TheEvan

Neew Hampshuh was the prettiest darned place I ever lived. The Kakamangus in Fall was too amazing.

It's a pity and a shame, all of this. But if a person/group refuses to submit to outside accountability they are cruising for a bruising. For ministries that exist outside the accountability confines of a denomination there is the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. I can see no good reason one would not belong and can see plenty of bad reasons they wouldn't.

Here's a blurb...

ECFA’s Standards of Responsible Stewardship focus on board governance, financial transparency, integrity in fund-raising, and proper use of charity resources.

Compliance with the Standards is monitored in three ways. First, all ECFA members must annually submit membership review information including independent CPA financial statements, IRS Form 990 (if applicable), salary information, fund-raising appeals, board composition, changes in organizing documents, and much more to verify compliance with the Standards. Second, ECFA conducts on-site field reviews at over 15% of its membership each year. These field reviews serve to verify the information submitted in the annual membership review, confirm compliance with the ECFA membership Standards, and give support to the member organizations. This year, approximately 200 organizations will receive an on-site review. Third, ECFA responds to complaints against member organizations. All such complaints are investigated thoroughly in order to determine possible noncompliance with the Standards.

ECFA provides several services to the donor public as well. Disclosure requirements enable donors to request and receive audited financial statements for all ECFA members. ECFA’s website contains a membership directory with selected financial information of all its members, guidelines for giving, the Donor’s Bill of Rights, and general information helpful to the giving public. In addition, ECFA staff provides information to donors on a variety of issues.

In other words, Evan, you would not include SIT along with those and perhaps say SIT alone (say, without love) is not true worship, or SIT is not the only true worship? Obviously the same could be said of those other items; e.g. cooking by itself is not worship, singing by itself is not worship, etc. Can you get much argument that SIT without love, devotion, and submission is not worship? But can it not be worship with those things...just as cooking, cleaning, talking, etc. are?

The original post questions whether SIT is the only true worship. A good question I think. But your statement would say that is not even one of many forms of worship. Do I read you correctly?

Sorry for my lack of clarity. The gift of tongues, in and of itself, is not worship. It becomes an act of worship when spoken on the lips of a 'worshipping Christian" as described in Rom 12:1.

The gift of tongues' primary focus is prayer, or when accompanied by an interpretation, a message from the heart of God. Honestly, I think Wierwille connected phantom dots when he concluded it is the only form of true worship for the Christian.

Good answers. Worship is devotion and submission. A devoted and submitted Christian lives a life of worship. When your heart is filled with devotion and you are submitted, your singing, working, tithing, loving, cooking, cleaning, talking, everything...are all worship.

SIT is not true worship. That's Poppycock!

Nice post, well considered.

As your post implies, there may not be a neat way to wrap up these theological questions in a neat little box. It's more like holding several seemingly competing concepts and 'letting them be'.

I think shifting the discussion from freewill to will is helpful.

Great men have struggled with these concepts.

Goey, fantastic post! Wow.

Nonsense. They consistently advocate on life issues, pornography, fatherhood, motherhood, child-raising issues, marriage issues, et al. Those are social issues, not religious. Their worldview that forms their position is informed by their Christianity, yes. Does that disqualify them from the the marketplace of public opinion?

Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. A small part of their ministry is using public forii to attempt to influence public opinion on the issues they advocate. If they are successful, the public will elect (yes, by majority) officials who share their values. If they are unsuccessful, it won't happen. Do I characterize laws enacted by pro choicers (for instance) to increase access to abortion as forcing me to live by their beliefs. No. Why? That's Not Honest.

If you listened to their radio broadcast daily for a few weeks you'd quickly realize that their Focus is not political at all, but on the Family. That their Focus informs their political stance is as it should be.

eharmony? I already have harmony in the home, cultivated over 26 years and involving much yielding, cooperation, mutual support, forgiveness and at times, putting up with. I feel for those who haven't had marital success and I pray those who want another go at it have good success.

They're not trying to force people to follow their religion. They are advocating for the family, pure and simple, according to their stated principles.. You may disagree with their advocacy, fine. But it sounds like you'd like to be the arbiter of what constitutes acceptable free speech. I think muzzling them would be unconstitutional.

If you'll take an honest look at their ministry from top to bottom you'll see what an enormous force for good they've been. Don't let your disagreement with their political advocacy blind you.

I'd answer, Mosh, but you've made up your mind. Extremist? Please.

