to us today. We comprehend meaningfully that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

A questioner is sincere only if committed to exploring the attributes of God, and then making up one’s own mind about personal salvation in Christ. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that God is the ultimate ground of reality? It makes philosophical sense; otherwise, we regress into absurdity. All the evil, selfishness and ill will we encounter have a remedy in Jesus Christ. It’s a fact that throughout history the Gospel has transformed countless lives, and continues to do so today. Isn’t it intellectually honest to read and investigate this Good News for oneself? Questions are meaningful only when we are genuinely open to considering the answers.

I have a question for the skeptic who asks, who created God? That is, if you somehow discovered that the Christian faith is true would you become a Christian? If you were to answer, no, then you should shift focus on why you would answer, no. It will reveal a great deal about your own questions.

You can follow Marlon De Blasio at MarlonDeBlasio@Twitter

THE BIBLE TEACHES SATAN RULES THIS EARTH FOR 6000 YEARS AND JESUS RULES FOR 1000 YEARS.

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Great message from Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. Make sure you visit their website http://www.answersingenesis.org. He omits what is next for this planet hence my addendum.

In an attempt to accept evolutionary ideas about the age of the earth (millions of years), many Christians try to add long ages somewhere into Genesis. Sometimes Christians will argue that the days of creation were not literal 24-hour days, that there was a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, or that Genesis is just poetry. But any attempt to put millions of years into Genesis puts millions of years of death, suffering, and disease before sin—and that’s a big problem!

The Bible teaches that God’s original creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and that death is the consequence of Adam’s sin (Genesis 2:17). Death did not exist in creation until after Adam’s sin.

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” Romans 5:12

“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:21–22

Although those passages refer specifically to human death, they are also discussing death in general. Other passages like Romans 8:22 make it clear that the whole world is groaning because of sin, and this includes the animal world. Taking Scripture with Scripture, it’s obvious there was no death, disease, or suffering of human or animal (nephesh) life before sin.

This is a big problem for those who believe in millions of years because those long ages supposedly come from the rock layers and fossils. Now, fossils are, of course, dead things, so if those rock layers are millions of years old, there’s been millions of years of death before Adam and Eve. And not just death, but also, millions of years of diseases and suffering, animal carnivory (but in God’s original creation everything was vegetarian, see Genesis 1:29–30), and thorns and thistles (a consequence of sin, Genesis 3:18).

Millions of years is incompatible with the Bible’s teaching about death!

Death is not a natural part of creation; it’s not something that has existed for millions of years—it’s an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), an intruder into God’s once “very good” creation.

As Christians, we cannot accept millions of years and remain faithful to the plain meaning of Scripture. So how old is the earth? Well, God created everything in six days, and then Genesis 5 and 11 give us detailed genealogies that allow us to determine how many years passed between Adam and Abraham (about 2,000 years). We know about 2,000 years passed between Abraham and Jesus, and then 2,000 more years gets us from Christ to us today. So, starting with the Bible’s history, the universe, earth, and life is only about 6,000 years old.

Yes, we live on a young earth impacted by death because of sin. But someday Jesus will return and create a new heavens and a new earth where death and suffering will be done away with and everyone who has placed their faith and trust in Jesus will live with him forever.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

A great message from Ken Ham except he left out the 1000 years Jesus will rule over the nations on this Earth with some, if not all of the glorified Saints. We have had 6000 years of Satan’s dominion over the Earth, next is Jesus’ Millennial Kingdom, and only then will this Earth be destroyed. The second resurrection of all of the dead will take place followed by Jesus’ White Throne judgement. It is only after the White Throne judgement that John sees the new Heaven and new Earth.

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened… Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:11-12

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” Revelation 21:1-3

HOW SATAN WORKS

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John Cooper of the successful band Skillet described the man, who was an agent of Satan, as well as a music agent, a promoter and a businessman who was a “mover and shaker.” 

“And he said, ‘It’s your time, John, but you have got to disassociate from Christianity. You’ve got to stop talking about Jesus so much. … Don’t do Christian interviews. Don’t do Christian music festivals. If people ask you what your songs are about, I’m not telling you to lie. Just don’t offer up the information about Jesus,’” he continued.

