Read Part One.

Another question that would have lengthened the title is, is Islam a religion?  In a discussion about whether the first amendment allows for the free exercise of Islam, one must consider the definition of free exercise and the definition of religion.  It is a legitimate question to ask whether Islam itself should even be considered a religion.  I don’t think that “some of the founding fathers thought it was one” is enough evidence that it is.  They didn’t write enough about Islam to give me confidence that they knew what it was about.  Islam wasn’t a threat to them either in the world in which they lived.  It is now, for sure.

Evangelicalism as a whole does not separate over beliefs and especially practices, which has been a historically differentiating factor between evangelicalism and fundamentalism.  As I have been keeping track, I have begun to hear the separation engine sputter to a start after sitting on blocks in the back yard.  It’s a dry, lifeless cough, but the mechanic is still tinkering.  Those mentioning it, as I follow along, are seeing that they need separation.  They need it as an escape craft as everything collapses around them.  They see the threat of something near total apostasy in the United States, and they are dusting off some kind of separation as a desperate move to stop that from happening.

Separation is a very awkward presentation and conversation for evangelicals, because separation is essentially mutually exclusive of evangelicalism.  It’s hard to pull it out with any kind of credibility after all these years of disuse.  It’s also become more awkward as fundamentalists have followed evangelicalism down its rabbit hole.

As has become the norm now, all conversations about separation come with long discussions about where to draw the line, what is worthy of separation.  I’m going to write more about this in my next post, but for now, you often hear that only certain doctrinal issues are worth separation.  This is not a biblical concept and at best it will throw a speed bump on the runaway ramp.  I’m saying that it is an embarrassing half measure at best.

NOT JUST DOCTRINAL, NOT EVEN MAINLY DOCTRINAL

The point of this post, however, is to say that evangelicals and even most fundamentalists see a doctrinal issue as either the reason or sometimes the most important reason to separate, but that I see this as entirely not true.   They have that wrong.  What is the biggest problem for evangelicalism and fundamentalism might be the destruction of the gospel, but it isn’t and it won’t be and it has not been primarily through a change in doctrinal statement.

The Bible doesn’t say that only doctrinal, or even practical, issues are what are important or all that are important or vital to a person or a church.  That is a lie of or at best the deceiving vanity of evangelicals, now being borrowed by fundamentalism, as I see it.  Doctrine and practice cannot be and will not be separated from the imaginations and affections of an individual, so if the imagination and affections are spoiled, the former will go along with those.  Those, doctrine and practice, actually are accessed through the imagination and are influenced by the affections.   What I’m talking about here is the same truth that Jonathan Edwards wrote about in his Treatise on the Religious Affections.

IMAGINATIONS AND AFFECTIONS

What I’m saying is that total apostasy is less likely by far to come through the destruction of spoiling of doctrine, but through idolatrous and covetous imaginations and inordinate or misplaced affections.   I believe both the Old and New Testaments bear this out.  Old Testament Israel knew the right things, but they were drawn away by their lusts, and then they just adjusted their worship to fit with they liked.  They were what and how they worshiped.  While harping about fundamental doctrines and essentials and really mocking those who don’t take that same position (never proving almost anything about what they mock — mockery is their proof like the apostates of 2 Peter 3), evangelicals (and I’m using a broad brush) have themselves contributed to the corruption of imaginations and perversion of affections.

Don’t get me wrong.  Fundamentalists are guilty too of what I’m talking about here, just less than evangelicals.  They thought something bad was happening even if they weren’t good at explaining why they were against it.  At some point fundamentalists became guilty of the same things as evangelicals, just in a different way.  Much of America for much of its history had the instinct against what evangelicals offer as worship and thus promote far worse in the private life.  Even the most conservative evangelicals still are the apologists for the apostasy about which I speak.

