Mark Driscoll: Is He Qualified To Lead?

Guest Blogger: Cathy Mickels lives in Seattle and is the co-author of Spiritual Junk Food: The Dumbing Down of Christian Youth

Summary and Introduction

This memo is written to Christian leaders detailing my concerns regarding the ministry of Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. His church has grown to 6,000 members in 11 years and is also described as one of the fastest growing, innovative churches in America.

Because this ministry is characterized by so many examples of the trivialization of Scripture, crudeness, foolish talk and vulgarity it will be a challenge to keep my correspondence as brief as possible.

Research leads me to concur with Pastor John MacArthur, who has also said, “I have a great concern about him. [Mark Driscoll.]”

Note: The Christian Worldview radio programs on this topic

• When Relevance Becomes Irreverence: The Curious Case of Mark Driscoll. Guest: Cathy Mickels
• The Pornification of the Pulpit. Guest: Phil Johnson, Grace to You

In fact, in a radio interview with Todd Friel on the April 7, 2008, edition of Way of the Master, referring to Mark Driscoll’s book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev, Pastor MacArthur said, “…there are statements in that book that are so sexually explicit and unnecessary and purely gratuitous humor at the basest kind of level; I saw a video from a service in the church in January in which comments were made from his pulpit, which were then put…. on the website, which again, were sexually explicit and gratuitous and unnecessary Read more

Psst, Gay Bishop Gene Robinson – God Ain’t Listening (Ps. 66:18)

Blogger Bio: Jan Markell is an author and radio host of Understanding the Times.  Find out more at OliveTreeViews.org.

The Obama administration and America are heading into treacherous territory.  There are certain kinds of behavior that seem to anger God more than others and at this point, America is already on shaky ground. President-elect Obama has asked V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, to deliver the invocation at a pre-inaugural event this Sunday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Bishop Robinson said he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.” He states, “I am very clear that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture. The texts I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”

Robinson said he might address the prayer to “the god of our many understandings,” language that he said he learned from Read more

The Perfect Storm to a New World Order?

Blogger Bio: Jan Markell is an author and the host of Understanding the Times radio program. Find out more at OliveTreeViews.org.

A one-world system in my lifetime? Never! Yet my frequent radio guest and one of our “Understanding the Times 2009″ speakers, Gary Kah, has said this to me for years: “We are just one global crisis away from global government.”

Think this is raging foolishness for those who hold to my eschatology? Here are some secular headlines from 2008: “G20 Leaders Struggle to Reshape Global Economy”; “Global Governance, Here we Come!”; “And Now for Global Government”; “Time to Build a Global Society.”  All of these articles can be viewed here.  They are spurred on by a global financial crisis, so-called man-made global warming crisis, and the global war on terror. It’s time for change! Where have we heard that in 2008? Make that “global change.”

A financial tsunami hit America and the world in 2008. After leaders in America, including President Bush, sized up the situation, America was largely “bailed out.” We were told Read more

Educated All The Way To Heresy

Guest Blogger: Mark Moore spent over a decade as a public school science teacher. Prior to that he was an officer in the United States Navy. He hosts a well-read blog in his home state of Arkansas, called Arkansas Watch. He and Dr. Donald J. Eckard provide content for the site, “textbookaccuracy.org”, which counters public school textbook macro-evolutionary bias. Mark currently works in private business and lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and daughter.

The current manner in which doctorates in theology (and to a great extent history) are awarded serves to promote heresy rather than truth. The system can actually serve to reduce what we know is true rather than add to or preserve it. It encourages lies to be given the same consideration as truth, and thus adds confusion rather than clarity to our sum total of knowledge.

The three orders of degrees awarded in most of the world are those of Read more

Knockout! The Biblical Worldview Stomps Newsweek’s Gay Agitprop

Guest Blogger Bio: Dennis Ingolfsland is a library director with masters’ degrees in library science and theological studies.  He also has a doctor of philosophy in religion and society.  Dennis blogs at www.ReclinerCommentaries.com.  

Editor’s note: You can read our original blog entry on the Newsweek article here.  For a complete smack-down, put-the-religious-humanist-in-her-heretical-place biblical rebuttal, read on.

