Written by Chelsen Vicari

Peek behind the curtain of some “progressive” or “hip” evangelical churches, past the savvy technology and secular music, and you will find more than just a contemporary worship service. You’ll find faith leaders encouraging young evangelicals to trade in their Christian convictions for a gospel filled with compromise. They’re slowly attempting to give evangelicalism an “update”—and the change is not for the good.

It’s painful for me to admit, but we can no longer rest carefree in our evangelical identity—because it is changing. No doubt you have seen the headlines declaring that evangelicalism is doomed because evangelical kids are leaving the faith. It is no secret that there is an expanding gulf between traditional Christian teachings and contemporary moral values. But the sad truth is that the ideological gulf between America’s evangelical grown-ups and their kids, aka the “Millennials,” seems to be widening too.

Somehow the blame for this chasm is being heaped on traditional churches. They are accused of having too many rules as well as being homophobic and bigoted. Yes, we’ve heard those false claims from popular culture in its desperate attempt to keep Christianity imprisoned within the sanctuary walls. But now popular culture is being aided by Christ-professing bedfellows whose message to “coexist,” “tolerate” and “keep out of it” is more marketable to the rising generation of evangelicals.

The seasoned Christian soldiers are noticing these distortions of the gospel. But for young evangelicals, the spiritual haze is harder to wade through. Desperate for acceptance in a fallen world, many young evangelicals (and some older ones) choose not to take Christ out of the chapel, and so they are unwittingly killing the church’s public witness. In this uphill cultural battle, mired by scare tactics and fear, three types of evangelical Christians are emerging:

• Couch-potato Christians: These Christians adapt to the culture by staying silent on the tough culture-and-faith discussions. Typically this group will downplay God’s absolute truths by promoting the illusion that neutrality was Jesus’ preferred method of evangelism.
• Cafeteria-style Christians: This group picks and chooses which Scripture passages to live by, opting for the ones that best seem to jive with culture. Typically they focus solely on the “nice” parts of the gospel while simultaneously and intentionally minimizing sin, hell, repentance and transformation.
• Convictional Christians: In the face of the culture’s harsh admonitions, these evangelicals refuse to be silent. Mimicking Jesus, they compassionately talk about love and grace while also sharing with their neighbors the need to recognize and turn from sin.

I know about these three types of Christians because at one time or another I have fallen into each of these three categories. My parents will tell you that even though I was raised in church, I morphed into a full-fledged feminist, told my parents they were ignorant for not endorsing homosexuality and bought into the distorted social justice rhetoric that confuses caring for the poor with advancing socialist or big government systems and demonizing the United States for its free market system.

I’m not ashamed to share my story because my experiences and those of my fellow bold evangelicals are a testimony of God’s awesome, transforming power. Being countercultural for Christ isn’t easy. What does the Great Commission say? Jesus commanded us to go, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20).

Where Did We Go Wrong?

I see so many parents scratching their heads trying to figure out where they went wrong with young evangelicals. Following the instructions of Proverbs 22:6—”Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”—many evangelical parents took their children to church and prayed with them every night before bed. Yet the values those children now hold dear do not reflect the traditional teachings of Jesus.

To be perfectly clear, I want to let you know upfront that this isn’t a parenting how-to guide that, if followed, will lead your loved ones to salvation. Instead, what I can offer you is a glimpse into the world of a twenty-something who sees thousands of young evangelicals being spiritually and emotionally targeted on Christian university campuses, in college ministries and at churches nationwide by a growing liberal movement cloaked in Christianity.

Research tells us that evangelicals are drifting further away from the orthodox truths their parents and grandparents held dear.

Our churches have rarely—if ever—faced the exodus we are seeing today. This will have a direct effect on the spiritual and moral values that will shape the nation in the coming years. That is why it is urgent that concerned Christians start acting now before the situation gets worse.

The Collision of Faith and Culture

Faith and culture will continue to collide in America. The culture wars, the growth of family, the success of missions, the prosperity of our great nation—the future rests on millennial evangelicals’ worldview. And that is cause for concern, because something has gone wrong with young evangelicals’ theology.

The millennial generation’s susceptibility to “feel-good” doctrine is playing a big part in America’s moral decline. Millennials’ religious practices depend largely on how the actions make us and others feel, whether the activities are biblical or not. For example, we only attend churches that leave us feeling good about our lifestyle choices, even if those choices conflict with God’s clear commandments. We dismiss old hymns that focus on God’s transforming salvation, love and mercy and opt for “Jesus is your boyfriend” songs. Or we contribute to nonprofits that exploit and misuse terms such as justice, oppressed and inequality because tweaking the language makes us feel more neutral, less confrontational.

Popular liberal evangelical writers and preachers tell young evangelicals that if they accept abortion and same-sex marriage, then the media, academia and Hollywood will finally accept Christians. Out of fear of being falsely dubbed “intolerant” or “uncompassionate,” many young Christians are buying into theological falsehoods. Instead of standing up as a voice for the innocent unborn or marriage as God intended, Millennials are forgoing the authority of Scripture and embracing a couch potato, cafeteria-style Christianity all in the name of tolerance.

This contemporary mindset is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian whose Christian convictions put him at odds with the Nazis and cost him his life, called “cheap grace.” In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

Right now cheap grace theology is proliferating around evangelical Bible colleges, seminaries and Christian ministries.

Christian Doctrine Hijacked

It is not that millennial evangelicals were not taken to church by their parents. It is that their training has been hijacked by ineffective and sometimes intentionally distorted doctrine.

As constant and pervasive as the attacks on Christianity are at public universities, it is important to remember that Millennials’ worldviews do not start taking shape after they move out of their parents’ houses. Their understanding of Jesus’ teachings and cultural convictions begin to form while they are still at home and under the influence of their local church.

What I hope and pray evangelical parents and leaders come to realize is that the church has been too trusting. In our jam-packed lifestyles, parents have treated Sunday school as they do softball or ballet class—drop off the kids for an hour then pick them up and hope they learned something.

Early on in my Sunday school teaching days, my co-teacher and I followed the curriculum pretty narrowly, the exception being that my co-teacher had an outstanding knowledge of biblical history that he imparted to the kids.

We taught all about Jesus’ birth, resurrection and saving grace. Thinking the fluffy kids ministry curriculum covered all of the necessary bases, I felt confident these kids had a firm grasp on their Christian worldview. Boy, was I wrong!

One day my co-teacher and I decided to play “True or False.” We casually went down a list of worldview questions with our class, sure that our little evangelicals would nail every question correctly.

No. 1: Jesus is God. “True.” Great job.
No. 2: Jesus sinned. “False.” Bingo!
No. 3: Jesus is one of many ways to heaven. “True.” What?

Shocked is the only way to describe how I felt. Hadn’t they been listening to us? When I asked who taught them that, one girl said, “Coexist.” Yes, these young evangelicals had been listening to their Sunday school teachers and their parents, but they had also been listening to their public school teachers, TV celebrities and rock stars.

Youth ministers, volunteer leaders and pastors also have to start preparing these kids to deal with the very real hostility that faces young evangelicals.

If we never talk about abortion in church, how can we expect the rising evangelical girl to calmly explain the option of adoption to her frightened best friend who just admitted she is pregnant?

What will surprise you is how much young evangelicals actually crave honest discussions about abortion, sexuality, sexual exploitation, feminism and radical Islam. My friend and Evangelical Action adviser Richmond Trotter has two non-negotiable topics when addressing youth: creation and life. Having volunteered in church youth ministry since 1996, Richmond is not afraid to have serious discussions about what Scripture says about abortion, evolution and homosexuality. Make no mistake: The trend away from biblical truth is not concentrated in the hipster city limits. It is unfolding in the crevices of America’s plains, hills, mountains and swamplands. All across this nation, “old-fashioned” conservative evangelicalism is being traded in for a bright and shiny, mediocre Christianity.

If America’s evangelicals disengage from the public square and fail to engage the rising generation of Christian leaders, then we risk losing our public voice, then our religious liberty, then liberty altogether.

What Happened to the Religious Right?

The last several decades witnessed tremendous evangelical influence in the United States. Leaders such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Paige and Dorothy Patterson, James Dobson, and James and Betty Robison made a bold impact on America’s families, churches and government. Now that those few leaders are aging or retiring, or have died, there are very few traditional evangelical leaders left holding the torch and even fewer candidates to whom they can pass it.

