Biblical Creation and Evangelism

It is both annoying and baffling how some folks do not want to take the Bible at face value, instead elevating their opinions or secular science views above Scripture. If you study on it a spell, false religions do something similar: We  will tell you what the passages mean, do not think you  can understand it. When someone cites William Lane Craig, I am on guard. While he can dismantle atheism, he has compromised in key areas of Christian doctrine . One of these is original sin. The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man , Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens,1615 I'll allow that the words  original sin  do not appear in the Bible, but other essential Christian doctrines, such as the Trinity, are not found under the names we know. That does not make them any less real. Although Craig mocks original sin (Adam and Eve at the forbidden fruit, and we inherit the sin nature), it is clearly evident from a plain reading of Scripture. This heresy is serious, and people...

Although it is an old word and often used when movie studios mock Christians who are the villains shout it, heresy is useful. Heresies about Jesus abound. Perhaps it is a heresy when an atheist claims there is no God (or the absurdity that he never existed), but we will focus on heresies among professing Christians. Unfortunately, people believe at least three of the most common false teachings. Why do they believe them? Because they are easily deceived. Bluntly, this usually comes from spiritual laziness and biblical illiteracy. The Good Shepherd , Public Domain Pictures / Bernard Plockhorst, mid-1800s As mentioned before, I was raised in a theologically liberal denomination. When I went to a conservative Christian school for my last three years, I had no understanding of the Trinity or that Jesus is God the Son. Yes, the Trinity cannot be fully understood and must be taken by faith, but we can learn basic teachings in the Bible. Some teachings are not heresies but are heterodox, oft...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  It was pointed out some time ago that it is perplexing why people who practice New Age, Buddhist, Hindu, and other philosophies to improve themselves are blind to how little they benefit practitioners worldwide. Various forms of the supposed Law of Attraction are major example. Centuries ago, I was a follower of Kenneth Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Frederick K.C. Price , and several others of the Word of Faith movement. Based on what I heard and read, they seemed to believe the gospel message, did not have a false "translation" of the Bible — but some things made me uneasy. Background image: Pixabay /  Okan Caliskan At the time, I was willing to learn. Mayhaps churches had it wrong and some of the message of the Bible had been shelved, so Copeland and friends might be onto something. I would watch his messages on TV and had a contraption hooked up so I could record them on cassette tapes (this was the 1990s). Something that made me defensive of Copeland w...

It may be surprising, but repentance is not preached nearly as much as it should (Matt. 4:17, Mark 1:14-15, Luke 24:46-47, Acts 3:19, 2 Tim. 2:25, 2 Peter 3:9, Rev. 3:19). It applies not only to the unsaved, but to Christians who are not following the truth. How does this apply to old-earth creationists? Credit: Modified at imgflip from a graphic at FreeImages by Claudia Meyer Repentance from false beliefs is readily apparent, such as Arianism , Pelagianism , Gnosticism and Docetism , and others . These are far more significant than, say, disagreements regarding baptism. (I have to restrain myself about the war between Reformed and Arminian doctrines, each has adherents that act like cultists belonging to the One True Faith™ and essentially calling the other side heretics. Why I oughta...) There is a difference between heresies and disagreements. Learn it. One thing that many false teaching have in common is denial of scriptural authority. Theistic evolutionists are coyotes sm...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen People who want to slap leather with biblical Christianity may think they have some new concepts, but they are actually reworking old false teachings. This applies not only to those things that have been condemned as heresies, but the remarks of mockers and "skeptics" are often rehash hoary thinking from past centuries. Fausto Sozzini (Faustus Socinus) was cracked Derived from a public domain image at Wikimedia Commons Before I go further, I must say that I'm doing something I've done before: taking material from smarter people and adding thoughts that pertain to my own areas of study. This article was heavily influenced by Phil Johnson's series on five major heresies (linked below). I hope you'll ride the trail with me and you'll see how some things come together. There have been several times in Christian history when the faith appeared to be on its way to becoming hopelessly corrupted. God raised up faithful men to uph...

Almost from the beginning of Jesus' incarnation as a man, there have been strange heresies about him. Owlhoots have been trying to find ways to denigrate him and make him less that who he was when he walked the earth, and nowadays, such heresies are no longer restricted to Gnostics, atheists, and other cults; the false teachings have infected mainstream churches. Credit: Pixabay / Hans_Hofer C.S. Lewis referred to unbelievers' remarks about Jesus being a "great moral teacher" as " patronizing nonsense ", but some professing Christians are at that same level. Even though his own words, Old Testament prophesies, New Testament writers, the church fathers, and so on have made it clear that Jesus is God the Son who humbled himself and took on human form, seems that people don't cotton to paying attention. Strange when they claim to believe the Bible, but then say that Jesus made mistakes. Quite often, you can find these false claims about him from beli...

