Introduction
Political Correctness has gone mad in the secular world and has overtaken most of the Evangelical Church. Biblically, blindness is one thing, but willful blindness is quite another. Due to this suspension of reason, the stage is being set for Jesus' warning that "For this reason" He will come at an hour when He is not expected.
For God has not given us a spirit of timidity but of power and love and discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7)
In this verse we see it is not of the Holy Spirit to be cowardly. The context of the passage suggests a willingness to suffer for the sake of proclaiming Christ (as Paul did), for upholding sound teaching and having no sense of ignominy in this proclamation and upholding (verses 8-14). If God's Spirit is infusing our spirits with the true character of Christ it will be evident in a power to proclaim Christ and uphold right doctrine, and in a love that furnishes us a desire to do it.
Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. (2 Tmothy 1:8-14)
In this text, Paul directly and strongly relates this to the Last Days and the Return of Christ (verse 12). This contrasts with many situations in these Last Days where cowardice in the church results in a lack of love so that evangelism is either abandoned (e.g. Ebenezer Fund) or where the gospel presentation is diluted (e.g. Nicky Gumbel's Alpha Courses), and where the upholding of truth is compromised. Contrary to the will of God expressed for us in the text and as demonstrated in the apostolic example of Paul, many Christians today find a sense of ignominy in proclaiming Jesus as the only Way of salvation in an age of interfaith and ecumenism.
The third element of the new spirit God gives us is discipline, or "sound mind". The Greek term here is “sophronismou”. This term means “sound judgment” resulting in the capacity to control one's behavior accordingly. The "soph" prefix of this term carries the meaning of wisdom in Greek. (When linked to the Greek word for human love it forms our English word “philosophy”). It is almost the same as the Greek word sophoi, meaning "wise ones", those with an informed ability to reason logically. Sophoi is also a Greek translation of the Hebrew "wise ones" or chakamim—those possessing the divine wisdom mentioned repeatedly in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that governs their actions. It is not however the same Greek term for “self-control” (ekreitei) as in the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, (although by definition it relates to it) but sophronismou is rather a spiritual nature resulting in the mental ability to think and act logically and reasonably with wisdom in accordance with God's Word.
Where it is lacking, real power and real love are also in deficient supply, but cowardice is not. Bearing in mind the eschatological (end times) emphasis Paul injects, let us examine, in light of this passage, the erosion of this “sound judgment” which, on the basis of God's Word, should be reflected in sound action.
The Current State of Affairs
The Body of Christ can never stop the world from being the world. Once the true Church fails to be salt and light, however, the world will only become more worldly. Once we go beyond this and the true Church becomes like the world, it can no longer be considered the true Church.
Secular society in the Western world is no longer secular but has a new spirituality (which is actually the old Gnosticism that threatened the early church in new packaging) called "New Age", which is essentially modified Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism and mysticism. From the Fourth Dimension heresy of Yonggi Cho to the Paradigm Shift of the late John Wimber and his ecumenical Vineyard Movement that has so influenced Sandy Miller, David Pytches, Nicky Gumbel and British Restorationism, the New Age Neo-Gnosticism is now the experiential theology of the British Charismatic Movement. So too, in recent years, we witnessed the Kundalini Yoga of John Arnott, Rodney Howard-Browne and John Kilpatrick that deceived most of both Elim and the Assemblies of God. This did not begin with Peter Wagner or the Kansas City Prophets, however neither did it begin with Wimber or Arnott, nor even with William Branham or E W Kenyon, the harbingers of Copeland, Hagan, Hinn etc.
This is the third time that Eastern religion has invaded and seduced Western Christendom. The first time was during the Pre-Nicean church in the era of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Basilides and Valentinus, whose Gnosticism in the form of perverted hermeneutics (style of biblical interpretation) was imported into the West by the Neo-Platonist Augustine of Hippo, the hero of John Calvin but also the chief doctrinal architect of Roman Catholicism. The second time was when the Crusades imported the influence of Islam and Hinduism into Western European Christendom before the Renaissance. The rosary beads, hideously attributed to the Virgin Mary via Dominic (the founder of the Dominican Order responsible for the torture and murder of perhaps half a million people in the Catholic inquisitions, whom the Roman church considers a canonized saint), in fact originated from the Vishnu prayer beads of the Hindu world, brought from the East by the Crusades and spice traders. Today, however, is the third time Eastern religion has invaded the evangelical church of the West. Because the Charismatic Movement had no biblical doctrine but its theology was largely experiential and mystical in orientation, it was inevitable that it would take its so-called doctrine from Eastern mysticism instead of from the Word of God.
This is not to deny a biblical understanding of charismatic gifts of the Spirit, or a genuinely scriptural understanding of Pentecostalism. Cessationism (the belief that gifts of the Spirit ended with the first century Apostles) is itself a wrong doctrine, originating in its current form with B. B. Warfield, but having roots in some of the Reformers, who were reacting against the bogus miracles of medieval Catholicism. Cessationism was not believed by Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitfield or D. L. Moody any more than Toronto or Pensacola were believed by the saner generation of earlier Pentecostals.
This sad saga, however, is long established and Moriel's readers are already well aware of both the errors of Cessationism on one extreme, and the bogus counterfeits of hyper-Pentecostalism and charismania on the other. But the yet newer wave of deception has not been the New Age beliefs. The newer wave of deception has rather followed on the heels of this existing deception in the form of the political correctness of secular society entering the Church.
