No one is swimming in an ocean of miracles, even with a tiny bit of faith. Copeland’s a rich moron who is quite likely to be a stranger to Christ. Popoff is a scammer exposed as such multiple times. Pastor Schuller is the only American minister with a television program showing any signs of growth in grace and Messianic knowledge. What a straight path he has cut away from his dad’s “possibility gospel”! If the passage of time as saved persons does not bring us to the undisputed preeminence of Yeshua I do not know what will. I have met people who have been disciples for two years who are more disciplined than pastors who have decades of stories of amazing visions and miracles. The more we look at the Risen Christ the more we should be able to separate him from thieves and robbers. Thinking biblically is just not a thing these days. The truth of the Gospel is the opposite of racism, misogyny and xenophobia, and gospel truth, the man Messiah Yeshua, has not even one voice in the wilderness calling American and Canadian society on their crimes, the same crimes – racism, misogyny and xenophobia – that first century people observed in the assault on the Church’s freedom from Mosaic law and Jewish tradition. With people like Mike Pence and Jim Jordan parading as principled Christians, Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham posing as caring human beings, we know we have caught the raindrop ascending; our eyes are popping. Snowflakes and flaky people love it where the air is warm.
“The Truth of the Gospel” is Christ’s anti-racism indictment
You have to be literate exclusively on a King James version level to not connect the phrase “gospel truth” with the racist practices of people like James (of the general letter in the New Testament) and the host of Jews who faked conversion while clinging to the delusion that “Gentiles need Moses”. Bible teachers who churn out books, study guides disguised as insightful commentary, and stories of miracles, evidently do not recognize the value of Greek and Hebrew texts. The only way to make oneself a true disciple of the Apostles is to be able to sit with their words as written or to admit that that is where the intimacy with them lies, not in the arguments in a commentary but in proper exegesis of what the apostles wrote. I do not want to try to explain why there are so many heretics these days except to say there is a broad road leading to destruction and most religious people or believers have little interest and therefore no diligence in showing themselves to be accurate interpreters of the Gospel. Indeed, when the gospel is said to revolve around the Sinai Covenant we know that fabrications and hypocrisy are more important than what Christ and his chosen witnesses taught.
Other flakes pretending to be warriors
There is a crude attempt to appear devoted to inclusiveness by television personalities. They are ordinary employees of media enterprises, who will, for example, say what authorized people have said, and then they get experts to tell their audiences what events mean. They are not even allowed to be critical because if they do we end up with the Fox spectacle. When television and radio news anchors become critical they expose fascism, misogyny, genocidal tendencies, open racism, and the class biases that have plagued societies from day one. Democracies do not have to convince or please every critic, because we know that the prevalent criticisms, including the parliamentary ones, in the short histories of Canada and the United States have kept the civic society needle at a meagre 33%. We are not going to tally up the things we have in common and arrive at a thriving society. Do we suppose that Jews and Palestinians cannot find enough common threads to live in peace? That may be the case, and American politicians are rightly not convinced that white people have enough in common with black and brown people.
“More that unites human beings than divides them” is a blind man’s guide
Pastors lose their credibility for not knowing where their parishioners live
“Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command.”
1 Chronicles 12:32
The whiplash from men like MacArthur and Stanley is homicidal. They are killing us respectively with their warrior mentality and sweet Jesus morality. Real humility is not a value we find in the absolute standard of Mosaic Law. You can’t be a follower of Christ and cling to a morality that is not cruciform. There is no glory to God from people who have less than perfect bodies, occupations, and families. You can quickly find them railing against murderers, unfaithful spouses and homosexuals, but we have yet to hear a single word from them about lying politicians and crooked and perverse religious leaders. Is it because they hope to create a new America that parallels the Islamic states with ruthless destruction of wrongdoers? It surely seems that way. With judges who will look the other way when racism, inequality of economic opportunity, misogyny and xenophobia prevail, America is more like the Israel and the Judah Yahweh sent into exile for their lip service and hypocrisy. The times that interest American pastors are the good old days of slavery, racism and unrestrained homicide, the days when they can sit in resplendent hypocrisy in church beside people about whom they care little.
Physician! Heal yourself!
One thing is certain: pastoral ministry has not shown itself trusted by God with healing powers over sickness and disease. Not even a headache comes to church for healing. Then again, how does one prove a headache? Proof of healing power can easily be focused on jails and hospitals. Shall I mention the morgues and funeral homes? How is it that so few are healed of greed, mental laziness, lying lips, and cowardice. I am sure you have wondered why a healing or a revelation seems to come with Baalistic chanting, bodies trembling, and falling to the ground. Wonder we must, because none of the Biblical signs occurred with the charismatic or pentecostal dramatics. Whatever happened to mustard seed size faith? Whatever happened to “speak the word”? How many organs does God have to heal before people recognize that healing, unlike blood-bought salvation, is temporary and often without evidence.
The power we dream of and the corruption we court
For the proof of religious impotence we need to look no further than the last presidency of the United States, the 45th, where the spectacle of every half-blind Tom, Dick, and Harry can be ordained as gospel ministers who care only about tithes and offerings, stupid political slogans, foolish and robotic support for the state of Israel and greedy alliances with broken nations in the Middle East and Asia. Look no further than the State of Israel where today law is a complete sham, and none of the kingdom things prescribed and pursued apply to the government. They are neither law-abiding, compassionate nor gracious. Corporate entities are not people and we know why Republican types want to see the IRS defanged. Those “disciples” of Christ affirming the Ten Commandments as the rock of their Christian experience can only be verified as the guardians of the failed traditions of the patriarchs, the prophets and hardcore followers of the scribes and Pharisees of New Testament times.
Flaky people on television are mostly idolaters. They are convinced that God and their country are equals. They do not read. They are only great at reciting. There is no morality more impressive than loving one’s neighbour. Once we shove their own books up in their face they will close their eyes, as if literature is a blinding light or a nauseating mess they are afraid to look at. As for those who are always selling a book or a study guide I have to say even an experienced man like Charles Stanley and an apparently informed teacher like John MacArthur are often caught respectively spinning literally incredible webs of hate and Mosaic morality. All the “power of faith” sycophants are using their mouth and anus like the rest of us, growing old and are grave-bound. I have been watching these guys for decades and their failure to put Yeshua first is hard to miss. “Jesus” is always a tack-on, a tombstone on their Solomonic wisdom and Mosaic heartlessness. I have to imagine that churches in Canada and the United States are also full of flaky people posing as rocky characters. They ain’t no Simon Peter. They ain’t no John bar-Zebedee.