by Standerinfamilycourt
Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
Give us that Marxist social gospel
It’s good enough for most
It was good enough for the mainstream Methodists
Good enough for the Episcopalians
Good enough for the leftist Lutherans
It’s even good enough for this Pope 
Yeah!….( okay, “SIFC” will behave now.)
In the not-so-humble opinion of “standerinfamilycourt”, it’s way past time to recognize that the bride of Jesus Christ is not some sort of demographic-sensitive, finger-to-the-wind organizational hawker. Her Husband never did allow one single soul to come to Him on his or her own terms while He walked the earth, not even the man who wanted to go home first and bury his ailing father.
It has been hard to miss the leftward drift over the past 3 or so years of The Gospel Coalition publication (TGC) and the related Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), both of which are Southern Baptist-affiliated organizations. What do we mean by “leftward drift” ? It’s easily recognizable to some of us with adult children whom we raised in conservative evangelical homes, or in traditional Catholic homes, but those big kids are now thinking Jesus died for “social justice” – and they choose their current church accordingly, leaving some of us grateful that our grandchildren are in church at all, but….
Did Jesus die for “social justice” ?
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.
Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth.
– John 18:36-37
Jesus laid down His life to bring the poor and lost into a future kingdom. Yes, He taught us to do unto others as we would have done for us, but the temporal (as He demonstrates Himself) is only PART of the equation, and it is, in fact, by far the lesser part.
While it might seem comforting to reason that the SBC is doing what all major organizations do in the 21st century, especially after losing a million members over the last decade, and they are appealing to what they perceive as their future demographic to try and recover the loss, yet there may possibly be a little more that’s afoot along with the demographic appeal, and it just might be a bit sinister. This may seem a crass suggestion, but once the choice has been made to shift (or drift) mission from the eternal to the temporal, is not such discernment fair game?
In the fall of 2015, TGC contributor Joe Carter did an excellent three-part series of articles on the Communist roots of the U.S.
50-state unilateral divorce laws, and the deleterious impact they have had on the civility and stability of our society. He promised a fourth installment which the marriage permanence community eagerly awaited, but for some reason, he has not delivered it –almost three years later. Why? Some have sought to find out, but Joe’s not saying. (More about the reinvented Joe Carter below.)
As the Southern Baptist Convention gears up for its annual convention June 10-13 in Dallas, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., it appears the agenda will be heavy with more of the same. The media has managed to keep the national attention riveted on “racism”, despite a rash of multi-racial school shootings, carried out by fatherless young men. Denominational leaders are tripping all over themselves to “apologize” for our “segregated” churches, despite the fact that people quite freely make their own choice where they feel most comfortable attending, and you never see a “blacks only” or “whites only” sign in front of any church in this country. Likely to be ignored (again) in the agenda is the fact that the 2018 host state and the neighboring state both have unilateral divorce repeal bills pending on the floors of their legislatures, and it’s a prime opportunity for the SBC to act on its year 2000 resolution — that is, presuming the denomination ever meant a single word of it.
The PMS Pasting of Paige Patterson
The family-friendly year 2000 SBC resolution entitled, “The Baptist Faith and Message” was presided over by the man who this week lost his job as head of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary over allegations that he is a “misogynist” and “patriarchal”, guilty in the first-degree of the unspeakable crime of counseling a physically and emotionally battered woman, some years earlier, in the identical fashion the Apostles Paul and Peter would have. As described in the preceding blog post, homosexual journalist Jonathan Merritt brought a Y2K radio interview audio of Dr. Paige Patterson to Spiritual Sounding Board, a blog site that “exposes” traditional biblical church conduct and morals (and especially, church leadership that cultivates this) as “abusive” and “controlling”. SSB then proceeded obligingly to second-guess Dr. Patterson’s pastoral ministry of 20 years ago as “misogynistic”, “paternalistic”, and insufficiently protective of battered women. This inflamed the likes of leftist-leaning Liberty University professor and ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) research fellow Karen Swallow-Prior, also media evangelist Beth Moore to raise a petition garnering over 3,000 signatures demanding Dr. Patterson’s removal from his post. The undersigned claimed to “affirm” The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 principles (we’d beg to differ), which reads, in part:
“…All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society….In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth…
“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race….The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God’s image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation…..Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage. Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth. Children are to honor and obey their parents.”
