November 5, 2010
FRIDAY CHURCH NEWS NOTES
November 5, 2010, Volume 11, Issue 45 (continued)
GRAPHICAL PDF VERSION
The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this does not imply an endorsement. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.
THE EMERGING CHURCH’S FEMALE GOD (Friday Church News Notes, November 5, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)
Phyllis Tickle, an Episcopalian lay “Eucharistic minister and lector” and a Senior Fellow at Cathedral College at the liberal Washington National Cathedral, is an influential voice in the emerging church and the contemplative prayer movement. Tickle promotes non-verbal contemplative praying. She says, “The whole business of entering prayer WITHOUT THE VEHICLE OF WORDS is very important, for it allows the spirit to flow freely with the spirit of God, and does not have to articulate what is happening until one comes out from prayer” (“Praying in Color: A Conversation with friends and authors Sybil MacBeth and Phyllis Tickle,” http://www.explorefaith.org/books/macbeth.html).
Wordless meditation is not biblical prayer; it is a pagan practice that is a recipe for demonic deception. Those who practice it are invariably led into heresies. It should not be surprising, then, that Tickle believes in a female God and calls the Holy Spirit “he or she or it.” She teaches that by partaking of the Lord’s Supper the believer is feeding God and reinvigorating the Holy Spirit, whatever that means.
Speaking at Rob Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, she said: “God is both male and female. God is both father and mother. ... There is more than one thing under the name of God, and it is both male and female. ... As we are about to do that [take the Lord’s supper], let us remember what we are doing. We not only celebrate that death and that promise of return, but we are feeding by eating God--which is what we are doing here--by eating the body and blood of our God, we are feeding the God within us.
For as we take those elements the Spirit also feeds within us and is reinvigorated as he or she or it is by our faith” (Tickle, “A Treasure We Don’t Understand,” May 3, 2009). Phyllis Tickle, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and that crowd are worshipping idols. The Shack, a popular book in emerging circles, also depicts God as a woman.
DARLENE ZSCHECH TAKES SENIOR PASTOR JOB (Friday Church News Notes, November 5, 2010, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)
After 25 years as worship leader at Hillsong Church, Darlene Zschech and her husband are taking the position of co-pastors at Church Unlimited.
Both churches, located near Sydney, Australia, are associated with the Australian Christian Churches, formerly Assemblies of God. Zschech will continue her involvement with Hillsong music projects. One of their themes is the importance of ecumenical unity. [!!] She says: “There is a new sound and a new song being proclaimed across the earth. It’s the sound of a unified church, coming together, in one voice to magnify our magnificent Lord” (from the cover to the album “You Shine”).
This statement ignores the New Testament’s warning that the end of the church age will be characterized by apostasy and spiritual confusion rather than faithfulness to the truth (i.e. Matt. 24:3-4, 11, 24; 1 Tim. 4:1-5; 2 Timothy 3:13; 4:3-4; 2 Pet. 2:1; Jude 3-4).
Zschech and Hillsong performed for the Roman Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney on July 18, 2008. Pope Benedict XVI was present and conducted papal mass on the last day of the extravaganza.
These are days of great spiritual deception and apostasy, and central to that apostasy is the charismatic movement. Its visions are false; its doctrine is corrupt; its practice is confusion; and its music is worldly. It is one of the glues of the ecumenical movement. It brings together Roman Catholics, Protestants, Baptists, and Pentecostals in an unholy union of truth and error.
Bible-believing churches that use charismatic contemporary praise music will find that this music brings a philosophy that will soon change the character of the church. We need to worship the Lord God in spirit and in truth continually, but we do not need the unscriptural contemporary worship movement as our guide.
BEWARE OF THE FALSE TEACHER HENRY WRIGHT AND HIS TOTAL HEALTH PROGRAM (Friday Church News Notes, November 5, 2010, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)
Henry Wright, pastor of Pleasant Valley Church, Thomaston, Georgia, and head of a ministry called Be In Health, claims that all sickness has a spiritual root. Such things such as aneurysms, strokes, hemorrhoids, and varicose veins, for example, are supposedly caused by fear and anxiety.
He misuses both Scripture and medical science to “prove” his points. His web site says, “We are dedicated to the eradication and prevention of all spiritual, psychological, and biological disease,” and, “God’s perfect will is that you don’t get sick.”
To the contrary, the apostle Paul himself had a sickness that God refused to remove (2 Cor. 12:7-10). The wise apostle concluded, “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
The word “infirmities” is the Greek word “astheneia,” which is elsewhere translated “disease” (Acts 28:9) and “sickness” (Jn. 11:4). The faithful preacher Timothy was physically weak and often sick, and Paul did not offer him a perfect health program (1 Tim. 5:23). Paul had to leave his co-worker Trophimus behind in Miletum because he was sick and God did not heal him (2 Tim. 4:20).
One distraught wife wrote to Rick Miesel of Biblical Discernment Ministries in November 2002 and explained how that her husband had attended Wright’s seminar and had come home “saying that sin is a demon, cancer is bitterness, diseases mostly have spiritual roots, anything less than 70 years on this planet is a curse, etc.”
Wright said at the seminar, “Beware when you get home because Satan will try and use the person closest to you to make you doubt what we have taught you.”
There was no warning at the seminar to test everything by God’s Word, to “prove all things” and to hold fast only to that which is good (1 Thess. 5:21; Acts 17:21). To the contrary, the man was taught to receive the teaching without criticism. When his wife called him and asked if he was using biblical discernment, he gave the very foolish and dangerous reply, “I will not slander these people by disagreeing with them.”
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