THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
Trump’s "Keep America Great” event in Wildwood on Jan. 28 will be in U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew’s district. Van Drew switched from to the Republican Party last month after being one of only two Democrats who voted against impeaching Trump.
Van Drew has pledged his “undying support” for Trump, a Republican.
Murphy, a Demcorat who called Van Drew’s party switch “ridiculous and pathetic,” issued a statement blasting Trump’s upcoming appearance in the Garden State.
“With the impeachment process continuing to unfold in Washington and unrest in the Middle East, the last thing President Trump should be focused on is coming to New Jersey to campaign for Jeff Van Drew," said Murphy, a frequent Trump critic. “Doing so speaks to President Trump’s misplaced priorities and refusal to put what’s best for the country ahead of his own politics.”
The governor accused Trump of “pinching the middle class” in the state by signing into law a bill that puts a $10,000 cap on how much people can deduct from state and local taxes.
“New Jersey is a state that supports the middle class and those striving to join it,” Murphy said. “Those are values that President Trump does not share, and his newly-minted fellow Republican Jeff Van Drew will never act to hold him accountable. That’s why it’s so important for Democrats to retake this district in November.”
Van Drew later shot back, saying people can add “Murphy to the list of reasons why I left the Democrat Party.”
“I didn’t vote for him in 2017 and certainly wasn’t going to in 2021,” he said in a statement. “Murphy is totally out of touch with the hard-working, middle-class families and retirees here in South Jersey who are benefiting from the Trump economy despite the Governor’s best efforts to make New Jersey even more unaffordable.”
The Wildwood event will be the first time the Trump hosts a rally in the state since he was elected president.
Tickets are free and are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
CNN PANELISTS MOCK TRUMP SUPPORTERS AS ILLITERATE!~TRUMP'S RESPONSE IS PRICELESS!
★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★There’s a massive backlash going on against Don Lemon and CNN; just the other night, Lemon, had two panelists featured on his show, and together, they said some of the most disparaging things imaginable against Trump supporters, which has provoked a massive backlash against the leftwing host and the ultra-liberal channel; which is surprising, since nobody’s watching Don Lemon OR CNN! But we’re going to take a look at what happened and we’re going to see why it’s only making Trump’s support even bigger and stronger than ever!
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For nearly 18 years, Lighthouse Trails has been reporting on the slide that evangelical colleges, universities, and seminaries have been taking into the contemplative/emergent/ecumenical river. It would be great if we could say there’s been a real turn around and things at these colleges are getting better. It would be great if we could say that your college-age child is safe in most Christian colleges today. And it would be great if we could say that these schools have realized the error of their ways and have made dramatic efforts to get back on the biblical course. Unfortunately, we cannot say any of these things because they simply are not true.
We were once again reminded of how far off the track evangelical schools have gone when earlier this month we received an e-blast from Christianity Today announcing a 50%-off tuition special for qualifying students to Seattle Pacific University. That will sound very enticing to parents who are looking for Christian education for their college-age children at affordable rates. But let’s take a glance at what these children will be introduced to if they attend Seattle Pacific University:
At SPU’s Center for Biblical and Theological Education, students will be introduced to various forms of contemplative spirituality, and faculty members are being trained to pass them on. For instance, in a 2019 faculty retreat syllabus, the list of activities at the retreat include lectio divina, praying with icons, sabbath keeping, Ignatian Spirituality, and Prayer of Examen. At the upcoming 2020 Winter Discernment Weekend, prospective students will be introduced to “Guided Prayer” and Lectio Divina. “Spiritual Formation” and contemplative spirituality are integrated throughout the spiritual infrastructure of SPU. Faculty Staff Bulletins are peppered with recommendation and accolades for Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and numerous other hard-core mystics and panentheists.
