WND EXCLUSIVE - EVANGELICALS CALL FOR NEW REFORMATION
Cite shortcomings on eve of 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s manifesto - September 8, 2017
http://www.wnd.com/2017/10/time-for-a-new-reformation/
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2017/10/time-for-a-new-reformation/#cCRpYsdpsJtbX247.99
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My thoughts:
I saw the advertisements for the movie on the Reformation, shown at this link, “Let the Lion Roar” (made from the book of the same title), a while ago. Sadly, I noticed in the advertising blurb that they had to bring “Anti-semitism” into it (why not bring in “black lives matter” too...? and the poor persecuted Pink-perverto Revolution...? one historical fiction reinvented through modernist eyes is as good as the other). Thus by that simple fact they show that their understanding of the Reformation and God’s Word is skewed and perverted by modernist anti-christ notions. I doubt that the film has any valid information, and it if does, it is TAINTED by this blasphemy! Furthermore, this statement is made about the book / movie, that it is “Perhaps the most ambitious project to stimulate awareness of the shortcomings of the Reformation” (which they include as violent clashes between Catholics and Protestants and the spread of anti-Semitism and disunity in the Church). It never ceases to amaze me that those who do nothing worthwhile on their own can criticize those who are responsible for Christendom and the free nation in which we live. The cover of the DVD even has the flag of the State of Israeli blended into it! These people would make great politicians (of the common sort: useless / corrupt).
[Someone in California informed me that a Holocaust Museum opened there. He went just to see what they were spewing. He said on the inside wall of the main lobby (through which tens or hundreds of thousands of school children are herded each year) there was a huge sign on the wall that said something to the effect, “The Holocaust happened because of Martin Luther”.]
To its credit, the movie employs actors who claim to be Christians (Kevin Sorbo, Eric Roberts, Stephen Baldwin and John Schneider), but also “features messianic rabbi Jonathan Bernis”, “Hebraic roots pastor Mark Biltz”, and music by Latina-American singer Jaci Velasquez.
This article / link also mentions a 50-page booklet by John R. Noe, Ph.D., titled The Next Great Reformation: 96 New Theses for Reclaiming Jesus’ Everlasting Kingdom. However, I would have to guess (without reading the book) that many of its 96 (one more than Martin Luther compiled) Theses are way off, since the author does not appear to believe in Hell, and seems to be a Preterist (believing that John wrote Revelation before Jerusalem fell). He also has a defective view of the origin of evil, believing merely that evil is part of God’s Plan, but that God is not the origin of it. However, to his credit, he does not appear to believe in the Rapture—but neither does he seem to believe in Christ’s Return (since it seems that he is a Preterist and believes that Christ returned in a.d. 70), nor does he seem to support the Jews / State of Israeli (but that cherry on top of a corrupt Sundae really is nothing to brag about). However, it is doubtful that he actually understands who the Jews are (Edomite-Canaanite imposters).
[For the most-detailed discussion of these topics, see my books: The Futurist and Rapture Conspiracy, God and Evil (and its sequel, Does God Repent? — Can God Change His Mind?), and What the Devil? / What the Hell?]
Thus, being that his theology is so defective on these points, I personally do not see how there could be any validity to any “New 96 Theses” that he could have conjured up. Does he truly seek to please God alone, or are he a “neo-Melanchthon” attempting to hold hands with God and the world? (as it seems the authors of the book / movie are). Does he believe that God abolished His Law? (many Preterists take that false position). Sadly, this gentleman, with an earned Ph.D. in theology, in charge of a Reformation organization, seems to be a neo-Sadduce, not a Reformer.
