PREDICTING HAROLD CAMPING's NEW PREDICTION

MY PREDICTION: I am going to be so bold and make a prediction about what Harold Camping will say in response. Camping Prediction: "My views have not changed, May 21, 2011 began the 153 day period of judgment ending with the rapture on October 21, 2011--the BIBLE guarantees it!"

I am making this prediction before any public response from Camping, note the date and time, it's Sunday May 22--9:00 AM. 

HAROLD CAMPING PREDICTION May 21 2011 Judgment Day Audio

Here is an audio from Abounding Grace Radio to air on KARI 55 May 20, 2011 in the lower BC mainland and Western Washington.
HAROLD CAMPING PREDICTION

See also my articles:
Part One the History of Camping
Part Two the Critique of Camping

ABOUNDING GRACE RADIO--EZEKIEL'S VISION of the GLORY

Here is this week's Abounding Grace series on EZEKIEL ONE!

Ezekiel 1 Chariots of Fire
Ezekiel 1 Chariots of Fire
Ezekiel 1 Chariots of Fire
Ezekiel 1 Chariots of Fire

Scanned from the 1578 Geneva Bible.

ABOUNDING GRACE RADIO: THE MEGA CHURCH MOVEMENT

Here is a Abounding Grace Radio Address I recently gave critiquing the mega-church movement.

 Click Here: Mega Church Movement

MISSION & MANDATE--What About the Great Commission? (Updated)

What is the church's mission and mandate? Is a church determined to be faithful by what it is doing "out there" as opposed to what happens on the Lord's Day? Just what is the Great Commission? And what did Jesus mean when he commissioned his church to preach and baptize? Is that commission for everyone? I ask this because the minute concerns are raised today about worship practices contrary to the Word of God, responses follow of people trying to discredit the ordinary means that God commisioned his church to honor until Christ returns. So the suggestion today is that a faithful church is marked by how many ministries or social programs it offers to the broader society. Is this correct?

Let's play a little game of church golf. This is from D.G Hart,

How would you rate the work of your church? A ministry scorecard might include the following categories: if your church has a children's ministry give it 2 points; a welcome team ministry, 1 point; a tapeministry, 1 point (but if a tape and book ministry, 2 points). A couples' ministry should be worth 2 points as should an international student ministry, a mothers' ministry, and a newlywed ministry; but subtract a point if it is a newlywed mothers' ministry. Women's ministry should also receive 2 points and-in the spirit of equity-a men's ministry should receive the same, but if your men's group is an adjunct of Promise Keepers don't give any points-you have to start it on your own. AIDS ministries, homeless ministries, and low-income housing ministries all receive 3 points, a score befitting a big church with many resources and talented members. Throw in 1 point each for a weekly Bible study, foreign missions, and the Sacraments (2 points for the latter if your church allows the laity to set up the Lord's Supper). Finally, add 1 point for a Sunday morning service, 2 points if you have both a contemporary and a traditional service.

Now tally up your score. How did your church do? Be careful, though. Before you delight in a double-digit number you should know that this game is like golf-the higher the score, the worse the performance. The reason, of course, for this inverse method of scoring comes from our Lord himself. When he sent his disciples out into the world he prescribed the means that they would use to disciple the nations. In the Great Commission Christ tells the apostles to teach and baptize. In other words, he defined the ministry of the church as encompassing two tasks only-Word and Sacrament.

Such a narrow view of the ministry means that par for the church is 4: 1 point for preaching, 2 points for the Sacraments, and 1 for prayer. Any activity beyond these results in a bogey church.

Hart makes an excellent point with this example. The mandate that Christ gave to his church in the Great Commission is to preach and to baptize. Historically, the Great Commission has been understood to be fulfilled by ordained servants in Christ's church. Not everyone is ordained to preach and baptize. Today, however, all distinctions have been broken down so that there is no difference between what the ordained pastor does and what the layman does. For instance, I saw a church marque the other day, and under the minister section it read, "everyone".

What happens in this scenario? The mandate and mission of the church becomes marginalized as it is assumed that "real" ministry happens "out there". Social programs take a higher seat than what Christ commissioned his church to do in Matthew 28. It's no wonder church services are dying in attendance and the second service dropped. People have been taught to devalue what happens when we "come together" as Christ's body. There is no confidence that anything powerful is happening when the gospel is preached. We have been programmed to lose confidence in the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

In fact, I would argue that the more people are taught to value the specific ministry of Word and Sacrament, the other social agendas that the church is obsessed with today, will be actively pursued by those who have already been transformed by this specific means of grace that Christ has chosen to make himself known. As the saints are given the food and drink of eternal life, they are then equipped to "go out" as pilgrims to be salt and light in the world--a very different thing than what Jesus specifically commissioned his ordained servants to do in Matthew 28. The more this occurs, the greater our light becomes in the world.


So let us learn to distinguish what needs to be distinguished and realize that a church is being faithful to its mandate when due attention and place is given to the preaching of the gospel and administration of the sacraments. Return confidence to these "foolish" means, and watch our witness spring forth to the ends of the earth in a real life-changing way.