For anyone who understands contemplative spirituality, these things we are sharing won’t come as a surprise because contemplative prayer is the gateway ‘drug,” so to speak, to all things emergent, socialist, Marxist, New Age, and anti-morality. And if there is one thing we hope to get across in this article, it is this: A very large number of Christian higher education institutions are now exhibiting signs that they are being influenced and directed by emergent ideologies; and many of these same schools are the ones we warned about years ago as they started down the contemplative path; the inevitable “fruit” of contemplative prayer is a drastic change in spiritual outlook (i.e., no longer resembling biblical Christianity; i.e., now emergent).
Northwest Nazarene University in Idaho continues incorporating emergent believes into the lives of its students. Some of our readers may remember our 2010 story titled “Buddhist/Universalist Sympathizer Woos Nazarene Students at NNU.” Most Nazarene universities had already been seduced by Catholic contemplative mystic Brennan Manning by then, and so bringing in a Buddhist/universalist sympathizer to NNU was just following contemplative protocol, which they have continued to do.
A few examples of NNU’s current status are the following: In the THEO4900 Religion Capstone course, The Living Reminder by Catholic mystic Henri Nouwen is one of two required textbooks. A graduate course titled COUN6594A Mindfulness Approaches uses Mindfulness and Psychotherapy for its textbook. Another graduate course (YCFM6730 Missional Ministry) uses these four textbooks— Celtic Way of Evangelism, Future Faith, Kingdom Come, and Creating a Missional Culture. In Creating a Missional Culture, the author introduces the reader to Jurgen Moltmann, Karl Barth, Marcus Borg, and several others of the same caliber (these three men are heroes of the emergent movement). In these NNU textbooks, you find the path to emergent, “progressive,” socialist, New Age “Christianity”—something that has become the hallmark for Nazarene universities today. If you attend a Nazarene church, and that church is looking for a new pastor, it would be a good idea to find out how much of his seminary/university training rubbed off on him because you can be sure, he’ll be bringing it to your church.
In this relatively short article, we have provided examples of just three schools. But we could give countless more of other schools that began opening their doors to the contemplative element, and now are becoming full-fledged emergent schools.
When we started warning about the contemplative movement entering the church through the evangelical colleges, seminaries, and universities back in the early part of this present millennium, our warnings were brushed off and dismissed by many Christian leaders. Today, some of these same leaders are being vocal about the left-leaning, anti-God, socialistic condition of this country. But they either don’t realize or don’t care that the early contemplative pioneers that they embraced twenty plus years ago brought in that very same mindset into the church through contemplative prayer. And now, as older pastors are retiring or passing away, the new younger pastors, trained in the colleges and seminaries, have become evangelists for this anti-Gospel, anti-biblical worldview.
The Calvinist Factor
For the editors at Lighthouse Trails, and for many of our readers, we are not surprised that this paradigm shift has occurred. We have witnessed the terrible apathy and indifference by Christian leaders and many pastors for nearly 18 years. Not only has there been apathy and indifference, but there has been hostility and anger. Just last week, a pastor in Oregon who had been placed on our Christian leaders and pastors booklet mailing list (at the request of one of our readers) called and told us to remove him from the list. He then proceeded to list off about a dozen adjectives to describe us including pugnacious, slanderous, and hateful.
We were curious about this pastor’s church and checked it out on the Internet. It was a Calvinist-promoting church. One reason we have experienced a new level of anger by some pastors and leaders is because of the book we published in 2018 warning about Calvinism (Calvinism: None Dare Call it Heresy). And this brings us to something that needs to be said in this article with regard to the direction evangelical colleges, universities, and seminaries have headed: Many Christian colleges and universities are now embracing or are in the process of embracing Calvinism and Reformed Theology.
This presents a different set of serious problems, in one respect. But as we have stated in other articles, and wholeheartedly believe based on what we have observed, many young people trained in or drawn into Calvinism end up emergent or leaving the faith altogether (such as in the case of the recent departure from the faith by I Kissed Dating Goodbye author Josh Harris).