Furthermore, sadly, it seems to me that Reformation is impossible today because the church is entrenched in false doctrine, humanism, and paganism (to which they cling with more loyalty than to Christ Himself) and it is thoroughly polluted with homoperverts of every stripe, and with those who are not God’s people—from whom God commanded that we be completely separate. The majority of pastors and congregants would reject sound doctrine if they ever heard it, would never expel aliens or the unsaved; neither would they excommunicate those bonafide members who are in unrepentant sin. The church is polluted with multiculturalism and homoperversion and is a friend of the world; the minds of both its leaders and its congregants are polluted morally and spiritually.
The Reformation,* even as the Great Revivals* and the American Revolution* could take place only because the majority were our people. Now any “Reformation” will have to be more like Lot fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah or like Noah building the ark, like the Israelites of the House of Judah leaving Babylon—and leaving Babylon BEHIND, and returning to God. That is what God’s people have to do concerning end-time Babylon: COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM and BE YE SEPARATE—and only by doing so will we be His sons and daughters. Those of His people who join themselves to those who are not His people [poorly rendered, “touch not the unclean thing”], will be the dead wood that is cut off the Family Tree. “Give not that which is holy to the dogs and cast not pearls before swine lest they turn and trample and rend you”, Christ COMMANDED. God never told us to attempt to “reform” those who are not even saved; nor attempt to save those who are not ordained unto life, those who are not His people. The Harlot Church is not to be reformed, but destroyed; thus all that can be done is for the elect to be called out (which is what the Greek word ecclesia “church” means).
[* For books on the Reformation, for starters, see: Twelve Reformation Heroes, Neilson; The Story of the Light that Never Went Out, Martin / Cook; and its companion volume, Stories from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Martin / Foxe. Also STP will soon be reprinting its own facsimile edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. For books on true revival, see In The Day of Thy Power, Wallis, The Power of Prayer, Prime, Stories of Great Revivals, Johnson et al, and Historical Collections Relating to Remarkable Periods of the Success of the Gospel / Historical Collections of Accounts of Revival, Gillies; all available from Sacred Truth Ministries. For books on the American Revolution, see Faith & Freedom, Hart (out of print, good used pb. and Hb. in stock; inquire.]
I do not doubt the good intentions of those involved here and I am sure that they have some wonderful ideas. But I believe that they have the cart before the (dead) horse, in thinking that the problem now is (and the “failure” of the Reformation was not) teaching the Kingdom. First of all, there could have been no teaching the Kingdom if the people of Europe were not converted to Christ, but in bondage to Roman paganism (which has a thin veneer of “Christianity); and thus, the error of the people at this website and the resources mentioned there seems to be that they think Catholics are actually Christians. Thus, they are not in favor of a “New” Reformation—but a new Counter-Reformation. Teaching the Kingdom is also a moot point; since most likely they don’t understand WHO the citizens of the Kingdom are to be—it is NOT “everyone”. Since the author(s) of the article [a “WND exclusive”*] mention Noe’s book, then quite possibly they also share his false doctrine.
[* The article also mentions another book, this one by founder and head of WND [World Net Daily], Joseph Farah, American of Lebanese / Syrian descent: The Restitution of All Things, Israel, Christians and the End of the Age. Farah stupidly agrees that the Reformation did not go nearly far enough in getting back to sola scriptura. Leave it to an outsider looking in (whose people and country did not even hear about the Reformation until about 400 years after it happened) to tell the Reformers they didn’t know what they were doing; and that he knows Scripture better than the most-learned divines of the day combined. While they are correct in that there will be a literal 1,000 year Kingdom of Peace here on earth presided over by Christ Himself—it has not yet happened and it will not be for those who are not God’s people. Furthermore, it is a bit disingenuous to claim that the Reformers were promulgating non-biblical / pagan notions, when Preterism itself is Jesuit, counter-Reformation false doctrine, even as Futurism and the Rapture are. Again, see my The Futurist and Rapture Conspiracy.]
