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On Saturday in Monsey, New York, at least 100 people gathered in the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg. Shortly before 10 p.m., as the rabbi was lighting the candle on the seventh night of Hanukkah, a man with face partially covered burst into the home and began stabbing people with a machete.“I was praying for my life," Aron Kohn, 65, told reporters, “he started attacking people right away as soon as he came in the door. We didn’t have time to react at all.” The intruder stabbed five people, including the rabbi’s son. Other stabbing victims were reported in critical condition. One attendee followed the attacker and got his license number. That number was picked up as the suspect crossed the George Washington Bridge and when police arrested him in New York City early Sunday, he was covered in blood.News reports identified the stabber as Thomas Grafton but others named him as Grafton Thomas, 37, an African American from Greenwood Lake, New York, some 20 miles from Monsey. As the New York Daily News reported, Thomas has one prior arrest “which is sealed, making the bloody machete rampage inside an Orthodox rabbi’s home in which five people were wounded all the more incomprehensible.” The default response, as Daniel Greenfield noted, was meaningless statements “about the evils of hatred.”New York’s Democrat attorney general Letitia James, a former New York City Council member and public advocate, proclaimed “zero tolerance for acts of hate of any kind and we will continue to monitor this horrific situation.”Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted “Anti-Semitism is a horrifying scourge that has no place in America. We must do all we can to prevent, punish and investigate these crimes and protect all who gather and worship in peace.” Fellow candidate Julian Castro denounced “what appears to be another hateful attack,” adding “We must combat the rise of anti-Semitism and hate.”New York governor Andrew Cuomo cited recent attacks, “motivated by hate. They are doing mass attacks. These are terrorists in our country perpetrating terrorism on other Americans, and that's how we should treat it and that's how I want the laws in this state to treat it.”The Hanukkah stabbings follow a series of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York area. Last Monday, as authorities are charging,Steven Jorge, 28, punched a Jewish man, 65, in the face, knocked him to the ground then kicked him repeatedly while yelling “fuck you Jew!” The next day a group of teenagers in Crown Heights knocked a Jewish man to the ground.On Tuesday afternoon, a Jewish man was assaulted by a group of teenagers in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. The teens followed the victim down the street, with one hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. A case of aggravated harassment in Brooklyn was also reported, and none of the cases involved provocation by the victims. That was also the case on December 10 in Jersey City.As NBC News reported, “hate-fueled domestic terrorism motivated the harrowing and prolonged shooting attack that killed three people inside a Jersey City kosher market and took the life of a veteran police detective.” In the “targeted attack,” suspects David Anderson and Francine Graham, heavily armed with rifles, handguns, and a shotgun, “were bent on taking out Jewish people and members of law enforcement.”Police officers Ray Sanchez and Ferenella Fernandez were wounded in the attack. The dead included detective Joseph Seals, a father of five; Mindel Ferencz, co-owner of the grocery; rabbinical student Moshe Deutsch, 24, and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez. Both attackers, found dead in the store, had been associated with the Black Hebrew Israelites, according to NBC, “a movement whose members have been known to rail against white people and Jews.”As Joseph Klein noted, the Hebrew Israelites are part of “a black supremacist group known as The House of Israel,” based in New York. The Southern Poverty Law Center flags “black supremacist groups on the extremist fringe of the Hebrew Israelite movement.” This group believes they are “God's true chosen people because they, not the people known to the world today as Jews.” The group has been defended by the New York Times as innocent street preachers who practice “tough love.”At this writing, any connections of Grafton Thomas to black supremacist groups remain unclear. On Sunday, Thomas pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary. Bail was set at $5 million and Thomas remains in jail.President Trump condemned the “horrific” attack at the rabbi’s home and tweeted: “We must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism. Melania and I wish the victims a quick and full recovery.”Earlier in December, the president issued an executive order targeting anti-Semitism on college campuses.Also on Sunday, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, a former Democra presidential candidate, told Fox News, “An atmosphere of hate has been developing in this country over the last few years. A lot of it is emanating from Washington and it’s having an effect on all of us.”