But religious convictions in America are not on the verge of disappearance just yet. There is still hope. In the book God Is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America, Gallup Inc. Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport ensures: “Christianity will prevail in the U.S. America will remain very much a Christian nation in the decades ahead, albeit less so than in the past because of an increase in Americans who don’t have a religious identity.”

Heed the Warning Signs

Evangelicals and culture warriors in the U.S. do not have to look far to discover what happens when Christian denominations give up on their traditional convictions and teachings. All we have to do is look at the dwindling memberships of mainline Protestant denominations.

In order to safeguard the trajectory of young evangelicals, we must uphold the authoritative Word of God. It is imperative that those in a position to influence Millennials have transparent and honest discussions about the culture wars evangelical youth are already engaging. Otherwise they will be silent and accepting in the face of persecution and false doctrine.

The importance of arming the next generation of evangelicals cannot be overstated. If we continue to follow the example of mainline Protestants, evangelicalism will have a gloomy future. We must offer sorely needed leadership, but before we can do that, we need to know exactly whom and what we are up against.

The original version of this article was published by Charisma Magazine.

Constitutional revisionists within our mainstream press claim that First Amendment religious protections extend only to churches and homes. So, why is it that they become silent as church mice when President Barack Obama publicly appeals to his Christian faith in defending his political positions?

Obama, who claims to be a Christian (and whom many in the press proclaim with dogmatic certainty he is), cites the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount to justify his “evolution” on marriage.

Obama now embraces and promotes a definition of marriage that contradicts explicit Old Testament moral laws that, unlike ceremonial laws, still pertain. And he conveniently ignores more salient New Testament passages related to both homosexuality and marriage that would have be wildly distasteful to his party base. But nonetheless, according to Obama, it is his religious beliefs that shape his political support for the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages. Usually, when liberals in the press are within earshot of a conservative politician citing Scripture, they become a cacophonous pack of baying hounds. In contrast, when Obama cites Scripture, they become stridulating crickets.

While Obama cherry-picks Scripture, plucking verses way out of context to defend his “evolution” on marriage, nary a liberal pundit screams “VIOLATION OF CHURCH AND STATE” as they do when conservatives mention Scripture to defend their political views. That I know of, neither Chris Matthews, nor Eric Zorn, nor Frank Bruni has accused Obama of imposing his religious beliefs on all of America or of violating the separation of church and state when Obama dared to walk his faith out of his pew, home, and heart and into the glaring light of the public square.

While transitioning to his now more fully evolved position (watch for more evolution to come), Obama said this in defense of civil unions:

I believe in civil unions….If people find that controversial, then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. [emphasis added]

Obama’s mind notwithstanding, all Scripture is God-breathed, so Paul speaks only truth. And Romans 1 is not in the least obscure. Romans 1 is clear, unequivocal, and consistent with passages in Genesis, Leviticus, 1 Timothy, and 1 Corinthians regarding God’s view of homosexuality.

When Obama’s transition to an even more advanced evolutionary but less biblically-consonant position was complete, he added this strained hermeneutical defense:

[Michelle and I] are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and, hopefully, the better I’ll be as president.

In addition to dismissing passages in the Old Testament and the words of Paul in Romans, 1 Timothy, and 1 Corinthians, Obama ignores Jesus’ own words regarding the true nature of marriage:

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Bearing in mind Obama’s odd use of Scripture, read these illuminating excerpts from Obama’s speech at the recent  National Prayer Breakfast:

There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.

… I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt — not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right…that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.

Our job is not to ask that God respond to our notion of truth — our job is to be true to Him, His word, and His commandments.  And we should assume humbly that we’re confused and don’t always know what we’re doing….

And so, as people of faith, we are summoned to push back against those who try to distort our religion…for their own nihilistic ends.  And here at home and around the world, we will constantly reaffirm that fundamental freedom — freedom of religion — the right to practice our faith how we choose….and to do so free of persecution and fear and discrimination.

There’s wisdom in our founders writing in those documents that help found this nation the notion of freedom of religion…. They also understood the need to uphold freedom of speech, that there was a connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  For to infringe on one right under the pretext of protecting another is a betrayal of both. [emphasis added]

Obama’s sinful perversion of and misuse of Scripture to defend non-marriage as marriage and the eager willingness of “progressives” to undermine religious liberty in deference to sexual libertinism render these words all the more compelling—and ironic.

Progressive pundits ought to admit their double standard when it comes to appeals to Scripture: Politicians can appeal to Scripture so long as their religious appeals never lead to policies that liberals don’t like.

And Obama ought to admit that he doesn’t study Scripture to inform his leadership. Rather he distorts and exploits Scripture to defend his political positions.

Of course, such admissions would require a commitment to honesty.

The secret, which is a dirty secret only to “progressive” pundits, is that it is constitutionally permissible for theologically conservative Christians to allow their religious beliefs to shape their political decisions.

So, brothers and sisters in Christ, step out of your homes  and pews and speak truth in the public square. Bring your coats. It’s chilly out there.

Please support the work of Illinois Family Institute.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is in hot water with omniscient Chicago Tribune pundit Rex Huppke for claiming ignorance about President Barack Obama’s faith. In answer to a question about whether he believes Obama is a Christian, Walker said he didn’t know.

So, what’s a politician to do? hmmm…

I know, give the answer “progressives” desire. Leftist columnist Rex Huppke pontificated that this is what politicians should assert about the interior religious beliefs and affections of Barack Obama: Yes, Obama is a Christian.

Since I’m not privy to the interior beliefs and affections of Huppke, I don’t know if he believes Obama is a Christian or if he’s merely suggesting that this is the most strategically savvy response.

I do know this, however, it’s unlikely Huppke knows if Obama is a Christian. This is not to say Obama isn’t. It’s merely to say that it’s unlikely Huppke knows with absolute certainty whether Obama is a Christian, because there is a wee bit of evidence to the contrary.

In order to help illuminate Obama’s faith for those who believe that possible 2016 presidential contenders must have a definitive and correct opinion on whether a lame duck president is a Christian, here are some Bible verses followed by relevant actions of or statements by Obama:

On salvation: Jesus said, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

In contrast, Barack Obama holds this belief on salvation:

There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that [if] people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell….I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell….That’s just not part of my religious makeup.

On “gender”: The Bible teaches “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” And it teaches that “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.”

According to the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Obama “has been the best president for transgender rights, and nobody else is in second place.” The public may be largely unaware of his anti-biblical position on “gender,” however, because Obama has kept his actions intentionally “low-key,” working through executive orders and federal agencies unaccountable to the public.

On marriage: Jesus taught this:

“Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ So they are no longer two but one.” 

Obama, in direct opposition to Christ’s teaching, asserts that “same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

On homosexuality: The Old Testament teaches that “”You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” The New Testament affirms Old Testament teaching:

“[T]heir women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Rom. 1:26-27)

And:

“Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor. 6:9)

Obama stated the following in a “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month” proclamation:

“I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration…. LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect….I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine.”

No follower of Christ can believe both that homoerotic activity is abominable and that homoerotic activity deserves respect. Homoerotic activity mars the dignity that derives from being created in the image and likeness of a holy God.

On holiness: Holy means set apart for God, sacred, morally perfect, and worthy of veneration. The Bible teaches, “Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

In a speech in Cairo, Egypt, Obama describes the Koran as the “Holy Koran.”

On murder: The Bible teaches, “You shall not murder,” and “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Obama defends the legal right to kill preborn children—including third-trimester babies capable of feeling pain and surviving outside the womb and on whom doctors perform surgery.

On lying: The Bible teaches that “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight,” and “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

Barack Obama told the “Lie of the Year” when he stated that under Obamacare, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

According to Obama’s friend and former campaign manager, David Axelrod, Obama lied during the last campaign when he said he opposed the legalization of same-sex “marriage.”

And Obama lied when he said he has not changed his position on using executive authority to stop deportation of undocumented immigrants.

On false teachers: Saint Peter writes that “false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them.”

Obama announced that “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Does Obama consider it slander to say that Mohammed is a false prophet who has brought destructive heresies to the world?

Inquiring minds wonder what Huppke thinks of I John 2:4, which says this about those who claim to be followers of Christ: “Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

Or what Jesus said in Matthew 7:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Or these words of Jesus: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.” What kind of fruits do lying, denying the singularity of the salvific work of Christ, the promotion of same-sex mirage, the vigorous support of intrauterine murder—including the murder of nearly full-term babies—constitute? I would argue his fruits are fetid, poisonous fruits.

