ERLC argues for nuance in teaching boys and girls how to behave.
(Capstone Report) Gender should be nuanced, and Christians should remember that even in the Bible gender is presented as “fluid and relational,” according to an essay published by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to the essay posted on the ERLC’s website, “It’s important to affirm ways in which gender expression is fluid and relational—even in the Bible.”
Ponder that for a moment.
The point the author is getting at however seems far different than what that sentence implies. The author amplifies his thought by pointing out how different people like Jacob and Esau showed both were men, but one was hunter and the other prepared a stew.
Pastor Artur Pawlowski, one of the Canadian pastors arrested for defying lockdown orders and whose church was shut down and locked tight by the government of Alberta had his garage set on fire by an arsonist Friday night, all while his children slept inside the nearby home.
Pawlowski, made famous for kicking the police of of his church while screaming at them “Get out Nazi Gestapo!” recounted the incident to Rebel News.
“Around 11-11:30 p.m, my wife she hears some commotions. And firefighters I mean so many cars and police. And first we thought ‘okay maybe they’re coming for me in the middle of the night.’ But no, they actually came to put the fire down. So my wife comes out, I joined her, and we see this big smoke coming and I thought ‘oh neighbor’s house is on fire’
So we went around and behold it’s our house, it’s our garage that is on fire..so I had to kind of keep moving a little bit closer and closer and closer until I was able to at least record a little bit of the of the craziness. So someone set our property on fire. Someone wants us dead.
..They want me dead and they want my children that I mean this is this is this is shocking…
Someone put fire into a blue bin that was with cardboard and that’s how the fire started. They pushed the bin to the door, the wooden door of the garage and the whole garage started to burn. So that’s how it was done.
But they don’t know who did it, of course. they don’t know what caused (it) there was a lighter or just someone holding the lighter and putting the bin on fire. You know, no one knows. Only god knows at this moment how was that and the villain.”
As if you didn’t need more proof that the crazy-as-rats-in-a-coffee-can charismatics at Bethel church have lost their minds and are routinely teaching bizarre and perverse doctrines, one of their pastors is now claiming that Christians have doppelganger “angels twins” that look just like them that flitter throughout the world doing random acts of kindness and benevolence. [Great, does that mean I don’t have to? -Ed.]
Eddie Tait, Associate Leader of Bethel Austin, told the congregation during a May 2 service:
I’m sitting in Nebraska, we’re at a pastor’s meeting, and this woman comes up to me at lunch and she says, ‘I just want to let you know how much your church has blessed us.’
And I’m thinking, ‘oh that’s awesome. Shane and I were speaking, we must have really blessed her in this meeting, that’s great,’ and she’s like, ‘about a few years ago…I was in Amarillo, Texas, I was at a prophetic conference, and during the break for dinner a group of people from Bethel Austin came up to me and said ‘we’re kidnapping you and taking you to dinner.’
And she’s like, ‘Why?’ They’re like, ‘God highlighted you.’ And she said they took her to a pizza place; she’s a vegetarian…and the person asked, ‘Hey, what do you want to eat?’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m a vegetarian,’ and they’re like, ‘Great we’re going to eat what you’re eating because we want to honor you.’
And so she goes, ‘I’ve never felt more loved and honored by a group of people…and I wasn’t at church I was with people at a pizza place.’
I was like, ‘Wow, do you know any of, you recognize the name of anybody?’ She goes ‘well the one was Joaquin…’ So I call him, and I relay this story and he says, ‘Uh I haven’t been in Amarillo since 2004.‘ Like, she said this was like two or three years ago.
We start talking and he says, ‘You know, last week I was praying about my angel that used to be seen, and I was telling God I haven’t had that happen in a while.’
I want more of those stories. And I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna find out if this was his angel.’ So I hang up with him and I pull up a Facebook, and I go over and I say, ‘Hey, is this the guy?’ And she goes, ‘Oh yeah, that’s him. That’s Joaquin.’
Not content to share one lie, he gives a few more examples, but not before telling the congregants to “not try to use the word of God to discredit an encounter of God” by telling them to approach his stories with openness, “Come at it with a heart to disprove instead to receive.”