The cover story on the latest issue of Newsweek is entitled “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage” by Lisa Miller. In the following post, I will summarize Ms. Miller’s arguments and respond.

Miller begins by writing, “Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does.” She points out that Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Israel were all polygamists, that Jesus and Paul were single, and that Paul only “regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust.” Miller asks whether “any contemporary heterosexual married couple…” would “turn to the Bible as a how-to-script?” Her answer is, Read more

Which Way To Go? Republicans Ponder Fork in Road

Guest Blogger Bio: “Markus Shepherd” is the nom de guerre for a man who has worked in marketing and advertising for nearly twenty-five years and is used to being the only Christian (or conservative, or Republican) in a sea of liberal hedonists. You can email him at markusshepherd@me.com.

Whining City Upon a Hill

On a mountain in Galilee, Jesus’ disciples and many others listened closely as He said, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.” Ronald Reagan, quoting pilgrim John Winthrop, applied that statement to the United States when he referred to it as a “shining city upon a hill.” It was Reagan’s dream that our nation would be a “God-blessed” beacon of freedom for people around the world.

Our pilgrim founders, fueled by their love of God and passion for liberty, worked to develop the new world for their progeny. Nearly four-hundred years have passed and the Puritan work ethic has less appeal than it used to. The old way is too hard; today there is a plaintive cry for change. Liberals, including believers like Tony Campolo’s “red-letter Christians,” are filled with Read more

Will America Survive “The Democracy Countdown”?

Guest Blogger Bio: Jeff Christian is a businessman and listener and reader of The Christian Worldview. He submitted the following article entitled “The Democracy Countdown.”

This is the most interesting thing I’ve read in a long time. The sad thing about it is that you can see it coming. I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting to see it in print. God help us, not that we deserve His help!

“About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier: Read more

Obama a Socialist…or “Interventionist”?

Guest Blogger Bio: Chuck Edwards is the Director of Bible Study Curriculum for Summit Ministries and is the co-author of “Worldviews in Focus.” His email is chuck@summit.org.

I recently came across an extended interview with Barack Obama by David Leonhardt (Obamanomics, The New York Times, August 24, 2008) reporting in more detail than I’ve seen anywhere else about Obama’s mindset regarding economics. According to this article, Obama believes in the free market, hence he is not technically a socialist, which is defined as the government ownership of the means of production. On the other hand, he said in the interview he’ll just tax the productive workers in order to redistribute it!

Here are Obama’s actual words: “If you talk to Warren [Buffett], he’ll tell you his preference is not to meddle in the economy at all — let the market work, however way it’s going to work, and then just tax the heck out of people at the end and just redistribute it,” Obama said. “That way you’re not impeding efficiency, and you’re achieving equity on the back end.”

That’s called interventionism, or, as the late postmodern professor of literature at Stanford, Richard Rorty, put it, “welfare-state capitalism.” This is where the government uses regulatory policies and the tax codes to control economic outcomes (without taking ownership of the private sector) and redistribute wealth according to their purposes, or, as Obama told Joe the plumber, “spread the wealth around.” Read more

Socialism in America: A Revolution in the Making

Our Guest Blogger is Jan Markell, host of Understanding the Times radio program.  Find out more at OliveTreeViews.org.

In recent weeks it has become more obvious that America is on the yellow-brick road to Socialism.

In 1962 Russian Premier Krushchev said, “We can’t expect the American people to jump from capitalism to Communism but we can assist their leaders by giving them small amounts of Socialism until they awaken one day to find out they have Communism.”  He also said that Communism would take over America “without firing a shot.” Read more

Abortion: Remembering Key Voting Issue

As the elections draw near, the most vociferous voices sounding in my family’s ears are those of the mammon lobby. OK, maybe mammon is too pejorative a term. Many candidates and their surrogates are telling us the economy is concern number one. They’ve marshaled impressive reasons for all of us Americans to vote only our pocketbooks. The concomitant drop in the stock market certainly hasn’t diminished their case. They promise they’ll change Washington and the Minnesota state legislature, fixing whatever ails our sagging economy. And we’ll all live prosperously ever after.

So will we make their righteous cause our paramount reason for voting, they ask? Read more

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