eChurch Blog

An important message from Polycarp.

According to Bible prophecy, false Messiahs, false prophets and false apostles arise as this age draws to a close, and later work great miracles, signs and wonders to deceive multitudes worldwide. Spiritual deception will dramatically increase, eventually so convincing that even the elect will find it difficult to resist.

Even today, faith healers and spiritual healers draw multitudes with promises of miracle healings and deliverance. We hear more and more about miracles and spiritual gifts, but how can we discern among real miracles of God, miracles, signs and wonders of the occult, and fake miracles via deceptions of men?

Surely we or our loved ones couldn’t be deceived? Or could we? See the article here.

This one made me smile….for once:-

Daily Mail:-

As an experienced police officer Inspector Roger Bartlett knows all about fighting crime.

But when he realised the crime detection rate in his district was one of the lowest in the force area, he decided the long arm of the law might need a bit of help.

He asked churchgoers to pool their efforts in calling on a higher power. God.

Now three years after encouraging locals to say their prayers to help the boys in blue – detection rates have soared, road accidents have fallen and Insp Bartlett is convinced it is evidence that God really does move in mysterious ways.

The 44-year-old policeman decided conventional policing could benefit from a little bit of help when he saw that the crime detection rate in his force area of Banstaple was one of the lowest in the Devon and Cornwall Police area.

The policeman who has 23 years experience, asked Christians to pray for the crime detection rate in 2007 – which at 26 per cent was one of the poorest in the region.

Every quarter since the detection rate has risen, so that now at more than 40 per cent it is one of the highest in the country.

Insp Bartlett asked for prayers for a reduction in the number of serious or fatal road accidents – and it fell from 97 in 2007/8 to 32 in 2008/9.

Last night the policeman said he was ‘convinced’ that people’s faith has had a positive impact on policing in Barnstaple.

The policeman, part of the leadership team of the local Christian Policing Team, began reporting at quarterly meetings of Christians from different churches in the town who want to pray for policing issues six years ago.

He said he has seen his prayers answered ‘on a number of occasions’.

There was the ‘unprecedented’ Halloween night when police did not have to attend a single incident of disorder.

Continue Reading

Perhaps CoAct, who are a Christian policing group, and believe that the power of prayer can catch criminals and keep officers safe, were right.

For my part I’m utterly politically disillusioned right now, however, Theos have done some research with ComRes on religious Psephology and here are some links for anyone interested:-

Theos – Voters with a religious faith could determine the outcome of the general election, according to a new poll published by Theos, the public theology think tank.

Theos – Is Labour the natural home for British Muslims?

72 page PDF of full data tables

Ekklesia – Exploding the myths surrounding the ‘religious vote’

It is fortuitous that the Jerusalem Post should report on the existential threat posed by anti-Zionist “theologians” to Israel, when the Archbishop of Canterbury who is currently in Jordan has just been quoted as saying:-

……the theology of Christian Zionism has no historical base and is a recent Protestant addition. – Eurasia Review.

Of course the irony is that the Archbishop of Canterbury is widely thought of as someone who is willing to embrace any new wind of zeitgeist doctrine, and usher it into the church as quickly as possible, overturning millennia of orthodoxy.

Jerusalem Post:-

Israel is facing a threat from theologians and activists in prominent Protestant churches throughout the world, in addition to the threats posed by “lawfare” and the Goldstone Report, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, charged on Tuesday.

Cooper was speaking at a plenary session of the seventh annual Jerusalem Conference in the capital.

“Theologians and activists in some prominent Protestant churches are seeking to destroy Israel from Above,” Cooper warned. “Their activities threaten to turn traditional friends into enemies and erode support for Israel in the United States…. They cast Israel as a theological mistake, conceived in the sin of the last gasp of Western colonialism.”

According to Cooper, the center of the Protestant theological war against Israel is the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of liberal church bodies, boasting a worldwide following of 349 churches and 580,000 members.

He said one of the most prominent denominations in the WCC is the Presbyterian Church, which was the first to call for divestment from Israel. Cooper warned that 50 members of the US Congress belonged to the Presbyterian Church and, although many of them were friends of Israel, church policy was run from the top by a tight group of activists.

“Anti-Israel momentum is building,” Cooper warned. He charged that the leadership of these churches had “accepted the Arab narrative.”

Cooper said he was specifically concerned by three documents published by members of the WCC in the past three years. They are known as the 2007 Amman Call, the 2008 Bern Perspective and the 2009 Kairos Document, issued by Protestant theologians last December.