Suspending Common Sense
To an academic, "criticism" simply means the scholarly study of something. It does not mean "fault-finding". It simply means literary criticism as in the critical examination of something in order to understand it intellectually. In the media, "criticism" simply means to review a book, a play or a film. In The Word of God, the Greek word kritikos means to judge something spiritually according to the Bible (Hebrews 4:12). It is related to the Greek word diakrino, meaning to investigate something (such as a prophecy, for instance) on the basis of Scripture in order to discern whether or not it is of God (1 Corinthians 14:29). Understood biblically, Christians are directly commanded to "be critical" by the Word of God. What the academic world, the theatrical world or even the Word of God means by "critical", and what the term "critical" means in an era of political correctness and in a politically correct church are two entirely different things.
Being critical becomes redefined as mere fault finding or contention. Sadly, we currently have an entire generation of mainly charismatic and Pentecostal Christians who have never been to a proper Bible study in terms of exegesis of Scripture (didaskein—Greek), nor heard a proper sermon in terms of expository preaching (homilea—Greek). The exposition of Scripture is replaced by psycho-babble, anecdotes, verses out of context and, too often, just plain hype and con-artistry. Since such people never had actual pastors in the biblical sense of shepherds who feed the sheep, they die slowly of malnutrition, eating straw instead of grain (Jeremiah 23:28) and have no grasp of the biblical doctrine that Paul says is essential to Christian growth and health (Titus 2:1). Consequently, they wind up believing anything, including the very deceptions we are warned would come in the last days (2 Timothy 4: 3-5). They accuse those who follow the command of the Lord (1 Timothy 1:3) in condemning unbiblical doctrines, of being unloving and divisive. The modern state of affairs has become one where such people simply do not know any better and do not understand that it is rather those who depart from the teachings of Scripture who are divisive (Romans 16:17), not those who will attempt to protect the Body from such deception.
When someone is really starving, they will eat anything set before them, including toxins which will make them ill, but their condition is compounded by the prolonged lack of nutriment, resulting in a failure of the immune system, so they will not have the means to identify and counteract infectious invasions.
It is like a charlatan on the old American frontier, pedaling snake oil as a miracle cure that makes those who consume it ill, but his living depends on them continuing to consume it, so he warns his customers to avoid a legitimate physician as a bad and dangerous person. This is precisely what we see today, for example, in the attacks of Robert Schuler, W. De Artega, and Wynne Lewis against Dave Hunt. The message is always the same: what the Bible calls being discerning now becomes the sin of being negative or critical which, when examined biblically, is not sin but virtue. If we accept such a perverted definition of being critical it would mean that the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles and, for all of their faults and mistakes, even the Church Fathers and Reformers should never have been used by the Lord to say, write and act as they did, but instead should have allowed the mystery of iniquity and demonic deception to destroy the true Church for the sake of some unbiblical definition of "unity", contrary to the true unity of the Spirit, which demands a basis in doctrinal truth (John 17:17-23) in order to be united in Christ.
Once the critical faculty is suspended, reason is automatically assassinated. People engage in every form of circumlocution and spin leading to what amounts to plain stupidity.
Homosexuality & Lesbianism
Let us, first of all, see this trend in secular society, before we begin to understand how it infiltrates the Church.
As one example, we are, in today's world, supposed to ignore the fact that in the animal kingdom penetrative same-sex relationships do not exist among any other primate species. We are supposed to ignore the fact that same-sex relationships cannot reproduce; but since homosexuals are unable to have children they demand children of others by proxy, claiming equal rights of adoption and access to surrogate motherhood to bring children up as homosexuals in homosexual relationships. We are expected to ignore the fact that a homosexual and lesbian minority demand the right to impose their will on a heterosexual majority, insisting that heterosexuals have their children taught, in tax-funded schools, that homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality and that children, often from dysfunctional family backgrounds, must discover their own sexuality on the basis of this presupposition. Social policies on everything, from education to same-sex marriage rights, are demanded (increasingly as well as affirmative action policies in favor of homosexuals) while we are expected to ignore the scientific fact that, zoologically, homosexuality among humans is unnatural.
We are expected, for the sake of political correctness, to ignore the medical evidence that among practicing homosexuals, average life expectancy may become reduced by as much as 25 years. We are expected to ignore the medical statistics that homosexuals are more inclined to suffer dozens of maladies and kinds of trauma than non-homosexuals and, in the developed world, are statistically thousands of times more prone to HIV infection. We are expected to ignore psychological studies, some of which indicate that partner abuse is far more widespread in same-sex relationships than in heterosexual marriages, and that substance abuse is often considerably more prevalent amongst homosexuals.
We are also expected to deny in our understanding of the homosexual and lesbian psychology that nearly all homosexual males lacked a positive father image, just as most lesbians lacked a wholesome mother image. Instead, we are expected to pretend that there is some conclusive scientific evidence that people are born with that orientation when, in fact, genetically none exists.
If we raise the issue of the scientific, medical and social evidence concerning the abnormal nature of homosexuality or the detrimental impact it has on longevity, we are considered to be homophobic. (The fact that homosexuals are very often heterophobic does not, of course, factor into the equation). In other words, in a politically correct environment, we are expected to turn a blind eye to reality and to behave irrationally in our consideration of homosexuality and lesbianism. Reason becomes the enemy of social harmony.
Several years ago I believed myself led of the Lord to warn that the compromise among Anglicans, Methodists and Reformed churches on the issue of homosexuality and the clergy would soon become an issue among Pentecostals. Those who faulted Jim Bakker for his ecumenism, money preaching, extravagance and heresy were portrayed as evil and "touching God's anointed", (a pathetic distortion of the story of David and Saul at Ein Gedi). In the aftermath of Bakker's public fall and being sent to prison for his criminal activities, his homosexuality was revealed by former associates. Just as an Elim superintendent in the North of England was found to have engaged in homosexual activity, now Roberts Liardon, the American counterpart and friend of Elim's Colin Dye, has been found to be a practicing homosexual. Yet those who had been warning about Liardon for years were the ones who were condemned. Heresy is very frequently a symptom of immorality!
