Distortions of the Gospel

James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago has written a tremendous article exposing "Five Distortions of the Gospel in Our Day." Here's how it begins:

A.W. Tozer and James Kennedy (both wonderful Christian leaders in their day)...believed that many, if not most, professing believers they encountered around the country were not actually saved. They were deeply troubled by the distortions of the gospel that were the result of trying to get the gospel to more people. Well intentioned yes, but eternally dangerous for the souls of men and woman who had not heard the whole message.

Let me strongly encourage you to read the whole article. It is a word of exhortation sorely needed in our day, particularly right here in metro Detroit. Many prominent pastors in our area have sadly stooped to preaching what MacDonald calls the "Cake Mix Gospel," the "Cultural Gospel," the "Cool Gospel," the "Carnal Gospel," or the "Careful Gospel." No matter how well intentioned, a distortion of the gospel is as bad as no gospel at all (Gal. 1:8-9).

Metro Detroit doesn't need more gospel; Metro Detroit needs the right gospel. Check back for more on this topic soon...

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Can You Hear the Cries of the Children?

January 23 is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.

Justin Taylor links to a disturbing video produced by Abort73.com, which includes graphic images of "the modern-day holocaust."

You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother's womb.... My frame was not hidden from You, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo. (Psalm 139:13-16)

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Of Whom the World Was Not Worthy

"In the late Seventeenth Century in...southern France, a girl named Marie Durant was brought before the authorities, charged with the Huguenot heresy. She was fourteen years old, bright, attractive, marriageable. She was asked to abjure the Huguenot faith. She was not asked to commit an immoral act, to become a criminal, or even to change the day-to-day quality of her behavior. She was only asked to say, "J'abjure." No more, no less. She did not comply. Together with thirty other Huguenot women she was put into a tower by the sea.... For thirty-eight years she continued.... And instead of the hated word J'abjure she, together with her fellow martyrs, scratched on the wall of the prison tower the single word Resistez, resist!

"The word is still seen and gaped at by tourists on the stone wall at Aigues-Mortes.... We do not understand the terrifying simplicity of a religious commitment which asks nothing of time and gets nothing from time. We can understand a religion which enhances time.... but we cannot understand a faith which is not nourished by the temporal hope that tomorrow things will be better. To sit in a prison room with thirty others and to see the day change into night and summer into autumn, to feel the slow systemic changes within one's flesh: the drying and wrinkling of the skin, the loss of muscle tone, the stiffening of the joints, the slow stupefaction of the senses—to feel all this and still to persevere seems almost idiotic to a generation which has no capacity to wait and to endure."

–Karl Olsson (Passion [New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1963], 116-117)

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