Jesus tells us to “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” The Left mistakenly believes that this means Christians must not discriminate between right and wrong actions. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. The Left believes that Christians ought not hold any biblical views on behavior with which the Left disagrees. So, it’s fine by “progressives” to “judge” racism and bestiality as wrong but wicked to “judge” homoerotic activity as wrong.

The truth is Christians are prohibited from hypocrisy. Christians are prohibited from judging the behavior of others as wrong if they themselves are engaging in it.

God has provided us with his Word to help us discern truth from lies and right from wrong. I guess it can be used too to help possible presidential contenders figure out if Obama is a Christian. Of course, only God knows with certainty if Obama is a follower of Christ. What’s curious is how Rex Huppke has concluded with dogmatic absolutism that Obama is a Christian.

Please support the work of Illinois Family Institute.

Written by Ravi Zacharias

President Barack Obama’s address at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5, 2015 has reverberated through the corridors of the world and provoked shock and dismay in numerous quarters. Even a professor at the University of London commented on his shallow understanding of the Crusades. I hesitated to write anything on the subject because it would drag me into politics or into a sobering critique of Islam. I am not sure that at a time like this either distraction would be wise, so let me keep it to the minimum.

For those who did not hear the talk, it is sufficient to say that it was the most ill-advised and poorly chosen reprimand ever given at a National Prayer Breakfast. I have been to several and have never, ever heard such absence of wisdom in a setting such as this. ‎I wasn’t at this one but have heard the speech often enough to marvel at the motivation for such thoughts. President Obama basically lectured Christians not to get on a moral high horse in their castigation of the ISIS atrocities by reminding them that the Crusades and slavery were also justified in the name of Christ.

Citing the Crusades, he used the single most inflammatory word he could have with which to feed the insatiable rage of the extremists. That is exactly what they want to hear to feed their lunacy.  ‎In the Middle East, history never dies and words carry the weight of revenge.

There is so much I would love to say in response but shall refrain. The President obviously does not understand the primary sources of either faith for him to make such a tendentious parallel. The predominant delight in his remarks would be in the Muslim world and the irreligious. The next day Geraldo Rivera, opining favorably, made the oft repeated lie that more people have been killed in the name of God than in any other cause.

Try telling that to the Chinese and the Russians and the Cambodians and the victims of the Holocaust! ‎Such intellectual ignorance gains the microphone with pitiable privilege. If a thinking person doesn’t know the difference between the logical outworkings of a philosophy and the illogical ones, to say nothing of the untruth perpetrated, then knowledge has been sacrificed at the altar of prejudice.

But let me get to the President’s final statement, after he had wandered off into erroneous territory. That final remark was true. He said, “It is sin that leads us to distort reality.” He was right. In fact he embodied it in his talk. But there is good news for the President. At least in the Christian message forgiveness is offered for sin. In Islam it isn’t. You must earn it. May I dare suggest that if Christians had been burning Muslims and be-heading them, he would have never dared to go to Saudi Arabia and tell them to get off their high horse. He unwittingly paid a compliment to those who preach grace and forgiveness. That is the dominant theme of the Gospel. That is why we sit in courtesy listening to the distortion of truth, the abuse of a privilege, and the wrong-headedness of a message.

I cannot recall when I have heard such inappropriate words at so important an occasion, in such a time of crisis. The world is burning with fear and apprehension. We need a message that will inspire and encourage and redeem. Ironically, two years ago when Dr. Ben Carson spoke and made some comments about our medical plan and the tax system, the White House demanded an apology from him for straying into controversial terrain, because it felt his comments showed disrespect for the President.

This year’s National Prayer Breakfast speech was a blunder in thought. But there was a silver lining. In the end, President Obama blundered into the truth. Sin distorts… and only Jesus Christ restores the truth. Christ will ever rise up to outlive His pallbearers. Even presidents will have to get off their high horses then and recognize the Lord of life and hope and peace. There will be no speech making then. Only a prayer of surrender… which is what the National Prayer Breakfast was meant to be in the first place.

Originally published at RZIM.org.

Written By Michael Haverluck

Addressing the crowd at the Oklahoma State Evangelism Conference last week, world-renowned evangelist Franklin Graham admittedly took a different spin than his iconic father, Billy Graham, on the podium and criticized America, declaring that “secularists have taken control of our country.”

The president of the Billy Graham Evangelist Association admonished believers in America for standing by while godless, democratically appointed government officials rip the Christian foundation of the country out from under them.

“Our country has changed, and we’ve got to take a stand,” Graham exhorted the Oklahoma City crowd, according to The Christian Post. “We live in a secular society led by people that call themselves progressives. Secularists … have taken control of our country. And we have just sat back and it’s happened. And we haven’t even realized it’s happened.”

Not my father’s world

Graham then said that he is not afraid to talk about many of the issues his father didn’t typically address and critique, noting that the bulk of the senior Graham’s ministry took place during a time before American society thoroughly divorced itself from God. He explained how Billy Graham’s school days weren’t riddled with fears that students would be punished for handing out Christian literature, forming Bible clubs or leading organized prayer.

“Well, you say, ‘Now Franklin, you father wouldn’t get onto these subjects,'” insinuated Graham, who is also the president of Samaritan’s Purse, a nonprofit Christian humanitarian organization. “Wait a second … My father, when he was going to school, they had a Bible in school. When he was going to school, they had the Ten Commandments on the wall. When he was going to school, you could pray in school, and the teachers would lead in those prayers.”

Since his father, the 92-year-old Billy Graham, grew up decades before God, Bible reading and prayer were removed from the public schools in 1963 — which is also the year that evolution replaced creation as the dominant teaching about the origins of man and the universe — the younger 62-year-old Graham argues that the changed times call for him to speak on the many moral issues that Christians now face on a daily basis.

“The secularists and the humanists … you mention the name of Christ, they jump all over you,” Graham contended. “I get jumped on all the time. I don’t really care.”

Secularization infiltration

Graham went on to argue that the secularization of society has long since extended beyond the schoolhouse gate, infiltrating virtually every facet of American society.

“It’s all over the country,” Graham insisted. “You have the secularists and the humanists who are wanting to deny that Jesus ever existed.”

Billy Graham’s son then talked about the ironic twist that came about in the late 1980s and early 1990s — a time when the Cold War ended and hearts went cold to God, as secularism, socialism and communism entered into American education, society and politics full force.

“When the Berlin wall came down, everybody said: ‘We won,'” Graham remembered. “And secularism came. And secularism and communism are the same thing. They’re godless. They’re antichrist.”

Only One hope, not 12

Graham argues that America is not what it used to be, as it has turned its back on the Christian principles upon which it was founded. And as another presidential election draws near, he contends that conservative politicians aren’t the answer.

“America has changed and it’s not coming back unless the Church takes a stand,” Graham insisted. “Now I’m not talking about Baptists or Republicans or Tea Party … I have no confidence that any of these politicians or any party is going to turn this country around.”

In the midst of the current political frenzy taking place, with a dozen conservative prospective candidates promising that they can turn America around from its godless, destructive path, Graham promises that no politician can deliver the country from falling apart.

“There is only one who can save — only one … Jesus,” Graham added. “You see, Jesus is in the boat. All we have to do is call Him, call on His name.”

As godless policies and laws continue to work their way into American society — from God being ousted from the public schools in 1963, to Roe v. Wade ushering in legalized abortion in 1973, to the floodgate of same-sex “marriage” opening in 2004, to the normalization of homosexual behavior in the military in 2011 — Graham warns that America will be judged for its disobedience and repudiation of God’s Word.

“There are storms that are coming,” Graham foretold. “The only hope for this country is for men and women of God to stand up and take a stand.”

Originally Published at OneNewsNow.com

One month ago, headlines proclaimed, “Grandson of Billy Graham: The Pulpit is No Place to Speak on Social Issues.”

The headlines were in response to comments made by Tullian Tchividjian, Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, during a panel discussion on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Pastor Tchividjian had said, “I think, in my opinion, over the course of the last 20 or 30 years, evangelicalism, specifically their association with the religious right and conservative politics, has done more damage to the brand of Christianity than just about anything else.”

He added, “That’s not to say that Christian people don’t have opinions on social issues and we shouldn’t speak those opinions, but Sunday morning from behind the pulpit is not the place, in my opinion.”

To give this further context, he explained, “It’s not so much religion in the public sphere as much as religion in the pulpit, behind the pulpit, that’s my primary concern. As a preacher, my job when I stand up on Sunday mornings to preach is not first and foremost to address social ills or social problems or try to find social solutions. My job is to diagnose people’s problems and then announce God’s solution to their problems.”

