Hal Lindsey's dispensational premillennialism really changed his life lol

 

 He got rich off the book, The Late, Great Planet Earth, 1970, and had four wives.

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

Lindsey accrued a fortune with his book sales, media appearances, and multimedia products. In 1977, Publisher’s Weekly described him as “an Adventist-and-Apocalypse evangelist who sports a Porsche racing jacket and tools around Los Angeles in a Mercedes 450 SI.” In 1981, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lindsey was making “thousands of dollars a week” from combined sales of books, films, and cassette tapes. He also kept up a busy schedule of public speaking and consulting, meeting with low- and mid-level government officials around the globe to advise them on the future. ...

Lindsey’s second divorce—and subsequent third and fourth marriages—raised questions about his character for many evangelicals. But the biggest blow to his reputation was his failed predictions.

More.

Mark Tooley correctly views Hal Lindsey, a disciple of Robert Thieme, among the vanguard of those who led the way to post-denominational evangelicalism, not mentioning the role of others in this such as street preacher and itinerant evangelist David Wilkerson, whose 1962 book The Cross and the Switchblade was immortalized by a film version starring Pat Boone, also in 1970.

 

 

 

Mark Tooley: United Methodist conservatives did it to themselves

 

Mark Tooley says United Methodist conservatives underwrote the denomination's theological and sexual liberalization decade upon decade with hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars in donations:

It’s more satisfying to blame outside forces. But United Methodist conservatives, loyal to financially supporting the institution across generations, underwrote the denomination’s liberalization. I think the same is largely true for other liberal Mainline Protestant denominations.

When we reflect on what is wrong with the church, we should always begin with ourselves.

-- Juicy Ecumenism

The Disciples of Christ are down to fewer than 300,000 members as COVID-19 all but buries denomination decimated by "theological revisionism"

 

Membership is down a whopping 85% from almost 2 million since the 1960s.

By the 1990s it was already down 50%, and another 50% by the 2010s. But COVID-19 has now all but buried the Christian Church Disciples of Christ.

Who will attend the funeral?

From the story, here:

From 2019-2022, there was a 21 percent drop in membership, a cataclysmic rate of decline. … Disciples have firmly moved in a theologically revisionist direction on matters of human sexuality, gender expression, and radical individual moral autonomy. …

The history of the fall of Methodism in America is a cautionary tale for today's Christian nationalists, but they'll probably ignore it

 Mark Tooley, here:

The collapse of Methodist social influence in America began with its greatest political victory: Prohibition. After Prohibition’s repeal, Methodism first began to lose in its share of American population, and then later in absolute numbers, all the while becoming politically less and less relevant. Presidents Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson all spoke to Methodist governing bodies during the lead-up to Prohibition, after which another president never again addressed a Methodist juridical convention. In the 1950s, Bishop Bromley Oxnam was exasperated when the Methodist bishops met with President Eisenhower, who offered only a photo op, and no interest in hearing their views. Oxnam was not discouraged from pursuing other channels of political influence for his denomination.

Forget the Christian nationalism, Christian globalism is where it's at, Jack

Mark Tooley, here:

But disdaining Emmett Till’s murder, and the civil rights revolution it helped unleash, as part of the wider ongoing, 2000-year-old Christian revolution of equality and dignity for all, is helpfully clarifying.

And don't you forget it™you Christian soldiers you, marching as to war.

The proud but more modest aims of the American nation died in 1865.

 

2.3 million Methodists expected to flee United Methodism by the end of 2023 over LGBT and become independent to avoid the fate of the Episcopalians

 Unsurprisingly, the liberal denominations of the old Mainline Protestant world are the fastest to decline. The Episcopal Church just announced that in 2021 it lost 56,314 members while attendance dropped 36 percent from 2020. Sixty-two congregations were permanently closed. Average worship dropped from 55 to 21 persons. Ninety percent of Episcopal churches have fewer than 100 attendees on Sunday. 

Many Methodist congregations seek to escape this grim fate. And who can blame them?

More.

Abortion just in the US approaches 60 million but Christians still wring their hands over Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Here.

If I didn't know better I'd say all these children killed in the United States since 1973 have been a guilt offering for the horrors of World War II in which we participated.

