"New Life in Christ" A 1979 film produced in and around Grace Community Church by Family Films. Vintage John MacArthur with long, open collars and teardrop glasses. Plus: special appearances by Jubilant Sykes. Styles and hairdos have changed dramatically, but the message hasn't. Then, as now, it was biblical, honest, gospel-centered, and clear.
0 Comments
Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], para. 841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day." [330] The following is from ReachingCatholics.org: Understanding Islam and Roman Catholicism by Mike Gendron As we all struggle to understand the terror and tragedy of September 11th, many are now asking questions about the religion of Islam. Clearly, the evidence points to Islamic fundamentalists as the perpetrators of this horrifying attack on America. A close look at the Koran, a book Muslims believe to be the word of God, reveals some possible motivations for the suicide mission of the hijackers. But first, we must clear up some common misconceptions. Muslims, Jews and Christians do not worship the same God. "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father" (1 John 2:23). "Islam" does not mean "peace." It means "submission" to Allah. The word for peace in Arabic is "salam" not "islam." Islam has been a religion of conversion by force ever since its founder Muhammad rode into Mecca on a stallion with a sword in the 7th century. The Koran calls Muslims to participate in a jihad or a holy war against the enemies of Islam. Those who die for the cause of Allah are the only Muslims who are guaranteed paradise. "Think not of those who are slain in God’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord" (Surah 3:169). The Muslims who crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were engaged in a holy war against America. They gave up their lives believing they were assured of paradise.While the majority of Muslims may not embrace terrorism, an estimated 15% are militant fundamentalists who are bent on world dominion. Their world consists of two groups of people—"true Islam" and "infidels." Infidels are unbelievers of Islam, including those who profess Jesus is God (Surah 5:17). According to the Koran Muslims are to "make war on the infidels who dwell around you" (Surah 9:122). "Kill them wherever you find them...if they attack you put them to the sword...Fight against them until idolatry is no more and Allah’s religion reigns supreme...If any one attacks you, attack him as he attacked you" (Surah 2:190-4). "When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them" (Surah 9:5). Ever since the end of the Gulf War, Muslims have been outraged with the presence of "infidel" troops based in the "holy" land of Saudi Arabia. This explains their anger toward America, which they call the "Great Satan."
Considering how Islam is so opposed to Christianity, we find it fascinating that the Vatican has included the Muslims in their plan of salvation (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], para. 841). Nearly 50 years ago, Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton Sheen predicted that Islam would be converted to Catholicism "through a summoning of the Moslems to a veneration of the Mother of God." He reasoned, "The Koran...has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Koran believes in her Immaculate Conception and also in her Virgin Birth. Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady." 1 More recently in a 1998 message to Islamic leaders, Pope John Paul II declared a unity of spirit already exists. He said, "There remains a spiritual bond which unites us and which we must strive to recognize and develop." At first glance, unity between Muslims and Catholics seems very unlikely but after a closer examination of the two religions we find much in common. Like Islam, Roman Catholicism has also offered spiritual inducements to those who put Christians to death. The Vatican offered plenary indulgences (the remission of punishment for sin) to those who killed "heretics." Those who died in such battles were offered immediate entrance into heaven. Other similarities between the two religions include the following... Read more: http://www.reachingcatholics.org/islam_rome.html The following is from Answering-Islam.org: Muhammad
God instructs us in his Word to test the prophets and we find in scripture not only clear criteria for this testing but also reports of many true and many false prophets so that we have examples that help us in this evaluation. To test whether a prophet is from God or a false prophet we have to look at both, his message and his life. Muslim theology itself acknowledges the importance of the lives of the prophets as an essential part of the criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of a prophetic claim so much so that it has created the doctrine of the sinlessness of the prophets which goes much further than the Biblical criteria. There have been many people claiming prophethood both before and after Muhammad. Muslims easily reject the prophetic claims of Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormons, no relation to Islam), Baha'ullah (Bahais, acknowledging Muhammad as true, but moving on to further revelation) and the Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (Ahmadiyya, understanding himself to be a reformer of Islam, not with new revelation) based on