Islam
We see an equal abrogation of sane thinking in the popular disposition towards the Islamic religion. Political correctness states that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. History and current events show the diametric opposite to be the case. Yet in the aftermath of September 11th, Tony Blair and George Bush Junior, rush before the TV cameras to insist that Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.
We are expected to ignore the fact that thousands of Muslims demonstrated in Trafalgar Square against the institution of democracy, demanding that Britain adopt the feudal Islamic form of government. We are expected to forget that Muslim history supports the contentions of Osama bin Laden that his is the true Islam and that Muslims not agreeing with terrorism and murder have apostatized from true Islam. Abu Bakir (father-in-law of Mohammed) contended on behalf of Mohammed that the only assurance of salvation was to be a shaheed—a Muslim who dies killing infidels in a jihad becomes a martyr.
We are expected to forget that Islam admits that Mohammed was a filthy pedophile who married a 6 year-old girl Aisha, and took her virginity when she was the age of 9. We are expected to forget that 70-80 year old Saudi men were exposed on prime time American TV buying little girls from impoverished families in India, justifying it on the basis of the fact that their prophet Mohammed was a pedophile. Islam is still, we are expected to believe, a civilized religion.
We are expected to ignore the fact that even small Christian girls, abducted in Muslim societies, are forcibly subjected to clitorectomy (female circumcision), often performed on queues of them with the same rusty razor blade under dangerously septic conditions in the name of the faith of the Quran.
We are similarly expected to ignore the fact that 1,000 British girls a year are taken to Islamic countries and forced to become one of the four wives of people they have never met, often not infrequently blood relatives as old as 60 years of age. Islam, we are told, is a moral religion and such practices, we are expected to believe, have nothing to do with Islam. Who, other than Muslims, religiously engage in such disgusting abuses of human rights?
If Islam is a civilized faith of justice and virtue, where is the justice in the feudalism of nearly the entire Islamic world? Where is the justice and virtue in a religion that allows pedophilia in imitation of its founding prophet, polygamy and the oppression of women, and even slavery? If Islam is the faith of tolerance (as Bush, Blair and their Muslim acquaintances insist), where does tolerance exist anywhere in the Muslim world? The answer, of course, is that it exists nowhere in the Muslim world.
If Islam is a faith of peace, as the politically correct media continually misrepresents it as being, why are there three times as many armed conflicts in the world involving Islam today as there are all of the other religious people groups in the world put together? Once more, the White House, Number 10, and CNN expect us to relegate common sense to the status of prejudice, in a new worldview designed to facilitate a New World Order (a term first coined by Bush Sr.) where reason becomes unreasonable.
In this "new think", we are expected to believe that neither Lockerbie nor September 11th nor the assassination of Robert Kennedy nor the suicide bombing of American embassies nor the endless stream of Islamic outrages perpetrated against the nation Israel had anything to do with Islam. Who did such things? Was it the Quakers? Now a Byron, California school system is requiring 7th Grade students to take courses in Islam. One thing we may be certain that the syllabus will not contain, however, is the fact that no place in the Muslim world would courses on Christianity be allowed, let alone required as mandatory curriculum. Such an absence of reason means that Islam will not have to destroy the West with jihad, the West has become far too adept at destroying itself.
We are expected to believe that, as was demonstrated by the involvement of senior Bush administration officials with Enron, and the fact that Bush and Cheney are owned and operated by Texas oil interests has nothing to do with their unwillingness to stand up to the House of Saud and the Wahhabi sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia, which decapitates Christians and finances Islamic extremism globally.
We are expected to forget that Bush's father was vice-president of an administration that supplied weapons to the Islamic terrorist government of Iran, and then denied it. We are expected to forget that, as a former CIA Director, Bush Senior saw American commandos training Gadhafi’s terrorists in Libya, and as President he left Saddam Hussein in power and now the disgraceful Bush legacy of Islamic appeasement is perpetuated by his son, who appeared on TV after September 11th singing the praises of Islam at an Islamic institution in Washington and allowing the U. S. postal service to issue a stamp commemorating Ramadan. Islam is a religion which interprets kindness as weakness and by calling for a Palestinian state in the aftermath of September 11th, the only signal Bush's attitude is to Islam is "terrorism works, we are winning the jihad, allah is giving us the victory, America is making concessions out of fear." We are expected to pretend that none of this has anything to do with the politics of Arab oil and the economics of petro-dollars recycled through the banks of London and New York.
We are expected to forget that 18 months prior to September 11th Vladimir Putin warned Tony Blair that the Islamic terrorism he was fighting in Chechnya would soon arrive in the West and that the Western position towards Serbia, who was fighting the Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army, backed by Al Qaeda, was unbalanced. Blair and Clinton intervened militarily on the side of the Muslims in defiance of the NATO treaty, which only allows intervention when a NATO country is attacked.
We are also expected to forget that prior to September 11th the Israeli Government had repeatedly warned the White House that the Islamic terrorism they live with would soon become a reality in the American mainland, whilst Bush held a Ramadan celebration in the White House!