Aside from the colleges that have historically been Calvinist and Reformed (e.g., The Master’s Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Calvin College), new ones are continually getting on board with Calvinism. A perfect example of this is Bob Jones University (historically the antithesis of a Calvinist school), which now has a Calvinist president. And then there is Southern Baptist Convention. We estimate that as many as half of the Southern Baptist colleges and universities are now Calvinist leaning. One caller, who is a longstanding SBC member that has been in leadership positions, told us that almost all the SBC universities are now Calvinist or Calvinist influenced. A 2007 Christian Post article titled “Calvinism on the Rise” stated: “Nearly 30 percent of recent SBC seminary graduates now serving as church pastors indicate they are Calvinists.” This statistic was based on data presented at the 2006 SBC “Building Bridges: Southern Baptists and Calvinism” conference. We believe that percentage is much higher today because of the increase in Calvinism in the schools. And if our theory is right that many young Calvinists will eventually become emergent or defect the faith (sometimes because they cannot handle the dismal beliefs of John Calvin and Calvinism and sometimes because they haven’t found a personal relationship with Christ through Calvinism), then the outcome is going to be disastrous.
CONCLUSION
Either way you look at it, Christian/evangelical colleges, universities, and seminaries are in trouble. And if they are in trouble, then so are our churches because the schools are producing today’s and tomorrow’s pastors and leaders.
Our exhortation to parents and grandparents is to carefully and prayerfully choose the schools your children and grandchildren will attend. The pickings are getting slimmer every day, but your choices can potentially have eternal consequences or eternal blessings. Please don’t take it lightly.
Editor’s Note: If you know of a young person who attends or who plans to attend a Christian college, university, or seminary, please consider asking him or her to read Castles in the Sand or A Time of Departing. If you cannot afford to get one of these books, write to us at editors@lighthousetrails.com, and we will send a free copy for you to give to that college-age person. If you are wondering why we have so much concern about this, read an article we wrote in 2013 titled “Want Your Child to Become an Atheist? – Send Him to LeTourneau University in Texas (or Any Other Contemplative/Emergent School For That Matter).” It’s a true story, and tragically, it is happening too often.
Overturning both a County Superior Court and an Appellate Division decision,
the law firm of Evan F. Nappen, Attorney at Law successfully petitioned the
NJ Supreme Court for a unanimous Opinion released today mandating that
people must be provided with hearings whenever a court contemplates
denying a handgun carry permit and that such hearings must be held within
30 days.
New Jersey’s highest court today held that: “if a court has any questions regarding the applicant or his or her permit to carry application, it must hold a hearing to address those questions. The court should not simply deny the application.” “[A] hearing must be held whenever the court contemplates denying a handgun carry-permit[.]”
NOTE: The above bold text for emphasis appears in the Supreme Court Opinion In Re Application for Permit to Carry a Handgun of Calvin Carlstrom and Syllabus.
This is believed to be the first pro-gun rights decision ever issued unanimously by the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Carlstrom was hired by a security company to be an armed guard protecting movie theatres. In 2016, he applied for a New Jersey permit to carry a handgun which, after an investigation, was approved by the Roselle Park Police Chief.
In New Jersey, however, county judges actually issue these permits, and Carlstrom’s application supporting documents was accordingly forwarded to the Union County Superior Court.
On February 2, 2017, Judge William A. Daniel denied Carlstrom’s application without ever providing Carlstrom with a hearing on the merits of his application.
Under New Jersey’s governing statute, carry permit applicants are specifically afforded a hearing if a police chief denies an application. The statute, however, is silent whether a judge must provide a hearing if the Court intends to deny an application that has been approved by a police chief.
Carlstrom hired the Nappen Firm to appeal the “trial” court’s decision. Nevertheless, on December 21, 2018, Appellate Division Judges Michael J. Haas and Stephanie Ann Mitterhoff affirmed Judge Daniel’s opinion, deciding that Carlstrom had “no authority to support his argument that a hearing is required in matters involving perfunctory licensing applications or that the court must hear testimony from the chief of police who reviewed an application.”