Was Pastor Tchividjian right? Have we politicized the gospel from our pulpits? Have we mixed with the culture wars with the gospel?

On the one hand, he is absolutely right, and to the extent we have confused allegiance with the Republican or Democratic Party with allegiance to the kingdom of God, we have damaged the cause of Christ.

The gospel message is divisive enough already, proclaiming that salvation is found only through Jesus. Why make it even more divisive by identifying Jesus with partisan politics?

I’d much rather defend Jesus than defend Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or Joe Biden or Ted Cruz, although to be sure, I have far more in common with some of the names on this list than with others.

And because the Republican Party has stood much stronger on a number of key moral issues than has the Democratic Party (at least in terms of their respective platforms), and because movements like the Moral Majority were associated with Republican leaders, Pastor Tchividjian is right to speak of the damage done to the gospel by associating it with conservative politics. (I’m speaking broadly here, fully aware that there are many voters who claim the Democratic Party is the more caring and compassionate in terms of the needs of the poor, also drawing a large percentage of conservative Black voters.)

It is also very easy to get so focused on social issues that we take our eyes off of Jesus, as if our primary calling was to “reclaim America” or stop abortion or preserve marriage rather than our primary calling being to make disciples and glorify God.

On the other hand, Pastor Tchividjian is absolutely wrong, since there is no separation between the gospel and culture, between how we live in society and how we live in our private lives, between the lordship of Jesus inside the four walls of a church building and outside that building.

Joel McDurmon, a resident scholar at American Vision, addressed this mentality in his Introduction to the reprint of Alice M. Baldwin’s book, The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution. He spoke of those who would say, “Christians should not preach politics! We should preach the ‘Gospel’ only!”

He responded, “Of course, this assumes that the Great Commission applies only to the inner, private lives of people and the salvation of their souls for the next world alone. In short, it limits the definition of the Christian calling in such a way as to exclude its social aspects up front.”

Put another way, we are called to go make disciples, but how do disciples live? How do we function in the world – in our marriages, families, schools, and places of business? How do we live as salt and light in the society?

That’s why it was preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the American Revolution (as carefully documented by Baldwin), preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the abolition movement, and preachers of the gospel who were at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement.

Do you think that Dr. Martin Luther King thought to himself, “Well, I shouldn’t be mixing the gospel with social issues”?

Conversely, we have no sympathy today for the German pastors who stood idly by as Hitler rose to power and began to make his murderous goals known. Should they have simply focused on the personal problems of their congregants?

And when a young woman in one of our congregations is contemplating an abortion, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When parents are trying to understand how to respond to the announcement that their son is “marrying” another young man, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When kids come home from school with virtually pornographic sex-ed material, is that a personal issue or a social issue? When a family is falling apart under the duress of severe economic pressure, is that a personal issue or a social issue?

There is also the matter of perspective, as an inner city black pastor once said to me, “You’re trying to get prayer back in the schools. I’m trying to get education back in the schools.”
Is that a personal issue or a social issue?

Recently, Rev. Franklin Graham addressed the concern that “your father wouldn’t get onto these subjects,” as he spoke about the need to stand up against the rising tide of secularism in our country.

He responded, “Wait a second. My father, when he was going to school, they had a Bible in school,” he continued. “When he was going to school, they had the Ten Commandments on the wall. When he was going to school, you could pray in school, and the teachers would lead in those prayers.

“Our country has changed. And we’ve got to take a stand.”

He also said, “Now I’m not talking about Baptists or Republicans and the Tea Party. I have no confidence that any of these politicians or any party is going to turn this country around. The only hope for this country is for men and women of God to stand up and take a stand.”

He’s absolutely right, and it’s time we take our stand, not with hatred, rancor, or insult, and not in the name of a political leader or political party, but in the name of Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, and in the love and truth of God.

Let us go into the world and make disciples, and let us go out into the world and be disciples.

(We reached out to Pastor Tchividjian for interaction without success but would welcome dialogue on these issues.)

This article was originally posted at The Christian Post website.

Thomas Banks worked for Ford in Michigan for more than three years as a product engineer. But one day he received an email, left a message in the comments section, and two weeks later – in August 2014 – was fired after being told he had violated Ford’s anti-harassment policy. Liberty Institute has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – and their investigation could lead to a lawsuit in federal court.

OneNewsNow asked Liberty Institute attorney Cleve Doty the nature of the article on which Banks commented.

“It was about the basically LGBT organization at Ford,” Doty responds, “and Mr. Banks had published a comment that said [in effect] Look, we should care about automobiles, not about this. This may be offensive to Christians and others in the workplace. Why don’t we focus on cars – [that was] the essence of his comment.”

Banks’ specific comments, as outlined in the complaint, were as follows:

“For this Ford Motor should be thoroughly ashamed. Endorsing and promoting sodomy is of benefit to no one. This topic is disruptive to the workplace and is an assault on Christians and morality, as well as antithetical to our design and our survival. Immoral sexual conduct should not be a topic for an automotive manufacturer to endorse or promote. And yes – this is historic – but not in a good way. Never in the history of mankind has a culture survived that promotes sodomy. Heterosexual behavior creates life – homosexual behavior leads to death.”

“Absolutely. Diversity and inclusion means that we’re able to have people in the workplace work together and don’t necessarily have to agree but we can all get along,” replies Doty. “And Mr. Banks gets along individually with folks. But here, he was told immediately [he was] fired based upon a single comment.”

Liberty’s director of litigation adds that if Ford is permitted to get away with firing Banks over the comment, “we fear that every person of faith will be punished for talking about his or her faith in the workplace.”

This article was originally posted on the OneNewsNow.com website.

Boy Scouts membership declined another seven percent in the last reporting period, but there was apparently a drop of over 14 percent in Cub Scouts, which grooms future members and leaders of the Boy Scouts. Part of the loss could be due to the group’s decision to allow homosexuals as members.

Meanwhile, a Christian-based scouting group is thriving. Trail Life USA was set up after Boy Scouts made the decision to accept homosexuals. Executive director Mark Hancock shares the group’s success.

“We finished the year up with 534 troops chartered in 48 states and just under 20,000 members, so I feel like we’ve seen some tremendous growth there for an organization that’s just a year old,” he says.

The process of qualifying for a troop is not easy, and Hancock points out more 300 troops are waiting in line to be chartered. Trail Life USA is making sure faith is the focus.

“There’s a temptation to say, Wow, we can grow really fast if we want to. But from the board of directors on down, there’s such an emphasis on understanding that we are building something for long-term effect on generations of young men,” he says. “We feel like we could grow explosively overnight if we lowered our standards – but we have no desire to do that.”

Meanwhile, Trail Life USA is working on plans for the boys for this spring and summer, including camping and the end of the year Freedom Convention in Washington, DC.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

Since it was first developed in 2008, the Bible app has been installed more than 168 million times. Bobby Gruenewald, the founder of the Bible app, says Romans 12:2 is the verse most shared, highlighted and bookmarked.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect,” he quotes.

Other verses of the Bible were shared nearly 69 million times; in fact, every second, two verses are shared around the world via the app.

“We’re seeing this as a huge opportunity to be able to get God’s Word in peoples’ hands and we’re seeing it grow very virally, especially in countries where maybe it has been a little difficult to get the Bible in the past,” he tells OneNewsNow.

Through the app, the Bible is available in more than 740 languages and in more than 1,050 versions.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

Written By Buddy Smith

Our nation is in great turmoil, both financially and morally. The problems we are facing are too large for human understanding. Culturally, we are becoming more and more secular. Never have we needed His intervention so desperately; never before have we felt so helpless in this battle for the soul of our nation. Is there hope? My friend, Dave Butts, recently wrote in Prayer Connect magazine which I found very resourceful and that urges readers to pray and believe that God can still save America. Actually, I was captivated by the theme of his article, “Can Prayer Save America?”

2 Chronicles 7:14 promises and history has recorded when God’s people get serious about prayer, repentance, and humbly seeking the will of God, that He pours out His Spirit and heals our land. Thankfully, history has recorded measured and pivotal periods of obedience that demonstrates His desire to act when we get serious. On several occasions, God has poured out of His Spirit, and entire cities have turned to Him. Prayer meetings have swelled into the streets, and millions around the world have ultimately felt the impact.

The moral impact of The First Great Awakening (1734-1760) is often credited with laying the foundation for the formation of our system of government after the American Revolution. The church was in a state of spiritual slumber but was suddenly endued with the power of Pentecost. As the message of repentance and the lordship of Christ were proclaimed in power, congregations across New England experienced the manifest presence of God. So many souls were converted that some thought the millennial reign of Christ had was imminent.

