95 Theses

Hey Rome...Read'em and weep.

Go ahead...indulge yourself.

Happy Reformation Day!

Because of the Pope's offer to bring Anglican's under his shadow, I thought it important to remind people why there was a Reformation in the first place.



It's not enough for Anglicans to get to continue using the Book of Common Prayer or have married priests. The issue is how are we made right with God! Until Rome repents of her pernicious errors, they will remain in impaired communion with us.

Don't forget that.

HOWL-O-WEEN II

Now the VATICAN has gone the way of the charismaniacs. According to the Telegraph:

The Holy See has warned that parents should not allow their children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls on Saturday, calling Hallowe'en a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death".

The Roman Catholic Church has become alarmed in recent years by the spread of Hallowe'en traditions from the US to other countries around the world.

I'd be more worried about the spread of clown masses and the proliferation of Marty Haugen / David Haas' tripe, tyvm.

Willikers - get with it. Pope JP-II (electric bugaloo) knew how to get with it.

Earlier this week the Catholic Church in Spain also condemned the growing popularity of Halloween, saying it threatened to overshadow the Christian festival of All Saints' Day.

The Bishop of Siguenza-Guadalajara, Jose Sanchez, said there was a risk that Halloween could "replace Christian customs like devotion to saints and praying for the dead."

Yeah...nothing overturns superstition like...more superstition. Ever been to El Día de los Muertos celebracíon? I'd hardly call it Christian. Ancestor worship comes to mind, though.
Just look at that.

Yessirree. Chock-full to brimmin' with Christianity.

HOWL-O-WEEN

Editor's Note: CBN - in a surprising display of good taste - has already taken the article down. (Either that, or the witches were able to knock it off the server through their orange & black magical debil-candy.) Nevertheless, you can still find the "article" posted at CharismaMag's blog - whence it originally came.

Kimberly Daniels, a guest writer for CBN Online, has written an article supposedly exposing the forces of evil and their use of the secularized All-Hallow's E'en celebration (Halloween). Unfortunately, the only not-so-hidden truth the article exposed was that this woman desperately needs to go to seminary before she ever speaks as a public Christian leader again. I don't mean to be mean, but she starts with error, and goes downhill from there.

First, she seems to think there's an unholy godhead - consisting of a perverse trinity:

Lucifer is a part of the demonic godhead. Remember, everything God has, the devil has a counterfeit. Halloween is a counterfeit holy day that is dedicated to celebrating the demonic trinity of : the Luciferian Spirit (the false father); the Antichrist Spirit (the false holy spirit); and the Spirit of Belial (the false son).

Didja get that? Yeah...me neither. The Trinity is oneness of being in three self-submitting persons. That's absolutely antithetical to the "me-first"-ness of the fallen one. I don't think Ms. Daniels knows what she's talking about - either on the trinity or on demonology.

She doesn't know candy-making any better:

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.

Seriously? I mean...as a homeschooler, I've been to candy-making plants. A friend of mine grew up in the Presbyterian church that the owner of Spangler Candy (maker of Dum-Dum Pops) attended. I've seen plenty of ovens, but nary a coven in those places.

Even more ironic, these are the same folks that would tell the Roman Catholic Church that it's superstitious for believing in sacraments that work ex opere (even though they have the promise of Christ behind them). Nevertheless, you bring out the devil and all of a sudden he's got power over all of nature that God Almighty doesn't have? He's allowed to work wickedness through material things, but Jesus isn't allowed to work good?

Confused much?

Even the colors of Halloween (orange, brown and dark red) are dedicated. These colors are connected to the fall equinox, which is around the 20th or 21st of September each year and is sometimes called "Mabon." During this season witches are celebrating the changing of the seasons from summer to fall. They give praise to the gods for the demonic harvest.

Wait a sec. Thanksgiving is off limits too, now. What church does this lady belong to? Jehovah's Witnesses?

Oh...it's worse. She claims to be an apostle.

The gods of harvest that the witches worship during their fall festivals are the Corn King and the Harvest Lord.

Um...I think anyone who would publish this tripe deserves to be crowned Corn King.

Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats. It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist.

Okay...this takes the cake. I remember when I was a little kid being absolutely FASCINATED with monster books & movies. I fancied that one day I might grow up to be a special-effects makeup artist. Some senior church members thought my "obsession" was a gateway for the evil one to take control of me. (As if he needed something like that when there was plenty of lust, greed, pride, etc. to go around.) Anyway, they said I shouldn't be fixated on that kind of thing or the devil would take control of me.

Here's the problem - even as a seven year old, I knew all that stuff was FAKE. (Not the devil - he's a real being, but vampires and werewolves and zombies, etc.) I could get up from these eeeeVIL things and go on about my life. They would vanish into the idleness of childhood imagination and historical mythopoesis.

But for duh-postle Kim, they're still real.

Just let that sink in for a minute.

There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent.

Alright...let's get something straight. The harvest is God's. It is His open-handed blessing to all creatures, and a reminder of the Noahic covenant. And it's so foundational a picture of God's goodness that he instituted THREE FESTIVALS associated with it:

• a seven-day springtime festival of Unleavened Bread, around the barley harvest (Passover/Unleavened Bread/Pesach/Mazzot);
  
• an early summer festival of Harvest, when the wheat ripens (Pentecost/Weeks/Shavuot);
  
• an autumn festival of Ingathering, when olives, grapes, and other fruits are harvested (Booths/Tabernacles/Sukkot).