Of course, there are so many questions. Do we likewise have evil demonic twins doing random acts of chaos and mischief? What if our angels get caught on CCTV at the scene of a crime? Do they have the same fingerprints we do?
The fact that this pastor is teaching that it’s completely normal for gangs of angels that look just like their human counterparts to be engaged in these activities is more of the same nonsense, and more of the same poisonous fruit coming out of Bethel church.
Update #1: James Coates’ lawyer, James Kitchen, responding to Calgary Police Service Statement, says that Pastor Stephens was never served with a copy of the court order and that Alberta Health Services is straight-up lying.
A third Alberta Pastor has been arrested and thrown in jail on account of breaking pandemic gathering rules, which limit church services to 15 people inside, or 5 people outside. [Where is “the science” on that? -Ed.]
Pastor Tim Stephens of Fairview Baptist Church in Caglary, Alberta, follows Pastor James Coates and Pastor Artur Pawlowski in being arrested for violating a a Court of Queen’s Bench Order that requires organizers of events to comply with public health restrictions.
Tim Stephens, a reserved man with 8 children, was arrested following the church service Sunday. He hugged his family and friends before being led away and put into a police car, surrounded by a half-dozen officers and multiple police vehicles. There is no word yet on how long he is being incarcerated for or if he’s being allowed to post bail.
For weeks Stephens has indicated that he will not comply with these health orders, writing on the church website:
Restricting the church to 15 people — which essentially restricts the church from gathering — is against the will of Christ and against the conscience of many who desire to worship the Lord of glory according to his word. Our actions are borne out of theological commitments to the Lordship of Christ and his instruction to the church as revealed in Scripture…The consequences may be severe. But we stand before Christ rather than bend before consequences.
In a public statement, Calagry Police say that they have “received repeated calls from concerned citizens regarding church services held at Fairview Baptist Church over the past several weeks,” and that after being served an injunction and told to stop, “the Pastor acknowledged the injunction, but chose to move forward with today’s service, ignoring requirements for social distancing, mask-wearing and reduced capacity limits for attendees.”
When asked last week by Rebel News what happens next, Stephens was reflective but unbowed.
It’s not the civil magistrate’s job, the government’s job to regulate or restrict our worship and so we’re really coming together as peaceful citizens to worship Christ because he is worthy. In terms of what that means, now I don’t really know. The government has obviously turned up the heat on churches trying to discourage them from gathering together. I think they don’t understand that Christians are committed to follow the Lord Jesus Christ regardless of the consequence.
Pray for this man, his family, and the church.
Bonus content: These are the first minutes of last week’s sermon, where Pastor Tim explains why their gather for worship even when it is outlawed by the governing authorities. A primer for un-arrested pastors everywhere.
World Vision’s online course designed to equip churches and pastors to understand “racial justice” is a hotbed of Critical Race Theory and unbiblical syncretism, infecting the organization and resulting in the wokefication of World Vision and a denial of some core tenets of the Christian Faith.
Discovered through their monthly “May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice” course, we will be doing a 5-part series exposing the extent that CRT and pagan syncretism – the fusion of different systems of religious beliefs with Christianity – has compromised the mission of the famed NGO.
World Vision has been driving leftwards for a while now. Famously back in 2014, they changed their hiring practices to allow men and women in gay “marriage” to be hired and considered for employment, then quickly reversed course under the pressure and backlash, causing the late heretic Rachel Held Evans to weep in peevishly lament. Likewise in 2019, when Enemies within the church reported that the international branch of the evangelical organization had funneled money to the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), an organization with ties to terror groups, including al-Qaeda.
In the summer of 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, World Vision announced they would be hosting a free one-year online course to educate on social justice and put on in partnership with “leaders who represent a diverse group of churches and our friendships with experts and some of the pioneers of this work.”
The organization currently has over 115,000 pastors, priests, deacons, and Christian faith leaders trained through the Word Vision program and suggests that because of their experience in equipping local churches, they believe that they are “positioned to act as a convener and host for this experience.”
Some of their stated goals are to have church leaders “be prepared to lead conversations about racism in America,” and to “engage with one another to dismantle racism and change the landscape of the church,” and comprises a series of sessions between guests and host.