Cooper stressed that the Amman Call, issued at the end of a WCC conference called “Churches Together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East,” supported a peace settlement with Israel based on a two-state solution and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

In another section, the authors of the Amman Call wrote, “Risk the curses and abuse that will be aimed at you and stand in solidarity with us and our Palestinian brothers and sisters of all faiths as we defiantly reject the possibility that the occupation will continue.”

In the following year, a group of Protestant theologians gathered in Bern, Switzerland to review the theological underpinnings of Christian attitudes toward Israel,Cooper continued. No Jews were invited to participate. The Bern Perspective, as the document the group issued was called, denied the Jewish understanding of a connection between themselves as a people and the Land of Israel.

“In effect, this marked the return to replacement theology, in which Jews were stripped of their legitimacy,” charged Cooper. Replacement theology holds that the Christians replaced the Jews as the people of the Bible.

“It is not fair to deny our validity as a people and a nation and to take away our Torah,” said Cooper.

According to the Bern Perspective, “the contemporary conflict in Palestine-Israel resounds with biblical metaphors. However, there was significant consensus in theconference that the Bible must not be utilized to justify oppression or supply simplistic commentary on contemporary events, thus sacrilizing the conflict and ignoring its socio-political, economic and historic dimensions.

“We are called not only to expose manipulations of scripture that ignore context and complexity, but to offer readings of text that promote the values of God’s kingdom: justice, peace, reconciliation and forgiveness…. Let us continue to critically and creatively examine notions of the ‘Promised Land,’” reads the document.

Cooper also expressed concern over the Kairos document, which wholeheartedly embraced the moderate Palestinian political line (as opposed to Hamas), arguing that the Palestinian resistance was a response to the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, that religious liberty and freedom of access to the holy places was denied under a “pretext” of security, and that Palestinians suffered from the “wrong interpretation” of theologians who maintained that God had promised the land to the Jews.

The document called on “individuals, companies and states to engage in divestment and in an economic and commercial boycott of everything produced by the occupation.”

Cooper also warned that there were indications that some Evangelical Christians were also becoming hostile to Israel and that it could mark the beginning of a dangerous trend.

However, he added that it was not too late for Israel and the Jewish community abroad to engage in dialogue with the Protestant churches and rekindle their friendship toward Israel. One of the problems, said Cooper, was that few Israelis were aware of the threat from these churches

This is an odd one from over the pond:-

Pajamas media

Christian-Americans Forbidden To Kill Murderer If He Is Muslim – Arizona Prosecutors Won’t Seek Death Penalty in Honor Killing

Remember the case in which Faleh al-Maleki, an Iraqi-American father brutally ran over his daughter, Noor, in Arizona, then attempted to escape but was apprehended in Britain and returned to face justice?

Guess what’s just happened? The Arizona prosecutors have been scared off seeking the death penalty. Public defender Billy Little raised the specter of “How will it look for Christians to execute a Muslim?”

I kid you not.

Billy Little asked the judge to “take special precautions to ensure the County Attorney’s Office wouldn’t wrongly seek the death penalty because Almaleki is a Muslim.” Little called for an “open process (to) provide some level of assurance that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs,” referring to County Attorney Andrew Thomas’ Christian faith.

Whoa!

Words fail me here. Are Christian lawyers, by definition, hopelessly biased against Muslims? This is a fact not in evidence. Is the public defender Christian? Why should this matter in America? What if the judge is Christian? Does Billy Little understand that Muslim judges do not usually prosecute men who honor murder their wives, sisters, or daughters?

Continue Reading

An interesting essay on the Crusades over at the Gates of Vienna Blog, which challenges the widely held view of the Crusaders as aggressors and portrays them historically as defenders.

The Crusades: A Response to Islamic Aggression by John J. O’Neill

One of the most potent myths of our age is that the Crusades were little more than an unprovoked attack by a barbarous Europe against a quiescent and cultured Islamic world. According to conventional ideas, the seventh and eighth centuries constitute the great age of Islamic expansion. By the eleventh century — the time of the First Crusade — we are told that the Islamic world was quiescent and settled and that, by implication, the Crusaders were the aggressors. Indeed, the Crusaders are routinely portrayed as a horde of barbarians from a backward and superstitious Europe irrupting into the cultured and urbane world of the eleventh century Near East.