The Nappen Firm believed differently and appealed higher, Petitioning for Certification to the New Jersey Supreme Court on behalf of Carlstrom.
After this filing, on May 20, 2019, the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) promulgated Administrative Directive #06-19: Criminal – Procedures for Processing Gun Permits, which provided that trial courts must hold a hearing if it has any questions regarding the applicant or his or her permit to carry application. Today’s NJSC Opinion affirmatively incorporates the AOC Directive into precedential case law that county judges must now follow.
The NJSC Opinion also mandates that carry permit hearings “must be held no later than 30 days after receipt of the permit to carry application, and the court shall make a determination within 14 days thereafter, absent extraordinary circumstances.”
Carlstrom’s Appellate and Supreme Court matters were briefed and argued by Louis P. Nappen, Esq., of the Law firm of Evan F. Nappen, Attorney at Law, PC, Eatontown NJ.
In response to the NJSC Opinion, Louis Nappen said, “This is an outstanding Due Process victory for gun owners. This will be particularly important when the United States Supreme Court – we anticipate – provides a heightened scrutiny level to the right to carry and scraps New Jersey’s ‘justifiable need’ requirement for the issuance of carry permits. People will now be assured their days in court if a judge intends to deny this Constitutional right.”
The New Jersey Supreme Court further remanded Carlstrom’s matter back to the Law Division to conduct a hearing on his application with guidance as to the scope of that hearing. The NJSC noted that, at that hearing, at the judge’s discretion, amendments to the application as well as other evidence not included in the application may be admitted, as well as evidence regarding discussions with the police chief and any written conclusions by the reviewing chief and testimony from the applicant or his or her employer.
re Application for Permit to Carry a Handgun of Calvin Carlstrom
Evan Nappen
About Evan Nappen:
Evan Nappen (www.EvanNappen.com) is a criminal defense attorney who has focused on New Jersey firearms and weapons law for several decades. He is the author of the New Jersey Gun Law Guide. Visit his website at www.EvanNappen.com
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Wouldn’t you think that the first president of the United States appearing at the anti-abortion “March for Life” would make someone at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) happy? It’s not so for Thomas Kidd, an appointee and prominent research fellow appointed to the ERLC. Lead Russell Moore, a former Democratic staffer, there is a strong anti-conservative bias at the convention’s lobbying arm.
Hopefully it will be good for Trump personally to attend the March for Life. It isn't good symbolically for the pro-life movement to be associated with him. // Trump to Be First President to Attend March for Lifehttps://t.co/h3MU6KfKVD
Kidd says it’s not good for the President of the United States to be associated with the pro-life movement. His argument seems to be that the pro-life movement will be hurt if the most powerful man in the world supports it.
Whose side is the ERLC really on? There are Democrat foxes in the Southern Baptist henhouse.
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Thomas Kidd, a research fellow for the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has written a new book timed for the 2020 election that demonizes evangelicals as “white Republicans” who largely support President Trump because they hate immigrants and Muslims.
As we have previously reported, the ERLC’s research fellows are regularly weaponized by ERLC president and former Democrat staffer, Russell Moore, to attack Republicans and drive evangelicals to the political left. Thomas Kidd, who teaches history at Baylor University and contributes to The “Gospel” Coalition is regularly at the front of the pack, lending his leftist voice to public discourse, albeit he does it deceptively in the name of conservatism.
Pulpit & Pen has also reported to you how Thomas Kidd recently claimed it’s okay for Christians to vote for Democrats and pro-abortion advocates. Additionally, Kidd attacked conservative pastors for endorsing a book by one of President Trump’s presidential advisors, which rings hollow considering his silence regarding President Obama’s spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright. Kidd took part in Russell Moore’s attempts to scuttle Trump’s primary candidacy in 2016, serving on the faith advisory council for a pro-amnesty Republican candidate.