The article mentioned that Antinomianism is a problem, but they don’t realize THAT it is the MAIN problem. Antinomianism (rejecting the Law of God and living as one pleases in most areas, under the false notion that God abolished His own Law and that morality somehow can ever “change’) is the result of an unconverted heart and mind. As we saw, the Apostle John wrote that if a person does not keep God’s Commandments he does not even know God and the Truth is not in him. Those who believe in a Lawless Grace and Gospel believe in a false christ. We are saved UNTO good works (obedience to all that God commanded) and if that fruit is not there, there was no conversion; even as a stillborn infant produces no works, shows no signs of life. Though a deluded person who has had a break with reality may think that he sees signs of life, GOD determines the signs of true life. If a person is truly a branch on the Tree of Life, Christ, he will produce CHRIST’S fruit. Any other “fruit” or notion is humanism. Unless THIS is addressed there WILL BE NO KINGDOM, that is, for those who are the foolish virgins who did not obey the Bridegroom. Christ will not return for a rebellious bride unwilling to be submit herself to Him. Those who declare (in one way or another, in these actual words, inference, or deeds), “we shall not have this Man to rule over us”; will hear Christ declare of them to the angels: “Bring those Mine enemies who would not that I should rule over them and slay them before Me”. Christ’s sheep know His Voice and follow (obey) Him.
When considered at its root, Antinomianism is the result of being unregenerate (or terribly, terrible ignorant or confused concerning the Word of God, being spiritually still-born or profoundly spiritually mentally retarded).
Understand: Doing good works / obedience / bearing fruit / walking in the Spirit / doing that which is pleasing in His Sight / keeping the Law of God (which are all synonyms) does not save. That very notion is a “paper tiger” ploy of deceiving simple-minded Christians. God’s Word never said that keeping the Law saved. It is the “bait and switch”. The false inference being: because the Law of God does not save, therefore, the Law of God has no value. While an anvil cannot be used as a vaulting pole, that does not mean that an anvil has no purpose. It it certainly useful to hammer and bend metal upon! So it is with God’s Law. It was never intended to save; it cannot. Each law was given for the specific reasons that God gave each law (respect / honor, to keep us healthy, keep up pure, keep us moral, keep us out of debt, etc.), in addition to each being an act of obedience it self to God our Father. Those who believe Christ abolished the Law follow a false christ, and listen to the voice of a stranger (just like Eve did—and where did that leave her...?).
However, one who is TRULY saved will be called out of darkness into Light, old things (habits, thinking, behavior, attitude) will be passed away and all things will become new (in conformity with the Will of God).
Believers are commanded to be obedient and study God’s Word. If one is truly studying (not merely reading a chapter a day and checking it off as one more daily duty accomplished, but meditating, scrutinizing, analyzing, ruminating, cross-comparing—and then putting it into practice), one whose mind is in the Word, who desires to obey God and not please self, are the hallmarks of one who is truly converted. Such a person will be led by God’s Holy Spirit into the Truth (not ignorance, humanism, false doctrine, worldism, liberalism, modernism, hedonism, feminism, etc.).
Thus one who is daily truly studying God’s Word from Genesis to Revelation year after year, on a daily basis, will have an “ah-ha” experience, and realize that the modernist church is wrong in much of its doctrine and practices. Such a person who reads the Word of God should realize that the majority of modern “churches” (which are little more than pseudo-spiritual country clubs and aura-fluffing, “feel good”, self-enrichment, motivational seminars marinated in humanism and garnished with paganism) and the majority of modern “Christians” are anathema because they preach another gospel and they preach another (false) “christ” and they worship a false god (the one formed in their own mind or in the darkened minds of their subverted denomination).
Thus, one who has truly been regenerated and who is a member of the true church (called-out ones) by consistent and quality reading and studying the Word of God on his own—and studying his roots, the roots of Christendom, the roots of the American Revolution and the Protestant Reformation—he will learn that God’s Law was never abolished. If a “Christian” actually has any respect for and believes Christ, he should KNOW that Christ did not abolish the Law—because He said that He did not do so and that not one jot or tittle would pass from the Law! Only the rituals of atonement (the slaying of lambs, etc.) were fulfilled in Christ’s Sacrifice of Himself (the Perfect Lamb of God) and He put to death the enmity—the CURSE / Judgment of the Law: the death penalty against us, by paying it Himself (by being made the Curse for us).