This at least is the populist language often employed on television and in newspaper articles. In my recent book Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization, I have shown however that before the advent of Islam Christians had no concept of “Holy War” at all, and that it was from the Muslims themselves that Europeans took this idea. I showed too that the Crusades, far from being an unprovoked act of aggression on the part of Christian Europe, was part of a rearguard action aimed at stemming the Muslim advance which, by the start of the eleventh century, was threatening as never before to overwhelm the whole of Europe.

Notwithstanding the evidence presented in Holy Warriors, the consensus among the majority of medieval historians is that the threat from Islam had very little, if anything, to do with the Crusades; the Muslims were simply the convenient targets of a savage and brutal Europe, mired in a culture of habitual violence and rapine. The “energies” of Europe’s warrior-class, it is held, were simply directed by the Papacy away from internal destruction onto the convenient targets of the Islamic world. This, for example, is the line taken by Marcus Bull in his examination of the origins of the Crusades in The Oxford History of the Crusades. In an article of almost ten thousand words, Bull fails to consider the Muslim threat at all. Indeed he mentions it only to dismiss it:

Continue Reading

Ecumenicalism marches on…

(CNA).- Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople’s newest encyclical encourages dialogue between the Orthodox Church and other Christian churches and laments those who are “unacceptably fanatical” in challenging such dialogue. He specifically condemned the false rumors spread about Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.

Patriarch Bartholomew’s patriarchal and synodal encyclical was dated Feb. 21, Orthodoxy Sunday, when the Orthodox Church celebrates the defeat of the iconoclastic heresy.

His letter began by noting the failure of those who tried to suppress, silence or falsify the Orthodox Church. He said that the Ecumenical Patriarchate cares about “protecting and establishing” the unity of the Orthodox Church in order that the Orthodox Christian faith may be confessed “with one voice and in one heart.”

Orthodoxy, he said, must be promoted with humility and interpreted in light of each historical period and cultural circumstance.

“To this purpose, Orthodoxy must be in constant dialogue with the world. The Orthodox Church does not fear dialogue because truth is not afraid of dialogue,” Bartholomew continued, saying that a Church enclosed within itself would no longer be “catholic.”

Dialogue with the outside world must first pass through all those who call themselves Christian, he wrote.

“We must first converse as Christians among ourselves in order to resolve our differences, in order that our witness to the outside world may be credible,” the Patriarch continued, citing Jesus’ prayer that all his disciples “may be one.”

From this source, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has conducted official Pan-Orthodox theological dialogues with the larger Christian Churches to discuss divisions in faith.

He noted that although these dialogues are conducted “with the mutual agreement and participation of all local Orthodox Churches,” they are challenged in “an unacceptably fanatical way” by some who claim to be defenders of Orthodoxy.

Such opponents raise themselves above episcopal synods and risk creating schisms, the Patriarch warned.

He also accused some critics of distorting reality to “deceive and arouse the faithful” and of depicting theological dialogue not as a pan-Orthodox effort, but an effort of the Ecumenical Patriarchate alone.

“They disseminate false rumors that union between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches is imminent, while they know well that the differences discussed in these theological dialogues remain numerous and require lengthy debate; moreover, union is not decided by theological commissions but by Church Synods,” Bartholomew wrote. “They assert that the Pope will supposedly subjugate the Orthodox, because the latter submit to dialogue with the Roman Catholics!”

According to the Patriarch, such critics also engage in condescension towards efforts aimed at achieving Christian unity and wrongly condemn them as representing “the pan-heresy of ecumenism.”

“Beloved children in the Lord, Orthodoxy has no need of either fanaticism or bigotry to protect itself. Whoever believes that Orthodoxy has the truth does not fear dialogue, because truth has never been endangered by dialogue,” the Patriarch stated. “Orthodoxy cannot proceed with intolerance and extremism.”

Patriarch Bartholomew encouraged Orthodox believers to have “utmost confidence” in their Mother Church.

He closed his encyclical letter with a prayer of Lenten blessing, asking that readers become worthy of celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ with all faithful Orthodox Christians.

Cross-Post by Joseph Weissman (Seismic Shock). Previous posts on Stephen Sizer; here, here, and here.

This past week, ABC News reported the arrest of Ayatollah Khomeini’s granddaughter Zahra Eshraghi, along with reformist husband Mohamed Reza Khatami.

In direct relation to this news, illustrated with a photo of Hassan Khomeini guarding a copy his book on Christian Zionism, Stephen Sizer comments:

Two years ago I took part in a lecture tour of Iranian universities at the invitation of Dr Zahra Mostafavi, the daughter of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Predictably, I was accused by Zionists of siding with the Iranian regime, with holocaust deniers, and those who allegedly want to ‘wipe Israel off the map’, etc, etc. I am glad that  what I always knew but could not say at the time has been made public – that they are part of the opposition movement to the Iranian regime. The picture is of Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan Khomeini.