As power fell from Heaven in The Second Great Awakening (1790-1840), believers lay prostrate before God in repentance. In the newly settled frontier regions, settlers in thinly populated areas gathered at Camp Meetings for fellowship and went for weeks at a time with thousands eager to hear the gospel. Society was transformed as the awakening spilled out of the church and into the world.

Upon their return home, most converts joined or created small local churches, which grew rapidly. Social reform movements sprang up to address societal evils such as child labor, alcoholism, poverty, the suppression of women, and the terrible blight of slavery. In an unprecedented way, missionary organizations were founded that still carry the gospel to the farthest corners of the world.

Preoccupied by growing wealth, by 1857 hearts had grown spiritually cold, and most had forsaken God completely. Then The Great Prayer Revival (1857-1858) sprang forth in New York City when a concerned businessman decided to pray that God would change people’s hearts. On September 23, 1857, he held a prayer meeting in the Old Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street in New York City. Only six people participated, but he persevered.

Every week, more people came. When the stock market crashed, the prayer meeting was flooded with suddenly awakened souls. At its height, more than 10,000 were estimated in attendance. Additional prayer meetings sprang up across the Eastern Seaboard, the frontier, into California. God was on the move once again, and as many as 50,000 people a week were being converted.

Can prayer save America? The stresses and woes of our nation today are comparable to critical times in our nation in the past. It could happen again. We have seen Him save our country in the past and we should be calling on Almighty God to do it again.

We need a new work of God for a new generation, so the world may know that there is indeed a God who lives, who empowers, and changes the destiny of those who call on Him.

Originally Posted at AFA.net.

Written by Dr. Robert Gagnon

Newsweek, in an article by Kurt Eichenwald, says that Christians who regard homosexual practice as sin (or who—horror!—favor prayer in public school) “are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians,” “hypocrites,” “Biblical illiterates,” “fundamentalists and political opportunists,” and “Pharisees.” To support his slurs, Eichenwald first tries to undermine reliance on Scripture as a supreme authority for moral discernment and then to show how Christians, oblivious to the problems with biblical inspiration, ignore its clear teaching.

Eichenwald claims that the New Testament Greek text is unreliable, ignoring the fact that no other ancient text comes close to being so well attested. For example, while the oldest surviving manuscript for a significant portion of Plato’s fourth-century B.C. dialogues dates to 895, for the first-century a.d. New Testament the dates are ca. 200 (Paul) and the third century (Gospels, Acts), with over a dozen substantial manuscripts from the fourth–sixth centuries. Only a tiny fraction of the variations among the manuscripts pose any serious problem for scholars in determining the original text. Furthermore, no major Christian doctrine hangs in the balance because of these variations.

Eichenwald also charges that modern English translations of the New Testament are notoriously unreliable. The truth is that there are today a dozen or so fairly reliable translations. Eichenwald cites as his key example of translation inaccuracy renderings of the Greek verb proskunéō (προσκυνέω) as “worship” when applied to Jesus. Although the verb’s basic sense is “prostrate oneself (before),” Eichenwald is ignorant of places in the Gospels where the sense is already sliding over into the meaning of “worship” such as when the disciples “prostrated themselves before” Jesus after he stilled the storm, declaring “Truly you are the Son of God” (Matt 14:33).

Eichenwald flubs even worse when he claims that nowhere in the New Testament is there a clear indication that Jesus is part of the Godhead. He erroneously tries to dismiss the reference in Philippians 2:6 to Jesus being in “the form of God” as a mistranslation of “the image of God,” ignoring both many parallels with the figure of Wisdom in early Judaism and many other New Testament texts that speak to Jesus’s pre-existent divine state.

Eichenwald claims that excessive attention to the authority of the Bible, particularly regarding the doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement, has been responsible for bloodshed. It is an odd charge given the vast numbers of Christians throughout history (including the first few centuries) were inspired by their understanding of Jesus’s gracious incarnation and death to be non-violent.

Eichenwald further contends that “the sociopath emperor,” Constantine, “changed the course of Christian history, ultimately influencing which books made it into the New Testament.” Such a fallacious statement shows Eichenwald to be ignorant of the canonical process. Councils largely affirmed what had already become a reality in the churches long before Constantine “converted.”

Eichenwald also focuses on narrative “contradictions” in the biblical account in order to undermine appeals to Scripture; specifically, the Christmas story, the Easter story, the Flood narrative, and the Creation accounts. There are various ways of dealing with the problems. One approach is to find ways of harmonizing apparent discrepancies, which sometimes is plausible, sometimes not.

Another approach is to view inspiration of Scripture differently for the genre of narrative than for the genre of, say, letters. The writers of Scripture sought to be faithful to available tradition, with all the limitations of oral culture, and were not necessarily averse to adjusting narrative to Old Testament prophecy, iconic stories of their culture, and theological proclamation. All this can be brought under a more nuanced view of inspiration than the one that Eichenwald lampoons.

He assembles these objections as a prelude to attacking his political opponents. Eichenwald rails against school prayer and conservative prayer rallies, stating that they are a violation of Jesus’s warning to followers not to parade their piety publicly but to pray in secret (Matt 6:5–15).

Yet context shows that Jesus did not intend by his remarks to outlaw all corporate prayer for his followers. Consider the first-person plurals of the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father . . . ”), Jesus’s prayers before meals, his blessing of children, the audible prayers both in the Temple and in synagogues (often called “prayer houses”), the stories of national prayer in the Old Testament, and the communal prayers of the early Christian churches recorded in the book of Acts and the letters of Paul.

Eichenwald’s main point is that it is hypocritical to pay attention to three places in the Pauline corpus that speak negatively about homosexual practice (1 Tim 1:10; 1 Cor 6:9; Rom 1:24–27) because you don’t do all the things commanded in these letters anyway.

Eichenwald pontificates: “Contrary to what so many fundamentalists believe, outside of the emphasis on the Ten Commandments, sins aren’t ranked. The New Testament doesn’t proclaim homosexuality the most heinous of all sins. No, every sin is equal in its significance to God.” Notice the contradiction: an unqualified “every sin is equal” follows a qualified “outside of the emphasis on the Ten Commandments, sins aren’t ranked.”

Note to Eichenwald: The Decalogue is not an exclusive list of the most serious offenses. It is rather a representative list of serious offenses, explicitly specifying only those that occur fairly frequently in the population but implying a number of others. Incest, homosexual practice, and bestiality are not lesser offenses than adultery simply because they are not specified in the Decalogue.

Eichenwald is careful to compare opposition to homosexual practice only to biblical offenses that he thinks evangelicals will have a difficult time opposing consistently: drunkenness, greed, pride, and the injunction in 1 Tim 2:9–15 for women to keep silent and not have authority over men. Eichenwald even makes a comparison with the command to submit to governing authorities in Rom 13:1–8, which he comically misconstrues as prohibiting any criticism of the Obama administration.

Yet if, as Eichenwald alleges, all sins are equal, why not compare the New Testament’s opposition to homosexual practice to its opposition to behaviors that even Eichenwald disapproves, such as consensual incest, kidnapping, idolatry, and cheating the poor out of their life savings?

Eichenwald is not in search of the closest possible analogues (like adult-consensual incest or polyamory) but rather focuses on more remote comparisons in order to achieve his ideological objective. The truth is that not even Eichenwald believes that “every sin is equal in its significance to God.” Does he believe that genocide is no more severe a sin than taking home a company pen? Or sleeping with one’s mother than speaking in an angry tone? Or rape than gluttony? He couldn’t believe that and maintain any moral credibility. Indeed, it is apparent from Eichenwald’s article that he is particularly upset with what he regards as great sins, like “parents banishing their kids” for “being gay. Obviously Jesus and the writers of Scripture treat some sins as more severe than others(see pp. 5–8 of this article), even though Eichenwald mocks anyone who thinks this as showing “that they know next to nothing about the New Testament.”

What then remains of Eichenwald’s claim that “the New Testament doesn’t proclaim homosexuality the most heinous of all sins”? I don’t know anyone who claims that homosexual practice is the worst of all sins. What Scripture does indicate clearly is that homosexual practice is a severe sexual violation. On pp. 8–10 of this article I give eight reasons for drawing this conclusion, including the following.

Jesus extrapolated a limitation of two persons in a sexual union (serially or concurrently) from the foundational twoness of the sexes established at creation (Mark 10:6-9).

