Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and
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AUTHOR: DAVID CLOUD OF WAY OF LIFE
BETH MOORE SAYS CHRISTIAN MEN REFUSE FEMALE LEADERSHIP BECAUSE OF SINFUL PRIDE(Friday Church News Notes, May 31, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The following is excerpted from “Beth Moore Challenges Theologian,” ChristianHeadlines.com, May 14, 2019: “Prominent Southern Baptist Bible teacher Beth Moore has ignited a firestorm on Twitter after challenging a theologian who singled her out in a blog post for encouraging women to preach. Owen Strachan, associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, said in the May 7 post he was surprised that both Moore and SBC President J. D. Greear support ‘a woman teaching and preaching to the corporate body.’ He followed that up on Twitter the next day, saying, ‘One thing we [complementarians] have massive agreement on: women do not preach on Sunday to the church. Doing so is functional egalitarianism. We will not capitulate here.’ Complementarians embrace the Scriptural view that the role of men and women is distinct and complements one another within the home and church ... Moore responded to Strachan with a series of tweets. ‘Owen, I am going to say this with as much respect & as much self-restraint as I can possibly muster. I would be terrified to be a woman you’d approve of. And I would have wasted 40 years of my life encouraging women to come to know and love Jesus through the study of Scripture. I am compelled to my bones by the Holy Spirit—I don’t want to be but I am—to draw attention to the sexism & misogyny that is rampant in segments of the SBC, cloaked by piety & bearing the stench of hypocrisy....’ She wrote, ‘I had the eye opening experience of my life in 2016. A fog cleared for me that was the most disturbing, terrifying thing I’d ever seen. All these years I’d given the benefit of the doubt that these men were the way they were because they were trying to be obedient to Scripture. ... Then I realized it was not over Scripture at all. It was over sin. It was over power. It was over misogyny. Sexism. It was about arrogance. About protecting systems. It involved covering abuses & misuses of power. Shepherds guarding other shepherds instead of guarding the sheep.’ For Strachan and other complementarians, though, that path to serving is clearly defined in Scripture and is not negotiable. ‘For a woman to teach and preach to adult men is to defy God’s Word and God’s design,’ Strachan wrote in his blog post. ‘Elders must not allow such a sinful practice; to do so is to bring the church body into disobedience against God.’”
BETH MOORE’S PROMOTION OF CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER (Friday Church News Notes, May 31, 2019, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Beth Moore’s contemplative prayer probably explains the “revelation” she describes in the previous report: that in 2016 her eyes were opened to see that men who refuse women preachers are sinfully proud. While it’s probably true that some men who are opposed to women preachers are proud, the rejection of women preachers and women church leaders is clearly taught in God’s Word and is therefore a doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Bible’s Author. “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Timothy 2:11-14). In rejecting this doctrine and attributing it to sin, Moore is communing with devils. Moore, a Southern Baptist who is influential with a broad spectrum of evangelical women, is very much on the contemplative bandwagon. She joined Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, and other contemplatives on theBe Still DVD, which was published in April 2008 by Fox Home Entertainment. Lighthouse Trails issued the following discerning warning: “In the DVD, there are countless enticements, references and comments that clearly show its affinity with contemplative spirituality. For instance, Richard Foster says that anyone can practice contemplative prayer and become a ‘portable sanctuary’ for God. This panentheistic view of God is very typical for contemplatives. ... The underlying theme of the Be Still DVD is that we cannot truly know God or be intimate with Him without contemplative prayer and the state of silence that it produces. While the DVD is vague and lacking in actual instruction on word or phrase repetition (which lies at the heart of contemplative prayer), it is really quite misleading. What they don’t tell you in the DVD is that this state of stillness or silence is, for the most part, achieved through some method such as mantra-like meditation. THE PURPOSE OF THE DVD, IN ESSENCE, IS NOT TO INSTRUCT YOU IN CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER BUT RATHER TO MAKE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY HUNGRY FOR IT. The DVD even promises that practicing the silence will heal your family problems. ... THIS PROJECT IS AN INFOMERCIAL FOR CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE, and because of the huge advertising campaign that Fox Home Entertainment has launched, contemplative prayer could be potentially introduced into millions of homes around the world. [On the DVD Moore says], ‘... if we are not still before Him [God], we will never truly know to the depths of the marrow of our bones that He is God. There’s got to be a stillness’” (“Beth Moore Gives Thumbs Up,” lighthousetrailsresearch.com). In her book When Godly People Do Ungodly Things (2002), Moore recommends contemplative Roman Catholics Brother Lawrence and Brennan Manning. Of Manning she says that his contribution to our generation “may be a gift without parallel” (p. 72) and calls Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel “one of the most remarkable books” (p. 290). She does not warn her readers that Manning never gives a clear testimony of salvation or a clear gospel in his writings, that he attended Catholic Mass regularly, that he believed it is wrong for churches to require that homosexuals repent before they can be members, that he promoted the use of mantras to create a thoughtless state of silent meditation, that he spent six months in isolation in a cave and spends eight days each year in silent retreat under the direction of a Dominican nun, that he promoted the dangerous practice of visualization, that he quoted approvingly from New Agers such as Beatrice Bruteau (who says, “We have realized ourselves as the Self that says only I AM ... unlimited, absolute I AM”) and Matthew Fox (who says all religions lead to the same God), and that he believes in universal salvation, that everyone including Hitler will go to heaven. (For documentation see “A Biographical Catalog of Contemplative Mystics” in the book Contemplative Mysticism: A Powerful Ecumenical Glue, available from www.wayoflife.org.) Beth Moore is the blind leading the blind, and her vast popularity is clear evidence of the apostasy of the Southern Baptist Convention.
