By Michael Brown, Charisma News
It has been said that heaven, at one and the same time, will be a great eye-opener and a great mouth-closer. You will be surprised to see many people there, and many people will be surprised to see you there. How true this is!
In the last week, I have been criticized for
failing to condemn Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar to hell while, on the
other hand, I have been criticized for daring to take issue with their
messages at all.
Someone claimed that Bill Johnson was the “biggest wolf ever” while, on the other side of the spectrum, someone claimed that John MacArthur was guilty of blaspheming the Spirit.
A Calvinist told me that Mike Bickle was a false teacher while someone else asked me how a Calvinist like James White could even be saved.
I witnessed one pastor being attacked for saying that those who did not believe in divine healing were preaching a “different gospel” while he, in turn, was condemned for preaching a “different gospel.”
And then were the lovely tweets like these: “Charismaticism is a cult of Satan” and “cessationists who mock [charismatics], mock for the same reason why Elijah mocked false prophets. Why Ezekiel called idols dung pellets.”
How can we possibly move forward in the midst of such division and name-calling?
I would urge everyone involved on all sides of today’s doctrinal and practical controversies to tone down the rhetoric so we can focus on the real issues involved.
Calling everyone you differ with a “heretic” doesn’t help the cause of Christ, and church history has more than enough examples of Christians damning other Christians to hell (or even drowning them or burning them at the stake).
The fact is that non-essential doctrinal differences don’t determine who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and as passionate as we might be about our beliefs, if someone holds to the essential fundamentals of the faith and has not denied the Lord by living a life of unrepentant sin, that person is our brother or sister.
Continued, here.
It has been said that heaven, at one and the same time, will be a great eye-opener and a great mouth-closer. You will be surprised to see many people there, and many people will be surprised to see you there. How true this is!
In the last week, I have been criticized for
failing to condemn Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar to hell while, on the
other hand, I have been criticized for daring to take issue with their
messages at all.Someone claimed that Bill Johnson was the “biggest wolf ever” while, on the other side of the spectrum, someone claimed that John MacArthur was guilty of blaspheming the Spirit.
A Calvinist told me that Mike Bickle was a false teacher while someone else asked me how a Calvinist like James White could even be saved.
I witnessed one pastor being attacked for saying that those who did not believe in divine healing were preaching a “different gospel” while he, in turn, was condemned for preaching a “different gospel.”
And then were the lovely tweets like these: “Charismaticism is a cult of Satan” and “cessationists who mock [charismatics], mock for the same reason why Elijah mocked false prophets. Why Ezekiel called idols dung pellets.”
How can we possibly move forward in the midst of such division and name-calling?
I would urge everyone involved on all sides of today’s doctrinal and practical controversies to tone down the rhetoric so we can focus on the real issues involved.
Calling everyone you differ with a “heretic” doesn’t help the cause of Christ, and church history has more than enough examples of Christians damning other Christians to hell (or even drowning them or burning them at the stake).
The fact is that non-essential doctrinal differences don’t determine who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and as passionate as we might be about our beliefs, if someone holds to the essential fundamentals of the faith and has not denied the Lord by living a life of unrepentant sin, that person is our brother or sister.
Continued, here.
No comments:
Post a Comment