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CALLING SIN A TRIAL (Friday Church News Notes, September 21, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On August 23 Randy and Paula White, co-pastors of Without Walls International, a charismatic megachurch based in Tampa, Florida, announced that they were divorcing after 17 years of marriage. Randy said he takes responsibility for the breakup, but the couple ultimately blamed the two different directions their lives are going (“Interruption during Megapastors’ Divorce Announcement,” Tampa Tribune, Aug. 23, 2007). That is not a biblical reason for divorce. Christ gave only one legitimate cause, and that is fornication, yet the two said “the split involves no third party on either side.” If they are going in two different directions, that is sin on both their parts. God says the wife is the husband’s help-meet and she is to be the keeper of the home (Titus 2:4-5), and the husband is to “dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). Randy has spent months commuting to Malibu, California, where he has a beachfront home. Paula, a preacher and motivational speaker, makes many speaking trips to San Antonio, where she recently purchased a home and is “oversight pastor” to the Family Praise Center. She also travels frequently to New York City where she has a Trump Tower condo and leads monthly services at New Life by Design Empowerment Center. This is open disobedience to God’s Word, which forbids her to be a preacher or a pastor (1 Timothy 2:12). And this is not the first divorce for the two charismatic preachers. They have four children from previous marriages. In reality they are sinning against God’s Word while pretending to be undergoing a “trial” and to be victims of circumstance, and this, sadly, is typical for charismatics today. When Paula appeared on Carman’s show on Trinity Broadcasting Network on September 12 and 13, she was greeted with loud applause. She told the enthusiastic crowd, “Some of the greatest development in the men and women of God ... were those in adverse situation, those in opposition. ... You can either gravitate and put your hand to the plow and say, ‘Okay, God, I don’t get this one; I don’t even like this one. But still what do You have to say to me? I will not be moved.’” Joseph and Job could say things like that and take a stand on simply trusting God in undeserved adversity, but when you are suffering for your own sin and rebellion to the Scriptures that is an entirely different story! “For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently?” (1 Peter 2:20). An article in the Tampa Tribune in May included statements by former Without Walls staff members who testified that the Whites have shifted their focus to money and fame. They preach a charismatic prosperity message and live lavishly. Their home in Tampa is valued at $2.22 million and the condo in New York, at $3.5 million.

REPLY TO A MAN WHO WONDERS IF HE IS BEING TOO CRITICAL (Friday Church News Notes, September 21, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - I received the following e-mail recently: “I feel that the Lord has opened my eyes a great deal in the past couple years about testing everything. In my early walk, my job was with a ‘Christian’ company that, it turned out, was a sect or cult. Ever since then I have been very watchful, maybe too much sometimes, but I don’t want to be duped again! My brothers and sisters in the Lord think I am overly cautious. I had one guy tell me not to take everything too seriously. Anyway, I guess my question comes down to this: am I being too serious and critical?” REPLY FROM BRO. CLOUD: I am glad that you took the time to write about this matter. I, too, have been urged not to take spiritual things so seriously. When I attended an ecumenical conference in 1987 with press credentials one man told me that I was too uptight about doctrine, “too afraid of being deceived,” and that I needed to relax more. I refuse to take that advice because the Bible teaches us to be very cautious about doctrinal and spiritual and moral matters. I don’t think you can take those things too seriously, and if ever there were a time to be cautious it is this apostate day in which we are living. Following are just a few of the Scriptures that exhort us to be watchful and vigilant. Matthew 7:15-23; Acts 17:11; 20:28-31; 1 Corinthians 16:13; Ephesians 5:10-11; Philippians 3:1-2, 17-21; Colossians 2:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:6, 21; 1 Timothy 4:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:13; 3:5; 4:3-5; Hebrews 13:9; 1 Peter 5:8; 2 Peter 3:17; 1 John 4:1; 2 John 7-10; Jude 3; Revelation 3:3. Of course, it is also important to be spiritually mature so that you can weigh issues wisely and properly (Romans 15:14), and it is important to have a humble, gracious manner in your judgments (James 3:13-18). But it is definitely NOT wrong to take doctrinal matters seriously, and if I were in a church where I received such wrong-headed advice I would find a better church right away! We need to be careful that we obey God rather than man, and we need to honor God’s Word more than man’s feelings.