Paul’s highly pejorative description of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27—“dishonorable” or“degrading,” “contrary to nature,” an “indecency” or “shameful/ obscene behavior,” and a fit “payback” for straying from God—suggests that Paul regarded homosexual practice as an especially serious infraction of God’s will, in line with all Jewish perspectives of the time.

Apart from ruling out sex between humans and animals, the male-female requirement for sexual relations is the only sexual requirement held absolutely for the people of God from creation to Christ. Both incest and polygamy prohibitions are analogically derivable from this prerequisite.

Perhaps Eichenwald’s greatest folly is in arguing that anyone who adopts Paul’s lawfree gospel must give up on the prohibitions of Leviticus against homosexual practice. This view grossly misreads Paul’s thought. While Paul contended that those who were in Christ were no longer under the Law’s jurisdiction, he also maintained continuity in core moral standards since the God who gave the Law to Moses and the God who raised Jesus from the dead were the same God. So, for example, when he expressed horror at the case of adult-consensual incest going on at Corinth he used a description of the behavior, “someone has (his) father’s wife” drawn from the prohibitions of man-stepmother intercourse in OT law (1 Cor 5:1).

Eichenwald’s final argument for why Christians should give up on their opposition to homosexual practice is all too predictable. “Jesus said, Don’t judge. He condemned those who pointed out the faults of others while ignoring their own.” Ironically, Eichenwald is exceedingly judgmental of orthodox Christians throughout his article, even abusive.

Jesus did speak against judging others (e.g., Matt 7:1–5; parallel in Luke 6:37, 41–42). However, the context makes it obvious that Jesus was not advocating that his followers cease making moral distinctions between good and bad behavior. Judgment sayings not only dominate the rest of Sermon on the Mount (7:6, 13–23) but are present in roughly half of all the sayings of Jesus (for a listing see pp. 6–12 of this article). Jesus’s point was not to reject all judgment but rather to caution against judgment that (1) lacks self-introspection, (2) majors in minors, and (3) rejoices in the damnation of offenders instead of seeking recovery of the lost.

Although Eichenwald characterized his article as “an attempt to save the Bible from the ignorance, hatred and bias that has been heaped upon it,” Eichenwald has rather contributed to that ignorance, hatred, and bias. In stating that “the actual words of the Bible can’t be ignored just to line it up with what people want to believe,” he has unwittingly offered us a picture of how the Bible is all too often misrepresented by those on the theological left who simply don’t like what it says.

One can only urge Eichenwald to put aside his ideological prejudices and let Jesus be Jesus, not some cardboard caricature of what he would like Jesus to be. That, Mr. Eichenwald, is a truly good place to start.

Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon Press). A longer version of this article can be found here. Originally published at FirstThings.com.

A fresh campaign has been launched on behalf of an official with the Atlanta fire department – a Christian – who was fired after making public his biblically based views on homosexuality.

Kelvin Cochran, chief of the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department, was suspended in November after he wrote a short book, a portion of which conveys the biblical view of homosexuality. He gave copies of the book, Who Told You That You Were Naked? (self-published in November 2013), to a few co-workers he knew to be strong Christians – but three city employees also received a copy without asking for one.

Mayor Kasim Reed now has fired Cochran after suspending him for a month without pay, saying “his actions and decision-making undermine his ability to effectively manage a large, diverse work force.” Cochran, a firefighter for more than three decades, otherwise had no blemish on his record.

Gary Cass of DefendChristians.org responds to news of Cochran’s firing and Mayor Reed’s remarks.

“It appears that simply upholding a traditional Christian view of morality automatically makes you unfit for any kind of leadership in this morally upside down world of political correctness,” Cass tells OneNewsNow. “It seems that Chief Cochran is being fired not for his actions, but simply for holding a biblical worldview.”

The mayor has stated publicly that Cochran’s “personal religious beliefs are not the issue,” but that the city’s nondiscrimination policy is “nonnegotiable.”

Cochran is a strong Southern Baptist – and Cass points out that Mayor Reed is a member of Cascade United Methodist Church in Atlanta.

“So here’s somebody [Reed] who ostensibly identifies as a Christian, who thinks he can be fair in the way that he conducts his business but apparently [thinks] Chief Cochran can’t be fair,” Cass surmises. “So it’s an interesting confluence of hypocrisy and double standards all at the same time.”

He asks on his website: “Does Mayor Reed believe what the Bible says about the sin of homosexuality? If so, shouldn’t he resign, too?”

At the end of the day, adds Cass, the action taken against Cochran is “an overt violation of Chief Cochran’s First Amendment liberties.” Cass is hopeful Christians will continue to contact Reed’s office on Cochran’s behalf.

Following Cochran’s suspension, the Georgia Baptist Convention initiated an online petition calling for the chief’s reinstatement. Another petition is available at ExtinguishIntolerance.com.

Take ACTION:  The American Family Association has launched a “Stand with Chief Kelvin Cochran” campaign that allows individuals to (1) sign a statement of support that will be delivered to Chief Cochran, and (2) contact Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed via email or telephone.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

If you missed the Illinois Family Institute’s annual fall banquet back in September you missed an important keynote speech by bestselling author Eric Metaxas. Combining encouragement and a call to action, Metaxas emphasized that “it is time for us to be all in” when it comes to the political and cultural battle.

This speech by Metaxas is now available on DVD, and I highly recommend that IFI supporters listen to it and then share it with as many people as possible.

Eric Metaxas first came to the attention of many after his speech about religious liberty at the National Prayer Breakfast in early 2012. Others know him from his award winning biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, or his book about William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.

In his speech Metaxas discussed the examples of both men – “We need to know these stories of encouragement.” Metaxas contrasted Bonhoeffer and Wilberforce with those who say, “I don’t know if Christians should be political – they should just preach the Gospel.” Metaxas responded: “Do you think Wilberforce was political?”

“If you give a darn about people suffering…in the case of Wilberforce that meant being very political,” Metaxas said. “Some people didn’t like that – they said he should keep his faith private…There are a lot of people who are glad that he didn’t keep his faith private.”

“Don’t think about what people say,” Metaxas said, “think about those people who are suffering.”

Wilberforce’s impact was felt “far beyond the slave trade,” Metaxas said, and added: “It is staggering to see how God used this one man. It needs to be a lesson for us – you have no idea what God can do through you.” Wilberforce, Metaxas said, “was used to totally transform that culture.”

As tough as the political fight might be, Metaxas said, Christians shouldn’t be fatalistic, but rather are called to rejoice and be hopeful – “we don’t know what the future holds.”

In Germany in the 1930s the Christian Church failed to heed the warnings of men like Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Germans became comfortable,” Metaxas said, and their complacency resulted in their forfeiting religious liberty. A parallel can be seen in America today as encroachments upon our religious freedoms are increasing at an alarming rate.

Religious liberty is at the heart of all of our liberties, Metaxas said. The Founders understood that without Christian morality, “the whole thing doesn’t work…the free market is nothing, and democracy is nothing without a moral populace.”

Metaxas also challenged pastors to “rejoice in rebelling against anything that would restrict religious freedom.” As during the founding era, he said, we can’t just “sit this one out.”

If every pastor in America was in the fight, Metaxas said, then we would be free: “There should be at least one line in every sermon you preach that would threaten your 501c3 status.”

“God is with us,” Metaxas said, so this should not be a dour campaign: “Now is the time for us to be all in. We can all give more money, we can all sacrifice more, we have time that we’re not using wisely…this is it – the church has to be all in.”

“I’m in a room full of heroes,” Metaxas said, “I often think, what would it be like if this organization didn’t exist.”

“I thank God for those of you who support this organization – you’re doing the Lord’s work.”

Order Today! The suggested donation is $15. Call the IFI office at 708-781-9328 or you can also send a check to following address indicate you would like the DVD:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, IL  60188

Newsweek magazine – which finally went out of print some time ago, but recently experienced a deep-pocketed resurrection – has graced its readers with a very long cover story on how Christians don’t know anything about the Bible and what they think they know is all wrong. But there’s hope because Newsweek tells us poor Christians what’s what. However, such a task takes world-class hubris and self-delusion as if Christians tried to tell Muslims they have no idea what the Koran actually means, and we do. (I’m not being overly snarky. Skim the article yourself. It’s a Hurricane Sandy of condescension.)

But that’s Newsweek for you. And they’ve done similar cover stories many times prior. The article’s seemingly countless problems can be divided into three general categories:

– The author uses the most extreme and largely unrecognizable caricatures of orthodox Christians as his canvas.

– The author makes simplistic and incorrect arguments about what it is serious Christians actually know about the Scriptures and the church’s ancient history.