Given that Jesus was abundantly and repeatedly clear that all “divorce” is man-made rebellion against the created order (Matt. 19:6,8), representing an un-Christlike and deliberate decision to take one’s own revenge, to never forgive, and to covet a different spouse, is it not at least possible that what really offended these women on Patterson’s part, is that many of them actually are adulterously-“remarried”, and therefore, Paul’s instruction for abuse found in 1 Cor. 7:11 casts an implicit moral judgment on their own unbiblical life choices, when counseled and publicly endorsed by a seminary head? Around this blog, we call that the “shoe fits-syndrome”; nobody likes to be exposed, by the double-edged sword of God’s word, as a hypocrite – even indirectly. This tragically-successful petition treats the socially conservative SBC year 2000 Resolution as though it were a bag of trail mix, because these same women (and possibly their pastors as well) have grown accustomed to treating God’s word the same way. Don’t think for a moment that the well-financed globalist players pushing the Marxist breakdown of the family aren’t intimately familiar with the utter hypocrisy of the contemporary adulterated church (as well as the 50-year advanced pastor-intimidation-factor which unrepentant congregation members routinely wield), or that these globalist malefactors would even hesitate to “play” these gullible women, along with their horde of well-meaning sympathizers!
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. – 2 Timothy 3:1-7
Swallow-Prior has also been openly critical of Dr. Patterson’s leadership to exclude women from theology professorships at the seminary, a feminist issue that can reasonably be associated with biblical instruction for a woman not to teach or exercise authority over men. Swallow-Prior’s actions indicate that she is an LGBT sympathizer and is in alignment with a faction that wants to push the SBC in the direction of a leftist social-justice gospel.
( 
SIFC: Regrettably, Karen Swallow Prior was reported to have been hit by a bus on Wednesday in Nashville, one day after Patterson’s removal, and suffered serious injuries requiring emergency surgery. Please be upholding this confused lady in prayer – Matthew 5:43-48 – for a healing from head to heart to toe, as God is gracious to deliver and instruct. She reportedly is recovering well, according to an update from the same source.)
In the four-minute “smoking gun” audio, Dr. Patterson is asked by the interviewer about a wife’s submission to her husband, asking him what he says to a woman he knows is being physically abused. Dr. Patterson tells the interviewer (approximately 52 seconds in) that it “depends on the level of abuse to a certain degree”, and that he’s never in his pastoral ministry ever counseled a woman to seek a divorce. Both are biblically-valid statements, but there is nothing Dr. Patterson could possibly have said that could be more inflammatory to the ideology that (in fairness to Dr. Patterson) was yet to emerge in these “abuse ministries” — already violating two of their core tenets within just 53 seconds of opening his mouth. From there, Patterson continued in the interview to make clear that where there was actual endangerment, he counseled chaste separation with the seeking of professional help, and said he had even assisted in bringing it about on occasion. (This is the correct scriptural approach, in fact). He then transitioned to the more typical case (approximately 1:50) where perhaps the abuse is not physical yet, and while stating unequivocally that he considered all abuse to be serious, Dr. Patterson related a specific story that should have been credited for its redemptive nature, sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the effective instruction in spiritual weaponry he imparted to this lady–rather than the “reckless endangerment” the cast of feminazi’s have vocally characterized it as. One has to seriously question the born-again experience of histrionical critics whose words and conduct show they do not trust the ability of God to supernaturally protect those who obey Him, and even worse, who cast aside as inconsequential the kingdom fruit of a former abuser being transformed, regenerated and born into the kingdom of God.