We are expected to believe it despite the fact that in one poll 40% of British Muslims and more than 90% of Saudi Arabian professionals expressed support for bin Laden. We are expected to forget that British TV broadcasted well-educated Pakistanis at one of Pakistan's most elite private schools regretting only that Bin Laden did not kill more people. Instead of protecting British and American citizens, Blair and Bush reject the clear need for the mass deportation of Muslims not holding British or American citizenship and the closure of mosques funded by militantly orientated Islamic interests and governments but would rather leave their own citizens at risk of further terrorism. "Islam", the politicians tell us "is a religion of tolerance and peace that believes in justice"—something only an imbecile could possibly believe.
In being expected to believe that Islam is a peaceable, tolerant and just religion, we are expected to suspend our powers of reason and to ignore the irrefutable fact that there is not a single Muslim country in the world that is an authentic democracy and that there is not a single Islamic country in the world where Christians are not persecuted. Our politicians expect us to believe their rhetoric and to accept at face value the propaganda of Muslims living in the West, that their religion is not one of hostility towards the West nor towards the Judeo-Christian faith, despite the fact that while the Saudi Arabians fund the construction of mosques all over Britain, America and elsewhere, these same heathen savages, who decapitate people for becoming Christians, will not allow the construction of a single church in Saudi Arabia. These are clear facts the Blair Government and the Bush White House expect us all to ignore.
We are expected to forget the 200,000 Christian refugees in East Timor—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.
We are expected to forget the 50,000 murdered in the Southern Philippines—Islam is a religion of 'peace and tolerance.'
We are expected to forget the World Trade Centre, Lockerbie and the Pentagon—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.
We are expected to forget the Saudis hanging a 15 year-old boy for his Christian faith while their country is under the strategic protection of America and Britain—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.
We are expected to forget thousands upon thousands of Muslim barbarians rioting in the streets of Britain's cities, demanding the murder of Salmon Rushdie, a British citizen, for authoring a book they didn't like—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.
We are expected to forget the Islamic genocide in the Sudan and the church burning in Nigeria—Islam is a religion of “peace and tolerance”.
We are expected, by the BBC, CNN, the British and American governments and the Anglican Bishop of Wales (who like Desmond Tutu favors homosexual and lesbian ordination) to ignore the fact that the heathen pedophile faith of Islam, based on murder, terrorism, hatred of Jews, and the decapitation of Christians divides the world into two camps: “Dar al Islam” (the world of Islam) and “Dar al Harb” (the world of the sword).
If you do not ignore factual reality and refuse to live in the fantasy world of political correctness created by the media, politicians, and spiritually and morally dead churches, you are the one who is somehow daft, morally deficient, and detached from reality!
Political correctness has indeed gone mad and reason is a casualty of a misguided sense of what brotherhood and equality actually are. Now we are expected to further ignore the absolute and incontrovertible fact that in their own backward countries, Muslims uniformly deny to others the same rights and privileges they aggressively demand from Great Britain, the USA and other more civilized nations.
Social Welfare & Euro-Federalism
When the British Welfare State was formulated by Sir William Beveridge in the aftermath of the Second World War, a single parent family was a war widow with children whose husband and father was killed, either in the Blitz, or the forces or Merchant Navy in the struggle against the Nazis, the fascists or the imperial Japanese.
The sense then was that the tax payer and the Government had a moral obligation to help these war widows and orphans whose breadwinner was killed in the war. Now a single parent family may be a young mother with 4 or 5 different children from 3 different drunken yobbo football hooligans whom the taxpayer is expected to support in addition to his or her own children. Everyone knows this to be true. Everyone knows this to be an injustice and an inequality, and everyone knows this was not why the Welfare State was established. But we are expected to forget this. We are expected to pretend that these single mothers and absentee fathers are the victims, instead of the working taxpayers.
There is not an economist or banker in the world who does not realize that once a nation loses control of its money supply its government becomes irrelevant. Once a nation loses control of its capacity to control its economic destiny it automatically forfeits its capacity to control its political destiny. As we see Daniel's prophecies fast taking shape in the confederation of a non-democratic Europe with an ecumenical/inter-faith religious establishment, the British Government has lifted control of the nation's monetary system out of the realm of voter accountability and placed it into the hands of the Bank of England, restructured along the anti-democratic lines of the American Federal Reserve System, as a stepping stone to junking the pound sterling. We are expected to ignore the fact that the future of British government will not be British but European, and will not be democratic but bureaucratic.
We are expected to forget that in the last federal Europe, the Germans dominated the Holy Roman Empire in league with the papacy and we are expected to forget what that meant and what it will certainly mean again. As Romano Prodi said, the Euro was not an economic move, but a political one. The European Common Market was the direct result of the Second World War. Thanks to the Europhiles of all major British political parties, contrary to popular myth, Germany won the War.
As the European agenda is propagated in the school systems, Britons are supposed to forget their history. They are expected to not have their children taught the truth, that it was the desire to be free from the scourge of Roman Catholic heresy and its blood butchering papacy and its murdering Jesuit henchmen from the 16th and 17th centuries onward, and that it was the ambition to pioneer the parliamentary democracy which Rome opposed, and gun powder plotting Roman Catholics like Guy Faulks tried to destroy that united the United Kingdom.
The Scots are expected to forget that it was the pro-papal agenda of Bonnie Prince Charles acting at the behest of Catholic France in league with the papacy that prompted the Presbyterians to fight with the disliked English against Roman Catholic Bonnie Prince Charles who was born in Rome. Britons are expected to ignore that it resisted everyone from Catholic Spain's Armada to Catholic France's Napoleon and to the Roman Catholic Adolph Hitler and all others who tried to make Britain part of Continental Europe, and which the Roman Catholic church in Britain is trying to make it become today, even telling Catholics to vote for pro-European/anti-British candidates. What the Armada, Napoleon and Hitler could not do with invasion and war, Britain's own politicians are now doing with the mere stroke of a pen, as the heritage that was once the glue of an empire dissipates in a post-Christian/neo-pagan UK. It is not reasonable to pretend that this is not the very obvious case, but since when is political correctness reasonable?