the "easy" criterion that Muhammad said there will be no prophet after him. Even though Muslims will certainly not be pleased by the material linked from this page, nor might they agree with us on the criteria for this test, we hopefully can agree that claims to prophethoood need to be tested whether the claimant's message truly comes from God or not, and this includes theclaims of Muhammad about himself and his message. We will provide references to Muslim sites and their view about Muhammad and why he is a true prophet. But in those presentations a number of issues are regularly left out. A true evaluation has to deal with all the facts and cannot be satisfied with a selective presentation. These articles are not written to aggravate Muslims, even though this is probably the section on the "Answering Islam" site which will produce the strongest (emotional) reactions. Our sincere hope is that the material will help both Muslims and Christians come to a more realistic evaluation and view about Muhammad based on a fuller presentation of evidences from the sources. In that respect, I hope that even Muslims will find the material helpful for themselves to not be ignorant regarding parts of their history. Read more: http://answering-islam.org/Muhammad/ Jesus: The Eternal I Am - John MacArthur I would like to have a Bible study with you. Maybe you don't even need to consider this a sermon, but I'd like to have a Bible study with you. I want to make sure that there's one thing about the person of Christ that you understand, and that is who He is. Before we get devotional about Christ, before we get sentimental about Christ, we need to understand who He is. The Christian faith is built on an accurate Christology. Christology is the essential foundation of salvation truth. It's really important to get Christ right. Who is He? Over the last two weeks I read a book by Alister McGrath. The title of the book is Heresy--fascinating book in which McGrath chronicles the history of heresy and its battle with orthodoxy. And at the heart of that battle has been the nature of Christ, going all the way back to the fourth, fifth, sixth century, all the way back to Athanasius, all the way back to Augustine, all the way back to the early church councils. The issue at stake was who is Jesus Christ?... Taken from the Resolved conference ©2010 by John MacArthur. Used by permission of Resolved. For more information, visit www.resolved.org. I want to talk to you on the subject of what God thinks of homosexuals. It is not a particular enjoyable subject to discuss, nor would any sin be enjoyable to discuss, for that matter. But it has become pertinent and essential and necessary for us to get a biblical view of this rapidly increasing and normalizing effort to accept homosexuality in our culture. We need to understand what the Word of God has to say. There is so much confusion on this outside the church that's explicable. But there seems to be about equal confusion inside the church. In fact, there is a new kind of evangelicalism that labels itself, "tolerant, loving, non-judgmental," that is affirming those who carry about and legitimize these kind of lusts and behaviors and they do so while maintaining the name of Jesus Christ in an affirmation that they themselves are Christians. I want you to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and all I want to do is just give you a biblical picture so that you'll know how God views this kind of behavior. And let me say at the very beginning, and I will show you this, but I want to say it because I want you to understand it. Homosexual sin is nothing more or nothing less than a perverse sexual act, or acts...it is no more than that, it is no less than that. It is a perverse abnormal sexual behavior. I'm reluctant even to call someone a homosexual because that seems to identify them with some kind of staple character that draws them into that behavior. It is no more or no less than a perverse act or acts.... In his recent Blog Essay, "God, the Gospel, and the Gay Challenge — A Response to Matthew Vines," Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. responds to Matthew Vines's God and the Gay Christian — a new book that argues that “Christians who affirm the full authority of Scripture can also affirm committed, monogamous same-sex relationships.” "Readers of his book who are looking for an off-ramp from the current cultural predicament will no doubt try to accept his argument. But the real question is whether what Vines claims is true and faithful to the Bible as the Word of God. But his argument is neither true nor faithful to Scripture. It is, nonetheless, a prototype of the kind of argument we can now expect." This essay also links to a new free e-book edited by Dr. Mohler with articles from faculty members of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce college. This e-book, God and the Gay Christian? A Response to Matthew Vines, addresses the biblical, theological, historical, and pastoral issues raised by Vines’s new book. READ MORE: http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/04/22/god-the-gospel-and-the-gay-challenge-a-response-to-matthew-vines/ “Gay Christianity” Refuted! | Alpha and Omega Ministries - The complete response to Matthew Vines is now available as a single program. Yes, its five hours and nine minutes long, (72meg in size). You can play it or download it here.
RELATED: Question: Do you often find that people will criticize you and characterize you without ever having heard you preach a sermon or having read one of your books?
Question: Why do you believe Rick Warren's seeker sensitive church model is unbiblical? Question: When Brian McLaren was asked who started the Emergent Church, he credited Leadership Network. The Leadership Network is largely known for pushing the seeker sensitive church model yet McLaren credits them for helping found the Emergent Church. Would you agree that what appears to be the goal is to take a traditional New Testament church and transition it into a seeker sensitive church and then to completely transform the church into the mysticism and Gnosticism of the Emergent Church? Question: On October 23, 2011, I was really encouraged when in your sermon on the Holy Spirit you exposed the heresy of Cindy Jacobs, Mike Bickle, Lou Engle and C. Peter Wagner. Can you give us some further insight as to why you believe the NAR is a threat to the gospel, and the true church? Are you shocked that so many nationally known pro-family and evangelical leaders are willing to unite in one spiritual enterprise after another with the likes of Bickle, Engle, Wagner and Jacobs such as the American Family Association, Family Research Council and even Dr. James Dobson who recently interviewed Lou Engle? Question: Evangelical and pro-family leaders are now promoting "Two Weeks for Freedom: Catholics and Evangelicals Together for Freedom." You were very outspoken against the 1994 document, Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Would agree that the "culture war" is being used to build unbiblical and ecumenical alliances to "win" the "culture war"? Question: I believe that Satan has very cleverly used President Obama and his promotion of tyranny to scare "self-professing" Christians right into the arms of New Age Mormon Glenn Beck and the Church of Rome and ecumenicalism. Would you agree that Satan is using the Hegelian Dialectic Process to build a false church? Question: What are your thoughts on the increasing number of reformed teachers such as Tim Keller that recently praised Richard Foster and the writings of Catholic Mystics such as Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Theresa of Ávila? Then then there is Mark Driscoll with his claim that he has visions and can see what has occurred in the past in someone's life. Additionally, why do you think there is such little outrage by Christian leaders over the embracing of mysticism by popular Christian authors and pastors? Question: Did you ever believe you would see the state of the modern "church" sink to the level that it has? In other words, did you think the Lord would rapture the church before it got this bad or did you expect this in your lifetime? If the Lord does not return in the next 5 to 10 years, what will the modern "church" further accept and promote? Question: As of today, how many downloads have there been of your sermons since you ministry began offering them on the internet for free? Question: In a sermon in 2010 at the Shepherds Conference you recommended Ian Murray's book, Evangelicalism Divided. I was impressed with Mr. Murray's research and courage to explain how Billy Graham helped to divide evangelicalism starting back in 1954 when he chose to sponsor his New York crusade with Modernists. You have also spoken from your pulpit several times on Dr. Graham's decisions and their impact on evangelicalism. Can you explain to our audience why you feel it is Biblically necessary to publically talk about the decisions of public men like Billy Graham and how should Christians handle the criticism of those who claim it is not loving? Question: The May 2012, cover story of Christianity Today is about Heidi Baker. The subtitle of the article reads, "There are credible reports that Heidi Baker heals the deaf and raises the dead." The article declares that "…she claims, scores have risen from the dead, food has been multiplied, the crippled and blind have been restored…" TBN, Daystar and so much of evangelicalism is increasingly into signs and wonders. Would you agree that the lines are increasingly being erased between the signs and wonders crowd and modern-day evangelicalism? Question: What would be your final words of action and encouragement for our radio audience as they desire to contend for the faith? - See more at: http://www.worldviewweekend.com:81/worldview-times/article.php?articleid=8369 |
Blog plus additional contentMy blog plus noteworthy sermons, news, articles, videos, audio & more! Archives
January 2024
|