Among separatists, keeping the imaginations and affections pure, by which someone gets his doctrine and practice, has been often called “personal separation.”  Sure, many fundamentalists have abused this and replaced a biblical type of personal separation with a placebo.  I have heard evangelicals blame their problems on these fundamentalists, who have replaced real personal separation with their false front city.  They have all the props of personal separation without really believing it and practicing it.

For years, I have pounced all over fundamentalists for what they have done and do.  However, evangelicals should take responsibility for their own problems that they have uniquely caused for themselves, instead of putting the blame on others.  This kind of whining is common in evangelicalism, also a part of an widespread effeminate quality to the movement.  Who might be just masculine posers totally misdiagnose the effeminacy they recognize.  I’m sure most of them don’t even see it anymore.  Fundamentalists have their own problems, but they are not the reason for the problems in evangelicalism.

For sure, not knowing who Jesus was and not keeping His commandments were serious misunderstandings or violations as seen in the gospels.  You can’t think that He’s only a prophet and be right. If you believed He was merely a Galilean, who grew up in Nazareth, that wrong view would leave you without light and life.  You have missed the doctrine with that assessment.  That isn’t often what Jesus targeted. He zeroed in on their love, as did Paul.  You really didn’t know God, know Jesus, unless you loved Him, and you don’t love Him like your boyfriend or girlfriend.  That’s not how someone loves God.  But people get messed about what love is in evangelicalism, because they have turned it into sentimentalism with their methods and techniques and dogged defense of their freedom.

AS SEEN IN THE BIBLE

The Bible talks a lot about loving God, not just being right about Who He is and then laying out all His rules and doing them.  No doubt you’ve got to do them if you love Him, but love is what He requires.  And if you don’t love Jesus, you don’t love God.  This was how Jesus presented it.  A barrier to love includes love for other things, which are fueled by lust.  A non stop diet for lust that is pushed by evangelicalism diminishes God to people.  They use the fleshly lust as a lure, as if they can use it to get people into church, where they’ll then love God.

The apostle Paul said at the end of 1 Corinthians that you’re cursed if you don’t love Jesus, and love was the problem for Corinth.  At the beginning of the epistle, you see it start with how they got people.  The Greeks wanted wisdom and the Jews wanted signs.  God alone wasn’t good enough. Evangelicals with this incredible genius know what Americans want.  They want rock music, so they take sacred lyrics and put it to the lustful tunes and rhythms, and then call it worship.  They do other things like this too, but it has been going on for awhile.  They bridged the gap between the sacred and the profane.  What Christians wouldn’t do for entertainment and recreation are now permissible — all of these things — and 1 Corinthians 1 is violated.  The problem, of course, is that the attraction becomes something other than Jesus.

Evangelicals say they are about Jesus, but Jesus is understood through the imagination.  He has to be the actual Jesus, not the one people want to be their Jesus, someone who Jesus knows isn’t Him. They gladly take him, the impostor.  He fits a particular doctrinal profile, but he doesn’t have the sacredness, the holiness.  He’s common and profane in fitting with the taste of each postmodern individual.  And you can’t judge that, because if you do, you’re judging a non-essential.   Their Jesus is the Jesus compatible with their lust, with their desires, where He really is diminished below what they really love, which is idolatry.  They have convinced themselves now that this is Jesus being Lord.  It isn’t.

Much more in the New Testament declares what I’m writing about here, what evangelicalism does, including the conservatives, to warp Jesus and belief in Him, to change the gospel.  They say this is all non-essential or non-scriptural, like there is very little meaning to anything.  They mock it.  They say personal separation is really all about wearing wire rimmed glasses and whether you’ve got or not got pleats in your pants, because they really have nothing to say.  Christianity is going down the drain with them.  They gave up on this long ago to keep their numbers to look like God was working.  As the world moved and got worse, they went with it.

