27 Oct., 2016<\/p>\n
It is not John or Charles Wesley or George Whitfield that I despise.\u00a0 No, as a good Lutheran fellow, I appreciate any fellow Christian with a high (i.e. historic) view of the Scriptures and the defining Creeds of the Faith.\u00a0 And that Faith is affirmed by historic Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, et al. \u00a0There are those in all denominations which can properly be called “orthodox” in their affirmation of a high view of the Scriptures and the foundational creeds of the early centuries.<\/p>\n
It is those apostate Methodists (United Methodist Church) like candidate Clinton that I despise. \u00a0\u00a0There are apostates whose identity as Christians ought to denied.\u00a0 It ought to be clear that false teaching and perverse behavior go hand in hand.\u00a0 Just as the Scripture-denying world has rejected the Biblical truth regarding the image of God in Man, so it rejects the sanctity of life in the smallest and most helpless of all – the children of the womb.\u00a0\u00a0 It was to these children that Trump was calling the nation to give consideration when he rebuked his opponent and those like her who approved “ripping babies from the womb.”<\/p>\n
One of my favorite Methodists is a minister, another George.\u00a0 Rev. George Anderson was \u00a0the pastor of Mount Oak Methodist in Bowie, Maryland where I grew up.\u00a0 Among the notable parishioners was Kathy Epstein, later to be known as Kathy Lee Gifford.\u00a0 (Her brother and I played football together.\u00a0 He went off\u00a0 to seminary and became a pastor.\u00a0 She and I \u00a0went to the prom together; I graduated high school and then we went our own ways.\u00a0 I maintained some contact with her mother, who regularly spoke to me about her faith in Jesus and whose preaching helped me with my own.)\u00a0 I developed a friendship several years later with Pastor George, when I returned to work on staff at the church of my youth after college and seminary, serving as assistant to the pastor of our Lutheran Church in Bowie, Maryland. Pastor George along with other churches in town supported my efforts when I started the Bowie Crisis Pregnancy Center and he would later speak on my behalf as a character witness in my defense in United States of America v. Michael Donald Bray<\/em> when I was tried and convicted for conspiracy to bomb abortuaries in the D.C. and metropolitan areas.\u00a0 He was a good pastor.\u00a0 He believed the Scriptures and taught them as the truth.<\/p>\n Indeed, I have met good and faithful Methodists, but I note that the denomination in recent decades has, in its leadership, apostatized from the Faith.\u00a0 And so, following such despicable shepherds, have many of their flock fallen into the same insidious doctrinal buffoonery. \u00a0Disregarding the Word of God, they flow with the ethics de jour<\/em> and approve fornication and abortion.\u00a0 Not satisfied with such flagrant Lawlessness, they move on to the approbation of perversion, particularly with great vigor for legalized sodomy.\u00a0 And then, as if with an unquenchable thirst to advance their cause beyond the decriminalization of perversion, they lurch further into the blasphemy by alleging to sanctify said perversion!\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, they presume to bestow nuptial honors upon the same in their apostate churches under the cover “law”!<\/p>\n I might illustrate the source and the spread of such corruption in our land as it slithers down to \u00a0the common pew-sitting church member from those “at the top” of denominations\u00a0 such as the United Methodists.\u00a0 (The same is the case with my own Lutheran folks: the\u00a0 recently formed ELCA in the 1980s from a merger of the LCA, AELC, and the ALC.) While I was at Colorado Christian University I participated in a two week seminar where a gathering of various theologians of varying un-orthodox positions regarding the authority of Scripture presented their viewpoints.\u00a0 One such speaker was Ed Everding from the local Methodist-connected Iliff School of Theology, generally acknowledged, then, to be one of the most “liberal” seminaries in the country\u00a0.\u00a0 The particular illustration that I recall him giving at the time was an Iliff dictum regarding the nature of “revelation.”\u00a0\u00a0 The term in orthodox Christian circles is used \u00a0in two senses: 1) the “general” revelation of God’s existence and personal attributes<\/em> (power, goodness, mercy, and anger) and 2) the “special” revelation – the Scriptures – which are propounded to be His particular revelation of Himself. Included in the information \u00a0include such things as \u00a0His nature and personality; His Law as a guide for behavior and a tool of condemnation to drive men to find mercy from Him; man’s predicament in the world as a sinner under His judgment; \u00a0His purpose in creating human beings in “His image”; and His purposes \u00a0in history.<\/p>\n Professor Everding declared that “special revelation” was not such as the historic Christian Faith had declared.\u00a0 Rather, “scripture” was anything written<\/em>!\u00a0 The tools of the philosopher were experience<\/em>, reason<\/em>, tradition<\/em>, and scripture<\/em>. The Bible was not only kicked out of the “revelation” realm, it was not even elevated above the writings of Hammurabi, Plato, Muhammad, Buddha, Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, or Guru Maharaji!\u00a0 “Scripture” was nothing but the writings of men!\u00a0 Any writings! Not particularly those inspired by the Holy Spirit, the One true God of the universe and maker of all things. Not the canon, the 66 books (including or excluding those disputed apocryphal books).<\/p>\n One of the organizations in which the United Methodist leadership have been participants is the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights.\u00a0 RCAR was active for many years and founded in the United Methodist Building (D.C.) in 1973.\u00a0 The name was changed to \u00a0Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) in 1993. \u00a0Finally, after many years of protest by a few, the UMC withdrew from that infernal organization.\u00a0 Just in May of this year (2016)! Well, thanks be to God.<\/p>\n But it wasn’t with the help of Hillary.\u00a0 It is a strange feature of this denomination, but one which typifies many in the pietistic tradition. \u00a0The UMC frowns harder against such peccadilloes as drinking and gambling – the vices which were the targeted sins during the days of the denomination’s origins – than it does against the flagrant capital crimes of sodomy and our contemporary holocaust – abortion<\/em>.<\/p>\n I recall entering the United Methodist Building located next to the Capitol in D.C. at the conclusion of a March for Life in the early 80s.\u00a0 There was a paltry number of members of the denomination attempting to garner support from the crowd to enter the building a protest the UMC’s \u00a0involvement in the “abortion rights.”\u00a0 They were sorely disappointed in their church and the lack of interest in members to oppose such scandalous behavior on the part of the denomination’s leadership and the negligible opposition from church members.<\/p>\n Clinton holds membership Foundry United Methodist Church in D.C. , a church notorious for its\u00a0 welcoming of unrepentant sodomites. The fact that no excommunication has taken place while she has continued to declare her support for baby murder and sodomy\u00a0is testimony to the apostasy of which she has been an active proponent.<\/p>\n Repent, Foundry!\u00a0 And excommunicate the damned\u00a0murderess!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 27 Oct., 2016 It is not John or Charles Wesley or George Whitfield that I despise.\u00a0 No, as a good Lutheran fellow, I appreciate any fellow Christian with a high (i.e. historic) view of the Scriptures and the defining Creeds of the Faith.\u00a0 And that Faith is affirmed by historic Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,42,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelbray.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}