Such a person who is truly converted will sincerely read the Word of God will not lean unto his own understanding, but be led of the Holy Spirit to understand God’s Very Nature (which is ENTIRELY different from our sinful human nature, His Thoughts and Ways being ASTRONOMICALLY higher than our own). Such a person will realize the very nature of God’s Law and Morality (which are extensions of God’s Very Mind)—that it never changes. What God declared to be sin and abominations 4,000 years ago still are today and always will be.
Such a true Christian will read, believe and understand Christ’s own declarations (not those of false prophets) and obey Christ’s Commands:
If you love Me keep My Commandments.
I you keep My Commandments ye shall abide in My Love, even as I have kept My Father’s Commandments and abide in His Love.
[Christ had no commandments of His Own. He humbled Himself and became obedient and came to do the Father’s Will.]
...not one jot or tittle shall pass from the Law.
The First Great Commandment:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
The Second Great Commandment:
Thou shalt love thy kinsman-neighbour as thyself.
HOW is this done...? THESE TWO LAWS ARE THE FOUNDATION for the ENTIRE Law of God. If you love God you won’t worship other gods, make grave images and bow down to them; you won’t violate THE SABBATH and you will KEEP IT HOLY; you won’t take HIS NAME in vain; and you won’t sin against His children by, robbing, raping, committing adultery, incest, murder, bearing false witness, etc.
[The Ten Commandments are not merely 10 individual laws; they are Ten Categories of Law under which the entire Law of God is organized. See my book, Ten Commandments for Youth.]
Such a true Christian whose mind has been converted and renewed will realize that this keeping of the Law is the by-product of the indwelling dynamic Presence of the Holy Spirit, not the work of the flesh. Where no fruit is evident the Holy Spirit is not evident. One who is not truly converted violates (with either impunity or indifference) the Commands of God (even declaring that God loves his sinful behavior as a wonderful form of self-expression), following instead the world’s ever-changing, polluted concept of “morality” (or his own, which means that his true god is “self”, in addition to the State, to one degree or the other; and God, the Creator and Lord of the universe comes in a distant third). The world’s (and the polluted State churches’) “morality” is basically nonexistent: The only act of “immorality”, “crimes”, and “unpardonable sins” that are now recognized seems to be “racism”, “homophobia” and violations against the State (which is a fictitious entity anyway).
Also, the Jewish Bolshevik Revolution (in which between 66 and 180 million Christians were exterminated) began in 1917 on the 400th anniversary of the Reformation. Now we are in the 100th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. We are at a crossroads, which will we take? —sadly, not reformation, but, it seems more persecution is in order because the true church has abandoned God for the world. Thus more tribulation is required to refine not the dross, but the gold—the dross shall be removed; the weak, sickly, corrupt, and illegitimate of the herd will be culled out.
[See the following books:
- Human Cost of Soviet Communism, Prepared at Request of Sen. Dodd for Subcom. to Investigate Administration of Internal Security Act & other Internal Security Laws of Comm. on Judiciary US Senate, 1971, 40pp., 4.00 + P&H.
- The Last Days of the Romanovs: From 15th March, 1917—100th Anniversary Memorial Edition (1920) Part I—The Narrative by Robert Wilton (Special Correspondent of The Times in Petrograd) and Part II—The Depositions of the Eye-Witnesses by Nikolai Sokolov (translated by George Gustav Telberg), and Part III; with many extra added illustrations of the entire Royal family... and additional information, 405pp. total pb., 22.00 + P&H. Author clearly knew who was behind Bolshevism, the Revolution, and the murders.] If you are unaware of this, one of the greatest crimes of the modern era and how an entire mega-super-power was stolen, order this.
