Seth Doty

That chapter as a whole deals with Gods judgment on the nation of Israel for their rejection of his ways and ultimately the rejection of Christ. It also contains prophetic reference to Christs betrayal by Judas for thirty pieces of silver and how that money would be "cast" to the potter. This was fulfilled when Judas threw down the money in the temple, and it was used to buy the potters field. The specific verses you mention are making poetic reference to the eventual destruction of the nation of Israel, with the cedars of lebanon, the oaks of bashan, the young lions and the shepherds all being pictures of the political and religious powers of the day. Similar wording is found elsewhere in the scriptures.

Church Covenants are neither biblical nor unbiblical. They are just one of a number of ways to assist in making sure everyone is at least roughly on the same page. Given that church membership is voluntary not compulsory, given that covenants are commonplace in scripture, and given that it is not uncommon for people to enter a church with ulterior motives a church covenant can be one tool to make subversion of a congregation a bit more difficult.

Welcome to the board lynn, I see you made it.

This is probably going to backfire on the network. The media has been pushing hard for homosexuality to be completely accepted as "normal" and to frame all those who disagree as "bad" people and bigots some time. While they have made significant strides toward shifting public opinion to match their point of view they are not all together there yet. They are overreaching on this one as the biblical point of view on homosexuality that he expressed is not yet as widely rejected and despised as they wish it would be. There are still a lot of even completely secular people who find it disgusting and morally objectionable even though they may not have the nerve to say so publicly.

Your experience has been different then mine. Most of the ones I have run across have been between somewhat and quite knowledgeable of the bible. They knew what it said and either ignored it or intentionally misrepresent and misinterpret it to fit their choices. Other than in the media I don't see a great deal of that anyway. Secondly, just about any homosexual at a pro-homosexual rally is proud of it and likely to be extremely unreceptive to the truth no matter how it is presented. They are there to make sure their wickedness is shoved in the face of everyone else. The vast majority at such a event are very solidly in the Romans 1:24-32 category. If you talk to them at all, no matter how politely, you will generally see that very quickly. There comes a point where people get so messed up and so evil that it really doesn't matter how you present the truth. A reprobate mind is unreachable by anyone or anything. Lot didn't have much success with the "nice guy" approach while living in sodom. Of course it is possible for a homosexual to repent and be saved, however it is a very infrequent occurrence because most do seem to have a reprobate mind.

I see what your saying here to be an ever increasing refrain among professing Christians and very honestly I don't like it one bit. I think it is either a intentional or unintentional effort to bring the Christian world view a little "closer" to the modern acceptance of homosexuality in the western world. Yes, it is indeed quite true that any sin will send someone who has not trusted in Christ to hell but some sins are indeed "worse" than others and are frequently indicative of a exceptionally deep level of depravity. God overthrew Sodom & Gomorrah to make an example of them when that sort of sin was extremely widespread. The nation of Israel almost wiped out one of their own tribes, the tribe of Benjamin, at one point for the same level of depravity when it existed on a broad scale in that tribe. Homosexuality is a extremely serious, extremely depraved and wicked sort of sin. It is one of the sins, along with murder, that in biblical history hastens the filling up of Gods cup of wrath and brings national judgment when it is widely practiced and accepted. It isn't exactly a ho, hum, you went 10 miles an hour over the speed limit and that is wrong but we are all sinners and nobody is perfect sort of thing. I relatively recently heard a preacher at a large "progressive" rock and roll(IMHO) type church in the greenville sc area preach on the subject of homosexuality. To his credit, at least he did say flat out that it was wrong. What definitely was not to his credit though was the timid, apologetic way in which he said it. He then proceeded to spend twice as much time preaching against "homophobia" and did that with much more enthusiasm and strong words. All he was doing was reflecting cultural pressure. I find it funny in a way that when you break down the term "homophobia" it literally means the fear of man, and that is exactly what bowing to cultural pressure is, the fear of men and what they will say. Of course when the term is used in our culture it is applied to those who actually are not afraid of man and are not embarrassed to say that "men with men working that which is unseemly" as scripture puts it, is a immoral, vile and utterly repulsive activity. I guess I am saying don't be afraid to call a spade a spade. More and more Christians are getting to where they are afraid to call a spade a spade in this area and try to sugar coat it. Some things can't and shouldn't be sugar coated. This is one of those areas where the modern western world is going to hate bible believing Christians for what they stand for. It is not avoidable, it just goes with the territory. We just need to accept that is the way it is, deal with it, and go from there.

I was just going off memory but I checked online and it was an ABC 20/20 special from 2011 not the anderson cooper special. It was indeed the same pastor chuck phelps I was thinking of though, he has been heavily involved in the BJU circles for years but is now pastoring a different church in a different state than he was at the time of the TV special. Apparently from the news today he lost a son and daughter in law in this wreck. Wouldn't see eye to eye with them doctrinally on a ever increasing number of things but it is a tough situation no doubt.

I don't think there is a good way to know how much God "micromanages" life any more than we can know how much or how directly angels interfere. From scripture it is obvious that at times God very carefully controls even little details to bring about certain events but at other times it seems he less directly controls what happens. For example, when God allowed the devil access to Job God allowed the devil to more or less "work out the details" on what the devil wanted to do to Job but specified a couple of things that the devil could not do. Likewise when Christ mentions a tower that fell on some people in the local events of that day and time he said that it wasn't because of anything specific they had done but was more a general warning to that generation. As a side note, isn't that church bus wreck you mention out of a church who's current pastor ended up taking it after he ended up leaving the church he had been previously pastoring a year or two ago after a anderson cooper news special highlighted him and the church he was then pastoring in a negative way? Not that that necessarily means anything at all but it does seem odd that his church end up in national news again when he moved several states away.