The first few entries have been brought to us by @wokepreachertv, who also provided the snippet and transcript. In this case, from Session 7 of the course, Flaming progressive and ecotheist Randy Woodley explains that Christians missionaries sent to do the Lord’s work not only in some ways mistreated indigenous people, which is true, but also that the missionaries were wrong to tell the Native tribes to repent from their pagan spiritual and animistic ways, given that they were already loving God before they arrived.
One of the things we need to understand about the theology that was planted in this soil, if you will, by the early settlers is that they did not deem the Native people as having anything spiritually worthy of keeping.
…All the early charters that were sent from England over here…all said that they had a mission to, and they would say, like, “the savages,” or “the heathen,” things like that. So the assumption was already that God is not here, that God is only present with us, and so what we need to do, then, is teach them our religion and get rid of any sort of cultural baggage or spiritual beliefs. In fact, they would even say, even missionaries would often say that they follow the devil.
…As Native people heard this, they were already very spiritual. They were people who understood that God is powerful, that God is love. That they have personal experiences and even covenants with God. There were ceremonies based on those covenants, there were stories built around those. And in particular, we all have our covenant story of the land that was given to us so long ago.
It’s sort of like that verse in Acts 17:26-27 that says: From one man he created every ethnos or nation, so that they might reach out and find God. And so those places, God placed our different Native peoples in.
And yet the people who came saying, no, they are the ones that are believing in the real God, destroyed our relationship with those places by removing us, by taking away those stories, by taking away those songs and those ceremonies, and the very foundation of what it meant to follow God here already.
And so we were very close. And as my adopted [inaudible] mother used to say, when the missionaries came, we were very close to the message. We only didn’t understand how much God loved us because we didn’t know the story of Jesus.
But you look at Acts 17…Paul quotes Epimenides, one of the Greek philosophers’ poets. He knows their stuff, right? So this is not a lazy guy. This is a guy who understands the people he’s talking to and the worldview and their culture…And Paul just simply said, “Let me explain who this unknown god is.”
WPTV, adding some commentary, notes that in vv. 29-31, “Paul does not merely “explain” who God is but commands his audience to repent from the false beliefs they hold.
Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead (Acts17:31).
None of this surprising, as Woodley is thoroughly compromised. A writer for Sojourners and a signer of the Boston Declaration, this nonsense echoes his previous work and statements where he has claimed among other things that missionary work “doesn’t merely mean sharing a truth, it means to invite people into a shalom community,” and that “there is no place we can go where Jesus is not already present and active. Since Jesus is active everywhere, the first responsibility of mission among any culture is not to teach, speak or exert privilege but to discover what Jesus is already doing in that culture.”
He has further said that “God expects two conversions out of every missional encounter: 1) our conversion to the truths in their culture, and 2) their conversion to the truth we bring to the encounter” and that that “our humility as servants of Jesus should naturally lead us to first convert to the truths in their culture wherever we see Jesus is at work.”
Kyle J. Howard has taken to social media, explaining that he only listens to worship music from people he personally knows and trusts, on account of how triggering and traumatizing it is, and that he finds ‘white evangelical worship’ and ‘reformed worship’ to be the worst offenders and especially problematic.
This new revelation is thoroughly unsurprising, as Howard over the years has described in uncomfortable detail how much spiritual trauma he has been traumatized with while being traumatized by anti-trauma experts who racially traumatized him by leaving him even more traumatized than the last time he was being spiritually and racially traumatized.
Howard reveals how he can 100% do without ‘psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs’ and usually only reads the lyrics- because they aren’t being sung by someone he personally knows and trusts.
He describes worship music in church as very triggering and that it’s one of the reasons people don’t attend church. He reasons that if they went to a church where they were spiritually abused, then they’ve come to associate songs like ‘In Christ Alone’ or ‘Amazing Grace’ that may have been sung there with spiritual abuse, making it impossible for them to sing or even be around people who are singing those songs.
Even instrumental music without lyrics can be traumatic for some, as it brings them back to the spiritual abuse they endured at the hands of the church. In perpetual PTSD, Howard explains that if he listens to music, it’ll only be from ‘pre-conversion era music or artists.’