Evolution
Educators continue to predicate all bio-medical education on Darwinian presuppositions. We are expected to overlook the fact that there is no proven instance of DNA transmutating across the species barrier in the natural environment. We are expected to overlook the fact that the kinds of mutations and permutations that would be necessary for evolution to take place would be mutations of a kind that works to the detriment and ultimate extinction of a species, not to its advancement. We are expected to overlook the fact that any genetic pairing involving nucleic acids requires previously existing information. The replicative functions of RNA require an existing bio-database; and information cannot exist without the pre-existing intelligence to create it. Nonetheless, reason is suspended and we are expected to assume a hypothesis whose plausibility is, at best, precarious and certainly unproven, as if it were a fact.
We are expected to deny the fact that there is an absence of transient forms and tremendous gaps in the fossil record that can only be explained by mere conjecture that we are further expected to treat as fact. In a generation that has seen ethnic cleansing on a genocidal scale unprecedented in human history, where other races are portrayed as sub-human, we are expected to ignore that Darwinism, applied anthropologically and taken to its natural conclusions, was the basis of Hitler's holocaust. We are also expected to forget that this same anthropological application of Darwinian presupposition would relegate non-whites to the status of genetic inferiority to Caucasians providing a supposedly scientific basis to racial superiority.
The scientific dilemma created by the abject premise of Darwinism, however, extends well beyond life science and social science, but even spreads its tentacles into physical science. We are expected to discount the fact that when the world of cosmology and particle physics was in a tumult of debate over questions surrounding propositions such as "Plank's Constant" and "Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle". Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist since Newton, retorted "God does not play dice with the universe", putting a nail into the coffin of known causal random effects on the basis of pure mathematical improbability. Yet this same caliber of mathematically quantified improbability is the very standard upon which evolutionary views of physical existence depend.
We are, for example, expected to ignore the odds in enzyme synthesis against the right combination of amino acids finding the right balance of covalent relationships and forming bonds to begin the complex process of forming extremely long protein molecules. Peptides must form according to a precise genetically controlled prescription into chains of polypeptides to make even a single protein which must be able to biochemically interact with other proteins in an organism which must maintain a level of homeostasis (chemical balance) enabling it to survive in, and interact with, an ecosystem containing countless other organisms of equal complexity. The notion that the entire biosphere could happen to evolve by chance on one particular planet conducive to sustaining life, and not on the other planets in our solar system, is statistically ludicrous.
In the name of modern science, we are expected to neglect the fact that the founders of modern science, from Newton and Pascal to Keppler to Pasteur and Einstein, were uniformly theists, believing in an intelligent creator, to say nothing of the fact that others, such as Rutherford and Faraday, were professing evangelical Christians.
There are both scientifically and theologically good and scientifically and theologically bad versions of creation science. There are, however, no good versions of Darwinism, scientifically, theologically or otherwise. The Word of God specifically warns of such foolishness concerning futile speculation about His creation; "professing to be wise they become fools" (Romans 1:21-24), and God gives them over to such foolishness to allow them to believe what a logical mind would call unbelievable.
Medical Science
We are expected to ignore the neo-natal survival of premature babies at earlier and earlier stages of gestation. We are expected to ignore the avalanche of advances, not only in neo-natology, but in ante-natal obstetric surgery, genetic medicine, improvements in amniocyntotic (embryonic fluid), ultra sound and magnetic resonance diagnostic technology, and in rehabilitative pediatric medicine, all of which provide less and less clinical grounds for non-therapeutic abortion and are on the verge of making the only difference between abortion and infanticide semantic. Yet it is not politically correct to confront the medical and scientific facts in regards to abortion for what they are. Medical science is supposedly based on logic. But now gynecologists are expected to adopt abortion policies void of logic. Euthanasia is the next battle on the horizon.
The social dimension of this human catastrophe, however, is even more outlandish. There are actually organized black markets for illegal adoption of children from the Third World and the waiting lists of childless couples wishing to adopt a baby, even a handicapped baby, are longer than the amount of babies available for adoption can satisfy. The social reality is that there is no such thing as an "unwanted baby". Yet because there are unwanted pregnancies, we are expected to ignore the fact that there is no such thing as an unwanted baby and pretend as if there is, even though everyone knows there is not. Not only are human fetuses being aborted, human reason is also.
We are expected to ignore, in contemplating the problems of reduced attention capacity in children, the fact that children today are the third generation groomed by a television culture, now reinforced by computer games and other electronic pastimes. resulting in very short attention spans. The decline of the nuclear family, due to the divorce rate and out of wedlock births, contributes to instability in a child's home environment during his or her formative years. All this we are expected to ignore.
In medical science the best way to diagnose a disease is to use some tool, such as an X-ray, a CT scan, a blood or urine analysis, or a biopsy. In the absence of this, the worst way to diagnose a disease is, instead of beginning with a disease and finding a cure, to begin with a cure (or supposed cure) and find the disease; if you cannot find what is wrong with someone, find out what therapy or medication they are responding to is used as a last resort in trying to identify the source of their complaint. Today, as we ignore the social and environmental factors affecting attention span in children as too politically incorrect to address, instead we prescribe Ritalin. No one at Moriel is stating categorically that there is no such thing as attention deficit disorder (ADD), but unlike hyperthyroidism (a hormonal imbalance also creating attention disturbances), the medical journals state that there is no pathology to diagnose ADD.
