Why do modern Christians go out of their way to try to be COOL???

Being cool.

What we need is to make everyone fit and rich and pretty and we’ll attract people to our church. Put on lively music, interesting talks and a general welcoming feel-good factor and we will have a successful, growing church.

We’ll become a popular destination. We will cut out tricky subjects and never discuss problems and above all we will not tell people about the need for repentance. We will even stop talking about the cross.

Eventually, we will talk about Jesus dying as an act of love. However it will not have been necessary because God just loves us. Love Wins see?

But that is NOT the Gospel of Christ. Jesus wasn’t cool. Jesus was executed. His followers were executed one by one.

It has never been cool to be a follower of Jesus. True followers were ridiculed, spat on, persecuted and murdered.

We are not called to be COOL. We are called to be FAITHFUL!

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A new Welsh Revival!!! (?)

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OK.

Yes it’s true I have thrown some dirt around at some of the mess the weird and wacky has produced on the fringe of our Christian Experience. However, I don’t want to be negative all the time. I do want to be positive. The Lord hasn’t got his house full yet!

He has one Son and He loved Him so much He wanted a bigger family. So God adopted many, many more children. People have been praying and prophecying a revival for many years in South Wales. Even now, we are pushing for one … how do we achieve it?

More importantly, how do we sustain it?

Yes, OK, it’s not us that does it it is God, but as Spurgeon once said “Pray as if it’s all up to God and work as if it’s all up to you.”

 

I don’t have any answers here. What do you think we should be doing in order to get where we want to be … in the Middle of a Revival. Indeed, what exactly does a genuine Revival look like? We have seen things in the last few years that have been advertised as such but have not been universally praised. In fact, they have tended to disappear without trace or collapse in scandal.

What happens in a genuine revival?

Let’s get some answers and maybe work through them.

The New Order of the Latter Rain. What is it? Is it Heresy?

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C. Peter Wagner has been called the “Pope” of the New Apostolic Reformation.

Is he leading thousands of Christians away from the Jesus of the Bible?

Is he replacing the Bible with his own apostolic decrees?

Is this another stage in the “great falling away” that Jesus Himself promised would happen before the end?

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The Latter Rain heresy was denounced by the American Assemblies of God back in the 1950’s when the anti-trinitarian William Branham was the undisputed leader of the movement. Amongst his disciples there was one very prominent young leader … Paul Cain. More about him in a moment.

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Peter Wagner is well known among the Charismatic fringe in the United States, with friends among the Vineyard Movement, Toronto Blessing, Pensecola/Brownsville Outpouring and he even drew Todd Bentley into apostolic alignment in a public ceremony with Masonic overtones just days before Todd’s very public fall from grace over public drunkenness and adultery with an intern, Jessa.

But, never mind, Todd had a quicky divorce from the mother of his children and then had a quicky remarriage with Jessa.

So … that’s OK with God now then?

In any event, Rick Joyner put him straight back in the pulpit to fleece the flock.

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So who is Todd Bentley?

You can read about him on Wikipedia. I could speculate wildly about his motivations, his public statements about visiting the third heaven and talking to Abraham and the Apostle Paul. I could wax lyrical about his angelic visitations and how he appears to worship the angels more than Jesus. But that would be speculation.

Lets just deal with facts shall we.

1) A proven serial adulterer. (Jessa was the second intern he had sex with in his marriage.)

2) A proven drunkard.

3) His mentors include Paul Cain and Bob Jones.

So, who are Paul Cain and Bob Jones?

Paul Cain was deeply involved in the latter rain heresy. He has continued to promote those teachings. They have been accepted by many mainstream pentecostal churches to a greater or lesser extent. However, it has become known that Paul is also a practicing homosexual who also has a drink problem.

Bob Jones was the seer in residence for the Kansas City Prophets. He got into some trouble with his church when they found out that he convinced many young women to come to his office for personal prophecy. In order to properly receive the prophecy, the young women had to remove all their clothes. He wasn’t thrown out of the church.

He was just told to keep his head down for a while.

Some mentors huh?

The deeper you look into this, the more troubling it gets. When you start looking into the theology of the latter rain, it starts to get alarming.

Instead of waiting for the return of Jesus to establish His kingdom, we have to do it first. Not only that, if any Christians try to hold to the Bible, they are the first to die. They are part of the old order.

The Kingdom will be established through force of arms. All the warfare imagery isn’t metaphorical. It is literal. The so called seven mountains are to be taken by military force if necessary.

It is Christian Fascism.

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But Jesus said “my Kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my people would fight.”

I’ll follow Jesus. Not these false prophets.

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• Ana Mendez Ferrell: Leaping Tall Mountains in a Single Bound (slaughteringthesheep.wordpress.com)
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When is it right to be Critical of American Hero-Preachers?

Yes.

It’s Time.

Having read some previews of Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” this could well be a defining moment in my own Christian Experience.

Rob Bell is either loved or hated and with good reason. By appealing to younger Christians, he teaches a kind of liberal Christianity with an appeal to the “nice” aspects of God. Universal love and acceptance is the way to go and lets not condemn people for anything!

The Nooma videos have gone round the globe and indeed get shown in many churches, even during the main worship services.

 

I don’t like him, to be honest … so am I biased?

He comes across as quite arrogant and pleased with himself in those videos.

 

But what is his message.

 

Essentially, 2000 years of biblical preaching, teaching and understanding is totally wrong, according to Bell. It appears that he believes that everyone will eventually end up in Heaven. Some will find themselves in Hell for a short time, or longer time, but certainly not forever.

 

Love wins, see.

Hmm.

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I shall have to get a copy of the book and do a critical analysis of what he is actually saying. However, it does look like he has completely abandoned the God of the Bible.

He is essentially saying “Did God really say … ?”

We all know who started that train of thought in the Garden of Eden.

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The wider question, however, is why do we need Hero-Preachers in the first place?

Rob Bell has been called a Christian Rock-Star. This kind of idol should have no place in a protestant Christianity that effectively rejected one form of it when the reformation happened. Are we so lacking in confidence in our own walk with the Lord that we need an idol to look up to? Isn’t Jesus enough?