Right as “Pride Month” started to gear up, I started seeing the “come one, come all” posters for Christian churches. Generally speaking, the language went something like this: “We don’t care if you’re curved, straight, or a corkscrew. We accept everyone, no matter what.” Naturally, and for various reasons, this made me grumble and scoff, including a couple of eye rolls. I know Jesus taught to the sinful, but he told them they had to change their sinful path.
First things first, a church is the place for sinners, how else are they supposed to find their way to Jesus Christ and be saved? However, today’s churches are not as concerned with saving souls as they are with making money and/or getting virtue signaling points, there are still a lot of good, usually small, churches out there that do, in fact, care about their Christian community. This is the issue I have with the “come one, come all” philosophy of the modern churches: as Christians, and especially Christian churches, sinners must have a genuine contrition for their sins, not be told that their sinful behavior is okay (much less promoted). The Bible is very explicit in what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
“But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”
Hebrews 3:13 (KJV)
This is the fundamental purpose of Christianity that has been forgotten in the modern Church. I expect my brethren to call me out when I am not acting accordingly. They are doing it out of love for my soul, and to see me find the right path to heaven. And, I should be doing the same for them. As long as it is done from a place of love for one another, within the realm of Biblical Christianity, this is the way forward. If someone was chastising me or tried to humble me for selfish or egotistical reasons, it would not be appropriate. They would be doing it for their own ends, and not the needs of the Lord. The Church has forgotten that guiding the flock to the love of Christ is not always easy. While we should be accepting everyone into the Church, they must make a conscious effort to improve their spiritual life. The sinner (a sodomite, for example) should not be accepted any more than an adulterer or an idolater.
Although many of today’s churches are not as concerned with redemption as they are with progressivism, there are still many quality churches available. This is where our people need to step in and become members (and leaders). The mega churches will not serve the immediate community, because they are too large and diverse to do so. When you have a congregation of a thousand people, the church cannot focus on each individual member.
“Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Matthew 3:12 (KJV)
Every once in a while, a church must do the same, a church must usher out members that have not made any progress toward being a better Christian and ask them to return at a later time when they are ready to be that better Christian. As long as the Church is willing to allow sinful, unrepentant members to stay without change, then it is not shepherding to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I use the word shepherding because it is not uncommon for sheep to wander off from the herd, and the shepherd must retrieve them. He does not, however, let the sheep wander off for good.
I wholeheartedly ask all sinners to find Christ. I also ask that our people do what is necessary for their churches and their flocks.
Teach a man to fight, he can win a battle.
Teach a man to write, he can win a nation.
The homosexual lobby is patently anti-Christian. They have bastardized the rainbow (it actually being symbolic of God’s gift to man) and they go so far as to name their month after one of the deadly sins. They are way out-kicking their coverage.
We attend a small church where the pastor, a young feller, quit a lucrative career with a city utility company to preach from the one and only Bible, the King James. I do not do any of the modern renditions of the Bible. Frankly they sicken me.
Thanks to me we eliminated the battle hymn of the republic from services and my next quest is to get the yankee rag tossed from the premises.
Amen!
Very nice, sir; I don’t need to tell you that you are in fact doing the Lord’s work in accomplishing such feats. I’m curious, though, and would love to know what arguments you employed to convince the principals in your church that “Battle Hymn” is indeed an anti-Christian hymn.
I dug up a little info on the origins of it and its author and how she was a Unitarian whore. I also asked: Who’s grapes do you think they are mashing?
Very good, sir. Credit to TPTB in your church for hearing you out and ultimately concluding correctly on the matter. This, by the way, is why I write about this subject and others fairly often here at ID and elsewhere – my purpose in so doing is to get the information out there to those who have as yet to discover it, in hopes that they will, as you did, take that information and do something positive with it.
God Bless you, Sir. And God Bless the Southland!
A church I USED to attend, knowing of my confederate mindset, actually used a Sunday morning Memorial Day service to have their choir rub Julia Ward Howe’s bloody hymn in my face! The pastor extolled Lincoln in a sermon in a subsequent service — just in case I didn’t get the message! Needless to say, I left; and I’m sure that’s what they were aiming for. This was a PCA denomination! Really sad when we consider, according to C. Gregg Singer, that this denomination had its origins in the PCCSA.
Yours is what I would expect to happen most of the time in the modern churches (virtually all denominations), but then we see testimonials such as thesouthwasright’s above, and our hopes are re-invigorated.
Lord have mercy.
Well said Brother.