[BBC List] get funny? you preach too high!

[Mike Abendroth]

A.W. Tozer: "Many a preacher has been warned about preaching over the
people's heads. I ask, 'What are people's heads for? God Almighty gave them
those heads and I think they ought to use them!' As a preacher, I deny that
any of the truths of God are over the heads of the people. I deny it!"

Joel R. Beeke: "Cotton Mather said, 'Ignorance is the mother not of devotion
but of heresy.' The Puritans understood that a mindless Christianity fosters
a spineless Christianity. An anti-intellectual gospel quickly becomes an
empty, formless gospel that doesn't get beyond 'felt needs.' That's what is
happening in many churches today. Tragically, few understand that if there
is little difference between what Christians and unbelievers believe with
their minds, there will soon be little difference in how they live."

John Piper: "There is a sad irony in the seeming success of many Christian
churches and schools. The irony is that the more you adjust obscure Biblical
doctrines to make Christian reality more attractive to unbelievers, the less
Christian reality there is when they arrive. Which means that what looks
like success in the short run, may, in the long run, prove to be failure. If
you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract
converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion.
This is not evangelism, but deception. There are thousands of pastors and
churches today that do not think that clear, Biblical, doctrinal views are
vital in the life of the church or the believer. They believe it is possible
to grow a healthy church while leaving the people with few and fuzzy
thoughts about what God is like. But ignorance about God is never a mere
vacuum. The cavity created by ignorance fills up with something else."

"In this Christ-diminishing, soul-destroying age, books and seminars and
divinity schools and church growth specialists are bent on saying to young
pastors, 'Lighten up.' 'Get funny.' 'Do something amusing.' To this I ask,
Where is the spirit of Jesus?
"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross
and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25). "If your right
eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that
you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell"
(Matthew 5:29). "Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot
be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his
own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes,
and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). "Follow me,
and leave the dead to bury their own dead" (Matthew 8:22). "Whoever would be
first among you must be slave of all" (Mark 10:44). "Fear him who can
destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28). "Some of you they will
put to death . . . But not a hair of your head will perish. By your
endurance you will gain your lives" (Luke 21:16-19)."

 

From

http://spurgeon.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/open-letter-mark-ashton-christ-comm
unity-church-omaha-ne/#comments

 

 

Thanks.

 

Charis,

 

Mike Abendroth

 

www.bbcchurch.org

 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

 

"After the reading of Scripture, which I strenuously inculcate, and more
than any other ... I recommend that the Commentaries of Calvin be read ...
For I affirm that in the interpretation of the Scriptures Calvin is
incomparable, and that his Commentaries are more to be valued than anything
that is handed down to us in the writings of the Fathers -- so much that I
concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished
above others, above most, indeed, above all."  Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609)

 

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