So, too, we are expected to ignore the psychological impact of peer pressure to live up to the manufactured image of a super-model or a female pop video icon as possible causes for the tragedy of increased anorexia amongst teenage girls. Instead, the syndrome BDD (bodily dysmorphic disorder) becomes the cause, despite there not being a physician in the world who can diagnose its existence with any objective pathology of a definite organic nature.
More preposterous still is GDD (gender dysmorphic disorder), which is the name given to the condition supposed to explain why homosexual men wish to have sex change surgery. We are expected to ignore the plain scientific fact that there are X and Y chromosomes and sex is determined by what we are chromosomally. It is not politically correct to take note of the fact that the DNA in every cell of our body says that we are either male or female. Instead, these people suffer from GDD, a disorder corrected by surgical intervention in the form of emasculation, a sex change surgery which they now demand be funded by the national health plans. It is politically incorrect to accept the scientific fact that in order to change someone's sex you would have to change the genetic constituency of every cell in their body.
Inter-Faith Unity & Ecumenism
What we call reason is no longer reasonable. When secular society abandons reason for the sake of political correctness, that is one thing. But once the Church does it, we are dealing with something that has much more lethal repercussions both socially and spiritually.
As we have noted many times, the seminal blame for this, however, is not to be found in either the corridors of power or in the godlessness of secular society. Rather, it is to be found in a Church that has failed to be salt and light. How can Evangelicals remain in the Church of England that ordains homosexuals? How can supposedly saved Christians financially contribute, via their parishes, to the diocesan funds that pay the salaries of homosexual clergy? Evangelical Anglicans are expected by their leaders to ignore these irrefutable facts, because it is not politically correct to do otherwise.
False religions are, by definition, irrational (including counterfeit expressions of Christianity). Only the authentic faith of the Bible is grounded in reason (Isaiah 1:18, Acts 17:17). This is not to say that the Gospel is merely an intellectual faith, but it is to say that unlike false religions, it is intellectually defensible. Empirical evidence affords us an apologetic foundation for our faith in Jesus and the Scriptures. It is unreasonable for Hindus to believe in an unjust caste system based on a belief in karma that values the life of a cow who is well fed above that of a hungry abandoned baby on the streets of Calcutta. It is not logical to drink cow urine or water from the Ganges believing it to be sacred and dying of cholera.
There is simply no empirical evidence for the claims of The Bagavagida, or The Tibetan Book of the Dead. There is certainly no logical reason for faith in a divinely inspired authorship of the Quran, or The Book of Mormon.
The Quran confuses Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Moses, who lived 1,000 years before. The Quran states that Haman from the book of Esther was an official in the court of the Egyptian Pharaoh, many centuries earlier than when he actually appeared in the court of the Persian king. The Quran teaches that upon growing weary in the evening, each night the sun sets into a miry pit. No one in their right mind can believe such rubbish. Just as no one in their right mind can believe in a righteousness of a depraved pedophile sexually violating a 9 year old child as Mohammed did. It is just not reasonable.
No-one can believe in a surrat containing the Quran's teaching of Umma, the doctrine that Muslims are one nation and one people. In fact, most jihads are Muslims fighting other Muslims and not so-called infidels. The actual reason Islam must make war against the Christian and against the Jew is because, without a common enemy, these savages will war against each other as they always have done.
The Jordanians in Black September of 1970, systematically exterminated upwards of 10,000 Palestinians in 12 days, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In the war between Iran and Iraq, 1.5 million Muslims, many of them children, were killed by other Muslims. After invading Kuwait and being driven out by America and Britain, Saddam Hussein once more turned his sword against his own people, annihilating countless Shia Muslims in southern Iraq and earlier murdered thousands of Kurdish Muslim women and children with nerve gas, just as the Syrian Government used its air force to eradicate somewhere between 20 and 35 thousand of its Shia Muslim citizens in a single series of air strikes directed against civilian populations, while in its notorious hypocrisy, Muslims decry limited American and British air strikes against terrorist targets or the internment of genocidal barbarians.
The simple fact of the matter is that the Quran is wrong and proven wrong. There is no umma and never will be. Whenever Western countries have had wars, at least one of the participants was not a democratic nation. While radical Islam denounces Western democracy in favor of the Islamic caliph system, the fact remains that no two Judeo-Christian democracies have ever had a war while Muslim nations have rarely had anything except war, usually against each other, a bloody history that continues to this very day. Reason dictates that, as a religion, Islam is something that simply does not work as its history and contemporary events prove beyond any reasonable doubt. Belief in the unworkable demands the rejection of reason.
Joseph Smith was a convicted swindler and Brigham Young, with 23 wives, a proven false prophet. Nobody in their right mind would believe that someone who said Quakers living to be 1,000 years old resided on the moon, as Smith did, nor on the sun as Young did in his Journal of Discourses, Volume 17. Only an ignorant bigot would believe that black people are the descendants of fallen angels and are ugly, wicked and mischievous, and that any white person marrying a black should be killed because of the Mormon law of atonement. Yet this is what Brigham Young taught. It is simply not reasonable to believe such evil men were God's prophets. The first requirement of being a Mormon is to abandon any sense of reason.
This is even more true when one examines the repeated legacy of false prophetic predictions by Charles Russell and Judge Rutherford, the founders of Satan's Jehovah's Witness cult. No one reading the Torah could reasonably believe that the Talmudic Judaism of the rabbis is the biblical Judaism of Moses and the Prophets (now fulfilled in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah). It is just not reasonable.
