Subversive Christian Unity

Pastor Olaf Latzel of Bremen, Germany finds that the church scene in his country is soft on truth, soft on gospel fundamentals. He is trying to wake things up. In the process, he is getting flack for saying things that once were unremarkable when said by Christians. Story via CBN, read it here: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/October/Pastor-Pays-Price-to-See-Germanys-Spiritual-Revival/

By Charles Marsh Recent conversations online and off have shown me something very curious. Some of what I believe to be Christian verity some other Christians take to be mere fantasy. They are cessationists and I am not . According to them, the things that I believe about tongues and prophecy and words of wisdom and of knowledge are sheer moonshine. So while in some churches I am thought orthodox enough, in others I am regarded as delusional or something rather like it. There are other matters in which, in like manner, some Christians view certain beliefs of other Christians as no better than free imagination, runaway fantasy or perhaps something worse: damaging falsehoods not harmless nuttiness. I admit to being somewhat dismayed by other Christians' newspaper novenas and Facebook prayer schemes. I do not think that is how prayer works. Their idea seems to be that if you repeat such and such a prayer x times, or republish it or "like" it or retweet it, then you w

I have been watching the homosexual schism with interest. By that I mean churches distancing themselves from one another and sometimes splitting up within, over the issues of gay sex and gay marriage. As a student of church schisms it is interesting to have one unfold before my eyes. I have heard, over and over, assurances from traditionalists that having gay desires is never the sin, the sin consists only in homosexual copulation. I have a question about that. I am not sure I am able to figure out an answer. Check out the sidebar: I am not here to propose final answers but to raise questions. If looking at a woman to lust after her is a sin, how is it not sin if one looks instead at a man? What if for years many of us have been reading it wrong, and the problem with a man looking at a woman lustfully is not that it is in itself sin, but predisposes us to the thing that is the real sin, causing us to surrender in advance to the temptation, taking away our resistance to sinning s

"The twin heresies, antinomian and legalist, are not two extremes with orthodoxy in the middle, but aberrations that deny the gospel, each in its own way. They are mirror opposites of one another but reflect only distortions." Here is a scripture that reveals a great deal about the nature of law and grace, and it occurs in the Old Testament. Examining it may surprise some people who think law versus grace is entirely a New Testament issue. 2 Chronicles 30:17-20 New International Version (NIV) Since many in the crowd had not consecrated themselves, the Levites had to kill the Passover lambs for all those who were not ceremonially clean and could not consecrate their lambs to the Lord. Although most of the many people who came from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun had not purified themselves, yet they ate the Passover, contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the Lord, who is good, pardon everyone who sets their heart on seeking