Where Is the Church Headed Now—And should we resist the trip?

By Al Benson Jr.

Earlier this week someone sent me an article from Relevant Magazine entitled: The Presbyterian Church Votes to Recognize Same-Sex Marriage. The headline is slightly misleading because all Presbyterians have not voted to endorse or accept same-sex (sodomite) marriage. No doubt the “progressive Presbyterians” have accepted it, but us Neanderthals in many Presbyterian churches have not, and will not, in accordance with God’s Word, accept this.

Actually the article is referring to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or PCUSA as most of us call it.  This denomination has been drifting leftward by degrees for decades now and so such a move was not totally unexpected. According to the Relevant article: “While the office of the General Assembly is still awaiting official tallies, it appears that a majority of the 171 presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have approved a change to the current description of marriage in the PC (USA)’s Constitution.”

Unfortunately, the liberal Presbyterians are not the only ones in the church that are pushing this perversion. In another article on www.relevantmagazine.com  the headline reads: Rob Bell: The Church Is ‘Moments Away’ From Accepting Gay Marriage. The article went on to say: “He (Bell) went on to say the church was risking irrelevance by holding off on an embrace of gay marriage. ‘I think the culture is already there,’ he said. ‘And the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense…’.” Look at his last statement. Do you realize what he’s saying here? He’s calling into doubt what the New Testament has to say about marriage because it doesn’t seem “relevant” to him. Where does that put him in regard to the authority of Scripture? If he can dismiss the truth of Scripture that easily because it doesn’t conform to what the world believes, I would suggest that, in the long run, maybe he is irrelevant.

In another article on www.standupfortruth.com  Rob Bell is noted as part of the Emergent Church movement, which the article describes this way: “The Emergent Church movement is a progressive Christian movement that attempts to reduce or eliminate Christian doctrine in favor of experience and feelings. Most do not believe man can know what is absolute truth, and believe God must be experienced outside of traditional biblical doctrines.” This is just another version of “if it feels good do it.” No doctrine, no absolute truth, just experience and feeling. These people are the Transcendentalists of the 21^st century. Emerson and Thoreau would have loved them! The article notes some of the leaders of this movement—among whom are Rob Bell and Rick Warren (“whom many of these leaders point to as their inspiration for the Emergent Movement.”) Does this help you to understand why Warren’s name was linked with Obama’s during the 2008 presidential farce?

It would seem that the arrogance and egotism of some of these apostates (and that’s what they are) knows no ends. In a brief article on www.beginningandend.com  the following was noted: “In a stunning sign of the growing apostasy—the rise of the false church in Christianity that no longer treats the Bible as its final authority, Reverend Oliver White of Grace Community United Church,  came on the radio show of Fox News Host Sean Hannity to proclaim that Jesus Christ was ‘wrong’  on the issue of homosexuality and gay marriage. White, speaking for Jesus Christ, said, with respect to the issue of gay marriage no longer being a sin: ‘If Jesus were alive today, I think he would be more inclined to say: you know, I didn’t know it all’…” There’s a photo of Rev. White at the top of this article holding what appears to be a big Bible—but then, with Rev. White’s attitude toward Jesus, maybe it’s really an enlarged version of The Humanist Manifesto. Here’s a man who thinks he knows more than Jesus Christ. Another 21^st century Transcendentalist! Who says Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and all the other unholy “isms” died in the 19^th century? Some of them may have taken a little breather, but they are back, alive and well today and their practitioners are back, fooling another generation of “useful idiots” who have never read their church history anymore than they have their American history and so they continue to make grandiose pronouncement while not knowing upside down from inside out.

You have to wonder why more preachers don’t stand up and expose this stuff. Too many have been bemused into a “all I’m called to do is to preach the gospel and I don’t want to get involved in politics” stance. This absolves them, so they think, from having to do anything about the abysmal spiritual condition of the church in our day. If they don’t know anything about any of it then they can’t deal with it, and so they continue on with a truncated version of John 3:16 and never, and I mean never, get beyond that. Nothing against John 3:16—it’s foundational, but if you never get past  the foundation then the house isn’t going to get built and you’ll live in the cellar forever. That’s one problem I have with the Scofield Bible Notes. They teach Christians to stay in the cellar because that’s all they will ever be.

Another problem for the cellar dwellers is the501c3 syndrome, which says that if any church, anywhere, makes even the remotest political statement about anything, then they will lose their tax exemption. Churches today are hide-bound by this and scared stiff to say anything that might “offend” the ruling elite and cost them their exemption. An article on www.hushmoney.org noted that “Churches were only added to section 501c3 of the tax code in 1954. We can thank Senator Lyndon B. Johnson for that.  Johnson was no ally of the church.  As part of his political agenda, Johnson had it in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence the church had always had on shaping ‘public policy’…For a 501c3 church to openly speak out, or organize in opposition to, anything the government declares ‘legal’ even if it is immoral (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, etc.) that church will jeopardize its tax exempt status. The 501c3 has had a ‘chilling effect’ upon the free speech rights of the church.” The article noted that LBJ was a “shrewd and cunning politician who seemed to well-appreciate how easily many of the clergy would sell out.”

Now the IRS routinely warns churches during election years not to deal with where candidates stand on any issues and so the threat is always there.

So this seems to be where the church is headed—intimidated by the IRS, scared stiff of losing their tax exemptions, inundated with false preachers who tell us that sodomy and other related sins are okay and that we wont be “relevant” unless we dump biblical teaching and embrace all the latest perversions. Thank the Lord there are some churches that don’t buy into this bovine fertilizer, but there are too many that do. The pastors that promote this rank apostasy are leading their congregations astray and there doesn’t seem, in many cases, to be enough spiritual discernment among the congregants to grasp this.

At the risk of offending the current seekers of “relevance” I would go back and advocate what the Scripture says in 2^nd Corinthians 6:14-18 to Christians in our day. If you are in a church where this kind of thing is permitted or encouraged then separate yourself from that church and find one that believes in and trusts the Holy Scriptures. Staying in apostate congregations will do nothing more than make you “two-fold more the child of hell” than you were before. I can understand wanting to help and love sinners, but accepting their perversions as normal does not help them, in fact it may well do them eternal harm.