All Gentiles

“If you want to be like Jesus, then be like yourself”.

Thus pronounced the wise pastor of a church not far from Salem. This sagacious gentleman seems very fond of making videos of himself offering profound comment on all sorts of topics. He uploaded one about Pentecost: people speaking in different languages, he explained, shows that God made people to be different. Great.

The same gentleman leads his church in the celebration of Pride Month, despite claiming to pastor an ‘evangelical church’, a term which has evidently lost all sense of meaning. I was curious about what one of our fellow evangelical churches believed, so I looked up its statement of belief. It is quite sound, although the final clause of ‘The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross dying in our place, paying the price of sin and defeating evil demonstrating the power of love’ seems a bit weak, a distant echo of those dull liberals a century ago. Otherwise, it was uncontroversial. One of the church’s ‘5 key principles’ begins with:

The only mission is love, the primary purpose is to love people, no strings attached, no motive, no conditions just to love as Jesus did.

No motive? Just go around and love everybody? Jesus literally threatened fraudsters with a whip, overturning their tables; He called hypocritical religious teachers a brood of vipers and asked people to leave their families in order to follow Him. This seems to be a different Jesus to the one spoken about here.

“If you want to be like Jesus, then be like yourself” is a dirty little lie. Everyone is already ‘being themselves’, that’s the problem. We are naturally selfish and put our own opinions before God’s truth. We are corrupted by the Fall, and our natural identities are darkened and flawed. Ironically, the Pride movement, with its pro-transgender ideology which this pastor is so keen to promulgate, is saying that one must not be content with who one is, but to become a man, or a woman, or something in-between, or none of the above. Yet the Lord Jesus (the real one) said I must deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Him. ‘Being yourself’ is a weak, lazy and dishonest assessment of the Christian gospel.

Our church services begin every Sunday morning at 11am We arrive early for fellowship, great coffee and prayer from 10:30am. The remainder of the morning is spent praising and worshipping God, enjoying His presence with us by the Holy Spirit; as well as learning from, and being inspired by, the Scriptures as they are presented to us by our Pastor, one of the leadership team or by an invited speaker.

‘Presented to us by our Pastor’. May God have mercy on the one who misrepresents God’s word, imposing a meaning upon it which the original authors did not intend, and leading people astray. All of us who teach will be judged more severely, but woe betide him who distorts and leads astray.

Yet the church is well regarded. Online reviewers write:

You get really great worship and teaching. I feel empowered at ***.

Top church. Wise, caring, prophetic leadership with Gods heart for people.

A fantastic bunch of people! Always a warm welcome with heartfelt, Spirit led worship and a great preached word.

Spirit-led, indeed, but which spirit? Let me offer a little prophetic insight of my own:

But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality. Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth. Revelation 2:14-16, NKJV: ‘To the Compromising Church’