“Then he said something else. And this is what got me, and this is what I think is interesting,” Cooper continued, he said, ‘But John, think about the good you could do for your faith. If you got rich and famous, think about what you could do for Jesus, if you stop talking about Jesus.’“

Cooper said that phrase was the “turning point” of his career.

“I went to the bus. I told my wife about the conversation. We prayed about it. And it was … almost instantaneous. I knew that that is not the Lord. It was from the enemy, Satan. He was trying … to get me to be quiet, and it had the opposite effect.”

A decade later, Skillet is now a Grammy Award-nominated, multi-platinum band. Cooper has a popular YouTube series in which he is very outspoken about his faith and shares his thoughts about current events.

In an episode of Abby Johnson’s podcast “Politely Rude” released in August, Cooper revealed the motivation behind his boldness. He said he was shocked to find that many people no longer believe in absolute truth and called the changes unfolding in culture “scary.” 

“We need to be extremely vigilant about the Word of God,” he emphasized. “We need to be extremely vigilant about what the Bible says because if we are not, then we will begin to read the Bible with that same sort of relativism. And when you do that, you’re not starting from a premise that the Word of God is absolute, that God’s Word is supreme.”

“What happens in relativism is you say, ‘No, I am supreme. My feelings are supreme. My experience is the brain. I can find truth in my heart,’” Cooper added. “Then I look through that filter at the Word of God, and then I shape the Word of God to meet my needs. So we need to be extremely vigilant about this because it is wrecking Christianity.

IS THIS THE PROBLEM IN AMERICA?

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American higher education institutions are stripping student’s ability to think critically.

Yeonmi Park experienced enormous struggles and hardship to get to America, but she does not call herself a victim.   

One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found. 

“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said in an interview with Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.“

Those similarities include anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt and suffocating political correctness.

‘America’s future is as bleak as North Korea’ says defector after attending Columbia
Yeonmi accuses American higher education institutions of stripping people’s ability to think critically.

Yeonmi saw red flags immediately upon arriving at the school.

During orientation, she was scolded by a university staff member for admitting she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen. “I said ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” recalled Park. “Then she said, ‘Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.’”

It only got worse from there as Yeonmi realized that every one of her classes at the Ivy League school was infected with what she saw as anti-American propaganda, reminiscent to the sort she had grown up with.

She was also shocked and confused by issues surrounding gender and language, with every class asking students to announce their preferred pronouns. 

“English is my third language. I learned it as an adult. I sometimes still say ‘he’ or ‘she’ by mistake and now they are going to ask me to call them ‘they’? How the heck do I incorporate that into my sentences?” “It was chaos,” said Yeonmi. “It felt like the regression in civilization.” “Even North Korea is not this nuts,” she admitted. “North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”

After getting into a number of arguments with professors and students, eventually Yeonmi “learned how to just shut up” in order to maintain a good GPA and graduate. 

She accuses American higher education institutions of stripping people’s ability to think critically.

“In North Korea I literally believed that my Dear Leader [Kim Jong-un] was starving,” she recalled. “He’s the fattest guy – how can anyone believe that? And then somebody showed me a photo and said ‘Look at him, he’s the fattest guy. Other people are all thin.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, why did I not notice that he was fat?’ Because I never learned how to think critically.”

“That is what is happening in America,” she continued. “People see things but they’ve just completely lost the ability to think critically.”

Moreover, to say you believe in the God of the Bible and His history of the Cosmos would have you expelled from these mainstream universities. Why? Because you believe God has and still is in control of what takes place in His Cosmos including the following miraculous events:

1. God’s created the Cosmos just six thousand years ago in six days purely as a pattern for man’s working life. Evolution does not provide a credible mechanism for creating our complex world.

2. God judged mankind with a worldwide flood that destroyed all human life on this planet except the eight people on Noah’s Ark. It caused the billions of dead things we find all over the world including fossil fuels.

