Thursday, November 09, 2006

Decay In The Church Leads To Decay In Society

RELIGION / DECAY OF THE CHURCH IN AMERICA LEADS TOWARD THE DECAY OF SOCIETY IN AMERICA

Smiley Flag Waver We are treading on dangerous ground in the American Church. We love to engage in hero-worship, and unfortunately, pastors are most vulnerable, gleefully receiving the flock’s adulation. The pastor is only one of the parts in the Body of Christ. Sadly, in most churches, Sunday has become a spectator sport where most sit and watch the man in the pulpit perform.

SOUL-SICK AMERICA

~ Coach Dave Daubenmire
November 9, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

My heart goes out to Ted Haggard, and especially to his family. The collateral damage to sin is devastating. Let us never forget the impact our actions have on others.

Mr. Haggard doesn’t need a kick in the ribs from me. Sadly, we all struggle with sin. I am no exception. It is a sad, sordid story that is repeated daily in America. Ted Haggard’s fall seems greater because people had elevated him so high; putting him on a pedestal that he didn’t deserve. He is a sinner, just like the rest of us.

We are treading on dangerous ground in the American Church. We love to engage in hero-worship, and unfortunately, pastors are most vulnerable, gleefully receiving the flock’s adulation. The pastor is only one of the parts in the Body of Christ. Sadly, in most churches, Sunday has become a spectator sport where most sit and watch the man in the pulpit perform. He becomes the show, and in some cases thousands flock to feed off of every word that spills from the pastor’s lips. Glorification of personality, especially in the Church, grieves the heart of God.

But I will save that commentary for another day.

I continue to be amazed as I scan the TV on Sunday mornings. In most cities, Sunday morning TV has become a haven for those who want to “preach the Gospel.” I wouldn’t be as discouraged if they really did … preach the Gospel. Instead they regurgitate over the air-waves a humanistic-Gospel that is nothing short of a life-enhancement seminar designed to make our journey here more enjoyable.

Go ahead; scan your dial on Sundays. See if I am wrong. Most of the sermons you will hear focus on how much the Lord wants you to be happy and prosperous, which by the way, I think He does. But that is a by-product of salvation, not the goal. Last Sunday as Ted Haggard was on my mind, I did some note taking as I flipped. Here are some of the sermons I heard:

We need to stop living in a state of financial need
The blessings of the Lord are yours for the taking.
End Times sermons (at least 3)
Healing
God’s supernatural provision
Your breakthrough is coming
The poor hungry kids in Sudan
You are what you think
Developing better relationships

That was just until my thumb got sore from flipping! Go to this website, or this one, here, or here. Do your own search and you will not find that one thing the preachers need to mention; the thing that is strangling the Church.

Sin.

That subject doesn’t sell many books or CD’s, and it sure doesn’t fill a church. Visit Ted Haggard’s church’s website. Do you see sin and repentance mentioned anywhere on that page?

It makes me want to weep, what we have allowed Christianity to become. Christ died to give me a better life … what a cheapening of His sacrifice. I John 3:8 He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”

Sin is of the Devil. It is rebellion against God. God hated sin so much he sacrificed His Boy … wouldn’t you think we would talk more about that rather than using the Gospel to enhance our fleshly desires?

Ezekiel 18:3 “For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son -- both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die.”

Americans’ souls are sick and dying. But we want to put a salve on the flesh.

The Church Growth Movement will tell you that preaching on sin is a no-no. Read this, scroll down to Joel Osteen’s interview with Larry King, where he admits he doesn’t talk about sin! Is it any wonder he has 30,000 members in his church?

I’m a sinner, let there be no mistake about that. Like everyone else I have “besetting sins” that constantly are knocking at my heart. But as I once told my pastor, “please preach the Truth to us. When I go to church I don’t want to be told how great I am … I want to be told how much I am missing the mark. I want to be challenged. ‘Be Holy’ Christ said. Please Pastor; challenge me to live that way.”

