While at initial blush this may sound mildly harmless, Visher is effectively taking the church to task for daring to come alongside and discipline church members who are openly defying the scriptures and God’s law by “doubting the wrong tenet of our faith” or “reconsider their own gender or sexual identity.”
In context, it’s talking about the notion of “queer Christians” and those with differing views on homosexuality, transgenderism, and gender identity. To use a real-life example, a woman comes out as a lesbian and says she doesn’t think the Bible condemns it, or a married man comes out as transgender and comes to church in drag. What does the church do?
While Vischer argues that this should not result in the church viewing the person as a “them” that is doing anything wrong, this in fact is called “sin and rebellion” and produces “leaven” in the body. If it remains unchecked or accepted, it will leaven the whole lump. Rather than purging the evil from among a congregation, Vischer instead wants to “get rid of its mentality.” He has no concept of the notion that “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth,” and that the Church elders ought to do likewise.
It is not loving to allow someone to remain in their sin, but rather the loving thing to do is to chastise them in order to bring them to repentance. The judgment is love. The rebuke is love. The church discipline is love. The shunning is love, and drawing them back and welcoming them into the body after they have repented is love.
Despite all his talk of “in” and “out” and “us” and “them,” 1 John 2:19 makes this very clear “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”
Vischer concludes with an appalling, intellectually dishonest statement: “Not saying doctrine doesn’t matter, just saying love overall.”
Actually, you are, Phil. You are.
[Editor’s note: This is what happens when you spend too much time talking to tomatoes…]
Joshua Harris, author of I kissed dating Goodbye and well-known apostate recently sat down for an interview with Nadia Bolz Webber, a tattooed, self-described “Bull-Dyke” and host of The Confessional Podcast.
Nadia, the former pastrix of House for All Sinners and Saints (which the church body refers to as an acronym – HFASS – and they pronounce it “half-ass” – an ELCA congregation). She left the church a few years ago and was replaced by a gay man married to a drag queen. Other than being known for her vulgarity and crudeness, she has been in the news for explaining that she would like to melt down all purity rings and form them into a vagina statue in honor of Gloria Steinem, along with advocating for the use of “ethically sourced porn.”
Naturally, Josh Harris would be right at home on her podcast, who himself has been on a bit of roll. Considered one of the most famous apostates in the last 50 years to publicly repudiate his faith, the LGBTQ advocate recently took to Instagram where he praised Cardi B’s song WAP, explaining that it’s “basically the biblical book of Song of Solomon set to music” and pledging to block anyone who disparages her or her music.
He likewise explained that he as an atheist feels “closer to Jesus when I’m pissing religious people off,” and by and large has been praising people who deconstruct their faith, explaining that he does it because he still “cares about Christianity and what happens to it.”
The two are a great fit.
In an interview with Bolz-Webber, who seemed as satisfied as a cat who got into the cream that the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye was knocking it down, Harris explains that prior to his apostasy, he wrote the book after an encounter with God and pledged to cut out his sexual sins, while at the same time pledging to be even more radical than most speakers on the subject.
I went on a church retreat and had a very powerful encounter with God, where you know, I just was like, I want to be serious about God, I want to serve God, and this dating relationship kind of embodied the holdout of submission to the Lord. And so I broke up and I felt so much guilt around, you know, dry humping her, touching her boobs, saying that I loved her, and that we would be together forever and then breaking up. I basically kind of came back. It was like this prodigal son moment where all of the ideas about dating and betrothal and courtship that my parents had been pushing on me, that I had been completely rejecting.
Writing the book brought him fame, and he shares how proud he was that people were listening to him and that he was gaining wealth and influence, such as appearing on James Dobson’s program, something his dad had never done. Harris gives a brief overview of the book, while explaining that the whole time he was abusing scripture and taking it out of context.
The main message of I Kissed Dating Goodbye was…if we want to be prepared for marriage and make the most of our single years, then dating is a distraction and can even be damaging, because we end up practicing an insincere love where we use people and we put ourselves in the backseats of cars where we’re tempted to have sex, and we end up focusing so much of our energy on being a boyfriend or being a girlfriend that we’re not actually preparing to be a healthy adult and we’re not ready for marriage.
