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Friday, May 21, 2010

Liberal Syncretism

Liberal Syncretism is the transition of Orthodox Christianity into Liberal Christianity that preaches all roads lead to salvation. Becoming a "better person," through self-help style sermons, so that their members can leave a more impressive legacy after they die are the markings these churches' teachings. They draw members by helping them to feel better about themselves and producing church services that entertain and offer a friendly atmosphere to bolster their mood. In short, it is more about the individual than about God. God is the means that the individual can become a better, richer, smarter, happier person.

These churches all began as orthodox churches/denominations that began to transition right along with the evolution theory. The church leaders began to believe in evolution and that anthropology led them to transition their theology into a sinless theology that people were created with all of the "sin" that they now how: greed, sexual lust, manipulation, aggression, and all other sins. Since these things are simply part of the nature that God made us with, they cannot possibly be sin. This then led to the concept of all people from all religions are saved because it is not their fault that they did not know God but they are not engaged in sin any more than the Christian is. This shift was a gradual shift, so much so that the leadership adhered to it long before the laity. The laity, continued for some time to adhere to traditional orthodoxy even though their sermons would have been increasingly devoid of the salvation message, against sin, and more and more self-helping. Their salvation was a "horizontal salvation" that is determined by man, not God.

Once the laity began to adhere to the same theology as the leadership, they would need a different reason than sanctification to come to church, since they were already free from sin. Therefore, they all developed a "Social Gospel" that primarily dealt with "liberation" from something. They were liberated from outside oppression or internal guilt or inadequacy.

The Forms of Liberal Syncretism are:
1. Social Gospel: They feed the poor and do good works for the oppressed.
2. Liberation Gospel: They fight the injustice (the only sin) for the powerless (minority) instead of simply taking care of the powerless. The powerful/evil are decried with demonic imagery. The Feminist movements use “Sophia” to describe God since Sophia is a feminine word and therefore it is the word they call God by. Black Liberation Theology (Jeremiah Wright/Louis Farrakhan) cannot accept either a white God or even the same God that whites worship, therefore, whites cannot be saved (whites are the oppressors). The only sin is oppressing and the only way oppressing is a sin is if you are not black (blacks can oppress whites, that will be their salvation).
3. Gender Gospel: Fight the injustice of Patriarchal Society that oppresses the Female (Sophia).
4. Political Gospel: Fight for the freedom to fall against despots.
5. Sexual Gospel: (This is a type of liberation as well). Their key is NOT sexuality, but SEXUAL ORIENTATION. This is not the liberation of sexual lifestyle, but from the oppression due to being oriented (by God) toward homosexuality (or any manner of sexual orientation). The only sin is hatred or intolerance toward them and the only repentance is acceptance of them.
6. Environmental Gospel: Liberation against the oppressors (robber barons). Someone MUST be punished and the punished must pay for what they have done to the environment.

Anti-Body Groups

Anti-Body Cults are groups that teach that salvation is only possible through their particular movement. They consist of the invisible and visible "Body of Christ," in its entirety. Regardless of how similar, salvation cannot be found outside of them.

Five Keys to consider in order to understand Anti-Body Groups
1. When conversing with these groups, remember, the question is not whether You think they are saved, but that they do not believe you are saved. Many Roman Catholics do not believe this, though the Church's official position is that you cannot be saved outside of the Catholic Church. This is the simple way to approach this argument with Catholics, and then detail how the Bible declares one is saved, compared to what they teach.
2. In many cases, the layman may not agree with this view, but they are usually aware of this position.
3. In some cases, a denomination may insist on “retraining” those who join from other denominations, but that is not a salvation issue, it is an ecclesiology issue (“how we do things”). Many Baptist churches demand that a person be "re-baptized" when they join their church, even though they had a believers baptism in a different baptist church -this is cultic.
4. Another key component of these movements is a measure of secrecy, either in rites (such as marriage) or rituals (ordination). It is a Gnostic holdover. They are hiding something they don’t wont others to see.
5. The groups herein include:
a) Roman Catholicism
b) Eastern Orthodoxy
c) Baptist Bride
There are certain marks that all Anti-Body Cults have in common:
1.They believe Jesus entrusted them alone with the truth. All other movements are flawed and send people to hell. There is no salvation outside of their group. (see point one above)
2. Their leader(s) holds the key to salvation, or their teaching alone proclaims it.
3. They draw a straight line from themselves to the Apostles for authority. This is not done for the reason the early church produced Apostolic succession, which was to combat heresy that was itself claiming Apostolic succession. And in the early church, the point of Apostolic succession and church tradition was to affirm the teaching of the Scriptures, not to guard tradition apart from Scripture -in other words, correct interpretation of Scripture was "tradition" for the early church, to which the Apostolic succession affirmed as correct.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Mormonism

The best way to understand Mormonism, and argue against it, is to compare it to Islam. Dr. Caner believes that Mormonism is nothing other than a modern form of Islam or that Islam is nothing other than medieval Mormonism. A few of the comparisons are that they both began by using the book of Barnabas as a launching point. The Book of Barnabas is a document that is first listed among a list of fifth century heretical books, though no surviving documents exists prior to the fifteenth century. The book of Barnabas displays a distinct Muslim bias and portrays Jesus as a prophet, that was neither the Son of God nor the Messiah. Jesus did not die on the cross but Judas in His stead. Jesus predicts a greater prophet coming, Mohammed, and even refers to him by name.
Other comparisons between Mormons and Muslims are that they both teach that the Jews had the truth but lost it and the Christians had the truth but corrupted it. They both received their revelation from angels and had it written on golden tablets to be deciphered by illiterate men (Joseph Smith and Mohammed were both illiterate and this has been used as proof of their ordination by God since God must have given these illiterate men the ability to translate His divine message). After copying the message contained on the golden tablets, both sets of golden tablets were taken into heaven to be with God. Both religions portray Jesus as simply a prophet who gave some of the works that men must do in order to gain salvation.
In heaven, both religions claim women are for the men's sexual pleasure. On earth, those women are also to be used for men's sexual pleasure and therefore both allow polygamy (though Mormons have since outlawed this in accordance with US law). Both tolerate those outside of their religion if but demand that they pay a special tax.
Though this is not the only way to confront a Mormon, it is a good way to begin and it is a good way to help a Mormon understand the need to investigate the origins of their own religion. Ask them to investigate their religion's original documents, though they will have difficult time doing so due to the leadership's refusal to allow access.

https://www.Liberty.edu/seminary
https://webmail.liberty.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=a92d6dfdea1b42ea9d07746145979491&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.Liberty.edu%2fseminary