"These are the three parts we have in this Gospel lesson:
1. Sin is unbelief; righteousness is faith;
2. the judgment is the holy cross. Therefore give heed and learn to consider everything that is without the Spirit as nothing and as condemned,
3. And afterwards be prepared for the holy cross that thou must suffer on account of it."
If every congregation would adhere to the three explanations above, they would become healthy, strong, and devoted to the Scriptures. The last 50 years take us back to what was happening in 1974 A.D.
All the denominations used to be infatuated with plans for new missions, new ideas, new Bibles, new hymnals. They knew the demographic shift, but lo! - they wanted the spin, the glory, the glamor of Fuller Seminary. World missions executives were first sent to Fuller, because seminaries were not preparing missionaries for anything except quinine for malaria. Their American missions executives trained the same way - completely wrong.
The last 50 years were a con job, the perfect example of -
“Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. ”
William Ralph Inge
A Facebook poster linked me and others to his garage sale of electronics. He was apparently building on the multi-campus model, because he had a large pile of very expensive electronics and a big bill for renting an empty space. (People do not have buildings anymore - they have spaces.) In short, his space and his toys were bleeding him dry.
His offerings disappeared, which reminds me of the motto - "A sucker is born every minute." - the iconic P.T. Barnum - because every one and every thing is iconic when it often should just be ironic. English is so degenerate now that media people say "very iconic" and "the most iconic." I'm so old I remember "unique." I could neve be a media expert now, because my vocabulary is bigger than 50 words.
"Build it and they will come" (Field of Dreams) said no one in the Bible. Tower of Babel - Build it and they will run.
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