I think it is balony.

I am glad your being open about it, and I don't think that it is so much a entirely flawed view of God suzy, it is just a incomplete picture. Take this verse I came across just last night. "Jeremiah 22:6 For thus saith the LORD unto the king's house of Judah; Thou art Gilead unto me, and the head of Lebanon: yet surely I will make thee a wilderness, and cities which are not inhabited." God is telling Israel how much they mean to him yet in the same breath he is telling them that isn't going to stop him from punishing them when they really deserve it and are unrepentant about it. I think the thing you may be struggling with, and it is a not a uncommon struggle, is subconsciously you may feel that you need to live up to a certain set of standards in order to "earn" Gods love and favor. If you fail to dot your i's & cross your t's spiritually you feel like you have failed(which is most likely true) and that God is standing there in wrath keeping track of every failure and sin and saying that will be another "smack" with my spiritual belt. (which is not true) Of course if somebody feels that way they are going to be stressed and miserable because no one ever managed to live up to Gods set of standards and the better a person knows the scriptures the more obvious it will be to them that they are continually sinning in one area or another and are not now nor ever have been what they should be. That can easily lead to misery and depression.... That form of the "miserable Christian life" is a easy thing to slip into, and it comes I think from subconsciously trying to establish our own righteousness rather than submitting to the righteousness of God. While we know and accept that we can't earn salvation itself by works we often tend to slip into the mistaken notion that after salvation we earn or fail to earn Gods approval, favor, & or love by our works. Reality is though that salvation is by faith alone and not of works and that proper Christian living and Gods favor comes through faith alone and is not of works either. Good works and righteous living are some of the evidences of having the proper heart toward God they are not in and of themselves the means by which Gods favor is "earned". God is most concerned with the condition of the heart through all scripture, and when a believer is punished by God as a judgement it is ONLY and I repeat ONLY because they do not have a repentant heart about that sin they committed. In that case Gods judgment is for the purpose of bringing them to a place where they can see in their heart the real problem with their sin and thus reach the place where they can actually repent of it or in some cases it is to serve as a warning to others not to do what they have done. If a Christian does have a repentant heart for their sin or failure God does not need to judge them for it. There is no point or anything to be gained from it. Christ paid the price for all their sins so it isn't like the sin needs to be paid for twice. It is forgiven and done with. Consequences of sin are different from Gods judgment though, consequences of sin are the natural result of doing what God said should not be done and many times they are some of the reasons why God doesn't want us to do something in the first place. Consequences for past sin or foolishness is not the same as God's ongoing judgement and sometimes God will reduce, take away, or help us bare the consequences for sins or stupidity of the past if we ask him to do so. God's judgement is like the spanking a kid gets for hitting another kid and "apologizing" when forced in a decidedly "not sorry" voice. Consequences for sin are more like that same kid biting into a rotten sandwich the next week that the kid he hit put in his lunch box regardless of whether or not he had been punished for it. Two different things that happen for different reasons...

Your loosing the youth with or without "hymnal only". The only question is what are you loosing them to? My suspicion is that many conservative churches are essentially like the Church at Sardis and loose the youth in part for that reason, however, what they loose them to tends to be either the world outright or Laodicean like churches. If A Sardis like church is loosing its youth to the world and Laodicean like churches the answer is not become more like the world and Laodicean like Churches, the answer is get right with God, get real, and be something worth having and being rather than being just a empty talking shell. Converting from the church of sardis to the the church of laodicea does no one any good, it just trades one set of problems for another. That is why so often there is a progression in youth that start out in a conservative church, move to a more liberal church, then end up quitting on God and churches all together. They see dead liberalism isn't really any better than dead conservatism and just get to where they don't see anything worth having at all.

I would say that is very accurate. The percentage may well be quite a bit higher than that. I will also say it seems to matter very little how carefully they were protected & raised or what standards their parents had or didn't have. For example in my family there were eight children which grew up in pretty conservative IFB churches. Myself, two brothers, and five sisters. All seemed to be more or less ok up until they left our parents house. Within a few years of that both my brothers at separate times decided they were atheists and slowly adopted lifestyles that reflect that, one of my sisters went into a very liberal form of christianity, another went into the modern neo-calvinism of the john piper flavor, one stayed ok and two more are still in my parents home. That sort of thing is the norm in almost every family I know. I think, at the core, a large percentage of children that grow up in IFB churches simply don't "get it". Why that is is a open question. They may have outward conformity to doctrines and standards but they do not understand in their hearts the reasons for those doctrines and standards and when the time comes where they must choose to stay or change they don't feel that what they have is worth having and therefore end up scattering to the four winds so to speak. The only question is is this type of thing strictly their own fault, or is it a joint fault with many IFB churches for not understanding that while the internal should produce the externals in many cases those that grew up in IFB churches are unhappy and empty internally and only conforming externally for a time out of convenience and that one day that is just no longer enough and they take off to where every they may so long as it is something different. One thing, once they get to that stage it seems to be very rare for them to come back so if it is to be stopped it has to be stopped in the stage where they are inwardly empty but not yet outwardly showing the fruit of that emptiness.

I have a younger sister who goes to college there and she likes it. Tells me the staff is good, some students are, and some aren't. That is the best one can hope for I suppose.