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One of the groups that believe in these books will refuse to submit or accept the new book, even unto torture and death.The other group will riot and kill until this new book is definitively repudiated by everyone.Guess which is which?The repressive measures of the Chinese government are bad enough. This one, however, is just stupid, as no believers are going to accept the new books. This is likely to blow up (literally) in their faces.“China to rewrite Quran and Bible to fit ‘socialist values,’” by Hamza Saleem, Islam21c.com, December 26, 2019:In recent months, the world has had its eyes fixated on China, anticipating its next moves. The torturous methods inflicted on its Uyghur Muslim minority have come to light, millions of whom are held in modern-day concentration camps….Chinese authorities have constantly denied its “ethnic cleanse” of the Uyghur Muslims since 2017, despite its blatant attempts to create a communistic nation. Instead, they claim them to be “vocational training centres designed to combat Islamic extremism.”…But now China have outdone themselves and said that all “classical religious books” will be “re-evaluated”. It intends to rewrite the Islamic and Christian Holy Books in order to prevent “extreme thoughts” and “heretical ideas” from eroding the country.The instruction for the rewriting of the Quran and Bible was given at a meeting in November held by the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs, which is responsible for all religious matters of the country, so that it may be fitting of the “era of President Xi Jinping,” who despite being President, is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC)….Beijing finalised the decision at the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, calling for a “comprehensive evaluation of the existing religious classics aiming at contents which do not conform to the progress of the times.”The project apparently extends to all major religions, including sutras from Buddhism, with the core aim of them needing to reflect the socialist values and beliefs of China’s leading Community Party….They even highlighted that “Jesus Christ’s parables” will have to fall “in line with the Communist Party, without whom failing which they run the risk of being purged from the bibles available to the faithful.”…
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“Pakistan is a multi-religious and pluralistic country where people of all faiths enjoy religious freedom under constitutional protections,” said Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Aisha Farooqui.And here is the truth about Pakistan. Scroll and see.“Pakistan Fumes After US Keeps It on Religious Freedom Blacklist,” by Patrick Goodenough, CNS News, December 26, 2019 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):____________________________________________________________________(CNSNews.com) – The Trump administration’s decision to keep Pakistan on a blacklist of religious freedom violators is irking the world’s second most-populous Islamic nation, which slammed the move as “unilateral and arbitrary” and complained that its archrival India had not been similarly targeted.“The designation is reflective of selective targeting of countries, and thus unlikely to be helpful to the professed cause of advancing religious freedom,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Aisha Farooqui said in a Christmas Day statement.“Pakistan is a multi-religious and pluralistic country where people of all faiths enjoy religious freedom under constitutional protections,” she said.In fact, Pakistan oversees the world’s most notorious blasphemy laws, with Christians, Ahmadis and other minorities disproportionally affected by provisions that carry the death penalty for disparaging Mohammed; life imprisonment for defiling the Qur’an; and shorter jail terms for insulting Mohammed’s wives, relatives or “companions.”Aside from the legal perils, Pakistanis professing various faiths have been targeted by murderous vigilante mobs or individuals determined to punish purported “blasphemers” in cases where the authorities have not yet acted.As recently as last weekend, a U.S.-educated Pakistani university lecturer in the city of Multan, Junaid Hafeez, was sentenced to death for blasphemy after being accused of insulting Mohammed on Facebook.Hafeez had been imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for six years while awaiting finalization of his trial. His first lawyer was shot dead in 2014 for defending a client accused of blasphemy.After the sentence was delivered, the BBC reported, prosecution lawyers handed out candy to their colleagues “who chanted ‘Allahu akbar’ and ‘death to blasphemers.’”WaiversAccording to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent statutory body, at least 80 individuals are currently imprisoned or in death row in Pakistan after being convicted of blasphemy.Citing the blasphemy laws and other concerns, the USCIRF from 2002 to 2018 called on the State Department each year to designate Pakistan a “country of particular concern” (CPC) under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), but to no avail.It was only in late 2018 that the Trump State Department broke with the Obama and Bush administrations, blacklisting Pakistan as a CPC despite its purported status as an important counter-terror ally.Last Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the renewal of CPC designations for Pakistan and eight other “egregious” violators of religious freedom.” (The others are Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.)It was that decision that the Pakistani foreign ministry was condemning on Wednesday.“This pronouncement is not only detached from ground realities of Pakistan but also raises questions about the credibility and transparency of the entire exercise,” Farooqui said.Despite the designation, Pakistan does not face any immediate consequences for its poor record….