And so it was making a very strong argument, really misusing scripture, taking scripture out of context, using stories and examples that were so overhyped and appealing to emotions, but basically making a strong argument that dating is a negative thing. And if we want to be really on fire for Jesus and serious about serving him, we will kiss dating goodbye until we’re actually ready to pursue marriage.”
Harris would write several follow-up books on the same theme, including Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship where he describes how he met, courted, and married his wife, whom he later divorced.
Incidentally, his ex-wife, Shannon Bonne, is writing a book about her experiences within what she describes as an “evangelical cult” that left her with PTSD-like symptoms.
Bolz-Webber tells Harris that the book was rife with false promises and pushed the lie, “If we just don’t have sex until we’re married, then the sex is going to be so much better. And they went through so, so many feelings of shame, and so much repression, and so much guilt about their impulses.” Harris readily agrees, exhaling that he heard so many stories of people who experienced that, and that “My regret when I think back on all of that is that I didn’t see the flaws and the massive problems in the book sooner and that I didn’t listen to people who were trying to share those stories.”
He explains further:
I look back there were some blogs that started to be written when people were sharing stories. And I just didn’t go towards hurting people soon enough with compassion. And I think I think the wrong motivations there were wanting to please my fan base, the wrong motivations were not wanting to cut off the book royalties that were, that allowed me to enjoy a certain lifestyle and all those kinds of things. Like it’s almost like I didn’t want to open that door because it’s because who knows, who knows what’s on the other side of it.
As far as what led him to kick his house of cards down:
It took me going through massive personal pain. It took me failing in my own church in different ways. It took my church melting down for me to kind of hit the pavement and go, maybe I don’t have all the answers here. All of that had to happen before I was willing to start listening to people. And even then, I was terrified.
Well, it actually took anonymous websites where people started sharing their stories and the things that had happened to them for some of these stories to start to bubble up, because that was the only safe place that they could actually do that.
And that was the beginning for me of realizing, oh, my gosh, like we say we’re about grace. But there’s like the exact opposite of grace happening in the actual cultural experience of the church.
And I started seeing how negative that was. And I and that was the first moment where I thought, is my book a part of that?
Essentially I came to a place where I was like, I have to get out of this context. I don’t know how to lead this church out of the problems of thinking, because I’ve been raised in these problems of thinking, I don’t know any other way of leadership and I need to to heal myself.
Harris concludes by sharing his deep regret over publishing the book in the first place, explaining that it has since been unpublished after selling over a million copies and apologizing to anyone hurt by it.
I’m really deeply sorry that those ideas and my misguided ideas about sex, about dating in any way just gave you a wrong idea of your sexuality, of God, and that’s something that I really regret and I hope that you would just experience healing and know that there’s life on the other side of a lot of these wrong ideas, and that’s the journey that I’m on right now personally.
After a bit more chitchat – where Bolz-Webber discusses the damages further, she concludes the interview with a personalized benediction, as she does with all her guests.
So I hope you and everyone else hurt by purity culture have passionately consensual, unselfconsciously joyous, deeply transformative sex.
A Dallas-based megachurch pastor that temporarily stepped down from the 11,000 member church he pastored for 20 years, taking a leave of absence due to his elders calling out the sin of pride in his life and telling him he needs a break and time to deal with it so he can better serve his flock in the future, has resigned from his Church.
8 months ago, Todd Wagner, senior pastor and co-founder of Watermark Community Church in Dallas, Texas, told his congregants on Sunday:
I’ve heard too many times lately that I’m burning up leadership capital, due to more numerous and I would say noticeable expressions of my flesh, and the bible has a word for that: it’s called sin.
It’s with a good conscience, and by God’s grace that I can tell you there is no hidden or disqualifying sin. There’s no sexual immorality. There’s no financial issues that are going on. There’s no physical altercation, there’s no foul language, there’s no holes in the wall. My marriage is as good as it’s ever been…but..and this is a big but… this sin of pride is enough for me to say it’s enough.
I have not been asked to step down. I am not by God’s grace needing to step down but I have been asked and I agree I need to step back, step away and I’m glad. We all agree this is what’s best for me and for you and I think for us.