– The author baldly creates “facts” ex nihilo about the development and use of Scripture in the Early Church.

Let’s address the major points by category.

I. Wild Caricatures and Oversights

1.) Their story is written about Christians who take the Bible as the reliable, true Word of God, but it characterizes these folks as if they are only American, hyper-conservative, reactionary nit-wits. They miss that Christians who accept the Bible this way live in all nations, represent a great majority of languages and adhere to very different types of political ideas stretching back many millennia, both Jew and Christian. A new low in the art of stereotyping.

2.) The article does not cite one conservative or even widely respected mainstream scholar of the New Testament. The few scholars cited are of the very liberal school of textual criticism. Not that they don’t deserve to be heard, but a good, serious story on this subject – or any – should include a diversity of views for the reader.

3.) It also refers to Christians who take Scripture as the reliable and authoritative Word of God as “biblical literalists.” This is a mistake many people make, but reasonable people should know otherwise. No Christian tradition does or has ever taken the Bible literally.

It is obvious, if we stopped to think about it, that some parts are indeed to be taken literally such as Christ’s claim about himself, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6). Others are to be taken as truth indeed, but not literally: “Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). And then some seem to fit in between the literal and the figurative: “I am the light of the world” (John 18:12). The Scriptures are a collection of many types of writing and meaning. There is no excuse for any learned person not knowing this obvious distinction.

II. Simplistic Presentations at Best, Flat Wrong at Worst

1.) The first and grandest overarching mistake the Newsweek author commits is common to such gadflies. The author points out concerns about the “numerous inconsistencies” in the Bible and suggests that those who copied the documents from generation to generation made mistakes (or added things) in their transcriptions.

Truth: This is not news. Christians have long been aware of these seeming difficult valleys in the biblical texts and have worked through them carefully with serious scholarship for the last two hundred years or longer. These points are certainly not faith-wrecking problems. Most of the changes and insertions are minor or inconsequential, as the article points out.

2.) Newsweek also explains that there are troubling differences about Christ in the Gospels, stories in some books that are not in the others or they present the stories in different ways with different facts. They call this “playing telephone” with the Bible.

Examples concern Jesus’ birth and resurrection in which different writers provide facts that others do not. The article explains that “In creating the familiar Christmas tale, Christians took a little bit of one story, mixed it with a little bit of the other and ignored all the contradictions….”

Truth: The same is true if you want to know about any incident, say the facts of what happened on 9/11. The New York Times’ reporting on 9/11 includes facts that are both missing and different in ways from those reported by the Los Angeles Times. But readers don’t question the reliability of either because they accentuate or leave out various points of the story. One seeking a true and detailed story of what happened on the morning of 9/11 draws from various sources and puts these different and unique reports together into a bigger, truer picture. It is what good journalists do in their own reporting.

Thus, the seeming “contradictions” in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give various parts of Christ’s story in their own ways from their own vantage points. Collectively, they give us a fuller picture. People know this.

3.) The author also makes the outlandishly provocative claim that “no television preacher has ever read the Bible. Neither has any evangelical politician. Neither has the pope.” What he’s getting at is that the Bible we have today is not the exact text the original writers created, so today we read “a fundamentally flawed document.”

Truth: First, it is a ridiculous quibble. Very few Christians are shocked to learn there are differences between an original manuscript and one transferred over the centuries. But are those differences enough to conclude that our Bible today is a “fundamentally flawed document”? Of course not.

One would have to say no one has ever read Aristotle’s work or Homer’s Odyssey because what the texts we have today are not what these authors actually wrote but are instead “fundamentally flawed documents.” Actually more so in that these documents are much older than the New Testaments writings and have been transferred for much longer. But scholars of these texts – and most other major ancient texts – don’t believe or explain to their students that seeking to understand what the authors truly meant is a fool’s errand.

God has not been helpless in preserving His holy Word through time. As it was first given to His people in Hebrew and Greek, He wasn’t caught by surprise that it would need copying and translating throughout time for all peoples. Obviously He chose to do it this way through the work of His people as we don’t get new editions sent down like manna from Heaven. If He’s good with this process, so too can we be.

4.) Newsweek also wants Christians to know that biblical authenticity is not possible because some Greek words don’t have precise equivalents in the languages into which it is being translated.

Truth: How many have heard your pastor explain a particular text and say, “Now, the original Greek word here doesn’t have a precise English equivalent, but it generally means (this) or could mean (this, this or this)”? Newsweek would have us believe your pastor is unwittingly pointing out the unreliability of Scripture, rather than just simply explaining the difficulty of translating the text from one very different language to another. And Newsweek is certainly smart enough to appreciate that if this is a debilitating problem for the reliability of Scripture, it is also one for any text translated from an ancient language, much less any language at all. Yes, words from language to language don’t translate cleanly. Not news, or a problem.

5.) They correctly note that most congregations hold to and even recite the Nicene Creed each Sunday in their services. But they insist, “It is doubtful many of them know the words they utter are not from the Bible.”

Truth: This one is just embarrassing. It is doubtful most of them don’t know this. Newsweek should have just asked around.

6.) Then they drop this bomb on good Christians as if it’s also faith-challenging: The Sabbath – as Christians generally practice it – is not actually Sunday but the last day of the week, Saturday. Newsweek tells us:

“The word Sunday does not appear in the Bible, either as the Sabbath or anything else. But four years before Nicaea, Constantine declared Sunday as a day of rest in honor of the sun god.”

Truth: First, Christians indeed do and have always well realized that our holy day is the day after the Jewish Sabbath. And it happened long before the Council of Nicaea and Constantine. This is obvious. The first day of the week (as the New Testament refers to it time and again) became our day of rest and worship because our Savior was resurrected on this day. He also first appeared to the disciples after his resurrection on this day and commissioned them to found His church, breathing upon them the Holy Spirit (John 20:19-23). And Acts 20:7-8 notes the meeting and communion day for Christians was the first day of the week.

Additionally, the very Early Church leaders tell us the first day of the week was sacred to the church, their special day. One such example is Ignatius. On his way to his martyrdom in Rome (and Onesimus, Paul’s dearly beloved friend from Philemon joined him in this journey to encourage and minister to him) Ignatius wrote to the church in Magnesia and explained, “Those then [the followers of Christ] who lived by ancient practices arrived at a new hope. They ceased to keep the Sabbath and lived by the Lord’s Day, on which our life as well as theirs shone forth…” (Letter to the Magnesians v. 9)

It is an utter, although long repeated myth that Constantine declared the first day of the week as the day on which the church would worship. What he did was name it Sunday as a civil holiday, thus Christianizing that pagan day of the Sun as the Son’s day. But Christians held it as their holy day from the church’s founding.

7.) Next Newsweek informs its readers that the birth of Christ was not actually December 25th but later moved to that day to satisfy a significant pagan holiday.

Truth: Likewise, it is no secret to most Christians that December 25th is likely not the actual day of Christ’s birth. The exact date of this great day is not mentioned in either scriptures or the early documents of the church. No secular accounts give the date either. No one knows.

There is even evidence by some Early Fathers that the birth of Christ was not even celebrated by the church in its early years. And records show that Early Fathers consider our Lord’s birth could have been on many different days; some among those considered are on our calendars – May 20, March 21 and April 15, 20 or 21. But by the fourth century, December 25 became the date celebrated in the Western church and January 6 in the Eastern Church. The span between these two dates is our 12 days of Christmas.

The theory that this time of year was chosen because it coincided with a major pagan festival is very doubtful.  No early documents indicate this and the tale appears to have first arisen in the twelfth century, a long, long time after its establishment and practice by the Church.

8.) Their article presents two additional “challenges” to confidence in the Scriptures that are so ridiculous any serious high-school Bible student can explain them. One, that there is no clear understanding – as well as seemingly contradictory tellings – of the important topic of when and how Christ will return. Second, that there seemingly two different creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2.

Truth: Does it really need an explanation? For the second point, see the explanation regarding the New York and Los Angeles Times above.

9.) And the last for this category is a doozy. Newsweek says “fundamentalists Christians” want certain people condemned to hell – homosexuals and the like – but that their wishes will hit a snag because “if they accept the writings of Paul and believe all people are sinners, then salvation is found in belief in Christ and the Resurrection. For everyone. There are no exceptions in the Bible for the sins that evangelicals really don’t like. So apparently, God doesn’t need the help of fundamentalists in determining what should be done in the afterlife with the prideful, the greedy, the debaters or even those homosexuals.”