SEE ALSO:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/12/pakistan-muslims-demand
-that-woman-who-questioned-muhammads-conduct-be-put-to-death
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On December 12, 2019, Christianity Today posted an article by “new” Christianity pastor Ed Stetzer, giving a recap of the GC2 Summit that took place on December 6th. The article, titled “Lies Pastors Believe, Part One,” states:Two months of planning for our GC2 Summit on Facing Hard Truths & Challenges in Pastoral Ministry couldn’t have prepared us for what we saw God do this past Friday. Over 400 leaders joined us in person and nearly 80 livestreamed in from all over the world to hear pastors and counselors talk about leadership, burnout, and mental health. If you were unable to join us, you can purchase the full day’s recordings through the GC2 website. They will be available until January 10, 2020.The messages from leaders such as Rick Warren, Derwin Gray, Ruth Hayley Barton, Drew Hyun, David Wang, Philip Ryken, Margaret Diddams, and others reflected the most important messages pastors need to hear today.With at least three of the nine speakers being strong advocates for Spiritual Formation (a synonym for “contemplative spirituality”)—Rick Warren, Ruth Haley Barton, and David Wang (a pastor of Spiritual Formation)—it is clear that organizers of GC2 believe Spiritual Formation is a crucial element of “the most important messages pastors need to hear today.”Spiritual Formation is the entry point for bringing New Age meditation into the church as Lighthouse Trails has time and again documented. The GC2 is yet another example of how Spiritual Formation has become saturated in today’s evangelical church. In fact, it is so integrated now that it’s difficult to find many lines of distinction. Ruth Haley Barton and Rick Warren illustrate this perfectly.Both Barton and Warren have been long-time activists for contemplative spirituality (i.e., Spiritual Formation). Rick Warren began endorsing it with his first book The Purpose Driven Church saying that the movement has a valid message to the church (p. 126) and continued promoting it in The Purpose Driven Life. Ruth Haley Barton, after training at the highly New Age panentheistic Shalem Center in Washington, DC many years ago, moved into Willow Creek to work with John Ortberg. Together the two created the Spiritual Formation/Contemplative Prayer curriculum for Willow Creek. Today, Barton runs The Transforming Center, a contemplative outreach that trains thousands of pastors in Spiritual Formation.The GC2 Summit (which was a conference for pastors and church leaders) focused primarily on “burnout,” “mental illness,” and pastoral care and was at least in part to be a remembrance of Rick Warren’s son who passed away in 2013 from suicide. We cannot even imagine the suffering a family would go through from such a loss, and we would not wish that on anyone is this world. We also recognize that the incidence of suicide by young people has reached epidemic proportions. People are looking for answers understandably. Unfortunately, as with the issue of racism that we recently wrote about, the church is looking to the world (and to the New Age) for its answers.It was no accident or coincidence that GC2 organizers brought in to the discussion of mental health issues prolific Spiritual Formation teachers. They obviously believe that Spiritual Formation is a major part of the answer to mental illness and pastoral burn out. But as we have shown for nearly 18 years, Spiritual Formation, contemplative and centering prayer, lectio divina, Yoga, mindfulness meditation, energy healing, and other New Age-based esoteric experiences and practices will not bring lasting relief for those in mental anguish. Quite the contrary as even secular studies are now showing (see links below).If your church or someone you know is involved with any of the practices mentioned above, first bring yourself up to speed on understanding these issues; then, pray and do what you can to help others who are caught up into something that is very spiritually (and mentally) dangerous. Remind them that the Lord and His Word are what will bring true peace of mind, comfort, and rest for our souls. The world, and worldly carnal practices, cannot give these things.The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18)But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:10)Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise. (Jeremiah 17:14)There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)