Of course, because it’s Howard, you knew the had to be a racial component to it.
As far as what can be done, Howards notes that white Christian worship is anchored in celebration rather than lament and that people ought to consider more lamentable black worship.
Furthermore, he says that pastors need to “cultivate an environment where it’s “okay” for a member to come after worship time” and that people should not be shamed or judged for not wanting to join with the church in corporate worship, but rather encouraged to miss the first half of the service if listening to their Christian brothers and sisters worship Christ is to triggering for them.
Howard has previously stated that black people ought to consider leaving their church and finding one where “black worship” is sung in order to alleviate the suffering and trauma that stems from the white worship experience.
In a song sure to send shivers down one’s spine, a charismatic prophet sang a prophetic worship song over a congregation, starting somewhat benign before making a hard left turn into very, very, very dark territory.
David Herzog, the singer of said song, is a popular charismatic speaker and is the founder of David Herzog Miniseries. For years he hosted a TV show called the Glory Invasion and now travels to New Apostolic Reformation conferences as a popular speaker, being well-known for insisting that in order for “heaven to open up,” people need to tithe to show their faith and to “get ‘er open.”
Near the end of a recent message, however, Herzog busts out into an impromptu song, explaining that by singing and decreeing these things, they will create their own “glory cloud” so long as they sing their own song in the spirit. He says not to “logically and analytically” try to process what he says to do, but rather to “just do it, and think about it later.”
Then, the song!
New realms of glory in this place New realms of glory are in this place I see the swirls of glory. I see the angels going round and around and around and around the throne
Singing holy holy holy, in his glory glory glory I feel like I’m walking on streets of gold Walking in a new realm. Walking in a new realm Walking in a new realm I’ve never been before
Moses’ rod turns into a snake and eats up the magician’s rod snake. Who’s your daddy now? Who’s your daddy now? The bigger they are the harder they fall
Some heads are gonna roll Because Jesus so delicately, lovingly, sweetly, tenderly, decapitates my enemy So lovingly, so tenderly, so delicately decapitates my enemy He’s so lovingly
As I worship him he starts loving on me He starts decapitating my enemy While he was loving on me I didn’t know he was decapitating my enemy
I was just hugging him and loving on him and receiving his love and affirmation. I heard a noise. I wasn’t sure what it was I think it was a head that rolled And suddenly my enemies were gone Nowhere to be seen Cause I was standing in the glory
A church in Kentucky has launched a survey on their website in a continued effort to investigate charges of sexual abuse against CCM artist Chris Rice, perhaps best known for writing the Cartoon song, after one of their previous male students came forward and alleged that Rice sexually assaulted him on several occasions 20 years ago.
Tates Creek Presbyterian Church in Lexington announced back in in October 2020 that they comissioned GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), a Virginia-based non-profit organization run by Boz Tchividjian (brother of unrepentant, notorious womanizer Tullian Tchividjian) that helps Christian groups confront sexual, psychological, and physical abuses. (In the interests of full disclosure, Protestia and formerly Pulpit and Pen are financial donors to GRACE.)
With the survey now pinned, its purpose is to “collect any and all relevant information consistent with the scope of this investigation” and “assist GRACE in identifying individuals who may have relevant information that GRACE could contact in order to schedule follow-up interviews relevant to this investigation.”
The 19 question survey covers questions like the age of the victim, what association they have with the church, how they know Rice, what interaction they had with him, what they’ve seen or experienced, whether or not they reported it to the church how the church treated the allegation, whether they feel confident that the church will treat allegations of abuse seriously, and then the option to add further thoughts.
Tates had an incident last year when one of their past youth pastors named Brad Waller was accused of engaging in impropriate sexual activity with several students between 1995 and 2006. In that case, the youth pastor was rubbing and touching his student’s feet and tricking them into rubbing their feet on his face, filming it, and then using it for auto-erotic stimulation. The Church hired GRACE, they investigated, found it credible, and the youth pastor confessed.