Remember, this is God's inspired Word we're talking about. And He told His people to hold these festivals during times when the pagan Canaanites around them would be having similar harvest festivals. He even talks about the ingathering of humans to the Kingdom as a harvest.

I don't think this woman knows what she's talking about. She needs to re-read 1 Corinthians 8. Verses 1-6 tell us that there's no reality behind false idols, so that she'll realize these haints and boogers and witches she's conjuring up are just that - idols of her own overactive imagination. Secondly, she needs to repent for laying false burdens on Christians (vv. 7 et seq.).

There is a false Gospel out there that says that kingdom-living is a bunch of do's and do-not's. RUBBISH! While God demands holiness, that has already been met in the righteousness of Christ. We are free to transform cultural relics and natural life cycles into reminders of God's goodness and providence. The whole hoopla over Halloween as a pagan festival, rather than a time of remembering the faithful departed, became popular in the supernaturalism / medievalism of the late Victorian era (little of which was based in fact).

G. K. Chesterton said "Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice."

The fact of the matter is that morally lazy Christians love to get worked up over nothings so they can ignore the real travesties of our day. The "War on Christmas" is just such a turn. If Halloween has "gone bad," Christians are to blame. We forgot to take time to honor the saints (living and dead), and embrace God's covenant faithfulness. If we did that, we might remember that the devil doesn't need witches, haints, and boogers to corrupt us. A nice TV and comfortable position at our job and a gliding indifference towards others is plenty to lead us to the gates of Hell.

When I was training as a medico, there was an old saying: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses - not zebras." One of the dangers of studying medicine is that you learn a fearful host of pathological conditions, and are eager to show off your knowledge by finding the most obscure diagnosis. (Think of the popularity of the medical drama, House.)

The same is true in the cure of souls. When someone is having trouble in their marriage, or their children are being rebellious, don't think "A-ha! Dad must be a Mason under Satanic oppression!" Instead, look for the regular old enemies: the world and the flesh.

So instead of exorcising candy...let's enjoy some, then go exercise.

Comprehensiveness vs Liberalism

Here are some lightly edited extracts from J. I. Packer's Latimer Studies booklet "A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness."

Although this booklet reflects on the theological situation in the Church of England, and that at a particular time, some of the following observations hold good for more contemporary movements. For although there have been several historic forms of liberal theology there is also a liberal mood or mindset:

First, the basis of all forms of this position is the hypothesis that no universally right way of thinking about God is given in Christianity.

Unable to accept what might be called a Chalcedonian view of Scripture (i.e. that it is fully human as well as fully divine, and fully divine as well as fully human), they have doubted both the reality of the Chalcedonian Christ to whom the New Testament witnesses and the propriety of reading Scripture as more than a rag-bag of traditions, intuitions, fancies and mythology whereby good men celebrated and shared their sense of being in touch with God - a contact occasioned for New Testament writers by a uniquely godly man named Jesus.

That prophets and apostles no less than creeds and churches can all be wrong on questions of reality and truth, is plank one in the liberal platform. Scripture and the Christian literary heritage are certainly stimulating, inspiring and effective in communicating God, but that does not make them true.

So the constant endeavour of the liberal fraternity from the start has been to go behind and beyond biblical witness to reformulate the faith in terms which to them, as modern men, seem truer, clearer and less inadequate (whether evolutionist, idealist, panentheist, deist, existentialist, Marxist; sociological, psychological, syncretistic; or whatever).

Certainly, for today’s liberals there are no fixed fundamentals; everything, not excluding the doctrine of God - indeed, some say, that first - is regarded as in principle open to review and change.

...liberals have no united platform or policy, for they hold in common only...negations...plus the sifting, reshaping methodology which these negations entail. They agree only in what they are against; beyond this it is every man for himself.

Sykes notes that ‘a “liberal” theological proposal is always in the form of a challenge to an established authority, and thus necessarily implies a dispute about the appropriate norms or criteria for any theology whatsoever.’ He notes too that ‘it is impossible to be merely a “liberal” in theology one’s theology … will be liberal in as much as it is a modification of an already existing type’ - liberal catholic, liberal evangelical, or even liberal latitudinarian.

And he rightly stresses that any church in which liberals do their thing, querying the traditional and jettisoning the conventional, will have to endure real divergences of belief as some negate what others affirm and affirm what others cannot but negate.

[A]ll forms of liberalism are unstable. Being developed in each case by taking some secular fashion of thought as the fixed point (evolutionary optimism, historical scepticism, Marxist sociology, or whatever), and remodelling the Christian tradition to fit it, they are all doomed to die as soon as the fashion changes, according to Dean Inge’ s true saying that he who marries the spirit of the age today will be a widower tomorrow.

It is not always realised that the history of the past century and a half is littered with the wreckage of dead liberalisms. Though liberalism as an attitude of mind (going back at least to the Renaissance, if not indeed to the temptation of Eve) has persisted, and persists still, particular liberalisms have so far been relatively short-lived, and can be expected to continue so. Some liberals cheerfully acknowledge this and never treat their current opinions as more than provisional, anticipating that they may think differently next week.

h/t Against Heresies

Tallis' Canon for Evensong

If you love this hymn, join us for Veterans Day Evensong on Nov. 11th at St. Stephen Anglican Church!

h/t to BettyLee for helping us wrap up the day with Libera!

Why I went into ministry

For the babes, of course.

Jubilate Deo!

Somehow I just cannot get enough of these boys' singing! The luscious scenery ain't hurting, either!