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I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. (1 John 2:21)The church is undergoing perhaps her final assault from within, as she has been beset with a new wave of Gnostics who have entered in.What is Gnosticism? One definition of Gnosticism states:Gnosticism was built on Greek philosophy that taught matter was evil and the Spirit was good. . . . So-called “Christian Gnostics” said since matter was evil, God could not really incarnate in a human body; He only appeared in human form and only appeared to suffer, but basically, it was an illusion. . . .Prior to Christianity, the Gnostics taught that man is composed of body, soul, and spirit. The body and the soul are man’s earthly existence and were considered evil. Enclosed in man’s soul is the spirit, a divine substance of man. This “spirit” was asleep and ignorant and needed to be awakened. It could only be liberated by a special knowledge that would be later called “illumination.”1The apostle Paul saw that Gnostic influences were coming into the church, and he addressed them in his epistles (Colossians 2:8-23, 1 Timothy 1:4, 2 Timothy 2:16-19, and Titus 1:10-16).Gnostics (“knowing ones”) redefined the knowledge of God (i.e., what it means to know and communicate with God). They were elitists who sought “deeper knowledge” than that which is revealed in God’s Word. Gnostics despised doctrine, dismissing it as mere head knowledge.They held forth a view of “salvation” which was, in fact, merely a self-realization rather than the rescue from sin and judgment through the blood of Jesus (which the Bible says is the only means of atoning for sin).Gnostics believed that self-realization wasn’t for every Christian but only available to elite Christians who are let in on the secret knowledge (the so-called “secrets of the kingdom” available only to the initiated). The same attacks are presently being launched as dogma also. The “dry, dusty doctrines of another day” are being jettisoned by the “new” Gnostics of today who eagerly covet “new revelation” or “present truth.”Gnostics influenced me early in my walk with Jesus. I was given a pack of Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin teachings and entered into the “deep revelations” of the Word Faith heresy. I learned such “revelations” as the following: the believer is just as much an incarnation as Jesus was, faith is a force, and we all can learn to use the laws of faith to get what we need. (If this were true, we wouldn’t need God; we would simply learn the laws of faith and control it like the force. )The deepest, darkest core of the Gnostic teaching was that we believers are in “God’s class of being.” In other words, “we are little gods” who just don’t realize it yet.According to the modern Gnostics, Jesus Himself was a man of faith upon whom the Holy Spirit came. He knew all of the laws of faith, which was why He could die on the Cross. Anyone could do so if he or she had the same “revelation knowledge” as Jesus.Kenneth Copeland, the Word Faith preacher, is certainly one of today’s Gnostics. Here is a sampling of some of his teachings:Every prophet that walked the face of the earth under the Abrahamic covenant could have paid the price if it were a physical death only. When He said “It is finished” on that cross, He was not speaking of the plan of redemption. The plan of redemption had just begun; there were still three days and three nights to be gone through.2The Spirit of God spoke to me and He said, “Son, realize this. Now follow me in this and don’t let your tradition trip you up.” He said, “Think this way—a twice-born man whipped Satan in his own domain.” And I threw my Bible down . . . like that. I said, “What?” He said, “A born-again man defeated Satan, the firstborn of many brethren defeated him.” He said, “You are the very image, the very copy of that one.” I said, “Goodness, gracious sakes alive!” And I began to see what had gone on in there, and I said, “Well now you don’t mean, you couldn’t dare mean, that I could have done the same thing?” He said, “Oh yeah, if you’d had the knowledge of the Word of God that He did, you could have done the same thing, ’cause you’re a reborn man too.”3What blasphemy! A whole generation of Christians has been swept away and corrupted on the deepest level by accepting this man’s unbiblical teachings.John Wimber was a Quaker who came into the charismatic movement. He eventually taught a famous course at Fuller Seminary, MC510 “Signs, Wonders, and Church Growth,” which launched a “signs and wonders” movement that spread Gnostic teachings throughout the Earth. Eventually, this movement became the Vineyard Fellowship.Of interest is that Wimber taught that a “paradigm shift” in thinking was necessary to bring the church into “power evangelism.” In my book, Weighed and Found Wanting, I explain:Wimber, Kraft, White and Williams, as well as many other Third Wave teachers, have been calling for a “paradigm shift” for some time now . . . A paradigm shift is a total exchange of your world view! . . . What