BJU PROFESSOR RECOMMENDING NEW EVANGELICAL MINISTRIES (Friday Church News Notes, September 21, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - One of the sessions at the recent “Whetstone Conference” at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina, recommend a wide variety of New Evangelical writings and audio sermons. The session was titled “Internet Resources for Ministry” and was presented by Nathan Crockett. NOT ONE truly fundamentalist separatist web site was recommended. What was recommended was Al Mohler, the head of the New Evangelical Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, John Piper, and All Souls Anglican Church in London. There were also links to OnePlace.com and Bethinking.org, which are vast collections of New Evangelical writings. There are sound things at these sites, but the truth is interspersed with error and there is never, ever a call for biblical separation, because a chief plank of New Evangelicalism from its inception in the late 1940s is the rejection of “separatism.” OnePlace features the writings of popular New Evangelicals such as Max Lucado, Tony Evans, Jack Hayford, and Chuck Colson of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” fame. There are articles at Bethinking that defend Harry Potter and the writings of the Roman Catholic J. R. R. Tolkien as something valuable for Christians. There is an article by Mark Pickering that says (falsely) that the Bible does not say what happens to people who have never heard the gospel and that it might be possible for them to be saved apart from faith in Christ. For general news purposes the Whetstone Conference amazingly recommended the New York Times! They also recommend World Magazine, whose editors are willing to criticize social evils but are largely silent about apostasy and religious compromise and ecumenism except perhaps that of the very grossest sort. World Magazine has frequently praised liberal, ecumenical, and Catholic religious figures. Examples are Augustine and Mother Teresa. In 1999 World Magazine refused to run an ad that was critical of the Roman Catholic Church. Someone might protest that the Whetstone Conference recommended the Sharperiron website and that it is operated by fundamentalists. Though they might call themselves fundamentalists, they have never seen a popular New Evangelical that they did not like, and there is not a hint of fundamentalist separatism on Sharperiron! If ever there were a day when fundamentalist writers should lift their voices boldly to warn of New Evangelical error it is today; but in reality Sharperiron appears to be operated by New Evangelicals who, for some reason, still hold to the name of fundamentalist. It is true that the presentation at the Whetstone Conference was preceded by a very brief disclaimer and the attendees were urged to “read with discernment,” but the fact remains that very, very few Christians today, including the average fundamentalist pastor, can discern the error of New Evangelicalism. The biblical thing to do with New Evangelicalism is to warn about it plainly and to avoid it! A chief reason that so many “young fundamentalists” are becoming New Evangelicals is that they read so deeply and uncritically from the writings of New Evangelicals. Dr. Mark Minnick, the senior pastor at Mount Calvary, is a professor at Bob Jones University and has a wide influence among “fundamentalists.” If a man really knows what New Evangelicalism is and is truly opposed to it, he is NOT going to allow New Evangelical websites to be recommended to a group of fundamentalist preachers under his watchcare! I have observed that many professing fundamentalists warn about New Evangelicals in the past (i.e., Billy Graham), but they do not warn about New Evangelicals in the present.

CHURCH VANDALIZED IN BANGALORE, INDIA (Friday Church News Notes, September 21, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On August 19 a Pentecostal church in Bangalore, India, was vandalized and closed by Hindus after the congregation was evicted. The Hindus, members of the group Hindu Ikyavedi, also threatened to burn the pastor and his family. After barging into a prayer meeting and abusing the Christians with filthy language, the Hindus drove them from the building, vandalized it, conducted a Hindu ritual inside, and locked it (“Hindu Radicals Turn Church into Hindu Temple,” Voice of the Martyrs, Aug, 23, 2007). Bangalore is known as “The Silicon Valley” and “The Fashion Capital” of India. In June a mob of Hindus beat and humiliated another pastor in that city and attempted to set him afire. The mob doused him with kerosene and threw a burning Bible on him. Only by God’s grace was he not severely burned or even killed. The mob then stripped him naked, hung a sign around his neck saying, “I am the one who was converting people,” and paraded him through the area (“Hindu Mob in India,” Compass Direct News, June 12). The angry crowd burned at least 250 Bibles and vandalized furniture and equipment. These are ongoing examples of the spread in persecution in India, and oftentimes the police take little or no action. Two pastors were murdered in India in 2005. In 2000 a Catholic priest was murdered by Hindus, and in 1999 Protestant missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned to death by a Hindu mob.

POPE DEDICATES AUSTRIA TO MARY, SAYS SHE IS NOT FAR FROM US (Friday Church News Notes, September 21, 2007, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - On a visit to Vienna on September 7, Pope Benedict XVI visited a Mary shine and prayed: “Holy Mary, Immaculate Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, in you God has given us the model of the Church and of genuine humanity. To you I entrust the country of Austria and its people” (“May Mary Help Us to Become Instruments of Peace,” Vatican Information Service, Sept. 7, 2007). In his speech the pope said: “In her maternal love, Mary continues to take under her protection people of all languages and cultures, and to lead them together, within a multiform unity, to Christ.” In a message at his summer resort on August 15 the pope said: “The protection of Mary accompanies you throughout your life. ... she is not far from us, but rather remains ever closer to us, and her light is projected on our life and on the entire history of humanity. Attracted by the celestial brilliance of the Mother of the Redeemer, we resort with trust to the one on high, who watches us and protects us” (“The protection of Mary accompanies us throughout our lives,” Catholic News Agency, Aug. 15, 2007). The pope reminded the crowd that Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven and crowning as Queen was pronounced as official dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. This is not only heresy; it is blasphemy. The Lord Jesus Christ is the sole Mediator. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time” (1 Timothy 2:4-5). The Roman Catholic Church claims that it gave us the Bible, but that is a very strange thing in light of the fact that there is no Roman Catholic Church in the Bible. Nowhere in Scripture do we find that Mary is the object of prayer or that she is immaculate or that she was assumed up to heaven bodily or that she is called the Queen of Heaven or the Queen of Peace or the Mother of God.

CONCLUSION: Friends in Christ, do not be discouraged by any of this. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. These things remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the coming of the Lord. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ day by day? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:11-14).