The slick-haired TV preachers seem to have it all together. They have the new trinity of fame, fortune, and power. And whether we will admit it or not, most American’s flock to those churches because they desire to have what the pastor has … the new trinity … and it’s flesh-pleasing benefits.

I wonder how much all of that means to Ted Haggard now.

Please understand, Ted Haggard is not the exception, his sin was merely exposed. All of the “plastic pastors” are fighting demons of their own, praying secretly that their sin will not be discovered. How do I know that? They all live in a flesh suit. In fact, the higher you go up the ladder the greater the temptations. Different levels, different devils. You think it is hard fighting pride where you are now, imagine what it would be like when you receive a White House invitation, or regularly appear on TV around the world.

I can’t help but wonder if Pastor Haggard would be in this situation if he had spent more time preaching against sin. The conviction of the Holy Spirit is God’s smoke alarm. It warns you that it is time to flee the impending doom. Perhaps if sin had been a greater focus in the ministry it wouldn’t have been as easy to hide behind that isn’t-everything-great grin. As most pastors will tell you, when they preach on sin, they find they are preaching to themselves.

Temptations abound but the Apostle Paul’s solution was simple: “Flee immorality.” I Corinthians 6:18. Being born-again does not mean temptation ceases; it only provides a way of escape. We have to make the decision to run when the smoke alarm goes off.

Apart from Jesus, who was the greatest man the world has ever seen? Moses? David? Joshua? Daniel? Samson? We could certainly get a discussion going on that one. But fortunately, Jesus already answered the question for us.

Matthew 11:11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen one greater than John the Baptist:

None greater than John the Baptist, huh? Isn’t that amazing? John the Baptist was not welcomed into the churches of his day. He spent most of his time living in the wilderness eating locust and wild honey. He didn’t have a huge following, no multi-media productions, no books and CD’s to promote. His message was simple and Jesus said it was the most important message ever delivered. What was that message?

Matthew 3:1-2 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We could learn something from that radical.

Ted Haggard won’t be the last to fall. Many more are afflicted with the illness. Sin is nothing more than soul-sickness. Americans are rotting in their souls and instead of a pastorate of John the Baptist’s trumpeting the cure, America’s pulpits are filled with snake-oil salesman marketing the “blessings of God,’ feeding our flesh, increasing the butts and the bucks.

Luke 13: 2-5 “And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

"For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" 1 Peter 4:17

Ecclesiastes 12:13 “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”

Repentance is the cure for soul-sick America. America needs some John the Baptists.

Do you think like a Christian or a humanist? Did the Founders really separate Church and State? Is Judicial tyranny ruining America? Check out these great teachings by the Coach.

E-Mails are used strictly for NWVs alerts, and are not for sale or re-sale.

Coach Dave Daubenmire, founder and President of Pass The Salt Ministries www.ptsalt.com and Minutemen United www.minutemenunited.org, is host of the high octane Pass The Salt radio show heard in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1999 Coach Daubenmire was sued by the ACLU for praying with his teams while coaching high school in Ohio. He now spends his energy fighting for Christian principles in the public domain.

E-Mail: coach@ptsalt.com

Send A Link For This Article To A Friend

Send an e-mail message with a link to this article to anyone/everyone in your address book. Click on e-mail [envelope] icon, below

Contaminated Bottles Of Acataminophen Recalled

HEALTH - MEDECINE / 11 MILLION BOTTLES OF ACETAMINOPHEN RECALLED - CONTAMINATED WITH METAL FRAGMENTS

WMUT-TV 9

Smiley Flag Waver A major manufacturer of store-brand acetaminophen recalled 11 million bottles of the pain-relieving pills Thursday after discovering some were contaminated with metal fragments.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or illness.

Contaminated: 11M Bottles Of Pain Med Recalled

Store-Brand Caplets Contaminated With Metal Fragments

10:16 am EST November 9, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A major manufacturer of store-brand acetaminophen recalled 11 million bottles of the pain-relieving pills Thursday after discovering some were contaminated with metal fragments.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or illness.