He counseled this lady, “you must not forget the power of prayer….I want you to every evening get down by your bed, just as he goes to sleep…when he’s just about asleep, you just pray for him, out loud, quietly…but I said, ‘get ready because he just might get a little more violent’…. Here, Patterson might have explained it a little better so as not to be misconstrued, but SIFC knows from firsthand experience that he was talking about violence due to the nature of spiritual warfare, not because she was necessarily overheard. He failed to be more specific about the days that most likely elapsed before what happened next occurred….
“…sure enough, she came to church one morning with both eyes black, and she was angry with me and with God and the world….and she said, ‘I hope you’re happy’, and I said ‘yes, ma’am I am, I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy’, but what she didn’t know when she sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and sat at the back, the first time he ever came, and when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken. He said ‘my wife’s been praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her. Do you think God could forgive someone like me?’ Patterson went on to make clear that the regenerated man was transformed into a great husband after that, and there was no further violence.
Additional audio “skeletons” came out of the closet where Patterson either showed some bad judgment in sheltering sexual offenders, or related some anecdote in a way sure to inflame the “feminists-for-Christ”, who insisted he was “objectifying” women and girls, including this audio from 2014. Lastly, a late-breaking claim from a former seminary student who reportedly told blogging Enid, OK pastor Wade Burleson just this week that she had been raped on the campus of another Baptist seminary in 2003, and she alleged that Patterson had counseled her not to report it to the police. This last story literally broke via the Washington Post (given by Burleson to young religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey) just as the deliberations for Patterson’s job were getting underway on Tuesday this past week, and this 11th hour story pretty much sealed his fate. Since Patterson had earlier removed Burleson from a job on a missionary board, the latter was hardly a “disinterested party” when he took the tasty morsel to WaPo. Snarks the previously-vanquished former underling of Patterson’s: “A woman divorcing a man is far worse than a woman enduring physical abuse. A single woman inviting a man into her apartment is a far worse sin than a single woman being raped by the man she invited over.” Tell me this false shepherd Burleson isn’t a cultural Marxist–and one with a festering personal vendetta, at that!
( SIFC:While any failure to timely report a felony crime to law enforcement officials is seriously unacceptable on the part of any school official — or any Samaritan with firsthand knowledge, for that matter, what was conveniently left to the side by Burleson, Dreher, et. al. in their screeds was any mention whether this perpetrator (another student) forced his way into the victim’s [apparently] on-campus living accommodation or was invited there, in violation of campus rules. These schools typically require all students to sign their pre-consent to strong morals agreements as a condition of remaining a student in good standing. Critics like journalist Rod Dreher, a former evangelical converted to Roman Catholicism, are decrying that the female victim was put on probation… while the male student was expelled and permanently barred from attending another SBC seminary. While not completely conclusive, this strongly indicates that the victim violated the campus moral policies by inviting him in, and she received a proportionally lesser penalty that at least allowed her the opportunity to complete her studies if she was so-inclined. The real question is whether the disciplinary actions were appropriately documented by school officials and whether those files still exist 15 years later. Apparently, normal seminary disciplinary policies, formally pre-agreed by the students, aren’t supposed to be enforced, under #churchtoo ideology, against victims who suffer crime as a direct result of themselves violating school morals policies, because “it adds to their trauma”. This, as concerns a seminary student, is supposed to be the moral equivalent of blaming a rape victim who–proverbially–had dressed like a streetwalker, according to the social justice ideology.)
Ironically, the only story we’re aware of about Patterson’s leadership malfeasance that doesn’t seem at least questionable by objective biblical standards never even surfaced during this food fight in Fort Worth, but was well-known to SBC leadership for years. We come by it due to a brief mention by relatively sympathetic Pulpit & Pen, who thinks disciplinary action against Patterson should have occurred ten years ago, and that he was politically singled out while other known bad and worse actors have come away unscathed so far. The others, apparently, are lesser-known to the noisy outside social justice warriors–and they don’t run the institutions that influence church doctrine and shape future pastors.