What morality can there possibly be in war, Christian or otherwise? All such thinking is a rationalization of war. All's fair in it. Who cares that millions of lives were spared by the atomic bombings? Certainly not Americans, who have gone on to kill millions of their own whose only crime was to have the temerity to begin existing as a consequence of someone else's pleasure-seeking.

In truth all such thinking about just war is actually an attempt at rationalizing Christianity itself, not simply war. It is an attempt to reconcile good and evil on the grand scale instead of on the puny stage we all occupy, where a beautiful life is tragically ended by a criminal, an accident, or a disease, and there's no explaining it.

The message of Jesus made perfect sense until it didn't, when the kingdom of God did not come as he thought it would, when God's justice failed to appear on earth as it is in heaven.

God's justice. The scoffers among us ridicule him for being wrong about this when we should be honoring him for showing us how far we are from it, the more now than in 1945 over Japan.    

A millennial's lights are on but nobody's home

Rachel Williams, here:

"It is encouraging to remember the United States remains the most Christian nation in the world.  After all, 7 out of 10 Americans claim some to follow some form of Christianity.  Even better, two-out-of-three Americans believe Jesus was the Son of God and rose from the dead."

And you thought 70% was better than 66%.

Contra Mark Tooley And Michael Novak, Jesus Wasn't Interested In Alleviating Poverty, Funding Charity And Sustaining Liberty

Mark Tooley, here:

Creating new businesses is a Christian moral imperative, recalling the Savior was Himself a small businessman, and knowing that only business can meaningfully alleviate poverty, fund charity, and sustain liberty. Why aren’t more Christians speaking of business and economic expansion as central to true social justice???

This claim that Jesus was a small businessman stands on the strength of Mark 6:3 alone in the New Testament:

"Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

But of course Matthew has corrected this narrative at 13:55 of his own gospel:

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?"

Apart from the fact that I rather doubt that Michael Novak would find a happy audience among his fellow Catholics if he similarly pressed these passages to insist Jesus' brothers and sisters were the progeny of the ever virgin Mary, to insist that Jesus was a small businessman is to miss completely from the gospels his vocation as eschatological prophet and his message of repentance, which required "saying goodbye to everything that one has" according to Luke 14:33. Fisherman are called to drop their nets and follow, in other words leave their jobs behind and become completely dependent on God in order to escape the wrath that is to come. The same for everyone else, rich and poor alike, from miserable tax farmers to princes in soft raiment. All are required to give up their former pursuits and come follow, bringing nothing to the table. Indeed, the more you've got, the more it is likely to hold you back.

Jesus' message is not about alleviating poverty. It's about increasing it. The meaning of Jesus' gospel is to become the poor.

Yes, distribution to others who are poor is required. You can call this funding charity if you wish, but Jesus expected the recipients to give it all away, too, and also come follow so that his movement would give and give and give without producing anything new until the eschaton of God's judgment intervened, which Jesus believed would happen imminently.

In other words, sustainability was the last thing on Jesus' mind.

Actually, liquidation of businesses is the moral imperative of the teaching of Jesus, not creating new businesses, because God's judgment is right around the corner. Well, if you said that today, they'd call you nuts, too.

If there is a stumbling block in the gospel it's this, not the cross of later invention.

5 Million Ethiopian Lutherans Split From ELCA Over Faggotry

The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Makane Yesus has split from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and from the Church of Sweden because the latter two perform gay "marriages" and allow openly gay people to serve as pastors.

From the EECMY website:

It is recalled, earlier in 2006, two of the major partners of the EECMY, namely the Church of Sweden and later, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, passed decisions that favor Homosexual practices and blessing of same sex marriage. The EECMY noted this as a surprise and immediately reacted against and earnestly requested for reconsideration of their decisions. To the contrary, these two Churches, going further, resolved to legalize same sex marriage and calling of gay persons into ordained ministry.

Read all about it, here, where you will note the move prohibits reception of Holy Communion from ELCA/Church of Sweden altars and distribution of Holy Communion to ELCA/Church of Sweden members at EECMY altars:

Even more painfully: members of the church “will not receive Holy Communion from the leadership and pastors of the (ELCA and the Church of Sweden). The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus will not distribute communion to these churches.”

The move makes the Ethiopians a larger denomination than the ELCA.

Who knew the Ethiopians were from Missouri?