CJG

LEGALISM--WHAT IT IS & WHAT IT IS NOT (UPDATED)

What is legalism?  The charge of legalism is so carelessly flung around today that people have no idea what the term means.  It’s become a catch phrase to write off any church that is doctrinal—a word also much of an embarrassment to people today. 

There are three ways this term is being misapplied and abused to attack churches that have remained confessionally Protestant. 

ABOUNDING GRACE RADIO: The FORGOTTEN HOLINESS OF GOD

ABOUNDING GRACE RADIO airs Monday-Friday on KARI at 8:30 AM & 2:45 PM

Monday, May 2: Isaiah 6 Forgotten Holiness

Tuesday May 3: Isaiah 6 Forgotten Holiness

Wednesday May 4: Isaiah 6 Forgotten Holiness

Thursday, May 5: Isaiah 6 Forgotten Holiness

A Great Class at the REFORMED BIBLE COLLEGE

This was a fun class, thanks for a very enjoyable time in our study through John!  Visit the Reformed Bible College. http://www.rbcollege.com/

The LYNDEN CHURCH PARADIGM: I LOVE MY "BANK"?

I think it's safe to say we now know where the marketing strategy "I Love My Church" came from.  Notice the last question of the commercial, "Do you love your bank?  Be sure to read my Part One on the Marketing Strategy, and Part Two on the Big Business Model. 

The LYNDEN CHURCH PARADIGM: A Signs & Wonders Movement (2)

Is a critique of Ncctk’s actions in our community really necessary (See Part One)?  That depends upon whether we believe it's permissible for Christ's church to be built with secular means, because that is exactly what is done in adopting a big business model.  Does God care whether a church uses a consumer model of outreach? Are the means for building his kingdom irrelevant?  Should the church operate as a business?  Is it permissible to market God as just another guy we can text message?  If we agree that God has chosen foolish means to save those who believe, then what does God really think about pastors who turn his church into a shopping mall giving the appearance that buying God is a product we can stamp "satisfaction guaranteed"? 

Some will not agree with what I write here, but I ask the reader to take the time to thoughtfully reflect on what is presented.  What I write is out of sincere concern for my brothers and sisters in this community.  I want nothing more than for us all to walk in the truth.

A Marketed God

Do you have a problem?  Are you divorced and need acceptance?  Are you tired of playing church? Has legalism beat you down? Do you want real life giving worship?  Do you need a mentor, a life coach? Recovery step program? Addiction release?  Need a prayer partner? What about a connection for your teenager? You name it we have a program for you.  If any of this sounds familiar it is because thousands of churches in this land have learned how best to build their churches based upon the wants of the people.  The church is offered as a product and the people as consumers.  But for this to work, you have to give the consumer what he wants, and to do that properly, nothing can look or feel churchy since those things run up against a God who is a lot more difficult to market.

The LYNDEN CHURCH PARADIGM: A "Signs" & Wonders Movement (Updated)

It must have been an awful scene when Christ walked into the temple of Jerusalem, made a whip of cords, and drove out the money changers. Why did Christ do this? Zeal for the Lord’s house had eaten him up! Radical? You better believe it; his father’s house of worship and prayer had been overrun with false shepherds who had turned the worship of Christ into a business.  It was mockery. It was chicanery, and souls were at stake. They were profaning God’s holiness in worship.  The message of gospel had been trampled underfoot, and no one cared enough to speak out.  The Lord himself had to come as the messenger of the covenant to cleanse his temple from such debauchery and raise it anew.   

My local church phenomenon is a microcosm of what is happening and is being practiced in communities all throughout this nation. Proper evaluation of movements requires a certain measure of exposure. As with any kind of confrontation, sincere love sometimes hurts, especially when it’s honest and direct. Inevitably, I will be charged with being envious, or a traditionalist, or even legalistic for the things that I write here.  But what I write is out of sincere concern for Christ's church and my brothers and sisters in the community. It is time for Christians to stop being passive and care enough to warn those who are being carried away by church leaders who are profaning God’s holiness and turning the church into a den of thieves. I don't have a perfect church, nor do I think I am better than anyone else. I am a sinner saved by grace who now desires to honor and reverence the risen Christ.
 

Abounding Grace Radio Interview w/ Former PENTECOSTAL MINISTER--MUST LISTEN

Abounding Grace Radio airs Monday-Friday on KARI 550 Am at 8:30 AM & 2:30 PM. Here is an interview with Rev. Mark Stromberg, pastor of the Belgrade, MT United Reformed Church on his transition from being an Assembly of God pastor to becoming Reformed.  Mark actually was asked to be on the power team and was known for tearing a phone book in half.  These are a must listen as there will be more to come.  Let us know what you think.