3. God’s judgement occurred less than two thousand years after creation.

4. The nations were established by God creating new languages at the Tower of Babel. This caused people to disperse across the planet beginning just a few hundred years after the worldwide flood.

5. God created a nation – Israel from whom the Redeemer/Jesus would come and we know from God’s Word that Jesus will eventually rule the nations from a reconstructed Israel.

TRANSGENDER PEOPLE AND THE CHURCH

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Rev Christina Beardsley is a transgender priest in the Church of England and author of numerous resources on trans experience in the church. She engages with Preston Sprinkle, author of ‘Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church, and What the Bible Has to Say’ who takes a grace-filled but traditional Christian approach to sexuality. They discuss how churches should engage with trans people, theological questions of ‘bodily’ and ‘gender’ identity, and the issue of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.

Contrary to what Beardsley stated, we don’t have enough data to recommend puberty blockers, hormone therapy or the surgical removal of normal body parts. Physicians are not engineers, they are repair men and women. Medicine needs to be very careful when it gets into the business of treating desires and not diseases. When humans try to create better living through chemicals they all too often fail to read the warning label.

Beardsley tried to make the case that there was a medical consensus concerning the role of transitioning in the treatment of gender dysphoria and pointed to several multidisciplinary transgender medical societies. The problem with these organizations is that dissenting voices are not allowed to be part of the discussion. Multidisciplinary should mean different perspectives on a problem and not the same perspective expressed in academically different languages. 

Sex-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy are experimental medical measures that potentially cross a therapeutic line and need to be rigorously studied before they are embraced as the “treatment of choice” for gender dysphoria. I fear that entering into such a grand social experiment will leave behind many medical casualties.

It was unsettling for me to watch this video but it was valuable to do so to learn of Beardsley’s journey and the decisions he made along the way to now present as a woman. I concluded that Preston Sprinkle had done a credible job of presenting the Biblical viewpoint.

IS GENESIS HISTORY? YES IT IS.

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Catastrophism not uniformitarianism formed most of the geologic features we see in the world today including the formation of coal. Evidence from the volcanic eruption of Mt St. Helens demonstrates Noah’s Flood is a good explanation for the geologic record.

Is Genesis History provides valuable resources for defending the Bible’s history. This short video will give you an overview of what to expect. Be blessed.

AOG CHURCH MUST EMBRACE BIBLE AS ABSOLUTE TRUTH

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It will be interesting to see what impact Dr Doug Clay will have in getting the AOG church to reaffirm the Bible as the absolute inerrant word of God – the truth about the cosmos from Genesis to Revelation.

During his recent consecration as the new general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, Dr. Doug Clay had two things in mind: First, he wanted to reaffirm the identity of his denomination, and second, to look to the future by keeping four AG core values at the forefront.

Drawing an analogy between Martin Luther and his 95 Theses and today’s Assemblies of God church, Clay, 54, said he recently had a dream about what it would look like to start a Pentecostal Reformation through the denomination. It would begin, he said, with the reaffirmation of these tenets:

  • The Holy Spirit is a person, not an “it.”
  • The Bible is the absolute truth.
  • Character, regardless of your title or position, matters.
  • The purpose of the Assemblies of God is evangelism, and the denomination must avoid getting sidetracked from that purpose.

A third-generation pastor’s kid, Clay spoke passionately about each of these values as applied to the AG church. The largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, the Assemblies of God has grown to more than 67 million members worldwide.

“I really want to see the Holy Spirit do what He does best: magnify Jesus,” Clay said. “We just need to let the Holy Spirit be the Holy Spirit. … With the Bible, we really do believe it is the foundation for all of life transformation and community transformation. Biblical literacy is one of the major initiatives I want to take on during my administration.

“We also need to place a high value on character. Paul says that if you don’t have the fruit of the spirit, then you are not a tuned instrument. … And finally, I’m committed to say that, in the DNA of the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal organisation, evangelism is going to have a high priority, as it has for the last 103 years.”

 

IS THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF PRAYER A CULT?