We’re Being “Played” : Abuse As a “Silver Bullet”
Many believe the bottom line was that unless a way was found ahead of the conference to shove Patterson to the side, there was a reduced chance of carrying off a social justice theme at the June conference. “Abuse” is one (but not the only one) of those potent, emotional core themes of the Left, right along with “bullying” — one that even the most ardent social conservatives will cast aside years of professional expertise in evidence and due process to treat an allegation emotionally if a painful personal experience stirs up those emotions. As we saw with the successful last minute smear of former Chief Justice Roy Moore (who was for years an active advocate for intact, biblical families in carrying out his duties on the bench–in addition to his powerful opposition to the LGBT political agenda) prior to the December, 2017 special election in Alabama. It is a signature trait of Soros interference with democratic processes that unproven (or unprovable) allegations will indeed carry the day if visceral human emotions are skillfully played ,with inadequate time or means to investigate allegations. It has become an article of Leftist faith that to call man’s divorce immoral, and to require a man or woman to remain in a marriage they no longer want to be in is “social injustice”.
The Gilyard debacle could have been spun as precisely what it looks like: insensitive and negligent failure to protect female members of the congregations and staffs of a succession of churches from an obvious sexual predator. One who was convicted, went to jail, and was installed in yet another pulpit as soon was he was released, as a matter of fact. Why wasn’t it spun this time? Perhaps the issue is that this sexual predator, apparently sheltered by Dr. Patterson for a couple of decades, is black. Not good for the narrative. The operatives knew that predominantly-female emotions were high enough over uninvestigated and questionable charges, that it was unnecessary to hang the man over a real crime which didn’t fit the narrative. And who was sheltering Dr. Patterson in the nine years since Gilyard went to prison – any of the board members who voted this week to depose him, perchance?
( SIFC: Update, June 1 ,2018 – documentary evidence has now been made public by the wife of Dr. Patterson’s chief of staff, showing that it is likely that the 2003 “rape victim” at Southeastern Baptist Seminary was actually caught in consensual fornication, and more recently lied to the media about it. This includes correspondence the “rape victim” sent to Dr. Patterson in 2003.
This should not be at all surprising, given the highly political rush to judgment, the revenge factor of some of the players, and likely outside meddling. As the actual facts come to light, the Patterson proceedings bear even more resemblance to the politically-pivotal Roy Moore incident in December, 2017, where unsubstantiated allegations cost a Senate election. Regrettably, on May 30 a faction of the Board of Trustees voted to reverse their May 23 decision based on continued feminist pressure, and vindictively stripped Dr. Patterson, age 75, of his retirement benefits, while he was out of the country, claiming, there was “new” – but undisclosed – “urgent” evidence.)
Another pastor from Oklahoma, Grady Arnold, was interviewed this week on the Janet Mefferd podcast show. Pastor Arnold has written a resolution, discussed at the 20 minute mark, which he will be presenting at the conference to try to turn the SBC back from formally or informally embracing cultural Marxism. May the Lord put the wind at his back, but the resolution’s prospects don’t look very good at this point.
Rent-An-Evangelical
Mentioned earlier was the connection between removal petition instigator, Karen Swallow-Prior and the ERLC, between Jonathan Merritt and the George Soros-controlled secular publications that frequently carry his work. Independent journalists such as Pulpit & Pen have been alleging for the past three years that one or more of the complex funding networks of Mr. Soros has been donating to both the ERLC and to The Gospel Coalition, which has manifested in the leftist undertones both have been steadily taking on. In fact, Pulpit & Pen asserted on an April 10 facebook post that Soros / Riady-placed board members run the ERLC, but did not name any names. The ministry website names only a massively large “Leadership Council” but does not disclose the names of ERLC board members. This information is also unavailable on either Charity Navigator or Guidestar. Presumably, this board would include the likes of Tim Keller, and others involved with the Acton Institute.
