John Piper Speaks on Abortion & President Obama

Worldly or Heavenly Worldview?

2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

“Worldviews are the most fundamental and encompassing views of reality shared by a people in a culture. The worldview incorporates assumptions about the nature of things—about the “givens” of reality.” – Dr. Paul Hiebert.

Your worldview has been tainted in many ways to date. Your parents, your sex (male or female), your country, schools, teachers, friends and experiences in life. As Christians, our task is to test our worldview in light of all these influences and make sure they line up with what God has told us our worldview should be. In one way we choose our worldview by the way we react to interactions within our culture or community, but on the other hand worldview also chooses us because we have been placed in a certain place and time by God for His purpose.

J. Mark Bertrand has come up with 4 principles that Christian thought should utilize to make sure we are within a worldview perspective. I like them and think they are worth considering, and as always we have to take these in comparison with what Scripture tells us about how we should perceive the world.

Mr. Bertrand says one of the first errors as believers we make is forgetting Genesis 1:1, in that we and everything around us has been created by God, and this creation screams at the top of its lungs to remind us. Romans 1:20-25, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Our worldview must entail that we remember who we belong to, and it is not ourselves.

The second area that we must remember is that God is a God of order and that He directs the world around us according to His plan and to His will. Ephesians 1:11-12 says, “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.” G.C. Berkouwer puts it this way in his book Providence of God, “There is a danger. . . that men subjectively and arbitrarily interpret history in the light of the extraordinary, that they seek only the special intervention of the finger of God instead of living with confidence in the hand of God which governs all things.” While there are things that we cannot know there are many things we can and in them we continue to see that God is ordering the universe according to His plan, which includes our participation.

All religions believe in rationality, even if they say they don’t, because they argue in a rational manner to say they do not believe in rationality. To even challenge this third worldview thought process you will be contradicting yourself, because you will have to use a rationalization to prove it false. There is no escaping it. We must remember that our rational thought is Christ, as we no longer live, but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). John 8:32, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” There is truth and we can know it through rational thought.

The last one is one that many have neglected or ignored for a long time now and that is fear. Today this aspect is not talked about much, as the social gospel (a dominant force today) does not want a God we are afraid of, and if we are honest a lot of us at times have trouble with this concept. The priest, prophets and apostles all had a fear of God. This included a reverence that enhances this fear. The more you know about God, this should in some fashions cause you to be more fearful of whom He is in light of who you are.

Maybe one does not fear God because we do not see our sin and that we cannot believe we could be the object of God’s wrath. Guess what? You need to wake up, because we are all fallen sinners and should be fearful of when we sin against God. You may be saved from Hell, but it does not mean you are saved from discipline. We should think again, though we do have Christ it does not negate who we are. Remember the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 1:7, 2:5, 9:10; 10:27, 14:26-27, 15:16, 33, 16:6, 19:23, 23:17, 22:4; 2 Chron. 19:7-9; Job 28:28; Psalm 19:9, 34:11, 111:10; Isaiah 11:2-3, 33:6; Acts 9:31; 2 Corinthians 5:11).

Take time to reflect on whether or not your worldview lines up with God’s, and if not; what needs to change.

What Are You Yoked To?

Matthew 11:28:30, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Have you ever thought about what you are yoked to? What you have tied your emotions and spiritual well being to? There is a movement among Christians and Churches to integrate yoga into their programs. They rationalize it by saying it is for health, and we use a different name, but they do not truly understand the trappings of yoga then. It would be like holding a Christian séance, and saying we were just trying to talk to angels or Jesus.

Yoga is a very spiritual ritual used by the Hindu religion and every aspect for it is for their particular religion/philosophy. And yes, even the stretches they have you do are for particular purposes.

Yoga literally means to be yoked to another, or to be united with another, and what they want to do is to unite the mind and the body. This will help them free from the enslavement of this world and reach moksha, or their salvation. The goal of yoga is to be free from your body and be one with God again, meaning to them that you are God and you have just actually realized it. “In Yoga proper the question of God is irrelevant; those who believe in God can use Him as one of the means of spiritual advance. Man remains the centre of his own interests and efforts. God is just a ‘a distinct Purusha, untouched by the hindrances of affliction and fruition” Matthew Vekathanam, Indian Christology: Perspectives and Challenges, 169-170.