Perrigo Co. said it discovered the metal bits during quality-control checks. The company passed 70 million pills through a metal detector and discovered the metal in about 200 caplets, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The fragments ranged in size from "microdots" to portions of wire one-third of an inch long.

The recall affects bottles containing various amounts of 500-milligram caplets.

Perrigo bills itself as the world's largest manufacturer of store-brand nonprescription drugs. The Allegan, Mich., company did not disclose the chains for which it manufactures the store-brand acetaminophen. A list of batch numbers and store brands affected by the recall was forthcoming, the FDA said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., CVS Corp., Walgreen Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp. are among the companies Perrigo supplies with health care products, according to company Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Perrigo said the pills contained raw material purchased from a third-party supplier and affected 383 batches.

Acetaminophen is best known as the drug in products sold under the Tylenol brand, but is widely available in generic versions. The recall does not affect Tylenol. The recall should not cause a shortage of acetaminophen, the FDA said.

The voluntary recall is considered a Class II recall since it covers products that might cause a temporary health problem or pose only a slight threat of a serious nature, according to the FDA.

Consumers with questions can call Perrigo toll free at (877) 546-0454.

Consumers who swallow any of the contaminated pills could suffer minor stomach discomfort or possible cuts to the mouth and throat, the FDA said, adding that the risk of serious injury was remote. Anyone who suspects they have been injured should contact their doctor, the agency said.

The FDA said Perrigo began investigating after realizing the equipment it uses to make pills was wearing down prematurely.

Send A Link For This Article To A Friend

Send an e-mail message with a link to this article to anyone/everyone in your address book. Click on e-mail [envelope] icon, below

America - Living In A Divided Nation Without God

AMERICA - LIFE / LIVING IN A NATION WITHOUT GOD

New Media Alliance

Smiley Flag Waver In a youth-oriented society, there is no tomorrow; just the Epicurean "eat, drink, and be merry." In an atheistic and philosophically materialist society, living a righteous life is a quaint relic of a discredited past; one must focus on personal consumption, financed by credit cards, confident that the Federal government must and will take care of us no matter how profligate or debauched we may be.

Whenever society strays from God's will and worships wealth, personal power, and sensual gratification, disaster is not far away.

A Divided Nation Without God

~ By Thomas E. Brewton

We are no longer "One nation under God." The destructive blows of liberal-progressivism since the 1930s have increasingly left us a disunited, spineless rabble.

The urgent readiness of the majority of voters to pull out of Iraq, regardless of the consequences, is the expression of a nation that no longer has core beliefs and faith in itself. We refuse to fight for our national rights and our survival, preferring groveling, making-nice to other nations, to get their approval.

Liberal-progressive spokesmen like Senators Kennedy and Kerry declare that gaining the approval of other nations via the UN should be the objective of our foreign policy. Supreme Court Justices declare that we must turn away from the Constitution to laws of other nations for guidance in deciding cases before the Court. Laws to make English the nation's official language are denounced by liberals as racism. Politicians on both sides of the political aisle perceive no danger to our survival in the overrunning of the Southwest and the West Coast by Hispanic illegals who have no intention of Americanizing themselves, and by immigrants who openly declare their intention to become the majority and vote to secede from the United States.

This sort of craven surrender of national tradition and pride is not unprecedented. It started in Europe in the 19th century.

There is very little of Friedrich Nietzsche's thought that can be taken seriously. But his appraisal of the jellification of European culture in the late 19th century is an exception.