Source: Full length video, American Association of Evangelicals, 2016
Another Janet Mefferd podcast on May 18 featured an interview with Tom Littleton, another Southern Baptist pastor and writer, where Soros funding of SBC entities was discussed at the 20:30 mark. where Littleton says, “at some point I think that’s [the dirty money] going to surface….and it’s going to be a really damaging thing for some of these leaders when we see where some of this money is coming from.”
Unfortunately, conclusively proving the money trail is not so straightforward, because both of these SBC “suspect” organizations are able to classify themselves as disclosure-exempt religious organizations according to IRS rules for nonprofits. That means the IRS Form 990 information returns that disclose financials and major donors which we might otherwise be able to look up on sites like Guidestar and Charity Navigator are not available to the public. That said, the serendipity of a 2016 hacking and leaking incident resulted in access to strategy documents of the (Soros) Open Society Foundation that at least provide some pretty good circumstantial evidence. The first “rented” evangelicals were already liberals, such as journalist Jim Wallis of Sojouners, who was forced to admit in 2011 to taking Soros money after originally denying it.
This is a map of the various locations for Soros funding organizations in the U.S. — showing plenty of them in and around the SBC’s operating hubs. Most deal with open borders immigration initiatives (which is how the first financial involvement with the ERLC was orchestrated), but not all do.
Source: Soros FY2015 Reception and Placement Program Affiliate Sites
( SIFC: Here’s a quick guide to those Soros-funded organization acronymns on the above map illustration:
CWS*~^ – Church World Service (open borders)
EMM*~ – Episcopal Migration Ministries (refugees)
ECDC* – Ethiopian Community Development Council (refugees)
HIAS* – (refugees)
IRC^ – International Rescue Campaign (refugees)
LIRS^ – Lutheran Immigration and Rescue Service (refugees)**
USCCB*~^ – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (ecumenism)
USCRI* – U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (open borders)
WR*^ – World Relief (“human flourishing” – a.k.a. humanist responses to human suffering)
* Eight of these “social justice” organizations have a presence in the Chicagoland area, home to The Gospel Coalition.
~ Three of these have a presence in the Louisville, KY vicinity of the SBC / ERLC national headquarters
^ Five of these have a presence in the Dallas / Fort Worth area where important SBC seminaries, including the one Dr. Patterson was just deposed from, are located.
** One of SIFC’s adult children is presently part of a liberal Lutheran church located in a university town in a Deep South state–which is also gay-affirming, divorce-and-remarriage-affirming, and deeply involved with this Soros-funded organization. The church’s local leadership consists largely of liberal professors from the nearby secular university. SIFC has attended services there numerous times and is quite familiar with the liberal culture of that church, where gay literature is displayed on the reception tables in the church lobby.)
Says Pulpit & Pen, December, 2017:
“THINKING THIS THROUGH together for a moment… Joe Carter came to the ERLC soon after Russell Moore’s ascent and radical altering of the standard conservative Southern Baptist messaging on key topics, especially LGBTQ issues. Carter serves as ERLC “Communications Specialist” while he still holds his Senior Editor job with Rev. Robert Sirico – the once radical left wing, Marxist gay activist Pentecostal (later) gay church pastor and founder of Metropolitan Community Churches (the world’s first gay denomination), who conducted some of the nations first gay marriages and boasted he would perform exorcisms to rebuke the heterosexual spirits from his opposition – who is now a Catholic Libertarian priest. If that is not disturbing we are simply NOT paying attention! Carter has also worked in high level editing positions with at least two other Catholic publications according to his biography….
( SIFC: This blogger personally became aware of a sodomy-affirming MCC evangelical “church” during the 1980’s while residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the “buckle of the Bible Belt” and sequential polygamy capital of the nation–and considered both very disturbing!)
