Circa 1930!

On coming to Union Theology Seminary Dietrich Bonhoeffer already a PhD noted, "There is no theology here… We talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation with no evidence of any criteria. Students--on the average 25 to 30 years old are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They're unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalist and yet basically are not even up to their level.


Paul tells Timothy that the believer in Jesus is a soldier with loyalty and complete focus on the mission, remembering there are rules in this endeavor of Faith,--it isn't an "anything goes," benign spirituality and through hard work and wise application of knowledge there is a payoff. (2 Tim 13-11)

But never forget:

The mission is about Jesus Christ risen from the dead; that is the foundation of it all and if that is ever lost through distraction, ever corrupted by false preachers, ever diminished through pseudo-scholarship or reinterpreted to some candy lozenge as a nicety rather then necessity, we will forfeit eternity and our promise of being with Him!

Words From One Of the Past's Greats

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor who was executed for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was a theologian in his own right. His words below reminded me--yet again--of the waywardness of the prosperity preachers and the god they have created; a god who is always there when and where one wants him to answer their beck and call. The God Bonhoeffer describes is NOT the god of the prosperites.

"If it is I who determine where God is to be found, I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in someway, who is obliging, who's connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found then I'll be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is none at all congenial to me. This place is the cross of Christ and whoever would find him must go to the foot of the cross as the sermon on the mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all; it is entirely contrary to it but this is the message of the Bible."

More Prosperity Deception

America's Pastor of positivity tweeted this yesterday: "There is a direct correlation between declaring favor and receiving favor. Declare that you are expecting "unprecedented favor!” This is the old "Name it, Claim it" theology of the hucksters of charlatans like Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagen, Paula White, and too many to list. When one wonders, "Where does this come from in Scripture," one must answer--"It doesn't."

I read the Bible through cover to cover nearly every year and have been studying it for over 30. I can say, this is NOT from the Bible and yet from the affirming tweets I read replying to Pastor Joel, people love it! And it will be the death of their spiritual life, their faith walk and perhaps even the church if it doesn't get a clue. http://bit.ly/rrXGGz