Peter had the same concern back in the first century when he wrote his first epistle (1:14): “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.”  He saw people who were being fashioned, conformed, or formed by their former lusts.  The point of the Christian life isn’t handing a tidy doctrinal statement, but it is to be holy as He is holy.  If you understand biblical holiness, then you know that it is a transcendent life, not a mundane one that looks like everyone else.  Later on in the next chapter, Peter writes, “abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.”  If you were a Christian, you had different interests than a worldly person.

The evangelicals have designed much of their program around giving people things of the world, of course with the idea that Jesus and doctrine will get in there too.  Those things don’t mix.  A different assessment of Jesus will occur.  He will be seen through this worldly prism, so it’s no wonder they don’t live holy.

I could go on here, making many other points, including about a false spirituality that comes from feelings choreographed by the evangelical presentation, but I think you get what I’m saying.  Doctrine is serious, so is practice, but the affections and imaginations are where people are getting another Jesus to believe in, and then belief isn’t belief, because it is absent the ordinate affection for Him.  What they say is either a disputable or non-biblical or non-essential is actually where the challenge to the gospel is most.  If they want things to change, they need to start with more than the doctrine and practice themselves, and then separate over those things too, the things that they mock others for teaching, practicing, upholding, and separating over.

You’ve got a Bible, and now it must look like you represent it.  Anyone reading the Bible will see that Jesus said the following in John 14:12:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

Earlier in John 5:20, He had said the following:

For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.

These are the two places anywhere in the King James Version of the Bible where you get the terminology, “greater works.” A lot of expectation for a person and a church has been woven by teachers from these two English words from the King James.  I know Jack Hyles got much distance out of “greater works,” enough that I remember thinking about those two words especially as they related to him.  He got thousands.  Others got thousands.  I mean, we’re supposed to experience “greater works.”  Should I expect it?  I just googled Hyles and “greater works,” and here’s something he wrote (dictated to his secretary) in Exploring Prayer with Jack Hyles (you’ve got to love that title):

I find myself not wanting to do greater works than Jesus, but it is in the Bible, and I must face it. I must confess that I never understood that verse completely until recently when I was on an airplane. I had no commentary; I had no books with me except the Bible/ I was reading this passage. Suddenly it hit me! I shouted, “I know what that means! Praise the Lord!” 

The fellow beside me said, “What did you say?” 

I said, “Praise the Lord! Glory to God! I think I just found the meaning of John 14:12.” 

With a puzzled look on his face he scratched his head and went back to his reading. 

Now let us examine the petals of this lovely orchid.

Then he examines the orchid.  It couldn’t be a tulip, like the 6 points of the orchid — actually four points here.  He’s a four point orchid man.

Also, if he shouted on an airplane today, authority would likely get the marshal involved and turn the plane around.  Shouting, as you know, is a sign of ‘Holy Spirit filling.’  Good exegesis “just finds the meaning” like that earnest pastoral candidate.  No process.  No study.  The Holy Spirit just tells you, you dictate it to your secretary and how could it be wrong when you have 100,000 in Sunday School?  His seat mate just scratched his head after he screamed on a plane (yawn) — just an everyday occurrence.  Something short of a one year old screaming is annoying, but when a grown man screams, I look for the oxygen mask to fall out and I’m searching for the flotation device.

 I’ve never been in the Charismatic movement and I haven’t ever looked for its theologians, but the “greater works” terminology works like the elastic clause, the necessary and proper clause, of the Constitution to a Charismatic.  You drive through a mack truck load of signs and wonders through “greater works.”  Reinhard Bonnke (not in my opinion a very Charismatic name) wrote a book length work, greater than other works on greater works, entitled, Even Greater.  Greater works, of course, to Bonnke are the signs and wonders that he and others are “doing” today.

On the other hand, Hyles couldn’t say they were the same thing that Bonnke would say, even though if you read him and others like him, you would find that they claimed miracles too.  Hyles focuses his miracles on numbers, the great number of souls “won,” which translates to the size of your Sunday morning crowd.  That’s a miracle, like Pentecost to them.  Guys like Hyles throw their numbers at you and when you question, their greater works make them safe from criticism   Many knew he was a fraud then, said it, and were criticized. I understand it.  It still happens today.  It doesn’t seem different to me.  Much is out of a false view of unity too, which we’ve exposed many times here.

