Someone once said that the church was forever changed and narrowed once it was forced to defend itself. Since then, it has cozied up with kings, rulers, presidents in order to seek worldly protection, validation, and advancement of its agendas. But it doesn’t matter if the church made friends with kings, Czars, Kaisers, dictators, presidents or emperors; the outcome was bad, bad, bad. When the friends in high places fell, they took the church with them. The fact that many countries still view missionaries as an extention of western power and culture is really sad and unfortunate. The fact that evangelicalism is viewed as a wing of the Republican party is even sadder.

That should take you right to him and then you can ask to be approved as his “Friend.”

The last 2 are of intrest to me.

The first of the two states that megachurch evangelism will continue on but will not remain faithful top the gospel. – Amen. That is correct; itching ears seeking to be scratched is all that is.

The second of the two contains some remarks on the pentecostal movement. That this particular denomination does not have major problems. That is something I would disagree on.

The pentecostals, may well not be as ‘dry’ as certain other denominatons yet they do have some serious error. Infact many, not all, of the present day heresy ‘performed’ within the banner of Christendom come from pentecostals. [Especially in the good ol' US of A.]

I am open to true fellowship with anybody from any particular facet of labelled Christianity beacuse lets face it – when persecution comes [and it will] it will be those who do not deny that Jesus is the ONLY way to God which we will embrace as brother or sister.

My fear is that many who speak muich of Jesus now will run for the hills and never speak of Him again. That or say something silly like Joel Osteen.

Ready for GR to flex his prodigious command of the obvious ?? Here goes:

IT SELLS. always has (in some circles) and always will (seems like the circles dont’ want to go away) . There is, it seems to me, a weird admixture at work here: there is the allure of gold, riches, wealth, status etc. to those in the church (and I mean spiritually born again ones); and then there is the same allure to those who are in churches. There is lots of ‘bleed over’, of course. The church WILL, of course be cleansed, because the LORD WILL have a clean bride, and HE has HIS ways……the churches, insititutions, however, well……..stay tuned.

For a snapshot of some of this , rewind the Byron Pitts/Joel Osteen interview on 60 minutes, a garish example, I admit, and some version of this is played out in even more ‘orthodox’ ev. churches.

LORD help us all to embrace the low position and choose servanthood instead of status, people instead of position, eternal things instead of wood, hay , and stubble. ……while there is yet daylight.
nice post, Mr.Ox

Greg R