Purusha for the Hindu is the spiritual self of man. It is pure consciousness and never changes and it is also self-illuminating. The Gita, one of their holy books, says that the Purusha is a distinct God that is untouched by affliction, meaning then that if you are a spiritual Purusha then you are just going to figure out that you are God, pure consciousness. Galatians 6:3, “For if anyone thinks he is something when in he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Paul continues on in Colossians 1:13-14, “For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins.” Not from ourselves. It is not inward as Yoga says, but outward. How can we be compatible and take in their practices?

Many in the states practice Hatha yoga, or Bhahiranga yoga, and this is what is also brought into the churches under another name, and saying it is good exercise. The goal here is to do these external exercises so that you awaken Kundalini sakti at the base of your spine, which will then go up through your spinal cord and awaken the lotus. This is where you then attain transcendental states and you are free from time and space, hence you are then becoming infinite, which is who you are truly. As you are just a part of God. This is called henotheism, as Indian scholar M. Dhavamony puts it, “The predominant idea of henotheism is that various gods are only different forms of a single divinity. The Rgveda says: ‘What is but One, the wise call by diverse names.’ And again: ‘Him with fair wings, though only One in nature, wise singers shape, with songs, in many figures.” You and I are gods, as we are part of the One true God being manifested in these bodies right now.

If you yoke yourself to yoga instead of the word of God then you are heading down a dangerous road. It does not bring religions together, as it denies everything about other religions, because they believe that we are all unrealized gods, which is gained through these practices of yoga and learning their Vedas.

If you want to stretch then stretch, but do not go to a yogi to show you, because he/she will teach stretches meant for their faith, which is a type of worship. We all had gym class in school and were taught how to stretch. It would take a whole other blog to cover the breathing aspect of yoga as well. It has many spiritual implications. It would be the same for a Christian to go to a Muslim Mosque and worship as if they believed the Muslim faith to be true, or vice-versa. When in fact they differ on many areas of each other’s faith.

Hindus believe in reincarnation, Christians do not. Hindus believe your soul is eternal and always has been; Christians believe we were individually made. Hindus do not believe in Heaven or Hell, as we do. They do not think Jesus is the Son of God as Christians do, and believe He is dead and did not rise from the grave. They say we all worship the same God. How can that be when all our faiths have very different ways of attaining salvation? Muslims must perform the 7 pillars and even then they are not guaranteed, as God may still banish them. Jehovah witnesses are by works for Heaven and do not believe in the trinity. Wiccans worship nature and do not believe in the same gods at all that we do (some no gods at all), or the Hindus. Would you also bring in some of these other faith’s practices? What if they said doing a séance would heal you? Would you do it when the Bible is against it?

Why do we worship with them then? Yoga is their worship, spiritual practice to attain salvation (Moksha). You can call it Christian yoga if you want, but know that Hindus are smiling, as you are incorporating their worship into your life and that is opening you up for spiritual attack and a slippery move away from the faith. It turns the church back into the Corinthian church, where we want to bring all these pagan ideologies within the church. “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. . .” (2 Cor. 6:14-16).

Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”

Christians Think Jesus Sinned? What!!!!!

World Net Daily

Saturday, January 17, 2009

TESTING THE FAITH
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
1 in 3 'Christians'
say 'Jesus sinned'
Barna poll shows adults
develop their own beliefs
Posted: January 16, 2009
11:40 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
WorldNetDaily


Half of Americans who call themselves "Christian" don't believe Satan exists and fully one-third are confident that Jesus sinned while on Earth, according to a new Barna Group poll.

Another 40 percent say they do not have a responsibility to share their Christian faith with others, and 25 percent "dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches," the organization reports.

Pollster George Barna said the results have huge implications.

"Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible," he said.