So, what are “greater works”?  You’d think the Bible talked about this a lot, the emphasis the Charismatics and revivalists put on it.  When you look at John 5:20 and 14:12 in the original language from which the King James Version was translated, you see that the word “works” isn’t even the word.  “Greater” is the Greek word mega, which has a wide range of meaning.  It doesn’t have to refer to power.  It doesn’t even mainly refer to power.  Then you have toutos, the near demonstrative pronoun, so the literal translation is “greater things.”  If you look up the two Greek words, it’s not twice those occur, but six of them (Mk 12:31, Jn 1:50, 5:20, 14:12, 15:13, and 3 Jn 1:4), five obviously by John the Apostle.

In Mark 12:31, love God is the greater thing.  In John 1:50, Jesus said Nathaniel would see greater things than seeing him under the fig tree.  In John 5:20, Jesus said that the Father would show greater things through Jesus than that crowd was seeing.  John 14:12 mentions the Apostles doing greater things than the works that Jesus had done.  If you go through John, Jesus refers to His own works, the antecedent of “things” in John 14:12, several times.  Jesus’ work in John 4:34 is the Father’s will, and after that, that is what Jesus’ work is in John 5:36, 9:4, 10:25, 10:32, 37-38, and 17:4,   In John 6:29, Jesus says God’s work is believing on Jesus.  As the Father sent Jesus to do His work, so Jesus sent us to do it, which is evangelism or discipleship.  In John 15:13, the greater thing is love.  In 3 John 1:4, the greater thing is God’s children walking in the truth.  We can’t assume that “greater things” was greater miracles or greater numbers of conversions.

When Jesus said the Apostles and then believers would do greater works, that didn’t nor does it assume signs, wonders, or miracles.  It doesn’t assume greater numbers.  Hyles doesn’t make any clear explanation that it is a gigantic or bigger church.  If we would assume anyone, it would be that there would be a greater extent of obedience, more wide-ranging and more of it.  We shouldn’t assume it is miracle.

Early in John, John 4, Jesus said in verse 34:  “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.”  In John 10:25, “Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?”  The works for which they were willing to stone Jesus, we know, were not the miracles.  Jesus said they loved those.  They wanted to stone Him for His claims, for His testimony.  He said He was the Messiah.  He preached the message of the kingdom.  The work of God that the Father sent Jesus to do, Jesus passes on to His own in John 20:21, “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.”  There is so much to say here, but Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:17 writes to that church, “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

The Apostle Paul was sent to preach the gospel.  At the end of Jesus’s physical life, He told His followers, preach the gospel to everyone.  Jesus got to Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Perea — really amazing for three years, very diligent.  He told us to keep going to the uttermost parts of the earth. Paul said that he worshiped God in the gospel (Rom 1;9).  The Great Commission was make disciples, going, baptizing, and teaching.  As far as Jesus got, much more has been done since then, greater works.  Jesus worked Himself out of a job.  He left the work for us to do.  You are doing greater works if you in your 50 year ministry you go further than Jesus in his three years.  Will you do that?  That is something that you can do, and it has been done, we know.

Don’t be discouraged.

Part One

As God looks at what churches and their leaders are doing on earth, He doesn’t have some special antagonism against the name Hyles, because the name Hyles somehow means something nasty.  No. It is Hylesism, and unbiblical philosophy and practice and methods that also must proceed from a bad theology.  All the former must come from the latter.  You can’t disconnect philosophy, practice, and methodology from a belief system.

For instance, someone may say that he believes man is a sinner, but if he approaches men with naturalistic means, as if the carnal methods will bring the solution, he is still falling short of a sufficient belief in man’s sinfulness.  A method that strays from the Bible, emerging from human intellect, robs God of the glory.  If God’s glory does not abide in the groundwork of one’s theology, wrong philosophy, methods, and practices will surface all over the place.  The first relates to pride with its elevation of self and the latter brings self glory.