is the shift? It is from a primarily Western, rational, logical, objective point of view to an Eastern, subjective, experiential paradigm. Haven’t we been subtly taught over the years that the Western mind set is cold, calculated, rational, based on just the observable facts? On the other hand, allegedly, the Eastern is mystical, from the heart, and based on experience?Wimber teaches, “We must remember always that the Bible was written in the Middle East, not with rational assumption, that we bring to it as we try to understand it, but with an experiential assumption.”4 I interpret him to be saying that the Bible is not so much an objective book, but a subjective one. Not so much for understanding God mentally, but for experiencing Him intimately.In another tape, Wimber explains: “You tell someone from the Far or Middle East that cotton only grows in warm semi-arid climates. England is cold and wet. [Ask them] Does cotton grow in England? The answer you’ll get is, ‘I don’t know, I haven’t been to England.’” Or, “I can’t say unless I’ve been there, (experience).”5 This is the new paradigm, a down playing of doctrine or “head knowledge” in favour of mystical experience. Another variation of this is, “God is bigger than His written word,” translated, God wants to bring you into experiences that aren’t in the limits of scripture. Just knowing God “doctrinally” is not sufficient, you now must have self-authenticating experiences. All of these attitudes are the end result of the New Paradigm. This is the shift from primarily objective to subjective thinking in our approach to truth.6Perhaps the premier proponent of Gnosticism in the evangelical and charismatic church these days is Bill Johnson, the senior pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California. Johnson’s church is the current version of the Toronto Airport Vineyard and Brownsville Assembly of God pilgrimage sites where people influenced by Gnosticism come to “experience” God.Through Bethel and most notably through their worship team (a popular rock band called “Jesus Culture”), Bethel reaches hundreds of thousands with its Gnostic message of anti-doctrinal, experience-based, New Age-emulating “power” evangelism.I believe Bethel literally represents the final stages of the apostasy, the slide into the occult which I wrote about in the revised version of my book, Beware the New Prophets.Here is an example of this redefinition of Christianity and the knowledge of God in occult terms promoted by Gnostics such as those associated with Bethel. An article in The Christian Post titled “Bethel Responds to Christian Tarot Cards Controversy” reported that Bethel “was accused of working with a Melbourne, Australia-based group known as Christalignment, which claims to have worked with many churches in that country to do such readings.”7 According to the article, Bethel denied using “Christian tarot cards.” The article stated:Bethel admitted the leaders of Christalignment, Ken and Jenny Hodge, are connected with several of their church members as the Hodges are the parents to church evangelist Ben Fitzgerald, and said the church leaders “have a value for what they are seeking to accomplish.”“They (Christalignment) stand in agreement with the Scriptures that all occult practices (like tarot cards) have no place in the Kingdom and should not be used,” Bethel said in a statement.Christ Alignment staff describe themselves as “trained spiritual consultants,” and say on their website that they “draw from the same divine energy of the Christ spirit.”8Christ Alignment staff further stated that,We practice a form of supernatural healing that flows from the universal presence of the Christ. We draw from the same divine energy of the Christ spirit, as ancient followers did and operate only out of the third heaven realm to gain insight and revelation.9Satan has seduced large segments of the professing church into Gnosticism and the occult. Like King Saul in the last desperate hours of his life, some have gone into darkness seeking power and a “word” of comfort, having already rejected the true Word of God.Endnotes:____________________________________________________________
- Mike Oppenheimer, “What is Gnosticism?” (Let Us Reason Ministries, http://www.letusreason.org/Current48.htm).
- Kenneth Copeland, “What Satan Saw on the Day of Pentecost,” audiotape #BCC-19, side 1.
- Kenneth Copeland, “Substitution and Identification,” 1989, tape #00-0202, side 2.
- F.V. Scott, “John Wimber and the Vineyard Ministries” (Passport magazine), p. 19.
- John Wimber, “Ministering in England” Audio Tape (Media Spotlight Report); John Goodwin, “Testing the Fruit of the Vineyard” (Media Spotlight Report, 1990).
- Bill Randles, Weighed and Found Wanting: Putting the Toronto Blessing in Context (St. Matthews Publishing, 1995), p. 81.