(Story continues below)

"Growing numbers of people now serve as their own theologian-in-residence," he continued. "One consequence is that Americans are embracing an unpredictable and contradictory body of beliefs."

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The results are a dramatic departure from the nation's foundings, when leaders held prayer meetings in the halls of Congress and attributed to Almighty God the victory in the Revolutionary War.

Barna noted the millions of people who describe themselves as Christian and believe Jesus sinned, or those who say they will experience eternal salvation because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior, "but also believe that a person can do enough good works to earn eternal salvation."

Barna's private, non-partisan, for-profit research group in Ventura, Calif., has been studying cultural trends since 1984. For this study, the organization randomly sampled 1,004 adults across the continental U.S. The study has a margin of error of 3.2 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

For the study, "born-again Christians" were defined as people who said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that was still important in their life today and who also indicated they believed that when they die they will go to heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The results highlight the significant shift in beliefs held by Americans, the study said.

"For much of America's history, the assumption was that if you were born in America, you would affiliate with the Christian faith," the report said. Now however, "half of all adults now contend that Christianity is just one of many options that Americans choose from and that a huge majority of adults pick and choose what they believe rather than adopt a church or denomination's slate of beliefs."

Fifty percent of Americans believe Christianity no longer has a lock on people's hearts. Two-thirds of evangelical Christians (64 percent) and three out of every five Hispanics (60 percent) embraced that position, making them the groups most convinced of the shift in America's default faith.

In contrast, the poll showed the importance of belief was growing along with the number of options about what to believe.

"By an overwhelming margin – 74 percent to 23 percent – adults agreed that their religious faith was becoming even more important to them than it used to be as a source of objective and reliable moral guidance."

Forty percent of respondents who do not affiliate with Christianity confirmed the increasing influence of their beliefs.

The result "underscored the fact that people no longer look to denominations or churches to offer a slate of theological views that the individual adopts in its entirety," the report said.

By a margin of 71 percent to 26 percent adults "noted that they are personally more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church," the report said.

Nearly two-thirds of "born again Christians" adopted that stance.

"In the past, when most people determined their theological and moral points of view, the alternatives from which they chose were exclusively of Christian options - e.g., the Methodist point of view, the Baptist perspective, Catholic teaching, and so forth," Barna noted. "Today, Americans are more likely to pit a variety of non-Christian options against various Christian-based views. This has resulted in an abundance of unique worldviews based on personal combinations of theology drawn from a smattering of world religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam as well as secularism."

Rainbow Arc Dove

1 John 5:6, 9, “Jesus Christ—He is the One who comes by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and by blood. And the Spirit is the One who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. . . . If we accept the testimony of men, God’s testimony is greater, because it is God’s testimony that He has given about His son.”

Many of you know that I have been teaching in India for the past 8 months. One of the areas that was given to me was Worldview. My job is to develop the course, write the outline, make a syllabus, create the notes and then teach the course. All within a couple of months. To do this meant a lot of research within Indian culture and learning how the Hindus think, as the course was to be utilized for witnessing in India.

The concept is basically being able to get inside the heads of the common Hindu and understand their philosophy regarding Hinduism, as that penetrates everything in their lives; from eating, work, marriage, children and so on. When I say everything, I literally mean everything. In order to understand the common Hindu Indian you have to understand Hinduism, which has proven to be a daunting task, but I have been blessed and challenged in my own faith by it.

I found that Hinduism has their own trinity, and it is called Trimutri, literally meaning: having three forms. The three they would put here is Brahma (God’s creative ideas), Vishnu (work of saving the world), and Siva (creation being brought to perfection). This started my thinking process and right away I thought of the concept Rainbow, Arc, Dove being allowed to be used as the description for the Holy Trinity. How much longer before we can then use Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva as names for the Trinity, because they almost line up with ours. Why not? Would not this allow us to witness to them better?

As always, I went to the Bible to see if the Bible allows names for the Trinity other then what is used. I could not find any. I found where examples were used to describe them. Calling Jesus the life (JN 6:35), or truth (JN 14:6), but these are descriptions. When I looked, this is what I found.