This December, 2017 article continues….
“Civil City Utopian Prophets and The Funding Machine
The following collaborations outlined as bullet points show the depths of Faith-Based involvement of Tim Keller and other evangelicals and institutions. Several have been mentioned in previous articles without mention of the role Acton played in them.
- Leading up to the 2009 infusion of untold billions of tax dollars by the Obama administration into the Faith Based Partnership overhaul – Tim Keller (page 80) and Friends, including the Acton Institute, worked with a Faith Based Partnership model in Orlando called “Seeking the Welfare of the City” (STWOTC) which resulted in the Polis Institute. Richard Florida’s pro homosexual ideology was promoted by the Human Rights Campaign and Albert Mohler played a key role (page 76) as has the Acton Institute. Acton still heavily promotes the “Welfare of the City” concept which centers around Faith Based Partnerships. If participants like churches and ministries want to find funding to “save their cities” through Community Development grants, they must be inclusive and welcoming of one of the more destructive influences within the communities they are asserting they wish to help. The erosion of the family and sexual liberation are two of the most compelling issues urban centers face.
……….
“Are Money Changers Funding Acton and an Evangelical Deep State?- Another major player in what appears as an Evangelical Deep State is the National Christian Foundation of Alpharetta GA. According to its history with Conservative Transparency and a 2016 990 forms /report, the NCF has brought about $6 Billion into its Christian philanthropy circles since 2011 (page 15 of the 990 shows $1,396,381,203 in 2016 alone.) On requesting NCF to provide its donor and recipient list and history, the organization refused to supply any information whatsoever. Various philanthropic sites do track some of the money and its sources, but given that NCF is a “Donor ADVISED fund,” the agreement upon giving is the intention of the donor is to be recognized but not required in the distribution. What the Conservative Transparency tracking shows is that NCF giving in large part goes to political organizations like Acton Institute, Heritage Foundation, and a variety of organizations, many being Libertarian like Acton instead of conservative Christian organizations or ministries. NCF helps coordinate giving for the Frankfurt School / Marxist-inspired Civilitas Group in which Tim Keller and Rick Warren serve as Board Members…..Since 2012 a marked departure from classic Evangelical conservative stance has taken place and Russell Moore, Tim Keller and others have been peddling the new, more civil, culturally relevant tone on social issues. Given that their partners, like Acton and Sirico, all share the goals of harnessing Christian giving while promoting a Social Gospel and Faith Based Partnerships (FBP) it is fair to ask, “WHY?”Marvin Olasky, crowned the father of the Bush FBP agenda, later heavily funded and loaded with LGBTQ activism in the Obama years, provides conservative Christians with unquestioned news “from a Christian world view” in World Magazine. Perhaps he should answer for his Fellowship with Acton Institute and Father Sirico knowing the LGBTQ infiltration of these circles and the programs he (Olasky) promotes. Would Albert Mohler, the highly regarded head of Southern Seminary and SBC/ TGC/ evangelical leader clarify exactly what part of Richard Florida and HRC’s pro gay urban planning he believes is so vital for the church that he endorses it along with other strategies of the homosexual agenda. There is little else in the Florida rhetoric except a heavy dose of Cultural Marxism. So what is the Appeal and what part of the ideology are we as the church to follow if NOT its push for LGBTQ “inclusion”?”
Another Christian journalist, Brannon Howse (World View Weekend), echoes this history and web of sinister connections between TGC and ERLC principals in his two-part series, “Exposing the Religious Trojan Horse of the Globalist Deep State” (March 28, 2018). Presumably, these leaked documents enabled the reporting that was coming to light in 2017 and 2018 by these sources.
( SIFC: While Howse’s documented fact-gathering is indeed very useful, we put a heavy “disclaimer” on the toxic Calvinism that intrudes at the halfway-point of the Part 1 video. Obedience to the commandments of Christ is not “salvation by works”, as Howse wrongly contends while critiquing Dr. John Piper as a “neo-Calvinist”.)