Lara Setrakian, writing for ABC News, logged this story a few days ago.

[...]

I have several points to make in response to this.

1. Stephen Sizer presents this arrest as allowing him to finally reveal the secret of Khomeini family members in opposition to the Ahmadinejad regime.

Yet this is not news: the New York Times reported in April 2003 that Eshraghi was a leading reformer opposed to the oppression of women in Iran. The New Republic reported in August 2009:

Eshraghi and her husband are open supporters of Mousavi and have officially endorsed him through their party; both were arrested a day after the election. In another interview ten days before the election, Zahra said, “Mousavi was one of the very few people trusted by my grandfather.”

2. Zahra Mostafavi’s public support for Moussavi – also reported by TNR in August 2009 – is no secret either, and is not something Rev Sizer is revealing to the world just now.

3. Zahra Eshraghi, grand-daughter of Khomeini, is not the same woman as Zahra Mostafavi, Khomeini’s daughter. Both are active in women’s politics, but whereas Eshraghi actively opposes the chador (Islamic veil) being forced on women, Mostafavi sees wearing the hijab as divine law and therefore not up for debate. There is a clear difference, and Sizer had nothing to do with Eshraghi during his visit to Iran. Sizer was invited by Zahra Mostafavi.

4. In July 2006, Zahra Mostafavi wrote a letter to Hassan Nasrallah in praise of Hezbollah, imploring children to become suicide bombers. Not good.

5. Zahra Mostafavi did not invite Stephen Sizer to Iran in a personal capacity or even on behalf of her family. This was a tour organised by the NEDA Institute. Indeed, Sizer himself wrote in a report on his website:

In October 2007, she [Dr Zahra Mostafavi] invited me to give a series of lectures on the impact of Christian Zionism on the Middle East. The tour was arranged and facilitated by Dr Jawad Shabarf of the NEDA Institute for Scientific Research in Tehran.

In January 2006, Dr Jawad Shabarf wrote to Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on behalf of the NEDA Institute. You can read Shabarf’s corresponse with Faurisson on a Google Cache of the neo-Nazi Zundelsite.

Rev Sizer’s acceptance of an invitation from the NEDA Institute is still inexcusable. It is not justified because Zahra Mostafavi’s niece is a reformer.

6. Hassan Khomeini, depicted in Rev Sizer’s blog, clearly supports terrorist activity against Israeli civilians.

From Payvand’s Iran News:

Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the father of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said in a July 18 letter to Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah that he is ready to go to Lebanon to fight the “enemies of Islam and humanity,” Iranian state television reported. Khomeini met with Nasrallah during a July 2 visit to Damascus, IRNA reported.

7. If Rev Sizer’s visit was genuinely out of concern for the opposition to Ahmadinejad, why did he spend his time criticising apocalyptic Christian Zionist theology without even mentioning Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic Mahdist theology?

8. If Rev Sizer was genuinely opposed to the Iranian state in 2007, why did he appear on the Iranian state’s Press TV in 2008? And why did he cite a Holocaust denier in the process?

9. If Rev Sizer was politically opposed to the Ahmadinejad regime in 2007, why did he appear at a political conference in 2008 alongside representatives from Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are armed and funded by the Ahmadinejad regime? (Holocaust denier Frederick Tobin was also in attendance, as were Neturei Karta reps).

10. Why was Rev Sizer happy to allow his book on Christian Zionism to be translated into Farsi by Zahra Mostafavi for open usage – despite knowing full well how the Iranian regime treats its Christians?

I do not believe that the very sad arrest of Zahra Eshraghi and Mohamed Reza Khatami justifies or negates Rev Sizer’s political alliances in any way.

For Christians interest in peace and justice who respect Rev Sizer’s writings, these developments may seem disconcerting.

Stephen Sizer’s output is focused on what he sees as the violent outworking of bad theology. Emploring Christians to embrace the Biblical quest for peace and justice, Reverend Sizer presents himself as a moral leader for how Christians should engage in politics.

Perhaps he too has some learning to do.

This development was absolutely inevitable once the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) endorsed gay marriage and changed their standards to allow pastors and other rostered leaders to be in committed same-sex relationships.