In Kidd’s latest book, Who is An Evangelical, Kidd asserts that evangelicals come from a wide swath of political perspectives and – more important to substantiate his point – it’s okay for evangelicals to vote Democrat.
Inan interviewwithReligion and Politics, Kidd claims that many evangelicals support President Trump because they dislike immigrants and Muslims.
Religion and Politics asked Kidd, “Trump has been criticized as a racist demagogue, and you spend a lot of time in the book detailing white evangelicals’ fraught history on race. Does that history help explain their attraction to Trump in the present?“
Kidd leans in toward the unsubstantiated accusation toward Trump and confirms that evangelicals voting for Trump definitely have racist and xenophobic sentiments.
Kidd responded…
There is definitely a pattern there and though many of us like to think of ourselves as being post-racial today, I think Trump’s presidency has exposed a lot of problems.So I’m sure that there are a lot of white people in America, including white evangelicals, who are attracted to Trump because of his hostility toward immigrants and toward Muslims and his equivocation about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and so forth. The fact that certain white evangelical leaders have expressed sympathy for Trump along these lines shows that it is part of his appeal.
Kidd referred to Donald Trump’s repudiation of all forms of racism, from both whites and blacks, as he criticized the protests in Charlottesville. Leftists claimed at the time that Trump’s repudiation of leftist hate along with “alt-right” hate was an indication of some kind of racism in his heart.
Kidd seems to have believed the notion.
He went on to state that it was impossible to know exactly the percentage of white evangelicals motivated by racism, saying, “Having said that, though, I don’t think we know how many white evangelicals have supported Trump in spite of these views, who find him dismaying and distasteful on race…”
He went on to say that he has a hard time, “accepting the idea of white evangelicals who are zealously supportive of Trump, because I see him as patently contradictory to the best of evangelical values.”
Kidd was not similarly dismissive of Democratic presidential candidates who believe in abortion up to the point of birth, gay marriage, and are hostile to religious liberty, nor did he assert that any leading Democratic figure holds beliefs “contradictory to the best of evangelical values.”
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New undercover video from Project Veritas shows two more Bernie Sanders field organizers out of South Carolina discussing how their far-left movement is embedded with radicals, and the violent measures they would take to implement their socialist vision for America.
In part 4 of Veritas’ #Expose2020 campaign, field organizers Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor discuss waging violence against their political enemies and promoting “extreme action” in the name of furthering socialism in America.
Baird discussed how the Bernie campaign attracts “truly radical” elements of the left.
“We do attract – I mean we attract, um, you know radical, like – truly radical people to the campaign,” Baird told the PV journalist. “That’s obviously not outward facing sort of.”
He added that a lot of people canvassing for the Sanders campaign “fall well outside of the American sort of norm.”
“So they’re Marxists-Leninists, they’re Anarchists, they’re these types of folks, and um, and they have more of a mind for direct action, for engaging in politics outside the electoral system.”
Baird even spouted alarming Communist rhetoric, speaking of “abolishing landlords” rather than killing them if Bernie wins the presidency.
“After we abolish landlords, we don’t have to kill them, you know what I’m saying?” he said. “But um….there were plenty of excesses in 1917 that I would hope to avoid. But like, I admire it.”
“It would, it’s gonna take, you know, it’s gonna take militancy…like a militant labor movement that’s willing to…strike, and if necessary, you know, just destroy property and things like that,” Baird added.
Taylor bragged about how socialism has become more mainstream in recent years, and how violent action may be necessary to implement it, using Antifa and Yellow Vest-type riots, but that’s being kept “on the back burner for now.”
“The whole socialist thing 4 years ago was a lot more toxic than it is today,” Taylor said. “I think people are starting to realize that maybe it’s not such a bad thing.”
“We don’t want to scare people off. So you kinda gotta feel it out first before you get into the crazy stuff.”