There are documents dating from at least 2008 to 2016. In June, 2016 the Open Society Foundations also had several documents leaked by DCLeaks. Bloomberg reported that the foundation notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the hacking. DCLeaks.com link was provided in a PJ Media article, but no longer works. One leaked memo posted by DCLeaks.com from Soros’ “Open Society” Foundations, for example, outlines a plot to co-opt Catholic officials and push Soros’ views within the Catholic Church and within the Christian world more broadly. To do that, Soros provided funding to two so-called faith-based organizations, PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing), and Faith in Public Life (FPL) that would advance his extremism against a “faction of the church” that does not support it.
Among other schemes, Soros provided “essential resources” to secure the “buy-in of individual Catholic bishops to more publicly voice support of economic and racial justice messages.” The agenda was to create a “critical mass of bishops” to promote Soros’ interpretation of Pope Francis’ perceived anti-free-market activism and “racial justice agenda.” Numerous prominent Catholics have said Soros is radically distorting the pope’s message to further his own fundamentally anti-Catholic agenda. Debatable, since the pontiff and the financier actually appear to be significantly aligned on matters of relativistic morality and “social justice”.
Soros money was used to help create an advanced propaganda campaign to promote one of Soros’ “Christian” puppets as a “leading commentator in high-profile outlets, such as USA Today, Newsweek, CNN, NBC, NPR, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.” Of course, if a “commentator” agrees with Soros, by definition he or she disagrees with the bible Possibly five of these bad actors, who were key in the removal of Dr. Patterson last week, seem to fit this pattern very well: Jonathan Merritt, Ed Stetzer, Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Karen Swallow-Prior, and Beth Moore. This 2014 Gospel Coalition video involves three of these individuals, and it accurately foreshadows (at about the 38 minute mark) what unfolded in 2018: learning how to “play church nicely”, removing any obstacles to doing so, so that we can grow at the expense of souls and, if necessary, while setting aside the word of God for “pragmatism”.
This whole conversation has been far more about heat, rather than light. What gives any group of people the right to demand that church leadership move away from biblical practice and principles? Or the right to murmur about everything else, short of whether Dr. P’s wife uses bagged salad greens in her submission to the “troglodyte” she married? One of these days, either SIFC or somebody else is finally going to prove the unsavory, undisclosed financial connection between this whole initiative and the demonic pocketbook that has successfully “rented” evangelicals over the past few years in the SBC, RCC, and even in other countries, for immoral political ends that go well beyond the church. Such would never be enabled if individuals claiming to be Christ-followers possessed the personal integrity to match their level of popular cultural influence. Identity politics and victimhood doesn’t look any better on well-published “Christians” than it does on anyone else.
To be fair to the Southern Baptists, there needs to be some acknowledgments: the Assemblies of God reportedly picked up 1 million members after they liberalized doctrine and practice in the area of marriage permanence. The Roman Catholic Church also appears to be gaining members after a long drought which let up after the death of conservative John Paul II, and liberalization of sexual morality commenced in earnest under the last two popes. The “social justice” gospel is attracting millennials and their young families back to mainline churches some four decades after their conservative evangelical parents once derided them as “dead churches” whose remaining members were primarily the elderly. Even so, God does not care at all to have pews packed full of spiritually dead and morally lost people who are “compassionate” in the temporal sense only. The Baptists and Catholics are about to find out what’s already evident in the resurgence of the mainline churches: the “social justice” pact-with-the-devil contains a price tag out of which the homosexual agenda cannot be “line-item vetoed”. That makes ERLC head, Dr. Russell Moore’s famous last words in 2015, “Evangelicals Won’t Cave”, (likely written while that SBC pact was being made with OSF) laughable only three years later, as we predicted at the time in our rebuttal.
