TENNESSEE TEMPLE BEING APPROVED AS SBC SCHOOL (Friday Church News Notes, July 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Tennessee Temple University, my alma mater, is being approved as a Southern Baptist school. This is the information that was published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press for June 14, 2008, in an article entitled “Highland Park Baptist Returns to SBC, Renovates Massive Auditorium.” It begins, “Highland Park Baptist Church is returning to its historic roots and looking to the future at the same time.” The 118-year-old church left the SBC 60 years ago under the leadership of Lee Roberson and built a Bible College specifically with the goal of training preachers. It conducted an aggressive independent missionary thrust, directly supporting independent Baptist church planters throughout North America and other parts of the world. When I was a student at Tennessee Temple in the mid 1970s, Highland Park was a huge church, running several thousand on any given Sunday, and it gave half of its income to missions. The annual mission conferences were spectacular, hosting one hundred and more missionaries. The school was also huge. It seems that there were three to five thousand students in the ‘70s. It was unabashedly fundamentalist, with high dress standards, no contemporary Christian music, and no ecumenical affiliations. Under the leadership of David Bouler the movement has been in reverse. The church and school are just shells of their former selves. When I visited there on a Sunday morning a few years ago the auditorium appeared to be about one-tenth full. It was a sad sight for someone who was there in its glory days. That is doubtless why they recently remodeled it to decrease the size and put classrooms, a coffee/café area, a bookstore, and a grand lobby where auditorium seating once existed. The 5,700-seat auditorium, which was completed in 1981, now seats 2,000, and even that is far too large for the crowds. But hey, they serve a good cup of coffee! David Bouler has the audacity to tell the local newspaper that though they have gone back into the SBC, “our message will never change.” Could he be that ill-informed, or is the man just lying? Mr. Bouler, please tell me the last time that the following messages were preached at Highland Park Baptist Church or Tennessee Temple University: Billy Graham is a compromiser who has led multitudes astray with his ecumenical evangelism; Contemporary Christian Music is of the world, the flesh, and the devil; Christian women should not wear pants because it is an immodest unisex fashion; long hair on men is a shame; the SBC Cooperative Program is unscriptural; the New Evangelical philosophy of judge not and be positive is of the devil; God demands separation from false teachers and compromisers, including from compromising evangelicals. I will answer my own question. The last time was at least two decades ago.

DARLENE ZSCHECH AND HILLSONG TO PERFORM FOR THE POPE (Friday Church News Notes, July 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The heretical face of Hillsong, the popular CCM group, is again evident in that they are planning to perform for the Roman Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, July 18. Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to be present and will conduct a papal mass on the last day of the extravaganza. The mass is a supposed continuation of Christ’s sacrifice. The consecrated host is thought to become Christ himself and is worshiped as such when placed in the monstrance and eventually in its own little tabernacle. Hillsong, led by Darlene Zschech, will perform after the Stations of the Cross. The 14 Stations allegedly depict Christ’s trial and crucifixion, but beyond the fact that this is not faith but sight and the pictures of Jesus are fictional and are forbidden by Scripture, several of the Stations are purely legendary. Jesus supposedly falls down three times, meets Mary on the way to the cross, has His face wiped by a woman named Veronica, and is taken down from the cross and laid in Mary’s arms. None of this is supported by Scripture. The pope has promised a plenary indulgence to anyone who participates in World Youth Day. This is the forgiveness of the temporal penalty (referring to a penalty owed either on earth or in purgatory) due for certain sins. Contemporary Christian Music is one of the glues of the ecumenical movement. Not only is it permeated with charismatic error and exceedingly worldly, its musicians discount purity of doctrine for the sake of a broad fellowship, which is nowhere supported by Scripture. “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Romans 16:17).

EMERGING CHURCH LEADER WANTS TO PROSELYTIZE YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN (Friday Church News Notes, July 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Emerging church leaders have the objective of proselytizing our children and grandchildren. In his 2008 book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, Brian McLaren describes his plan to infiltrate churches and Christian institutions that are currently rejecting the emerging church. He says: ‘But over time, what they reject will find or create safe space outside their borders and become a resource so that many if not most of the grandchildren of today’s fundamentalists will learn and grow and move on from the misguided battles of their forebears’ (p. 133). McLaren is saying that emerging church teachers will infiltrate Biblicist churches from without through “resources” such as books, videos, and web sites. That is exactly how New Evangelicalism has so deeply infiltrated fundamental Baptist churches over the past two decades and it is doubtless how the more radical emerging church doctrines will infiltrate over the coming decades. It is more imperative than ever that pastors train their people to discern the error of these heresies and that they exhort them to avoid the writings of false teachers. It is imperative that fundamentalist Bible Colleges and Institutes prepare their students to resist this tide of error. Too often it can be said of Bible-believing churches today what was said of Israel of old, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). The average member of a fundamentalist Bible-believing church is not equipped to deal effectively with the spiritual dangers that lurk on the shelves of the typical Christian bookstore and on the airwaves of the typical Christian radio station. The average church member receives little practical warning from his pastors and teachers and has no interest in building a library of material that can help protect him from spiritual dangers. If this situation is not rectified, the Brian McLarens of this world will doubtless devour many of our children and grandchildren. (See also “Beware of Brian McLaren” at http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/beware-newkind-christian.html.)

VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL TURNS COOL (Friday Church News Notes, July 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - The Associated Press ran a story on July 3 entitled “Vacation Bible Schools Adapt to Changing Times.” VBS started in the late 19th century and VBS materials began to be published in 1922. The basic program was largely unchanged through most of the 20th century. It consisted of enthusiastic songs, simple Bible lessons, memory verses, craft projects, missionary stories, and refreshments. I always enjoyed VBS when I was growing up and I made a profession of faith at one when I was about 10 years old (though there was no evidence that I was born again), but today’s VBS isn’t the VBS of my childhood! Today tens of thousands of churches use slick packages to “reach children who have grown up on TVs and computers.” Power Lab, by Group Publishing, is one example. Following is the description of this program as used by a church in Birmingham, Alabama. “At Mountain Brook Community Church, volunteer John Byrd pulls on a black wig, puts on a long white coat and gyrates at the front of the chapel for his role as a professor in this year’s ‘Power Lab’ VBS, a curriculum produced by the Colorado-based Group Publishing Inc. Jumping around with a keyboard slung around his neck, he lip syncs a song with about the power of Jesus--the most powerful thing there is, the lyrics say.” I don’t care if the whole world disagrees with me I am convinced that this type of thing is foolish, worldly, heretical, and blasphemous. Rock music is all about the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil. To use it to preach about the power of Jesus Christ, who is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26), is a great confusion. Such things might draw a crowd, but “what you win them with is what you win them to.” “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).

PAGAN MYSTICISM PERMEATING PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Friday Church News Notes, July 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - Pagan mysticism has been infiltrating public schools in North America since the 1970s. Mindfulness training, which is akin to Buddhism, is the latest twist. The following is excerpted from “In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind,” New York Times, June 16, 2007: “As summer looms, students at dozens of schools across the country are trying hard to be in the present moment. This is what is known as mindfulness training, in which stress-reducing techniques drawn from Buddhist meditation are wedged between reading and spelling tests. Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept--as they did yoga five years ago--and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects. During a five-week pilot program at Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Miss Megan, the ‘mindful’ coach, visited every classroom twice a week, leading 15 minute sessions on how to have ‘gentle breaths and still bodies.’ The sound of the Tibetan bowl reverberated at the start and finish of each lesson. ... Susan Kaiser Greenland, the founder of the InnerKids Foundation, which trains schoolchildren and teachers in the Los Angeles area, calls mindfulness ‘the new ABC’s--learning and leading a balanced life.’ ... Asked their reactions to the sounds of the singing bowl, Yvette Solito, a third grader, wrote that it made her feel ‘calm, like something on Oprah.’ Her classmate Corey Jackson wrote that ‘it feels like when a bird cracks open its shell.’”

MAN SELLS HIS SOUL TO HELL PIZZA (Friday Church News Notes, July 11, 2008, www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - A New Zealand man has sold his soul to a pizza chain called Hell Pizza. Twenty-four-year-old Walter Scott first put his soul up for auction on TradeMe, but the bidding site cancelled the auction after receiving an “overwhelming number of complaints.” Scott said he didn’t find his soul of much value, since he “can’t see it, touch it or feel it.” After the auction was shut down, Hell Pizza stepped in and purchased his soul for $3,800 (“New Zealand Man,” AP, July 3, 2008). Men who look lightly upon the matter of the soul should listen to Jesus Christ: “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire” (Mark 9:43-47). Jesus warned about the reality of eternal hell fire and exhorted His listeners to avoid it. He was not suggesting that the sinner literally pluck out the eye and cut off the hand, because that would not stop the sinner from sinning and would not keep him out of hell. It is not our hands, feet, and eyes that are the core problem; it is the heart that drives them and the sin that is rooted in the heart (Jer. 17:9; Mark 7:20-23). In this sermon Christ was trying to make men understand how serious sin is and how real hell is and how impossible it is for a man to cleanse himself from sin and escape hell by his own power. Christ was using the Law for its intended purpose, which is to show men their lost, sinful condition and lead them to salvation through the grace of God (Rom. 3:19; Gal. 3:23). “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” (Romans 3:19). “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24).