Like Charismatics covet showy spiritual  manifestations, which are actually fleshly ones, Hylesism covets its own showy spiritual manifestations in church size or numbers of salvation decisions. Covetousness and self-glory are idolatry — man worship.  God isn’t being worshiped, which is why often we see celebrities spring out of this mammoth system.

One big name arises one generation after the next with the next iteration of church growth fads — the bus, the big day, the band, the big screen, the flamboyant website, the worldly music, entertaining speaking, the building design, the comedy or drama, buffet of activities and groups, giveaways, greeters, refreshment, fun, casual atmosphere, folksiness, programs, and brochure layout.  It might be the relevant facial hair or brick stage facade or seating arrangement or architecture or campus development.  It is one thing after another.  God just isn’t good enough.  The amazing message of scripture isn’t sufficiently attractive.  There is some strategy not found therein, that you need, that you can use, that will work — you should try it, because someone did it and it succeeded.

Those who would surely hate Hyles still embrace Hylesism, the ideology.  They wouldn’t ever want it to be thought to be that, even if that is what it is.  They might not say it was that, but it is at least the same primordial ooze from which Hyles emerged.  Evangelicals trace their way back to the identical abyss.  The trajectories of Billy Graham and Hybels and Warren terminate at the roots of the same family tree.

Advocating Hylesism doesn’t mean supporting every aspect.  Anyone who uses it is tolerating it. Those who tolerate also endorse.  You can say that you don’t endorse all of it, but where do you draw the line once you’ve acquiesced on any of it?  You’re not trusting God any more at a point that you think is necessary for your success.  Maybe you’ve sold out.  Think about it.

Who are Hylesists, who at least permit or allow or consent to Hylesism?  I know very few churches and leaders who are not.  Almost everyone capitulates somewhere and it makes a difference.  They’ve got to do things.  They’re required now.  They’ve got to use a rock band, yes, even if it is “soft rock,” the type of music the beatles played.  Someone stands and performs like a pop singer and they are calling this worship.  The people on their own take it even further.  That’s some of the most conservative of it.

The Hylesism that is almost identical to Hyles still occurs.  Men still follow Hylesism, but they don’t have the same stigma since Hyles died and Jack Schaap went to prison.  There is still a huge Hyles network that hasn’t repudiated what Hyles was about.  Some of them have morphed, added characteristics of worldly evangelicalism and Charismaticism into their arrangement, but it’s still Hyleism.

Those called conservative evangelicals adopt Hylesism to varying degrees.  It’s important to them.  Hyles himself would never have allowed some of what they do, but the strategy is the same.  They’ve done it so long, they don’t even recognize it any more in many cases.  Some in their midst do, but they tolerate it to get along, adapt, or comply.

I follow the twitter feed of conservative evangelicals.  Many are fully engaged in pop culture and it doesn’t matter.  Their churches use it and accommodate it.  They don’t give it up.  They are tuned in and plugged in.  They hardly miss a thing.  Everyone knows in their churches that it’s approved.  Even if the churches are complementarian, egalitarianism thrives.  The manifestations of lust are everywhere — the way unmarried couples interact, entertainment choices, and immodesty.  The intellectualism of the church is one of the traps.  Their church is scholarly too, as smart as anyone else around, something to be proud of.  All of this lends itself to attracting and keeping a bigger crowd.

In the first post, I defined Hylesism as “using human means to attract a crowd for evangelism.”  What is called evangelism isn’t always evangelism.  The gospel itself was abandoned in many of these churches long ago.   However, in others, many, the methods dilute and convolute the gospel.  In the evangelical churches, their affections are so distorted, that the Jesus of their imaginations is someone different than the Bible Jesus.  They can’t access Him through their polluted imaginations or affections.  Everything they hear funnels into their understanding through that grid.