As the Reformers, themselves from the intelligentsia of the Roman Catholic clergy discovered, no-one reading the New Testament could reasonably argue that either the Roman Catholic church or the Eastern Orthodox church are the Christianity of the New Testament. This is why Roman Catholicism to this day denounces scriptura sola and why it placed the Bible on the index of banned books for so many generations, actually burning those who read it for witchcraft and often placing an eternal anathema on their souls.
None of these false religions have a reason based faith, unlike the faith of the bible. All demand that one suspends reason.
The Jesuit founder, Ignatius Loyola, taught "that if the papacy says it is daylight when it is dark outside, we must believe it is night." Catholicism can simply not accept common sense. Its pagan ideas of transubstantiation, derived from Aristotle's misunderstanding of physics and chemistry, where something could be atomically one substance on an elemental or stoichiometric level invisible to the human eye, but appear to be something entirely different on a visible level, known as its mere "accidents". The advent of molecular chemistry, however, debunked this peculiar concept of physics and chemistry as demonstrable nonsense, yet Roman Catholicism continues to believe it to be true of its Eucharist. It began with a misunderstanding of the scientific nature of matter, but once science understood molecules it was proven utterly wrong. To continue to believe something disproved is superstition and superstition requires an absence of logic. It is just not reasonable to believe in the mass. Yet in order to be a devout Catholic, one must be devoid of reason.
What About Contemporary Evangelicals?
The abrogation of reason, unfortunately, is not the exclusive domain of evolutionists, homosexuals, politicians, the media, or false religions. The abrogation of reason has been preached repeatedly by apostate evangelicals, such as Rodney Howard-Browne, Kenneth Copeland and John Arnott from among a long list. Such nonsensical and maniacal paths to apostasy have been adopted and promulgated by such figures as Paul Weaver, Colin Dye, John Glass, Sandy Miller, David Pytches, Gerald Coates, Bryn Jones and others. Death of reason in the world is rivaled by a death of reason in the church.
When the Scriptures, no fewer than six times in both testaments, issue strict caveats against spiritual drunkenness, and portray animal imitation as a divine judgment, it is unreasonable to believe that deceptions stemming from such abominations can possibly be of God. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control, and God does not contradict Himself or He would not be God. To remain in churches led by such false shepherds is unreasonable given their proven track record of failed routes to revival, from the afore-mentioned to Jim Challenge to Alpha courses.
According to The Brierley Report, the UK has seen a 22% decline in church attendance in the first ten years of Alpha alone, with Anglicanism losing approximately 1,000 per week and a 16% decline in the number of charismatics and Pentecostals since the laughing experience, while Islam has become the fastest growing institutionalized religion in the UK and the Mormon cult the fastest growing supposedly Christian sect. Reason demands that the false leaders who misled the Church into these deceptions be abandoned by their flocks, but reason is openly preached against.
It is both dangerous and unreasonable to ignore physical symptoms of illness. Doing so can result in premature death. Yet the bastardized gospel of Copeland and Hagin urge biblically ignorant Christians to do this very thing. It is not reasonable, but they do it and consequently place themselves at risk of self-inflicted death.
It is no more reasonable to call the faith of the prosperity preachers the faith of Hebrews 11 than it is to call Talmudic Judaism the faith of Moses or Roman Catholicism the faith of the Gospels and Epistles. Yet now professing evangelicals sacrifice reason and true faith for a false faith that in the end is but faith in “faith” and not in Christ, and therefore no faith at all.
It is not reasonable in light of the warnings of the Olivet discourse, Deuteronomy 18, Jeremiah 23 and 28 to continue to heed the words of those proven to have prophesied falsely in the name of the Lord. The Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons do this, but so too do the adherents of the ministries of Gerald Coates, Rick Joyner, and the Kansas City (false) Prophets. It is not reasonable to be a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness for these reasons, but for these exact same reasons neither is it reasonable to be a member of New Frontiers.
I have rarely encountered as much illogical and emotional reaction to a challenge than I have from Reformation Protestant Christians in general and Calvinists in particular. Unlike, as in Biblical narrative where both the good and bad points of hero figures are portrayed for what they are, a sure mark of "religion" and religiosity is the tendency towards hagiography (misrepresenting religious heroes as totally sanctimonious figures, where reference to the human imperfections is omitted and mention of them considered virtually blasphemous). Roman Catholics call it "canonization of saints".
The Jehovah's Witnesses do it with C. T. Russell, the Mormons with Smith and Young, and, not least of all, the Muslims with Mohammed. Orthodox Jews even resort to it among some of the most sinister characters in rabbinic history, such as with Simon Bar Kochba (who kicked a 90 year-old rabbi in the head and killed him and bought the nation into destruction and dispersion as a false messiah), and Rabbi Akiva who persuaded the Jews that Bar Kochba was the Messiah.
Nonetheless, many Lutheran Missouri and Wisconsin synod churches do precisely the same with Luther, calling him "the Beloved" and expecting everyone to join them in dismissing Luther's polemic against the Jews, which later inspired Hitler, and his "stab them in the back" position during the Peasants' Revolt. Luther and the Reformers may have been the founders of what came to be called "Protestantism", but they certainly were not the founders of the Reformation; they more or less hi-jacked it. It was actually Erasmus who first pointed the Church back towards the Scriptures (and attacked the papacy for its hypocrisy and corruption in the most vitriolic terms imaginable!) and the Baptist sects (whom the Protestants and Catholics alike would persecute) who were the most Biblical Christians.