As a result, Tates takes allegations of abuse seriously, and even though Rice has not been employed by the Church for nearly 20 years, the pastor rightfully feels it is their duty to investigate these charges that happened to their students under their care. They released this statement, which can be found in full here:
On multiple occasions between 1995 and 2003, a musician named Chris Rice was hired to lead worship at our youth and college retreats. Mr. Rice was not an employee or member of our congregation…
Through his involvement in our ministry, Mr. Rice developed close relationships with multiple students.
Last week, one of those male students called to inform me of allegations that Mr. Rice had sexually assaulted him on multiple occasions. While these remain allegations at this point, we are treating them as credible because of the source of the allegations and corroborating evidence we have discovered.
Immediately, I informed the police and called a meeting of our church elders. At that meeting, the elders unanimously voted to once again contract with GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) to conduct another independent investigation into these new discoveries. We are determined to uncover the extent of the alleged abuse, along with any way our church and the leadership at that time may have been complicit.
While Rice hasn’t been relevant in the music space for a long time now, he was active and a big deal in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. He is best known for writing the Michael W Smith hit “Welcome to Our World,” releasing albums Deep Enough to Dream and Smell the Color 9, and releasing the controversial (at the time) “Cartoon Song.” Rice also was nominated for and won several Dove awards.
At the time of writing, these are only allegations, and Rice has not publicly commented on them. He has however deleted all his social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
(Rerformation Charlotte) Self-proclaimed “Christian” rap artist, KB, who is part of the Reach Records group along with other well-known names like Lecrae, Trip Lee, Andy Mineo, and Hulvey, recently published a cartoon video blaspheming and mocking Jesus.
The cartoon that he dubbed “the Southside Jesus,” presents Jesus as a “gangsta” walking on water as others stand around laughing and making fun of him. “Is the fish kissin’ yo’ feet?” one of cartoon characters asks the caricature of Jesus. “They might as well,” “Jesus” responds, laughing and acting stupid.
The entire cartoon displays a total lack of reverence and fear of God and who he is. Making an idol of Jesus to fit their own description, to justify their own lifestyle choices and habits. This is the epitome…
To continue reading, and to see the video, click here
Editor’s note. This article was written by Jeff Maples and published at Reformation Charlotte.
Voddie Baucham appeared on The Sword and Trowel (linked below) with Jared Longshore and Tom Ascol to talk about his new book Fault Lines, as well as Resolution 9, and the SBC and anti-racism. He also discussed how he was doing health-wise, letting the podcasters know that he was doing ok.
I haven’t been doing much or really having to do anything yeah the last couple of months. (Ascol: Just trying to recover, I mean that’s a lot.) Well first just try not to die, and then just you know, trying to get through all this, trying to recover. You know, I’m happy to say I’m doing much better. The road to recovery from this is a long one. Today I’m actually five weeks post-op from open-heart surgery, which is a pretty brutal thing to experience, to go through. God’s been gracious and God’s been kind and I’m, you know, on the road to recovery and looking forward to being restored to complete health and getting back at it.
Ascol finished up the health questions asking him about his book launch and the impact it had on his schedule and sales.
You know it’s been interesting because we were supposed to leave Jacksonville – again all of this stuff was in the works long before we knew what was going on with my heart – and then I had the first procedure in February, and my goal after that was ‘I got to be ready April 5th to start this tour,’ and there were a couple of things that they wanted to do. A couple of things that they wanted to look at, just to make sure.
And they did one of those the day before we were supposed to get out of here, and that’s when the wheels fell off, and that’s when they immediately decided, ‘oh we’re admitting you, we’re doing open-heart surgery.’ So instead of turning around and leave and go do all the tour and everything, I ended up having open-heart surgery during the time that I was supposed to be out promoting the book.
But you know, in God’s providence, like you said, the book just exploded even without promotion. First of all, because of an incredible group of people who signed up to be part of the launch team. So a lot happened before the book launched, and then just because of word of mouth and everything else that has been happening. And so we ended up debuting it at number #7 on USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers list, and it’s been incredible.
Open heart surgery generally takes 6 to 8 weeks to recover, with 80% of healing happening in that time. After this, a cardiac rehabilitation program is paramount, which works on strengthening the heart and building endurance, progressively getting more and more active. Around 10 weeks, regular exercise can resume, and most people are fully recovered within 3-6 months.