Churches and leaders are very sensitive to the accusation of Hylesism.  It’s got to be admitted if it’s going to change.   Typically they argue that silence equals permission.  If you accuse them, they say that you are adding to the Bible.  You can’t say that they can’t do what they do.  They’ve got permission because the Bible is silent.  The most preferred argument is marginalization.  They’ve been more blessed, they’ve got more connections, they’ve got more access, they’ve been more published, and they’ve seen more success, so they’re right.  I think quite a few know that God’s Word is the basis of judgment and that argument is wrong.  It won’t stand up to God’s inspection in the end.

There are so many fruits of Hylesism that a whole post would be required to list them all, and that without explanation — just listing them.  Not all the churches have preaching like Hyles.  The preaching is better in some.  The churches that might repudiate Hyles put up with Hyles-like preaching, preaching that takes on the primary characteristics of Hyles preaching without Hyles entertainment ability.  I hate it.  If you say the preaching is like Hyles, they’d be more upset that you said it was like Hyles than they’d be angered by the bad preaching.

What I’m describing with reference to Hylesism is where we’re at as a country.  It’s where the church is at as the church.  Church, what church really is, isn’t good enough any more.

You’ve heard the expression, the best of both worlds.  As an expression, it doesn’t need to be wrong, because someone can live in the country close to the city and enjoy the best of both.  I get that. Almost everyone in the world though acts like there are really two worlds.  There is the world they live in, which is acceptable, albeit not real, but fictitious, and then another world, the biblical world, which is actually the only world,  To them the real world is a kind of ideal world, an impossible one and, therefore, not required.  They choose to live in a fantasy world.  They do.  God is still going to judge them for what they do in His world, the real one, the only one.  He’s not going to judge them based upon how they operate in their own fictitious world.

What happens, of course, is that people have to alter the truth about God Himself, invent a new god, who does accept their fictitious world, and inhabits that world in their imaginations.  He’s fine with them.  The problem is, it’s not Him, this one they’ve made up.  The one judging their fictitious world is a false God.  At some point this all breaks down into false worship, because they are not worshiping the one and true God.  There is no such thing as a brain in a vat, but they are living like they are brains in vats, projecting on this world the one in which they live, which doesn’t happen to be the one in which they live.  They’re only living it in their brain.

From the perspective of the world, there is the world of engineering that builds bridges and skyscrapers according to certain laws that it cannot transgress without consequences.  Then there is the world of their own morality that can infringe many other natural laws that are as concrete and inviolable as the laws of physics adjudicating the construction of infrastructure.  However anyone argues, he is assuming laws of logic that exist to the same degree that man is separated from God because of his sin.  There are not two worlds, but the world lives like there are.

I’ve been thinking of this two world thought for awhile, but what brought it to my mind is especially when I have seen it all over in evangelicalism and in fundamentalism.  Let me give you an example that I observed recently.  A segment of evangelicalism says they believe in complementarianism and eschew egalitarianism.  They write books about it.  I would like to take them at their word in those instances.  I’m very happy that they would want to support in writing male headship of a home and distinct roles for the man and the woman.

Sometimes in the real world, the only world, male headship does clash with evangelical church growth philosophy or technique.  Other times it contradicts their views of the church and of unity.  To make this all work with everything they might want to allow, they right on the spot spontaneously invent their own version of complementarianism that looks just like egalitarianism.

There is a fairly conservative, evangelical Christian talk show host(ess), Janet Mefferd, who got more famous at one time when she attacked the cussing former pastor, Mark Driscoll, because of plagiarism in one of his books among other things.  She got big time support for her putting it to Driscoll again and again.  Several conservative evangelicals fawn over her pounding of Driscoll and treat her like fans for this kind of application of her gender role.  It’s not intended for a woman, but she gets a pass because of her position.  Is this right or even appropriate?