In a statement to the congregation, the elders explain that longtime elder and staff member David Leventhal resigned his position due to an inability to support Wagner continuing as senior pastor. Leventhal described it as “a loss of trust in Todd’s ability to lead in the role of pastoral elder/senior pastor, which was the direction the elders were wanting to move to.”
Three weeks later, Wagner himself would come to that same conclusion, saying:
We are fully convinced that today, in the interest of Christ, for me and for my family, and for Watermark in this next season, it would be best served by me ending my season in serving as pastoral elder of Watermark Community Church.
In an unusual set of circumstances, however, Levanethal explains that he is still friends with Wagner, and that “Todd and I are good. There is no anger, no wrath.” This is confirmed by Wagner, who even rubbed his back while they delivered the news to their congregation.
Both Levanthal and Wagner, while resigning, aren’t abandoning the church. They still plan on attending and serving the church as members of the body and elders emeritus.
[Editor’s note: there is a reason that pastors leave a church when they resign or retire, and it has to do with letting the new guy actually take charge of the church without the inevitable backbiting that will occur because they can go to the old guys…this is a bad idea…]
For the third week in a row, GraceLife Church had their service in secret – an undisclosed location somewhere within a 100-mile radius of the city.
Whereas previously hundreds of protesters attended the rally at their facilities, driving hours to wave flags, give speeches, listen to speeches, pray, and protest the occupation of a Christian church by a tyrannical government, the property now lies empty and has been empty the last two weeks, attended to only by a handful of security guards and RCMP officers.
Meanwhile, at their undisclosed location that is still being attended by hundreds of people, Pastor Jacob Spenst preached the sermon yesterday from Colossians 3, going through some heady passages about dying with Christ and having our lives hidden with Christ in God.
Based on the backdrops they are using to conceal their location, as well as the rippling effects on the screen and the lighting, the clothes they are wearing and the backround noise, it appears that the last two services have been held outside in the sun rather than indoors.
At this point, all indication is Parkland police officers and Alberta Health Services (AHS) have decided to leave GraceLife Church alone. They have not crashed or disrupted their newest gathering, despite having the ability to do so. They have not released any public statement to that effect and no major media sources have asked AHS why they have backed off, thereby keeping it out of the news. There is currently no political pressure to chase them down and there haven’t been constant complaints from neighbors and concerned citizens at seeing them gather openly.
In effect, the people have been assuaged by seeing a building boarded up while the body belts out praise to the Lord away from prying and watchful eyes.
With no large crowds gathering at their facilities, there have been rumors that the church is going to have a service near their church property soon, but that has not been confirmed by anyone and should be taken as mere speculation.
James Coates is expected to be in court Monday, May 3rd to fight his remaining charge of violating the Public Health Act, where the Justice Centre will argue that the government and law enforcement violated multiple Charter rights and freedoms by ticketing, arresting, and jailing the courageous pastor, and therefore need to abandon the last charge.
The fifty-seventh album in an ongoing series documenting faithful churches gathering for Sunday service in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
One year in, and we’re still doing this.
With some churches still not gathering in-person in these dark times and others being persecuted by the government for being open, these are the congregations who are meeting faithfully at the command of Scripture (Heb. 10:25).
These churches are preaching outside, are back in their buildings having in-person services, or are having drive-through services. Some with masks and social distancing, others without.
All are being safe. All are being obedient to the scriptures. All are loving their neighbors.
Preaching from Ephesians 1:11-14, John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, took a minute to call out Joel Osteen and his rotten book Your Best Life Now taking it to task for the false promise that it presents. MacArthur notes that for For unbelievers, this is their best life. For Christian, this is not our best life, but rather our worse life, because our best life will be in heaven.
Tim Hurd, who does excellent analysis every week and where we pulled the video from, also explains that this is the first time in a long time that the camera person is showing the crowds and congregants, now that California is allowing churches to gather. For many months they had abanded their traditional practice of showing the audience and chose to focus the whole time on MacArthur, so as not to give authorities an idea of who was in their congregation, lest they be subject to fines and punishment.