In Northern Ireland, extreme Calvinists engage in open revisionism (the rewriting of history), pretending that the Pope did not bless William of Orange with a papal decree centered in Vienna, controlled by the Catholic Hapsburgs, and likewise behave as if there were not Catholics from Holland fighting with William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. More absurdly, they expect everyone to join with them in pretending that Irish republicanism was not founded by reformed Protestants in the Home Rule movement by figures such as Isaac Butt, James Napper Tandy, Charles Parnell and Wolfe Tone. They act as if their Protestant forebears were always for the British crown when, in fact, at the close of the eighteenth century the British crown massacred their Protestant ancestors fighting the crown for Irish independence. There is simply no logic to Orange Protestantism, but bigotry is never logical.
Reading the Quran and Islamic history, the Taliban were indeed genuine Islam. The only thing the Taliban regime actually amounted to was Islam taken to its logical conclusions. Yet, the police states of the Reformed church in Calvin's Geneva, Zwingli's Zurich, Knox's Scotland and Puritan England and Massachusetts were the Taliban of their day, complete with the judicial flogging and execution of women on religious grounds as public entertainment. Whenever one points out that Mohammed was a pedophile to a Muslim, they become extremely disturbed, not because it is a lie, but rather because it is true. I have experienced similar responses evoked from Calvinists by citing George Whitfield's support of the institution of slavery; again, not because it is false, but because it is true.
The history of injustice in Muslim society is paralleled by the history of injustice in Calvinistic society, from the apartheid of South Africa to the slavery of the American South to the Plantation period of Ireland, all endorsed from the pulpit by the Calvinistic clergy and sanctioned by the Reformed churches of those places at the time. Muslims resent someone looking at the reality of their own societies for what they are just as some Reformed Christians share the same aversion for the same reasons. It is not reasonable, but neither hyper-Calvinism nor Islam are reasonable, because neither one works.
Just as Islam was unable to prevent Muslims from massacring each other, so too Calvinism was unable to stop Calvinists from massacring each other in the Puritan war against the Presbyterians. Both killed each other. And just as Islam requires a common enemy to stop fighting amongst themselves, the recent shoving spectacle by Protestant Parliamentarians in Stormont illustrates how, in principle, the same thing can be true of Calvinists. This is a reasonable observation, but the political correctness of Northern Ireland insists that reason be jettisoned.
Just as Muslims become enraged when you point out its failure to bring unity, so too, Calvinists become angry when you document its similar failure. As we have often noted, the fatalistic Islamic doctrine of Insha'Allah and the Calvinistic misunderstanding of the biblical doctrines of election and predestination are essentially two variations of the same thing in two different religious and cultural packages—one Islamic, and one Protestant.
In Hinduism it is not reasonable to exhibit the serpent spirit demonic manifestations and animal imitations of Kundalini yoga or find an allure in Brahman priests or gurus as little gods who prey upon and exploit them and to believe them to be untouchables whom it is blasphemous to criticize. Yet in Vineyard, Elim and other churches where Hindu-oriented New Age deception has been given a Christian label by David Blake, John Arnott and others, we see the same demonic manifestations. Like any Hindu guru, Rodney Howard-Browne and John Arnott urge people in the name of spirituality to suspend analytical thought in order to become “more spiritual” in what the Bible calls a counterfeit spirituality. So, too, the same allure is paid to the faith-prosperity con men whose followers are the Bhagwan Rajneesh devotees of hyper-Pentecostalism, and the untouchable status of Brahmans becomes an exegetically twisting of “touch not my anointed”. Just like a guru propounding yoga, Pioneer's Patrick Dixon calls altered states of consciousness and irrational behavior “spiritual experiences” (which they may be, but not from the Holy Spirit whose fruit is self-control as stated in (Galatians 5:23).
Worse still was Elim's David Blake's defense of the animal imitations common in Hindu mysticism as Christian, published in the Elim tabloid (and called “excellent” by the Elim leader of the time Wynn Lewis). But in The New Testament, it is only backslidden Christians whose behavior is compared to that of animals (2 Peter 2:12). Remarkably, the term used here is aloga from the Greek term alogos translated (e.g. Acts 25:27) “irrational and unreasonable”, but whose etymological root is "without the logos". The logos is of course the Word of God and the logos is the incarnate Word of God—Jesus Himself. Where His Word is negated, Jesus is negated, and consequently so are reason and rational behavior.
Indeed, the message of the Gospel itself is God wanting to reason with man about our sin and how it can be forgiven (Isaiah 1:18). The Gospel is reasonable.
Conclusion
In order to accept the unreasonable with the attitude of nonchalance we see in so much of the contemporary church, a deranged strain of complacency is required. It is a pitiful complacency that treats reason as unreasonable and substitutes the reasonable with that which can never be supported with reason, let alone justified by God's Word. Such complacency in the Last Days always relates to the church of Laodicea. But this complacency accepting the abrogation of reason is not primarily the usual complacency of Laodicea that stems from being deluded due to being lukewarm and materialistic; it is rather one that comes from the spirit of deilias actually meaning “cowardice” that Bible translators euphemistically call "a spirit of timidity". It is what happens when we fear other men instead of fearing God—we lose the logos. As a direct result, we lose power, we lose love, and then we lose the power and the love of "reason".
This is precisely what Jesus warned the elect would happen before His return. He told us that in just such an age, where reason has been sacrificed to the point that the reasons He gave to be alert for His return are ignored is the time He would return. We have apostatized from reason because we have apostatized from the Word of God. Truth no longer matters (2 Thessalonians 2:12). This is why doctrine (the teaching of Jesus) no longer matters in the Church, but is seen as divisive and undesirable, forgetting that Jesus Himself is both the Word and the Truth, and once we depart from the Word and the Truth, we have departed from Him.
What is happening today defies reason, because reason has been rejected. It is for this very reason that the Son of Man is coming at an hour when people do not think He will (Matthew 24:44).