Driscoll deserves negative exposure and repudiation, but do complementarians support this being done by a woman?  Do we need a woman to do it?  Should a women be encouraged to do it or even be placed in a position to do it?  How can an evangelical support complementarianism on the one hand and then cheer her role reversing behavior on the other?  This occurs again and again in evangelicalism, because they have capitulated to their own world, even conservative ones.  Conservatism itself has chosen to do this too.  Rejecting two worlds is at the heart of conservatism, but yet accepting various editions of world has begun to characterize it.

The encouragement of egalitarianism is a small example that is very much on the ground that anyone can see day by day.  Conservative evangelical men, who say they are complementarian, essentially act egalitarian or encourage it.  They are supposed to be giving a clear presentation of the only world, God’s world, to everyone, and yet they don’t because they have sunk to the fantasy, the fictitious.  The real world isn’t egalitarian even if real people construct that fiction in their fake worlds.  Same sex marriage is a mirage.  They swear it.  That’s true too. One egalitarian mirage should not accompany another though if we live in just one world. And yet, they give in again and again, this just an example.

The above type of exposure I make of the two world lie brings upon me the wrath and disdain of conservative evangelicals, as seen in this tweet by Phil Johnson, giving his best evidence against it.

@DrOakley1689 Bob Wilkin and Kent Brandenburg in the same week? It’s your own personal purgatory.

— ٩(ಠ益ಠ)۶ uosuɥoſ lᴉɥԀ (@Phil_Johnson_) August 13, 2015

I’m not a thing like Bob Wilkin, who preaches a false gospel in my opinion.  He is living in his own world.  However, Phil Johnson must live in mine, because it is the only one.  He can’t defend his view of the world, so he just mocks me in order to poison the well.  That is enough  proof for his adherents.  Phil Johnson never gives me biblical reasons why he opposes the things I preach that he denies.  He just calls names.  This reveals the level of desperation in keeping the bridge from the only world that exists to the fantasy one he has erected in his own mind to justify its existence.  You’re in trouble if you even point it out. It isn’t real trouble though.  It couldn’t be, because it’s only trouble in their fantasy world, not in the real world that God created.

***********

I would like add another example for those who are reading here.  I’m right now watching the google hangout as part of the Ligonier, R. C. Sproul work, with John MacArthur.  There is so much for which I’m thankful with John MacArthur.  So much of what he says is good and right.  You’ll hear much helpful.  I wish people would recognize that I say that.  Very few people even in fundamentalism are as strong as him.  However, the host there asked about his relationship with R. C. Sproul.

MacArthur answered that Ligonier and Sproul invited him to a conference many years ago even though he was a premillennialist and they were so kind to him.  Later he talked about lying about choosing a president and figuring which is the best liar between them.  This is confusing to people, because isn’t amillennialism a lie that peverts a third of God’s holy Word?  What about the lie of infant sprinkling that might be the lie that has condemned more people to hell than any other lie?  If you don’t care about the lie of amillennialism and the lie of infant sprinkling and you justify it with your fellowship, your communion, then what is lying?

Bruce Jenner is a liar, but is that a worse lie than amillennialism?  I understand that Ligonier says better things overall than Jenner would, but accepting other lies as almost commendable, at least acceptable.  You can preach against both, but can you fellowship with one of them?  Why?  This is where there are two worlds again — the amillennial world and the premillennial world, the credo-baptism world and the paedo-baptism world.  This accommodation to two worlds influences and prepares people for the two worlds.  People just assume then that truth is relative and whatever world you want to live in is fine.

More to Come

I would not live somewhere if there wasn’t a good church there.  I understand that some of you readers truly do not have a choice.  You can’t move because your husband or father has you in a particular church or at least in area where there isn’t a very good church.  I think that more of you have a choice than you think you do. I believe that your church is the most important factor in deciding where you will live.  As most of you know, people will move somewhere for a job or even for some lesser reason, and then look for a church afterwards, to find there isn’t much of a choice.