Interview with Pastor Mark Stromberg

Sabbath Meditation: PERKINS on HEARING & PREACHING

Q. How must we hear God’s word, that it may be effectual to salvation?

A. We must come unto it with hunger-bitten hearts, having an appetite to the word; we must mark it with attention, receive it by faith, submit ourselves unto it with fear and trembling, even then when our faults are reproved; lastly we must hide it in the corners of our hearts, that we may frame our lives and conversations by it.

“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath” – Jam. 1:19;

“And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul.” – Acts 16:14;

“For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” – Heb. 4:2;

“For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” – Isa. 66:2;

“And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.” – Luke 2:51;

“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” – Psa. 119:11.

Mrs. Dr. CHARLES WOODBRIDGE (1923-2011)

Today I had the privilege of preaching the funeral service for Doreen Woodbridge, the widow of the late Dr. Charles Woodbridge. Charles Woodbridge was mentored by J.Gresham Machen and later became a church history professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.  Woodbridge defended Machen at his trial before the New Brunswick Presbytery and would later write “The New Evangelicalism”, a work devoted to the defense of the doctrinal purity of the church.  He left Fuller in 1958 out of conviction that the seminary was becoming apostate.  Woodbridge was also one of the few who confronted Billy Graham for his conduct at his preaching campaigns (Woodbridge, The New Evangelicalism, 1970, p. 44).

I met Doreen Woodbridge some time ago at a Sunday lunch.  There was an immediate connection as I found myself being engaged by an 88-year old woman about the modernist fundamentalist controversy of the twentieth century.  She was sharp, teaching me things I didn’t know. It was at this lunch that I learned that Doreen’s pastor in the UK was Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones and that her late husband was the well-known Charles Woodbridge.  During the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she still had many letters from Machen to her late husband—letters never seen before!  I’m trying to get my hands on those letters.  

I write about Doreen for two reasons.  First, she was a woman who at 88 years old still cared about the truth.  She lamented how far the church has defected from a Biblical and confessional view of worship and Christ-centered preaching.   Her convictions about what worship should be, who Christ is, how he should be honored, deeply mattered to her. All I could think about was, no matter how much we try to make Christianity relevant and hip to the next generation, the wisdom and conviction of Doreen Woodbridge is timeless.  Her convictions defy everything that is temporary and fleshly.  The gospel is the most “authentic” and relevant truth communicated to sinners, why line pure gold with gilded tin?

Second, she was godly.  I’m convinced that behind a man who makes a difference in Christ’s church like Charles Woodbridge is a woman like this.  I have done over twenty funerals now as a pastor.  As I see many of these aged saints die, the more I feel the cry of David, “Help, for the godly man ceases.” Doreen was a godly woman who diffused the fragrance of Christ.  As people like this come and go, we should be perceptive enough to see that no matter how bad things get, Christ will continue to preserve his seed in the earth.  This should be an encouragement to Christians to remember why they are here.

JUDGMENT DAY, MAY 21, 2011? - HAROLD CAMPING & The UNTOLD STORY

HAROLD CAMPING, JUDGMENT DAY, & THE REST OF THE STORY
See Part II: The Critique
PART I

by Christopher J Gordon- Lynden, WA

Introduction:

It was December, 999 AD, and a great panic was spreading throughout Europe that the end of the world was less than a month away. Predictions of the end had surfaced throughout the first millennium, but as the sun went down New Year’s Eve, the millennial frenzy reached new heights. Possessions were given to the churches, debts were forgiven, prisoners freed, merchants refused payments for goods, and the churches swarmed with people confessing their sins. Many of the sick begged to be placed outdoors to see Christ’s descent from heaven. Pope Sylvester II held a mid-night mass at St. Peter’s in Rome, the supposed last one ever to occur on earth, and in the moments before midnight, as the church bells sounded, enemies embraced each other with the kiss of peace. As the moments into the new millennium transpired, nothing happened.  The aftermath left behind a wake of disillusionment, especially when churches refused to return people’s possessions.

Wild eschatological interpretations and predictions of Christ’s return have always been a problem since Christ’s first coming—this is nothing new. But we seem to be living in a time when the consciousness of the end of the world not only grips the community of faith, but also the world at large. Political and economic chaos characterizes news reports. In the last ten years, a powerful earthquake has struck each year killing thousands, the most recent in Japan leaving us in horror as we watch the footage. On people’s minds is the question as to whether these things mark the end of the world. We are told the Mayan Calendar itself predicts a 2012 apocalypse; and Hollywood, capitalizing on this fear, recently debuted “2012”, a movie depicting the awful destruction to be unleashed at the end of the world.  

I live in the town of Lynden, WA. On many of the major roadways, even into Vancouver, B.C., are signs and billboards warning that Judgment Day will happen on May 21, 2011. This prediction is made by Harold Camping, the co-founder of Family Radio, Inc. My initial response was to laugh off the prediction in astonishment, not only because the Bible condemns such predictions, but because Camping already did this, and got it wrong. Who would possibly believe him? But after receiving mailings in support of Camping’s prediction that went out to every home in Lynden, and knowing the fearful response of many Christians, a response is warranted.