I was asked this morning if this was my last sermon ever, because it was titled the final blessing. (Laughter) Now I know for some of you that would be the final blessing (Laughter)
It was about a dozen years ago that a popular book came out written by Joel Osteen, the title of the book was your best life now. And it sold about 8 million copies. at the time it’s been 12 years since then and 12 rather dramatic years particularly, the more recent ones.
Such a jarring disturbing shift has taken place in the social order that we have in our country and around the world that I think few people are convinced that this is their best life right now. That would be a hard sell, probably good that the book came out before the current stress began, or it might not have been very popular. In fact there may be a number of those 8 million who would like to get their money back since this didn’t turn out to be what they had hoped
We are now living under dominant deception, dominant lies, hatred, crime anger, selfishness, immorality. A pandemic wickedness that most of all hates the truth and will assault the truth every possible way it can. And that means that the church of Jesus Christ is going to experience things that we haven’t experienced in this country or even in the West ever perhaps. the noble experiment of America have a just and civil society based on biblical morality and firm legal control by government exercising the threat and the reality of punishment to those who violate the law, is essentially over.
Nobody really seems to care to hide any wickedness anymore. Hearts are unmasked while faces are masked. This cannot be our best life! And it’s not going to get better. Evil men grow worse and worse. This is a free fall, not temporary. We’re going down and we’re going down under the sheer force of unbelief and sin unprotected and unrestrained by the judgment of God.
This is not our best life, not by any means to all who are in Christ, our best life is yet to come our best life is the glory of heaven.
A Polish pastor in Canada who went viral after he lit into police officers and Alberta Health Service (AHS) workers who entered his church without permission in order to shut down the service, kicking them out and calling them “Gestapo” and “Nazis” while demanding they get a warrant, found himself in a similar situation after being greeted yet again by an AHS worker and even more police who interrupted the service in order to get access into his building.
Seemingly forgetting how last time went, with them running away with tails tucked between their legs after getting thoroughly scolded and verbally trashed, Pastor Artur Pawlowski of the Cave of Adullam Church in Calgary, Alberta started off the conversation cordially enough. While AHS wanted access during the service so they could see if Street Church was over the mandated 15% maximum, Pawloski likewise barred them entry.
While he does run the ministry Street Church, the pastor points out that the church they are visiting is not the address of the registered organization, and it’s not in fact Street Church gathering, telling them “You’ve got to do your homework first before you come, ok?”
The member of Alberta Health Services explains that they just want to come in for a bit, that they’ll serve the order and then stand at the back of the church as to not interrupt.
This is not an acceptable course of action for the pastor.
No, you can contact my lawyer. My lawyer takes care of this. I’m not interested to listen to any word you have to say. I do not cooperate with Gestapo. I do not talk to the Nazis. You came in your uniforms like thugs.
That’s what you are. Brownshirts of Adolf Hitler. You are Nazi Gestapo Communist Fascists. I do not cooperate with Nazis. Talk to my lawyer. You’re not allowed here. You’re not welcome here, and I’m not going to cooperate with Gestapo like you, ok? So is that fair enough for you? Talk to my lawyer.
The AHS agent interrupts and says, “Let’s at least have a conservation.” Her habit of continually seeking to butt in leads him to raise his voice.
I’m not interested in talking. You see, this is what the Gestapo is doing. You’re coming to the place of worship, to intimidate and to harass, so you can make an appointment – Lady! Listen to Me! You can make an appointment. Another day! You’re Gestapo!
AHS agent: “You don’t need to shout…”
Another day! Not this day! Not this day! Not during the church! You understand!? Make an appointment! Ok?! So Go!
Recognizing the futility of their plan and the fact that Pawlowski wasn’t going to do as they wished, the police consented to leave, while the pastor continued to shout at them and berate them for the dastardly plan of action.
You are sick! That’s what you are. Rightfully so you change your uniforms to black because you are exactly acting like the Gestapo of old.