While it’s strategically tempting to hope to fill empty pews by opening the U.S. borders and becoming gay-friendly, if the SBC doesn’t get back to true biblical bearings, and tell all opposed critics to take a hike, what we’re going to have is a strengthening in an already-strong, growing movement inside and outside the churches, to dump the corrupted denominations and opt for small house churches / lay pastors, which nobody can argue isn’t a 1st century biblical model. In other words, a continued loss of membership despite “inclusion” (heretical liberalization) efforts. I’d personally hate to see that transpire at this nasty and pivotal point in our national history, because we really need the GODLY political power of the collective church to restore a little of the kingdom of God in our nation for everyone else suffering from 50 years of Leftist misery, most especially the poor, during which the salt lost its savor. Instead, we’re squabbling about whether the Apostles and church fathers were “misogynists” in the clear instructions, presumably God-breathed, they left today’s leadership to follow. SIFC’s current young pastors would call this contemporary vexation a “first world problem”.
Yes, the SBC has lost a million members over the past decade, while the liberalizing RCC seems (temptingly) to be picking up members the past few of years, with their Leftist, gay-affirming, “annulment”-expediting, communion-adulterating Pope. AOG likewise picked up members like nobody’s business from 1971 to 1984, adding 1 million members (far fewer souls, I daresay) as a direct result of voting to desecrate heterosexual marriage in the wake of unilateral divorce enactment in the early 1970’s. The price they paid was the swift exit of the power of the Holy Spirit, as numbers grew by yet another million to-date, and it gradually became acceptable to haul exposed cleavage, drooping pants and the “spouse”-du-jour into church. I know because I was there for most of it. “Come as you are, stay as you are” does indeed work wonders for membership — until it doesn’t. In this case, the Southern Baptists can be presumed to be on the same side of “until it doesn’t” as the Pentecostals. Tulsa didn’t get to be the divorce capital of the United States due to Catholic dominance. It’s small wonder some SBC leaders are so keen to import potential new members through open or porous borders, rather than set a godly example that gains power over the “nones” as our godly forebears did.
Teaching unbiblical, culturally-popular pseudo-values (including, never piss off the women) to future pastors also works – until it doesn’t. The fixed moral wall that has been hit a couple of times previously in church history is Islamism (and its ancient predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar), a reprise of which would be perfectly fine with Mr. Soros.
Women like Beth Moore and like Karen Swallow-Prior, who claim that Jesus prescribed marriage dissolution for all manner of perceived and actual abuse, as opposed to chaste separation with rehabilitation in mind and appropriate reliance on the criminal justice system (where warranted)–are hussies and Jezebels, no matter how many books they sell. They will be found “correct” the day that Jesus accepts hard-heartedness, unforgiveness and self-promotion as acceptable attributes in His disciples. And those who become so presumptuous as to build “abuse ministries” around the same ideology, are apostates misleading others toward moral destruction. Quite amusingly, the hard-Left feminists have recently expressed their extreme displeasure with the nouveaux “conservative” feminists who promote the judicial murder of God-joined covenant marriages; who promote sequential polyandry in the name of domestic “justice” — but still won’t give their unqualified endorsement to abortion on demand for all.
Dr. Stephen Baskerville (May 3, 2017 – How the Church Must Confront the Sexual Revolution, Crisis Magazine) : “The church must take a firm and decisive stand on other aggressive and destructive legal abuses of the Sexual Revolution, principally fabricated accusations of new gender crimes like “rape” and “domestic violence,” and “child abuse.” The feminists claim that these are epidemic. Either they are right, in which case the church is silent in face of a great evil. Or they are false and the feminists are using them for political purposes, in which case the church is likewise silent in the face of a systemic injustice. “
But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. – Revelation 2:4-6
Will the Southern Baptist Convention not even measure up to the Christ-rebuked Ephesian church, by the time this story of shameless social pandering and denominational prostitution ends? Will there be anyone left in power to “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans” by the time of the 2019 annual conference ?
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7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal Unilateral Divorce!