We are seeing 2 Peter 3:3-4 happening right before our eyes . Worse than that, Christianity is being eaten away from the inside. People will proclaim themselves as modern prophets and apostles with "new revelations" from God. Christians should be saying, "Hang on a minute. Where did you get that from the Bible? Oh, you heard from God personally? You know, like Joseph Smith? The canon of Scripture is closed,  as are the offices of apostle and prophet. Let me check your presumptuous pronouncements against the written Word of God". Instead, too many are staring in wide-eyed wonder, being gullible, and being whipped into a frenzy by the false teachers. Image credit: Morguefile / clarita (modified) Many false teachers with throw some Scripture into the mix, but it's a bait 'n' switch tactic, the Heresy Two-Step. Be discerning and watchful. Notice that they are not fond of reading verses in context, often reading a bit and then telling you what ...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Andy Stanley has been disappointing some people, and causing quite a few to be alarmed by his opposition to the authority of Scripture. (Note: Do not be confused.  Charles  Stanley is his father, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and heard on In Touch Ministries . I've found most of his teachings to be doctrinally sound, and he upholds the inerrancy and authority of the Bible.) Unfortunately, megachurch director Andy Stanley has been saying things that are destructive to the truth, including recommending the false teaching of theistic evolution. Gray wolf image credit: US National Park Service While shooting from the hip can be a good thing, someone claiming the title of pastor should reign himself in . Stanley was disrespectful of small churches, then apologized later . In another instance, " What  did he just say?", Stanley may have used a very bad word in a sermon. When the segment was legally posted on YouTube ...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Generally speaking, Christians believe the Bible is God's written Word to man. For centuries, people have been trying to gain esoteric knowledge by searching for patterns and codes for deeper meanings. Although the Bible can be understood by untrained people for salvation and instruction in righteousness, I'll allow that there are some tricky passages where we need the help of a skilled theologian. A section of the 20th anniversary Dr. Who episode from 1983, "The Five Doctors", comes to mind. The Time Lords are wondering what's happening in a certain area, and one says, "We must know what is happening in there". Extreme sidewinder The Master asks, "Did it occur to you to go and look?" I reckon that's the way some professing Christians act: they want the knowledge of the Bible, but are not bothering with what it actually says. Go and look, what a novel concept! Seems to me that a lot of cults and false tea...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen To borrow from Chris Rosebrough (who is linked below), I'm not asking people to read this or watch the video with open minds, but to have open Bibles. My opinion and yours are not worth a whole lot, nor are our traditions. Only God's Word matters (Isaiah 40:8, Mark 13:31). Way back yonder, I was a follower of "Word of Faith" heretic Kenneth Copeland and some of his gang, but I didn't go whole hog on his teachings. Still, I accepted too much at the time. One of several things he said that I rejected out of hand was his affirmation of the "gap theory", where there are supposedly millions of years between the first two chapters of Genesis. I disremember why he wanted to use this gap eisegesis , especially since there is nothing to support it in the rest of Scripture, and I don't think there's anything about it in church history, since an old Earth is a relatively new phenomenon in liberal Christian thinking. Mrs...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen If you scroll through those religious channels on your television, you'll have the disappointing experience of finding quite a few " Word of Faith " heretics (I was into that movement myself for a while, years ago) but precious little in the way of solid biblical teaching. One of the more notorious of those blab-it-n-grab-it preachers is Creflo Dollar. He made big news when he said he wanted a $65,000,000 USD Gulfstream G650 jet . Naturally, there was a huge outcry, and the campaign was shut down . Here's the part that nobody else will tell you, it's been our secret, but now it's time to let you in on it. God put a burr under my saddle by giving me a direct revelation. He spoke to me, saying, "You have two of those jets at The Question Evolution Project . Give him one, and watch me bless you!" Well, we do have a second one that we're not even using, it's on an airstrip at our secret second headquarters, near the ...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Evolution is an ancient pagan religion that was plagiarized, tweaked, dressed up and popularized by Charles Darwin. People like to call it "science", but it is the pseudoscience of an anti-God religion. It seems that some religious people wish to appear intelligent in the eyes of the world, so they accept evolutionary thinking, but they need to have some sort of veneer of religion, perhaps a "fire escape". So they tack God's name onto it so they can have the best of both worlds. Old earth compromisers will add to God's written Word, finding excuses to insert millions or billions of years where it is unjustified (Prov. 30.6, 1 Cor. 4.6). Theistic evolutionists take this even further, but both have a low view of Scripture. A great deal of modern theology is man-centered, not God-centered. Read the popular religion books, watch the television broadcasts, listen to radio sermons and religious music, and you'll hear about how God...