Truth: They actually got this point exactly right despite so badly misunderstanding one of the basic tenets of evangelical theology, the great hope and essence of the universal Christian faith: Christ came to die for sinners. All sinners, offering salvation to each one who repent and seek him, regardless of their story.

III. Just Plain Wrong or Made-Up

1.) Newsweek’s biggest mistake goes right to the heart of what Christianity believes and has consistently proclaimed: That Jesus is God and the second divine person of the Trinity. Their article claims the texts saying Jesus is God have nothing to do with the Greek texts and that “modern translators pretty much just invented the words.” Regarding the Trinity, they offer their readers the tired and incorrect explanation that because the word never appears in the Bible it’s not biblical.

Truth: Both of these ideas – that Jesus was God and the nature of the Trinity – were not made up in later years by unscrupulous translators. The claim is fantastical. The first truths the Early Fathers of the Church sought to teach and defend passionately against rising heretics are these two:

Jesus is God: Some heretics taught that Jesus – a real flesh and blood man who was born an earthly birth and slaughtered on a cross – was not God at all and couldn’t possibly be. These were the Arianists, Docetists and the Gnostics. A great deal of energy was put forth in the early centuries of the church to make sure that the divinity of Jesus – both fully God and fully man – was adhered to and faithfully passed on church by church. Even the most basic understanding of church history gets this.

Trinity: To charge that the Trinity is not a genuinely Christian truth because the word itself never appears in Scripture is as simplistic as it is wrong. Many fundamental concepts are deeply biblical even if the words to describe them never appear there. Just one example concerning the Trinity is Matthew 28:19 even though it was Tertullian who first used the word to explain this fundamental Christian truth around 200-220 AD. As with the divinity of Jesus, the Early Fathers vigorously taught and defended the Triune nature of God against those who denied it. Nearly all the early creeds of the church proclaimed it as well.

2.) They also claim that the Early Church “butchered Christians” who did not agree with the doctrine of the Trinity, or taught that Jesus was not God or would not sign onto the Nicene Creed. And they claim that the Emperor Constantine, after his conversion, committed the same atrocities as well. Newsweek states outright that “In fact, Christians are believed to have massacred more followers of Jesus than any other group or nation.”

Truth: This is just embarrassing.

3.) Newsweek again demonstrates a dramatic lack of understanding of basic Christian theology and history by stating, “About 50 years later, in A.D. 381, the Romans held another meeting, this time in Constantinople. There, a new agreement was reached—Jesus wasn’t two, he was now three—Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

Truth: Now one might just start to feel sorry for Newsweek.

4.) But wait, there’s more…

“… and several books of the New Testament, including some attributed to Paul, are now considered forgeries perpetrated by famous figures in Christianity to bolster their theological arguments. It is small wonder then that there are so many contradictions in the New Testament.”

 Truth: The author offers no explanation of who these “famous figures” are, what changes they made to the Scriptures or what novel theological ideas they were seeking to insert. He can’t because they don’t exist. More stuff just made up.

5.) Also, Newsweek says that in the early decades of the church, “there were no universally accepted manuscripts that set out what it meant to be a Christian, so most sects had their own gospels.”

Truth: Not even close. A canon of scripture – the New Testament as we have it today – was not settled upon until quite sometime after the founding of the Christian Church, but there were indeed accepted and reliable manuscripts that the church made regular use of. Many of these became the New Testament. Others did not, like the first and second letters of Clement, the Didache as well as the writings of Polycarp and Ignatius for example. These were widely taken by the church at large as reliable and beneficial for teaching what it means to be a faithful Christian as we might use the writings of Calvin, Edwards, Moody, Bonhoeffer, Lewis, Schaeffer and others today. Are they sacred? Of course not, but they are solid teachings that are useful to and appreciated in most churches.

There were indeed universally accepted manuscripts used regularly by the church from earliest days and there was little tussle over these. Churches certainly did not have their own unique manuscripts teaching many different, much less conflicting, things.

And the silliness just continues page after page; Christians getting the Scriptures plain wrong regarding homosexuality, flouting Christ’s command to not pray in public etc. The article never does improve in its reasoning, arguments or seriousness of scholarship.

It is certainly not being mean, cheap or unfair to say this major front-page article from an otherwise serious newsweekly is less thoughtful or burdened with any manner of truth than one would expect to find in a screed by the village atheist in one’s local alternative give-away weekly. Newsweek just provides us a longer version of it

And the only reason this one is worth responding to is because of who published it and how widely it will, unfortunately, be read.

Written by Richard Hartian

Who is God? People come to be aware of God in many ways; but how do you really know God better? There is a difference between merely being aware of God and knowing Him.

God promises us that if you seek Him, you will find Him. So, if you truly want to know your Creator, search for Him.

• I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me. – Proverbs 8:17
• This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. – 1 Timothy 2:3-4

God’s Word tells us in the first chapter of John, verse 1, “In the Beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.” In verse 14, we are told that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.

• In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. – John 1:1
• And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. – John 1:14

So if you want to know God, you have to spend time with what God gave us to know Him.

But first, let’s take a look at a list of ways that we try to know God that fail apart from the one way God Himself gave us to know Him. Don’t get me wrong, this list is filled with wonderful things and what we consider “godly activities.” As a Christian, this list represents things that we have in our life because we already know God and have accepted His Son as our Savior. They come naturally as a result of who we are and who we are becoming.

Sadly, for those who want to know God, this list represents works; things we do because we often feel like we “should” do them. They do not reveal God to us apart from daily reading, studying, and memorizing God’s Word. All too often we confuse these things as ways God reveals Himself to us. Take a look at the list and notice that many of them are things that we do “to God,” “for God,” or “about God.”

• Listening to godly music
• Talking to or about God
• Singing songs about God
• Singing songs to God
• Donating time to help others
• Volunteering at church
• Belonging to a church
• Socializing with godly people
• Reading books about God
• Leading a small group
• Having the title of pastor, elder or deacon
• Donating or tithing to a church or Christian group

When a person truly knows God, this list takes on a new meaning and becomes worship to the God we know. It then has a different affect on our spirit and relationship with God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and The Holy Spirit, who lives in a believer (2 Corinthians 13:5, 1 Corinthians 6:19,1 Corinthians 3:16).

Here are the ways given to us by God to know Him:

• Read from a Bible that is a literal translation of God’s Word. It must be translated from the original Hebrew and Greek.  I tend to prefer the English Standard Version (ESV), New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the Amplified (AMP) translations of the Bible. I also have the Holman Christian Standard that was given to me by Ravi Zacharias.

o    Jesus said that God would send the Holy Spirit to help you remember what He said. You have to know, (read and memorize) God’s Word in order for the Holy Spirit to help you understand and remember God’s Words –  “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” – John 14:26

o    “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” – Romans 15:4

o    “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” – 1 John 2:3-4

o    “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” – John 6:63

• Memorize God’s Word – When we memorize God’s Word we are hiding it in our heart (Psalm 119:11); where it helps to renew our minds (Romans 12:2), heal us (1 Peter 2:24), keep us from sin (Psalm 119:11), and allows us to be ready (1 Peter 3:15) to share God’s salvation message (John 3:16).

o    “For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” – Hebrews 4:12

o    “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. – Psalm 119:11

o    How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” – Psalm 119:9

• Ask God to reveal Himself while you spend time reading and memorizing God’s Word.
• Taking God’s Word and allowing it to change your life by actively changing what you do and how you respond to life’s situations –

o    “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” – 2 Timothy 3:16

When you think about it, God really has made it easy for someone to know Him. He wrote everything He wanted us to know about Him in the Bible. He reveals His plan for us and tells us who He is.

If you really want the life changing message that God has to offer, I challenge you to try the following in your life; I can say from experience, God will show up for you.

1. Start and end your day in God’s Word – devotionals do not count.
2. Pray to God what you are reading. As an example, using Proverbs 8:17 Pray, “Dear heavenly Father, your Word says that if I seek you diligently that I will find You. Lord please help me to know how to seek You in the way You would want me to.  God, I ask that the promise You give in Proverbs 8:17 be realized in my life and that I find You in such a way that it changes me to be more like the person You created me to be.”
3. Don’t watch more TV than the time you are willing to read, study, and memorize God’s Word.
4. Take notes (journal) about what God is revealing about Himself, His character and desires for you. Spend time thinking about what affect this has on your life, and work towards making changes in your life based on what you are learning.

Be blessed by how God works in your life as you diligently seek Him by reading, studying, and memorizing His Word.

Originally post at Hartian.com