In "Beyond Good and Evil" (1885), speaking of the ethos prevailing in Western Europe (what we witness today in the United States as a cultural war between Judeo-Christian traditionalists and liberal-progressive, atheistic materialists), he wrote:

There is a point of pathological hollowness and over-indulgence in the history of social groups where they even side with those who harm them, with their criminals -- and they feel this way seriously and honestly. Punishment seems somehow unfair; at any rate it is certain that the idea of punishment, of having to punish, hurts the group. It creates fear in them. "Isn't it enough to render them harmless? Why punish on top of that? Punishment is frightful!" ... Anyone who tests the conscience of today's Europeans, will pull the same imperative out of a thousand moral folds and hiding places, the imperative of herd-timidity: "We desire that someday there shall be nothing more to fear." Some Day -- the will and way to that some-day is everywhere in Europe today called "progress."

In this one can recognize today's liberal-progressive preoccupation with "sensitive" foreign policy. Common sense in the past informed us that it is better to be respected, or even feared, than to be held in contempt. Liberal-progressives move in the opposite direction. The object of liberal foreign policy is not protection of our vital national interests, including survival itself, but being liked by socialist governments around the world. That necessarily means that we cannot make our own foreign policy; the UN, led by thugs like Hugo Chavez, will do that for us.

In Nietzsche's description of the 1885 climate of opinion in Europe, we also can see foreshadowing of the pathetic myth that a world government by socialist intellectuals and technicians, the UN, will remove all reasons to fear aggression by other nations and other cultures. Liberal-progressives remain steadfast in their faith, in the face of repeated disappointment, that socialism is the gnostic path of progress to perfection of humanity. At the end of that gnostic path government will wither away, and we will find ourselves in the Garden of Eden.

Nietzsche continues: Anarchists in 1885 were savagely antagonistic to this liberal faith in "progress" ... and even more to the bungling philosophasters and brotherhood-visionaries who call themselves Socialists and desire a "free society" -- but in actuality the anarchists are of the same breed, of the same thorough and instinctive hostility against any social structure other than that of the "autonomous" herd (they go so far as to reject the concepts of "master" and "servant" -- [Neither God nor Master] is one of the Socialist slogans) ...

. . . they are one in their faith in the morality of commonly felt compassion as though this feeling constituted morality itself, as though it were the summit, the attained summit of mankind, the only hope for the future, the consolation of the living, the great deliverance from all the guilt of yore -- they are all one in their faith in fellowship as that which will deliver them, their faith in the herd, in other words, in "themselves" ...

Nietzsche could easily have been describing today's "educated" young people coming out of our colleges and universities, having been thoroughly inculcated with the anti-American, atheistic, and philosophically materialistic religious views of the Vietnam War Baby-Boomers who infest academia's professoriats.

As many other observers have noted, our short-changed young graduates have been led to believe that universal indulgence in narcotics, sexual promiscuity, and rebellion against the nation's founding traditions constitutes individuality -- Nietzsche's herd-mentality. Conformity to the latest media-communicated fad in dress, entertainment, and social justice ideas is "individuality." Worse, the media bombard us with images of youth, turning society into an immature juvenocracy that worships only that which is novel and consciously rejects the wisdom of experience in past ages.

Nietzsche's "commonly felt compassion as though this feeling constituted morality itself" is the doctrine enunciated by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -- truth is whatever wins out in the public market, whatever viewpoint the media can create in the minds of the majority of citizens.

In this scene there is no place for Judeo-Christian morality and principles of self-reliance, hard work, and saving for the future. There is no basis for, or even thought given to, the Constitution's Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

In a youth-oriented society, there is no tomorrow; just the Epicurean "eat, drink, and be merry." In an atheistic and philosophically materialist society, living a righteous life is a quaint relic of a discredited past; one must focus on personal consumption, financed by credit cards, confident that the Federal government must and will take care of us no matter how profligate or debauched we may be.

Thousands of years in the Jewish people's history described in the Bible's Old Testament tell us, to the contrary, that whenever society strays from God's will and worships wealth, personal power, and sensual gratification, disaster is not far away.

Please consider publishing/posting this article from the New Media Alliance (www.thenma.org). Reprint rights granted.

Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 (http://www.thomasbrewton.com/)

Support The NMA