- Anugrah Kumar, “Bethel Church Responds to ‘Christian Tarot Cards’ Controversy” (Christian Post, January 6, 2018; https://www.christianpost.com/news/bethel-church-responds-christian-tarot-cards-controversy-212796.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
ROBERTA MORRISON:
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Photo credit: Click to Pray eRosary WebsiteIn October of this year, Pope Francis and the Vatican launched the “eRosary” app with the hopes of drawing in more young people to pray the rosary. A BBC article, “Vatican launches new ‘eRosary’ bracelet,” states:The Vatican is hoping to pull in tech-savvy youngsters with the launch of an “eRosary” bracelet.The gadget, which costs $109 (£85), can be worn as a bracelet and is activated by making the sign of a cross.It is connected to the “Click to Pray eRosary” app, which is designed to help Catholic users pray for world peace and contemplate the gospel.On ChurchPop (a Catholic news source part of the EWTN Network), an article announcing the release of the eRosary states:The Vatican recently launched and promoted an eRosary, a digital and wearable prayer aid activated by the Sign of the Cross. The official website describes the eRosary as “an innovative way to help you pray for peace in the world.” . . .Aimed at the peripheral frontiers of the digital world where the young people dwell, the Click To Pray eRosary serves as a technology-based pedagogy to teach the young how to pray the Rosary, how to pray it for peace, how to contemplate the Gospel.Therefore, this project brings together the best of the Church’s spiritual tradition and the latest advances of the technological world.The Catholic Church has worked very hard at not only rounding up their own young people to become more committed to the Catholic Church but has also worked very hard at bringing in what they call “the lost brethren” (the Protestants and evangelicals). They have also worked tirelessly to convince the world that if the Catholics, Protestants, and evangelicals would just come together in unity, then world peace could be achieved.A little history worth mentioning: In 1917, an apparition of “Mary” appeared in Fatima, Portugal to three young shepherd children. “Mary” told the children:God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace.
Continue to say the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, to obtain the peace of the world and the end of the war, because only she can obtain it.Roger Oakland discusses the Marian apparitions, including the one at Fatima, in his book, Another Jesus: the eucharistic christ and the new evangelization and ties them in with end-time deception throughout the world:The world is being prepared for great deception through lying signs and wonders; according to the Bible it is a deception that is so great it has the potential to unite the religions of the world for the cause of peace and in so doing give the world a false sense of security that everything is just fine.As the Catholic Church is stepping up its efforts (as we can see with the new eRosary app) to bring all into unity under its authority, Protestant and evangelical leaders are showing less and less resistance to the Catholic “gospel” and more and more comradeship with the Vatican. And as Warren B. Smith points out in his booklet Be Still and Know That You Are NOT God, Roman Catholic doctrine teaches that man can be God as shown in these quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God’s grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. (#795)26 (emphasis added)For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. (#460)27 (emphasis added)The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods. (#460)28 (emphasis added)In an article by Ray Yungen titled “Christian Leaders—A New Openness,” Yungen documents how Christian leaders are helping the Catholic Church to bring about its “new evangelization” plan. Yungen names Rick Warren, Beth Moore, Kenneth Copeland, Nicky Gumbel (of the Alpha Course), Wheaton College, Franklin Graham, and Southern Baptist Convention as those who are doing this. Yungen further explains:It is not just a fluke or an aberration that the evangelical churches and the Catholic Church are coming into alignment with each other. The Catholic Church is taking a softer approach to the evangelical church, and the evangelical church is starting to downplay the traditional and significant differences that have kept it at bay with the Roman Catholic Church. While church history has witnessed martyrs who would not bend on doctrinal issues concerning salvation, today, we are witnessing a paradigm shift from an emphasis on biblical doctrine to the experiential and the mystical. The consensus is becoming that it’s not so important what we believe anymore but what we do—namely that we need to experience God and get along with everyone. And this is where the Catholic Church comes in as it promotes oneness (a unifying of all religious traditions under the umbrella of the Catholic Church) and a vast array of religious practices stemming back to the Church fathers to satisfy the draw to the experiential.With the new eRosary app, it is the ambition of Pope Francis and the Vatican that many young straying Catholics will begin praying the rosary and thus, pledge their allegiance to Rome. And with Christian leaders like Beth Moore and Rick Warren (who are followed by millions) doing their part to show the evangelical church that there is nothing seriously wrong with linking arms with Rome, maybe the eRosary will be attractive to evangelical young people as well. That is not as far fetched as it may sound to some. Catholic priest and mystic activist, Richard Rohr, said in an interview called “The Cosmic Christ” that one of his publishers told him his biggest audience was young evangelical men!1 With that in mind, the eRosary may far exceed the Catholic Church’s expectations in creating their unity and peace throughout the world.Only time will tell how well-received the eRosary will be; but, no doubt, it is another step toward a future described in the Bible as a time of great apostasy and “falling away.”It is so sad to see that today Protestants and evangelicals will go so far as to compromise the Gospel itself, while our forebears were willing to give up their lives for its soul-saving truth.Satan’s final effort is to deceive the whole world for the purpose of bringing vast destruction to the world and his own harvest of souls. Those who overcome will do it through the Gospel itself while clinging to our one true Savior, Jesus Christ, whom the world has rejected.And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. (Revelation 12:11)
Below is a short promo for the eRosary. If you cannot view the video below, click here.Endnotes:1. The Liturgists Podcast (April 11, 2016, http://podcast.theliturgists.com/e/episode-35-the-cosmic-christ-with-richard-rohr).