God is called God the Father, I Am (Ex. 6:2, the name He gave Himself), Lord, but never anything close to Rainbow. He is always God: Genesis 15:7, 26:24; Ex. 3:6; Lev. 11:44; Numb. 15:41; Deut. 29:6; Judges 6:10; Ps. 81:10; Is. 42:8; Jer. 32:27; Ezek. 6:13; Hosea 12:9; Joel 2:27; Mal. 1:6. None of these verses, and there are plenty more, give another name for God. Again, they may use examples to describe Him, which is called anthropomorphic language, but never a new name.

Jesus is referred to as Jesus. They may use metaphorical language or syllogisms to describe Christ, but never to name Him anything but Savior – Jesus. Look for yourself: Matt. 22:32, 24:5 (says “I am Christ,” giving His name); JN 14:6; Acts 7:32; Rev. 1:8. No Arc anywhere, not even a reference and I could not even find an example where He was compared to an arc. Can you?

Lastly, but just as important is the Holy Spirit. I barely found anything besides Holy Spirit, and certainly no new names, unless you count Spirit of God in 1 Cor. 12:3. Again, look at these verses: Matt. 3:11, 12:32; Mark 1:8, 3:29; Luke 1:15, 11:13; JN 14:26 (called Helper, but again a description); Acts 2:4, 4:8; Titus 3:5; Heb. 6:4; 1 Peter 1:12; 2 Peter 1:21; Jude 1:20. And they clearly say that to even mess with the Holy Spirit can have dire consequences. Wouldn’t that include changing His name to dove? At least, I guess, this name is actually used, but the wording includes “like a dove,” a description.

We should not taint the names of God, nor think it is something His servants can actually do. Why do we think we have the right to usurp Him? This is dangerous. Again, how long before we can use Brahma, Vishnu, Siva to make Hindus comfortable in Church?

We should not be imitating other cults or religions. The names of God are precious and His to name, and to usurp that is not for us and in the end is evil and sin.

3 John 11, “Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.”

HINDERANCE

I Thess. 2:18, “Therefore we wanted to come to you—even I, Paul, time and again—but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming?”

I have been used to hearing that it is just another symptom of your fibro. Sending my new MRI reports to some doctors in the U.S. was really not that big of a deal. Just wanted to make sure that they agreed with the doctors here, that it was just old lesions they found and should be no worry.

Waking up, I took my time to get to the computer to check my email prior to leaving for work. Thinking the typical speed of most hospitals in the U.S. with results, I would not have a response for two weeks or so. Not so this time, as a close friend helped my readings to be seen quicker.

Sitting down with my coffee in hand and signing in to my email account, I figured there would be nothing but the usual work emails and requests. There before my eyes was a response already from the doctor in charge. The doctor had two independent doctors look at my MRI. A radiologist and a neurologist, and they came to the same conclusion. The next statement at the bottom of the paragraph was not what I was expecting, “Each independently said that the findings are more suggestive to them of multiple sclerosis.”

Talk about shock. I think I read that same statement probably four times before moving on to why they made their conclusions. Then they gave one more potential, which is Central Nervous System Lyme Disease, which is in the later stages. Neither one was very exciting to me, nor my wife. Over the day we talked about it, then cried together and started processing. We contacted family and some close friends to start discussing what the next step should be, and all came to the same conclusion (including the Neurologist), that we should come home and get the best care possible.

Erin and I prayed about it and wanted to wait for some blood tests to confirm what we already knew we needed to do. My blood tests came back abnormal in three different areas, which made us conclude that we needed to come home. Everyone in India was also in agreement of what we needed to do.

The problem is why? Why now? Why are we being hindered? All these questions hit you. We have given our time to do the work of God here in India and are being productive for the cause of Christ, so why are we being HINDERED?

Sometimes there is no answer, but only trust, and hope, knowing that God the Father is in control and will even use this hindrance to His ultimate glory. Maybe one day we will see why, just as we have seen so much of what He has done through us while we are here. But all one can answer is the following statement later in the same book. . . .

I Thess. 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”