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LISTEN TO MIKE BICKLE ON PRAYER AND THE BIBLE. A POWERFUL AND ENCOURAGING MESSAGE ON BIBLICAL AUTHORITY. JUST A SIX MINUTE MESSAGE ON WHY IHOP IS NOT A CULT.

https://youtu.be/7EmYvM5JhCU

MORE CHRISTIAN LEADERS EMBRACE APOSTASY

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Amazing how eminent Evangelical leaders say their views on LGBT issues have evolved over time. Much like the acceptance of evolution versus creation. In both cases the authority of God’s Word is at stake. These leaders no longer believe God’s Word is inerrant so they compromise with the world and will suffer the eternal consequences.

Jesus does not change, nor does His Word, so how can their views evolve over time. Also, why can’t see they see, they are part of the prophesied great falling away in the church that would occur in the “last days”.

Eugene Peterson author of The Message Bible

Eugene Peterson

Christian best-selling author Eugene Peterson said he would be willing to officiate at a same-sex marriage. In saying so, he joins a prominent group of Christians whose views on same-sex marriage and LGBT issues have evolved.         “I wouldn’t have said this 20 years ago, but now I know a lot of people who are gay and lesbian, and they seem to have as good a spiritual life as I do. I think that kind of debate about lesbians and gays might be over. People who disapprove of it, they’ll probably just go to another church. So we’re in a transition, and I think it’s a transition for the best, for the good. I don’t think it’s something that you can parade, but it’s not a right or wrong thing as far as I’m concerned,” Peterson says.

Jim Wallis

The founder of Sojourners magazine,  Jim Wallis was raised evangelical. He defended traditional marriage in a 2008 Christianity Today article, saying he wasn’t sure he’d perform a same-sex blessing, although he did express support for gay and lesbian civil rights. In 2013, Wallis answered “yes” when asked if he supported same-sex marriage in a Huffington Post interview.

Matthew Vines

After taking a leave of absence from Harvard University to study the Bible and homosexuality, Matthew Vines gave a speech at his church about accepting gay Christians that has amassed over 1 million views on YouTube since 2012. He also started The Reformation Project, a nonprofit trying to “reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity,” and wrote the book God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships.

Rob Bell

The former pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church publicly stated his views on gay marriage while speaking at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral in 2013. He then reaffirmed them during an Odyssey Networks interview the same week. At Grace Cathedral, he also said evangelicals should no longer be assumed to be conservatives. He described “a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized, evangelical subculture” that he sees dying out.

Trey Pearson

In a post on his website titled “My Coming Out Letter,” Christian rock musician Trey Pearson told fans that he identified as a gay man, despite being married with children. As he explains in the letter, published in June 2016, he was raised in a faith that taught him “sexual orientation was a matter of choice,” so he repressed his sexual desires most of his life. Since coming out, he has written about life as a gay Christian and created a music video depicting his experience.

Jen Hatmaker

Evangelical leader, author and HGTV star Jen Hatmaker publicly changed her views on gay marriage in 2016. Both a Facebook post calling for LGBT acceptance and comments about supporting same-sex marriage in an interview with RNS led LifeWay Christian Stores to quit selling her books in October.

Vicky Beeching

Christian rock star Vicky Beeching still considered herself an evangelical, even after coming out via an interview with The Independent in 2014. During her keynote address at the 2015 Gay Christian Network’s annual conference, the U.K.-based singer said she still loves the church. According to her official site, she now works as a speaker and writer, often discussing her personal journey and LGBT issues in the church.

Rachel Held Evans

In 2015, The Washington Post called Christian author Rachel Held Evans “the most polarizing woman in evangelicalism.” This label comes from her positions on LGBT rights and homosexuality, topics she’s grappled with publicly since starting her blog in 2008. In one of her old posts, “An Evangelical’s Response to Homosexuality,” she refuses to choose a side of the issue but does admit to wondering if the evangelical church “has it wrong.” In more recent years, she has referred to herself as an “ally” and wrote about LGBT Christians in her 2015 book Searching for Sunday.