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Pope Francis focused his Christmas blessing on migrants, invoking the topic of migration on numerous occasions during his brief 865-word message and taking a dig at “detention centers.”“May the newborn Lord bring light to the people of Africa, where persistent social and political situations often force individuals to migrate, depriving them of a home and family,” the Catholic leader said to the approximately 55,000 tourists and pilgrims at Saint Peter’s Square.The pope stated that modern migration is the result of injustice and that migrants’ aspirations for a better life are often impeded by “walls of injustice.”Migrants “are forced to emigrate in the hope of a secure life,” he said in his Urbi et Orbi blessing.“It is injustice that makes them cross deserts and seas that become cemeteries,” the pontiff declared, adding:It is injustice that forces them to endure unspeakable forms of abuse, enslavement of every kind and torture in inhumane detention camps. It is injustice that turns them away from places where they might have hope for a dignified life, but instead find themselves before walls of indifference.Then, in his closing invocation for the blessings of Christ upon “all the suffering members of our human family,” Francis once more brought up migration.“Through our friendship, such as it is, may he draw close to the elderly and the lonely, to migrants and the marginalized,” he said.Migration has been a common theme in the ministry and speeches of Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pontiff.In his yearly Christmas address to the Roman Curia last Saturday, he said that no one is a “stranger” to God and labeled migrants among society’s most vulnerable and marginalized members.The pope then called on the Church to promote the “integral development of the human person” by serving those who are “forced to emigrate, who at the present time represent a voice crying in the wilderness of our humanity.”“The Church is thus called to remind everyone that it is not simply a matter of social or migration questions but of human persons, of our brothers and sisters who today are a symbol of all those discarded by the globalized society,” he said.Last Thursday, Pope Francis presided over the installation in the Vatican of a migrant crucifix, which had a migrant life vest placed on the cross instead of the body of Christ. The ceremony took place after the Catholic leader had a meeting with 33 migrants from the Greek island of Lesbos.“We are facing another death caused by injustice,” said Francis.He continued:Yes, because it is injustice that forces many migrants to leave their lands. It is injustice that forces them to cross deserts and suffer abuse and torture in detention camps. It is injustice that rejects them and makes them die at sea.I decided to exhibit this life jacket, ‘crucified’ on this cross, to remind us that we must keep our eyes open, keep our hearts open, to remind everyone of the absolute commitment to save every human life, a moral duty that unites believers and non-believers.He concluded his remarks by thanking “all those who have decided not to remain indifferent and do their utmost to help the victim, without asking too many questions.... It is not by blocking their boats that the problem is solved.”Earlier this month, the pope compared U.S. President Donald Trump to Herod, the wicked biblical king who ordered the slaughter of infants in and around Bethlehem in an effort to kill the newborn Jesus.“I must admit that I am shocked by some of the narratives I hear in Europe about borders. Populism is gaining strength. In other parts there are walls that even separate children from parents. Herod comes to mind.”On other occasions, the pontiff has criticized President Trump in comments about “builders of walls” who “become prisoners” of their own walls and are “not Christian.”In response to the pope’s remarks during the 2016 election, then-candidate Trump responded that “for a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful.”The pope has also been a vocal advocate for taking action against so-called climate change and has spoken out against capitalism and the free market, calling “trickle-down theories” a “crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.”