I cannot believe that after the last fiasco on Easter weekend — that went viral globally — the thugs from @CalgaryPolice have returned, again during a church service, to the same church. With more cops, with more guns. They truly hate Christians and it shows. pic.twitter.com/xSHwyAlWkD
When Kat Kerr, our favorite pink-haired charismatic meme-bot and ‘Dr. Michael Brown-approved prophetess isn’t weaving an unbiblical tale of witchcraft and false theology by claiming that when babies die in miscarriage, sometimes God “puts them back” in the womb that St. Patrick’s mansion is surrounded by giant singing shamrocks, or that heaven is full of 20ft Sasquatch Warriors, ‘Fairies,’ and unicorns, she’s explaining that when Moses hid in the cleft of the Rock as God passed him by, he actually went on a time-traveling adventure.
I do know this, that when God put Moses in the cleft of the rock, God himself put Moses inside him. The cleft of the rock was inside God and all of time is shown in there. God’s been from the beginning to the end, the end of the beginning, it’s all inside him.
So when he hid Moses in there, Moses saw time begin. He saw the garden of Eden, (Shultz “Wow!”) He saw Adam and Eve, he saw that he would not have known about any of that. And so he said “as I pass by, when time passes by..I will show you the “hinder parts”. Those are the exact words. (Shultz “oooh, that’s what that means)”
The “hinder parts” wasn’t God talking about his back, the hinder parts were the parts of time that had gone before them. He showed Moses time before that time, and that’s how Moses knew about Adam End eve and all that stuff. So that was a whole different encounter that Moses had with God.
Steve Shultz joined in with the rest of the 100k viewers who watched this video on YouTube alone, praising Kat and thanking her for this fresh revelation and new insight into the scriptures.
Yeah. Wow okay, awesome. That’s…I never heard that explanation, that the hinder parts means ‘in history’ basically. Awesome! I always wondered where Moses got his revelation about the garden of Eden. That’s what you’re saying, that’s where it happened because he wrote those books. Okay.”
A new documentary film has been released by Tbckawaii , chronicling the malfeasance and dirty deeds done in darkness by Servus Christi, aka Joshua Chavez, as well as cult leader and enabler Jacob Prasch.
Featuring JD Hall, Chris Rosebrough, Justin Peters, as well as our own site, the 44-minute film, according to the press release “Exposes Joshua Chavez as the man (and woman!) behind Servus Christi Ministries, “an exposing that also captures his intensely evil associate and fake Jew cult leader Jacob Prasch in his lies and deception to coverup the career-terminating sins both men threw themselves into in their demonized crusade against Christ and Christ’s people.”
The film is best viewed in High Definition and is available here
LifeSite News has launched a petition against the Vatican for hosting a “Health” Conference on “Exploring the Mind, Body, and Soul,” explaining, “Everything about the conference is rotten — morally, scientifically, and culturally,” and amassing over 22,000 signatures calling for its cancellation.
Despite being populated by Roman Catholics and having an entire variant of their website designed as the “Catholic Edition,” that promotes and reports Catholic news, Lifesite has been notoriously critical of Pope Francis, deigning him to be dangerous and likely one Papal Bull shy of being an anti-pope. As for the problems with the conference, they explain:
Incredibly, the conference organizers have listed huge numbers of globalist and abortion-promoting speakers such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, vaccine developers, Mormon elders, pro-abortion Chelsea Clinton, population control advocate Jane Goodall, a New Age activist, a prominent UK Muslim scholar, and pro-abortion American actress Cindy Crawford, among others.
The logo for the conference is a circle of people linking hands, colored in the tones of the LGBT rainbow flag, and positioned next to the crossed keys and Papal tiara of the Pontiff. In the ten goals listed for the conference, the Pontifical Council for Culture makes no reference to God or the Catholic Church.
Given that LifeSite News focuses on anti-abortion work, they note that the conference is having the following speakers, among others.
The CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna, the former of which produces abortion pills;
The Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Francis Collins, who advocates using fetal tissue in research projects;
Chelsea Clinton, a strong advocate for abortion;
LifeSite concludes their petition with a call to action, noting, “this conference contains such a high concentration of poison for the Faith and the faithful that it should be canceled, not only for the contents itself, but also for the grave scandal it will (and is already) cause” and asking signers to “contact the following Church authorities to politely, but firmly, voice your dismay and displeasure at the anti-God, anti-life, and anti-faith conference which the Vatican has scheduled for the beginning of May. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi – Head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture. Email: cultura@cultura.va; Phone: [+39] 06 6989 3811.”