- The Secret Holocaust, Mullins, 34pp., 4 00 + P&H.
William Law in The Power of the Spirit,* offers some very terse, but true words, in regard to the righteousness and obedience of professing believers:
“[The average Christian possesses] ... blind believism which imagines faith to consist of a mere idea rightly affirmed with the lips, but knows nothing of a real faith that possesses within the heart. So men imagine that to believe in Jesus Christ is something that can be done apart from obeying Him, because they do not know Him as the Lord who reigns and lives within. As well imagine that a command is only to be believed but not obeyed, or that a tree is not known by its fruit. ‘I will show you my faith by my works,’ said the apostle; and if this is the only way faith can be shown, then any faith which is not thus one with its works is no faith at all. “James said, ‘As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.’ Most pointedly this Scripture makes clear that devoutness and piety do not consist in a mere right understanding of these things that a man may profess without the fruits thereof, for works cannot be separated from its faith, or James could show his faith alone without its works. He only is the devout man who lives no longer to his own will or the way and spirit of the world, but to the will of God alone. He who considers God in everything, serves God in everything, who makes every moment of his daily life a real part of God’s will on earth by doing everything in the name of Christ; he alone can be called the pious man. For if a man say he has faith, but does not evidence a life that produces the works of God, James tells us most emphatically that ‘faith alone’ cannot save him.*2 (pp. 180-181.)
[*1 The Power of the Spirit (1896) William Law (formerly titled An Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761); edited by Dave Hunt, 1967, Switzerland), 189pp., pb., 12.00 + P&H.
*2 ie. such a fruitless faith is counterfeit; not real (false life). R.A.B.]
“....So it is that for lack of this basic intention to surrender all to Christ, the church today is an open fraud of mere lip profession to that faith and divine love that once burned as a fire from heaven in those who ‘turned the world upside down.’ “If you will but stop to ask yourself why your brand of Christianity is hardly recognizable as related to that which primitive Christians knew, your own heart will tell you that it is primarily because you never thoroughly intended to live as they lived and to die as they died. You sing of your devotion to the same Lord, and profess to believe the same New Testament doctrines as the early disciples. You have the same promises from the Lord of the fulness of the Spirit, the divine nature, and all that pertains to life and godliness. You would never hope to get to heaven through a faith any different than theirs, but you have believed Satan’s lie that it is possible to have the same faith as the first Christians without manifesting the same works as they. And if you are honest you will admit that this lie has been gladly received because you have not really had the heart intention to walk as Jesus walked.* Did you but have this intention to please God in all your actions, as being the happiest and best choice for life in this world, you would then find yourself as unwilling to deny Christ with your life as you are now unwilling to deny Him with your lips. And would you but add to this intention a simple faith in the promises of God in Christ, you would find yourself living in the same denial of self and as contrary to the world as fishermen apostles did in their day.” (pp.,182-183.)
[* Wow. Amen! So many professed believers today are like the rich young ruler who went away sad, not wanting to sacrifice what he deemed more important in life, in order to truly follow Christ. R.A.B.]
“....the question is not whether gospel perfection can be fully attained, but whether you come as near it as a sincere intention and careful diligence can carry you through faith in Christ. .... Can you really call yourself a follower of Christ without at least intending to follow Him all the way? .... Can a man who has this saving faith then fail to manifest those works which the Scripture so plainly tells us are the direct consequence of the new creation? .... that man who does not so much as intend to manifest in all his ways these works which God has ordained for him has denied the very faith which he otherwise professes. .... Works without faith is the dead and unacceptable offering of the sinful flesh; and faith without works is a fraud, a false profession of that which is dead because it does not have the life of God in it; and this is proven by the lack of fruit of the Spirit. God holds out to our faith the blessing and power of the Holy Spirit as our all in all, filling us with the life of Christ, causing us to overflow with rivers of living water.” (pp.186,188,189)