“We were talking about, you know, more extreme organizations and stuff like Antifa, you know you were talking about Yellow Vests and all that, but, you know we’re kinda keeping that on the back burner for right now.”
“It is unfortunate that we have to make plans for extreme action, but like I said, they’re not going to give it to us,” Taylor added.
Two weeks ago, we learned that American cities will go up in flames and cops and moderate liberals will be murdered if Bernie Sanders loses either the Democratic nomination or the general election.
That warning from a staffer in the elderly socialist’s Iowa campaign, and another from a worker in South Carolina, included a hint of what would come with a Sanders victory in November. Republicans will go to an American gulag. The rich will be guillotined.
Guerilla journalists for Project Veritas video-recorded those threats, and today published a fourth installment (video below) in which Sanders’ staff members elaborate on their plans for a Stalinist America should Sanders prevail.
Two New ConfessionsThis week’s video features two more staffers in the Palmetto State, Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor, who divulged plans for a communist uprising and “extreme action” if Sanders lands in the White House.
Admitting that “we attract radical, truly radical people,” Baird confessed that campaign staffers are “Marxist/Leninist” and “Anarchists” with “more of a mind for ‘direct action’ for engaging in politics outside of the electoral system.”
Sanders expects to assemble a “mass movement going after the election” that will completely alter American life as we know it, Baird explained, not least by nationalizing Google, YouTube, Facebook, and other social media to use “as education stuff goes.”
As well,Baird envisionederecting a Maoist state of trial and error — or trial and terror:
We would need a federal government and labor union movement that is working together to strip power away from capitalists and preferably directing violence toward property. At the end of the day, this kind of stuff will come out through practice, through the work and it’s hard for me to talk about it in the moment we live in ’cause I think China today is not what Mao envisioned, right it was through the practice of Chinese people doing the work to create the China today.... A lot of these answers are going to come through practice — we’re going to try things — things aren’t going to work — we’re going to move on to the next thing, and we’re going to try to be as conscious and intentional about those things, but when you get into a certain level of detail, and depth, it’s like, that’s kind of my ‘cop out’, it comes through the work, you know. The answers come through the work.
Whether guillotines and burning cities are the “things” Baird and his cohort will try is anyone’s guess, but he did promise “militancy” and a violent labor movement that will crack skulls — “a militant labor movement that’s willing to ... strike, and if necessary, you know, just destroy property and things like that.”
And if the “militant labor movement” doesn’t succeed, “other means” will be tried.
Landlords will be glad to know Baird doesn’t want to kill them if they refuse to surrender their property, but alas, he’ll do what he must:
After we abolish landlords, we don’t have to kill them, that’s my feeling I think it’s damaging to the soul, but um, there were plenty of excesses in 1917 I would hope to avoid. Labor, I think that’s a big source of power for us, and just try to gain as much leverage and power in the short time that we have. You know, Lenin didn’t have the internet, they were a peasant society, and I mean it was like, so you know I would hope that like, that we would — we’d have — we’d be doing a bunch of prep work before the capitalists got hip to what we were doing, I guess. That’s my best uh, I’m not excited about the prospect of armed struggle.
Americans can rest easy though, because “the Gulags and the persecution of the Kulaks and things like that are exaggerated.”
“Back-burner” Plans
Another staffer in South Carolina, Daniel Taylor, explained that “extreme action” is planned whether Sanders wins or loses:
We don’t want to scare people off, you first have to feel it out before you get into the crazy stuff.... You know we were talking about more extreme organizations like Antifa, you were talking about, Yellow Vests, all that but we’re kinda keeping that on the back-burner for now..
In other words, Antifa goon squads will be ready to enforce Sanders’ edicts. “It’s unfortunate that we have to make plans for extreme action,” Taylor warned, “but like I said, they’re not going to give it to us even if Bernie is elected.”
For the record, three Sanders campaign staff members have promised the following after the election:
