What are they all missing?
God created the world ex nihilo (Out of nothing at all)
“First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” II Peter 3:3-5
They deliberately forget. Things are like they’ve always been. God’s not going to do anything. He didn’t create us! Sounds like uniformitarianism.
Just as God destroyed this world once by water, He will destroy it again by fire.
“By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” II Peter 3:6-7
“Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!” II Peter 3:12
You talk about your global warming! What we ought to be doing is living our lives in the fear of God in anticipation of his judgment of the ungodly! We should take care of the earth, for sure, but more important by far are our souls and the souls of others and the eternity we will enter. Forgive the malapropism, but the earth is not long for this world.
The Bible, our well-known 66 books, is the inerrant word of God.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; II Timothy 3:16
Self-authenticating, you say? But more than that. There are many more witnesses to the authenticity of scripture than its own claim. (Just think for a minute what those might be…hmmm) The Bible is breathed by God, written by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit (II Peter 1:21)
Jesus came to seek and to save lost sinners from this world into an eternal, heavenly kingdom (Luke 19:10). That was his primary and sufficient reason for coming and dying. He did not come primarily to make this a better place to live, though the existence and spread of Christianity has indeed resulted in the greater general welfare of mankind.
You will notice that He did not immediately end slavery, stop all wars,
give women the right to vote for awhile, supply the globe with an eternally regulated thermostat, or grant perfect economic equality to everyone.
Critics of the true church today are so caught up in the social gospel that they have forgotten the real one.
“Holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power;” II Timothy 3:5
These are four fundamental errors that bring us our present deception and malaise. Take note, those of you who have got off track. The way is narrow to life and few are those who find it, but the way to destruction is wide and many go that way. (Matt. 7:13)
Jesus ChristI am FOR Jesus Christ. The whole “Conspiracy against,” thing is to get you here. Not that there isn’t a plot against Jesus and His teachings. There are plans and attacks on Jesus, both premeditated and random.
When I say, “Jesus Christ,” I mean, Jesus, the Messiah. It’s not just Jesus. “Yeshua,” the Hebrew word for Jesus, means, "Yahweh is salvation." Yet, many people may be named, Jesus, or Yeshua. Moses’ successor had the same name, Joshua, or Yeshua. If you speak Spanish you well know that there are a lot of latins named after the Savior.
So the Jesus that John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Seminar are talking about is not Jesus Christ. Some, conscious of this distinction, will refer to Him as “Jesus of Nazareth,” not wanting to ascribe to Him either divinity or the ability to redeem and save mankind. I find it curious that this is just what the Pharisees and Sadducees did, calling him “Nazarene,” or “Galilean,” and denying His messianic claim. Today’s skeptics miss the point of Jesus’ visit to our planet in the same way. "Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" I John 2:22.
When Brian McLaren and many of the Emergent Church folks talk about a Jesus who wants us to live for this world, focusing on making God’s kingdom here, they are making Jesus not the Christ, but demeaning Him to a mere teacher/philosopher/example. The “Christness” or Messianic about Jesus is the centrality of His substitution for us in His death on the cross. The central fact of Him dying for our sins and then raising to life in both body and spirit makes Him the Christ, the Son of God, God Himself.
When Elaine Pagels elevates the Gnostic Gospels to a status parallel to that of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, she is casting doubt on who Jesus really is. She is trying to call into question the testimony of those who touched, handled and walked with Jesus the Messiah.
When critics mock those who believe in a literal six day creation of the world by a personal God, they undermine the foundation of the truth of a Creator God. By denying a Creator, they think to absolve themselves from any moral responsibility to their Maker, while at the same time relegating Jesus to being the descendant of monkeys, which themselves evolved from a mysterious primordial mix of chemicals. I am a man of faith, but I don’t have great enough faith to believe that life spontaneously generated from non-life at random. Louis Pasteur might back me up on that.
It's open season on Jesus. No opinion is too small or too far out not to be painstakingly considered by the most eminent scholars. It turns out, the Jesus of the gospels that we've believed in for over 2000 years is not the right guy.
As it happens, only 21st century wise men have been able to map out the journey to find the "real" Jesus, who turns out to be--shockingly--not the different and wondrous Bethlehem manger baby turned Saviour bloodied on the cross then resurrected, but...
...Amazingly like these latter day wise men themselves. Turns out He only wanted us to be happy in this world, disdaining any sort of war, decrying threats to the environment, being happy and peaceful in THIS world, not the next! After all, they say, the kingdom of God is the here and now. No need to sacrifice, to pick up our cross, to evangelize. Why impose our views on others, when it turns out happily, EVERYONE is right! (Except you, if you hold to a traditional, exclusive view of Jesus as the only way, truth and life.)
From the slanderous fiction of the Da Vinci Code, to the soothing lies of Brian McLaren's Emergent Church, to the renewed onslaught of newfound links in human evolution, to the foisting of false, discredited gospels by Elaine Pagels, the lies of this conspiracy are NOT NEW.
The roots of this conspiracy lie in the ancient untruths of gnosticism propounded by Satan and his human cohorts in the first century, when Christianity was first spreading throughout the world. An integral part of the counter attack on this plot is understanding the historical, biblical and philosophical roots of this battle, which was already won long ago, and must be won again.
I invite you to join me in fighting this conspiracy. Join the alarmist, extremist, narrow-minded people like me who take Jesus' words at their face value (what a crazy, naive thing to do!)
