I am thankful for every sinner who came to know the Gospel of Christ through the preaching of Oral Roberts, and I heard him preach about salvation in ways that were true and powerful. But I can only lament the prosperity theology that he leaves in his long shadow.
My thoughts exactly...
Al Mohler gives the best summation of Oral Roberts' life and ministry:
Tim Keller and John Malcovich - Separated at birth?
Surely they are on opposite sides of the table on almost every issue, but I think there's definitely some weird similarity going on here.
Twelve Months of Being Reminded of God's Mercy and Love
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12Happy Birthday Amelie!
A Little Honesty
From one of the most honest pro-choice articles I have read:
When life does not begin at conception, the question of when it does begin becomes a big gray blur. I once took a class with a guy that said abortion should be legal up to age 26. After all, that is when the brain is fully formed. Only then, he claimed, are you completely human.
And then there was Harris, who wrote about performing an abortion on a woman who was 23 weeks along and then immediately running to deliver a premature baby of 23 to 24 weeks. "I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother’s uterus," she writes, "but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and unspeakable."
When life does not begin at conception, the question of when it does begin becomes a big gray blur. I once took a class with a guy that said abortion should be legal up to age 26. After all, that is when the brain is fully formed. Only then, he claimed, are you completely human.
The Arrogance of Being Antihistorical
When I was a younger, thinner, adolescent, bleach blonde (awful I know) teenager, I would have conversations with my pastor during which I would rail about the silliness, injustice, and unbiblical nature of the church's practices. And I would go on and on about how I wanted to do church like it was done in the New Testament --like the early church did it. You see, at some point church got off track (probably around the time that Rome adopted Christianity). It's how we got the crusades and the protestant-Catholic wars of the reformation and the coldness of hyper-calvinism and the arrogance of Manifest Destiny and the closed-mindedness of fundamentalism and the scattershot of denominationalism and ...Baptist deacons! I thought I was humble and revolutionary (Pop Evangelical culture told me to be that way after all), but little did I know, my view was quite arrogant for several reasons.
1. I falsely assumed that church had been done wrongly for almost 2000 years. You can look at history one of two ways. Either it's chaotic, and God has said how things should be done, and we are stuck until we can get it right, or God has been doing something in the earth for 2000 (much more than that actually) years. In my youth I looked at history and the events that have happened and assumed that since God hates sin, then he has hated everything that has gone on for the last 2000 years. I don't think that any more. God is telling a story, and He's been working for 2000 years through sinful men who trusted in Him for righteousness. God has been working, and it's not always pretty, because we're sinful, but he has absolutely been weaving history for His glory and our good.
2. I falsely assumed that there is only one way of doing church. Acts 2:42-47 is definitely the biblical in method for doing church in my mind. I took that description of the authentic expression of church to be very narrow rather than thinking that its proper application is actually very broad. A church in China is going to look very different culturally than a church in Georgia, and that's great as long as both are doing Acts 2:42-47. My mistake was assuming that a church in 1998 had to look culturally like a church in 60 AD. There is more than one way to accomplish what was going on in Acts. God has made it that way so that all peoples can worship and glorify him in the culture and time that they live in --in the culture and time that He has placed them in.
3. I falsely assumed that I was special. Let me throw down some Tyler Durden right here. "Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else." Now I'm not trying to get into a discussion about the Imago Dei here. I understand the value of the image of God, but the same image of God that I possess is the same one that all men possess. I am not special. It's arrogant to assume that I am the one individual in 2000 years that has figured out how to do church rightly. Other guys have come before God countless times with broken hearts and read the Bible. God has told them to do things, and they have obeyed. We're all sinners an we've all gotten it wrong, but in obedience to Christ, we've all gotten it right. I'm not special. If God wants to make me a Billy Graham or a nameless faceless guy who is forgotten immediately by everyone after he dies, that's God's business not mine. My job is to be faithful. He gives the ideas. He gives the strategies. He gives the words. He gives the grace.
I say all these things, because there are guys out there who are like I was. Don't assume that there's just one way of doing things. Just because you do "simple church" or have a $200 million building doesn't mean you've got the market cornered. Don't assume that you're the only one who has it right. Don't assume that church history has nothing to teach you. God is telling a really big story. Let's play our part and look at the whole story. Maybe he put Nicaea and Calvin and Luther and Fundamentalism in history for a reason. Let's rely upon Him and his Word.
1. I falsely assumed that church had been done wrongly for almost 2000 years. You can look at history one of two ways. Either it's chaotic, and God has said how things should be done, and we are stuck until we can get it right, or God has been doing something in the earth for 2000 (much more than that actually) years. In my youth I looked at history and the events that have happened and assumed that since God hates sin, then he has hated everything that has gone on for the last 2000 years. I don't think that any more. God is telling a story, and He's been working for 2000 years through sinful men who trusted in Him for righteousness. God has been working, and it's not always pretty, because we're sinful, but he has absolutely been weaving history for His glory and our good.
2. I falsely assumed that there is only one way of doing church. Acts 2:42-47 is definitely the biblical in method for doing church in my mind. I took that description of the authentic expression of church to be very narrow rather than thinking that its proper application is actually very broad. A church in China is going to look very different culturally than a church in Georgia, and that's great as long as both are doing Acts 2:42-47. My mistake was assuming that a church in 1998 had to look culturally like a church in 60 AD. There is more than one way to accomplish what was going on in Acts. God has made it that way so that all peoples can worship and glorify him in the culture and time that they live in --in the culture and time that He has placed them in.
3. I falsely assumed that I was special. Let me throw down some Tyler Durden right here. "Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else." Now I'm not trying to get into a discussion about the Imago Dei here. I understand the value of the image of God, but the same image of God that I possess is the same one that all men possess. I am not special. It's arrogant to assume that I am the one individual in 2000 years that has figured out how to do church rightly. Other guys have come before God countless times with broken hearts and read the Bible. God has told them to do things, and they have obeyed. We're all sinners an we've all gotten it wrong, but in obedience to Christ, we've all gotten it right. I'm not special. If God wants to make me a Billy Graham or a nameless faceless guy who is forgotten immediately by everyone after he dies, that's God's business not mine. My job is to be faithful. He gives the ideas. He gives the strategies. He gives the words. He gives the grace.
I say all these things, because there are guys out there who are like I was. Don't assume that there's just one way of doing things. Just because you do "simple church" or have a $200 million building doesn't mean you've got the market cornered. Don't assume that you're the only one who has it right. Don't assume that church history has nothing to teach you. God is telling a really big story. Let's play our part and look at the whole story. Maybe he put Nicaea and Calvin and Luther and Fundamentalism in history for a reason. Let's rely upon Him and his Word.
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