Pew forum:-

by Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service

(RNS) Saying they’re done with efforts to reform the nation’s largest Lutheran body, dissidents unveiled blueprints Thursday (Feb. 18) for a rival denomination, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

The new body, which will hew to a more traditional line on issues of human sexuality, is expected to be formally launched in August as a conservative alternative to the 4.6 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

So far, at least seven ELCA congregations have voted to leave after the Chicago-based denomination lifted restrictions last summer on non-celibate gay clergy. An additional 28 congregations appear poised to leave.

The ultimate size of the new denomination remains unclear.

Congregations seeking to leave the ELCA must garner a two-thirds majority in back-to-back votes. So far, 64 of the 220 ELCA parishes that moved to secede couldn’t muster the necessary votes, both sides said.

The new denomination will be “faithful in its preaching and practice to the Holy Bible and to the teachings of the Lutheran Confessions,”
organizers said. Still, they said remaining in the ELCA is also a “faithful course” for individuals or congregations that choose to stay.

Organizers are “united in a common confession of the Christian faith and commitment to submit to the authority of God’s Word over all matters of faith,” said the Rev. Mark Chavez of Landisville, Pa., director of the group Lutheran CORE, which is overseeing the breakaway.

Chavez said Lutheran CORE would remain as a network of Lutherans across the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, NALC and perhaps even the more conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Lutheran CORE expects to work alongside the new denomination on evangelism, theological training and social services. Former ELCA Bishop Paull Spring, who chairs Lutheran CORE’s steering committee, said there are no plans to dissolve Lutheran CORE into the new NALC.

Whatever the group’s future, organizers made clear they’re fed up with years-long fights within the ELCA.

“These proposals are a way for Lutherans to move forward … while leaving behind past struggles to reform the ELCA,” said Ryan Schwarz, a NALC organizer from Washington, D.C.

The new body would mark the second major U.S. church schism over homosexuality in as many years. In 2009, conservative Episcopalians launched the rival Anglican Church in North America, which now claims some 800 congregations in the U.S. and Canada; Episcopal Church headquarters puts the number of breakaway congregations at no more than several dozen.

The new Lutheran church body was announced on the 464th anniversary of the death of Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, a date on which Lutherans celebrate their founder as “a renewer of the Christian church,” officials said.

Recently released ELCA membership figures reported a 1.6 percent drop in 2008 — losses incurred well before last year’s policy change.

For its part, the ELCA issued a statement saying church leaders will go forward on implementing the policy changes while regretting the decision of “a few congregations” to leave the denomination.

“As the ELCA carries out the directives of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, we continue to encourage congregations, synods and the churchwide organization to remain in conversation about these matters,” the ELCA statement said.

I confess that I thoroughly enjoyed this little article from American Thinker:-

If discussing politics and religion should be avoided at all costs, then science must join the list. Much of today’s “scientific consensus” is actually religion in its purest sense. The scientific faithful are proselytizing, pronouncing woe to anyone who questions their doctrine.

Too many scientists are High Priests in the First Assembled Reformation Church of Environmentalism, or FARCE for short. They and their followers defend their god — the environment — with the same zeal with which fanatical Muslims defend Mohammad.

Actually, to grant church status is a bit kind; FARCE is a cult. Nonbelievers can have rational discussions with religious persons. But sensible debate is impossible with cult followers. Fact, history, and common sense don’t matter to the cultist. Thus they don’t matter to the FARCE adherent.

The slightest questioning of a FARCE tenet labels one a heretic. Denounce man-made climate change — FARCE’s core belief — and you’re a global warming denier. Blind obedience, sans individual thought and reason, is required.

For example, if you watch a flat-screen television, then you’re destroying the planet. Your light bulb must have a FARCE priest’s sacred blessing. And your automobile must appear on the FARCE’s list of doctrinally acceptable vehicles.

Cults also demand absolute compliance. Within faiths and religions, there are divergent opinions known as denominations. Denominations hold to basic principles even while disagreeing about specific doctrines. Not so with cults.

Environmentalists allow no disagreement. Green activists ignore any evidence or argument that contradicts their beliefs. Dissent is sacrilege to be ignored or condemned. Let’s look at the evidence.

Continue Reading

It’s funny because it’s true and if you think I exaggerate, then remember it was not all that long ago that the UK department of health seriously considered calling for a cull of Britain’s sheep and cow stocks to combat climate change, because of the environmental dangers of livestock flatulence!

Coincidentally, Vee over at the Living Journey blog has put together a rather good post on Anthropogenic Climate Change, which is well worth a look.

AGW — Just some things to consider…