Is it okay for people, regardless their beliefs, to be politcally involved? Or is it that only 'approved list' beliefs need apply?

I hear ya, Geo on dating...

Focus on the Family, a Christian dominionist group

Not they are NOT. They focus on the family from a Christian perspective.

From that logic, that makes the NAACP a Negro dominionist group, the ACLU an athiest dominionist group, etc.

Christian dominionist do exist. FOTF are not them.

Back to topic...I can't even imagine dating again. :o

Congrats to you & PD (Precocious Daughter).

Don't worry about her safety in Uganda & Rwanda. She'll be well looked after. Just tell her to stay off the boda-bodas.

A wise approach to understanding the topic is considering other scriptures.

You'll find numerous verses in support of what you're implying and numerous verses proving it wrong.

Believing and faith are not the same word. I understand Wierwille's argument and he was very wrong.

If you want to have two words that come from pistis, faith and belief are it (or faith and trust, I suppose). Making it an infinitive changes everything...into false religion.

Faith implies an object of that faith, one in whom you have faith. It is, properly, an inherently religious term. It implies trust and reliance on the one in whom you have faith. Faith is a gift of God (Eph 2:9) and it pleases God. It is God-centered.

Believing is an act of the mind. That is why common Way usage became "believe for". It implies action...works. It points back to the person and their own thinking. It is mechanistic and self-focused.

That, my friends, is the difference between true religion and one that is utterly and irrevocably false.

Oldiesman, that's another straw man. In trinitarian parlance it was the Father who raised the Son.

Sure, Jesus went to the cross 'believing' he's be raised (but it's more like knowing he'd be raised), but it's a non-issue in the Bible. Therefore it's more or less irrelevant. What is relevant, because it is mentioned in the Bible record, is Jesus' obedience.

This whole believing thing is such a red herring...and is still causing people to miss the big (and very clear) picture.

And so Jonah was 'believing' to be disgorged by 'dat real big fish?

Way errors are still multiplying like rabbits.

Some "whys and wherefores", as I see them:

Our freewill response to God's "request" is a shaky foundation on which to base our Christian life. If we don't feel like it that day, or fail to believe because we doubted somewhere along the line, we're hosed. Our faith becomes self-focused, becasue it's predicated on how our will is doing and how our 'believing' response to truth is doing that day. If we're in a funk, God is out of business as far as His activity in our life goes.

If, on the the other hand, God is all-everything (including all-knowing), then He will act according to his own wisdom (who hath been His counselor?) and exert his sovereign will on a world in no condition to bring about His will because they happen to agree with Him that day. And feel like it. And happen to believe just right that day.

That's the way I see it.

Good, consider yourself complimented.

The point above is more than peripheral to the topic because it points to God's sovereign will, in this case concerning the covenant he made with the world through Abraham. While Abraham's human will was involved in obeying God, it is not mentioned. In fact man's "freedom of will" goes pretty much without a mention in the Bible. I think it bears asking why.

In the case of Abraham, we see nothing of a request. If that is not what God determined to be said of the record, then we should seek to understand what He did determine to say:

God commanded Abraham to go someplace else. Abraham obeyed, knowing almost nothing except the brief command.

God informed him he would have a son in his old age. Abraham was incredulous. But he did have a son.

It reminds me of the Shunamite. When the prophet informed her she'd have a son in the time of life (ie, normal time of gestation) she scoffed and said "don't lie to me!". But, in the time of life she had a son. Where was her free will? Where was her 'believing'? I say it happened according to God's will alone.

God can exercise His will so thoroughly because His knowledge (past-present and future) is so utterly complete. Nobody had to 'believe for it'.

Forgive me for appearing to nitpik, but the Lord didn't ask Abraham a thing, and he certainly didn't 'ask him to believe'. He merely informed Abraham of what would be happening. When Abraham believed the promise, it was counted to him for righteousness.

God did command (though I suppose Abe could have refused) Abraham to sacrifice that very son of promise, but that's a whole 'nuther lesson I guess.

Great post. T-Bone. Thanks

Even still, it's not faith (or the lack thereof) that's the dealmaker/breaker. God's will is the dealmaker and the power, every time.

In the end, Evan, I think we are in agreement on this particular passage in the sense that neither one of us is expressing certainty. I don't know in this case. but in my other example that follows my answer to you, i do believe there is enough evidence to suggest that hannah would not have received the answer to her prayer had she continued fretting and being so sad about her predicament.

Could we be dealing with a sound pinciple and not an absolute law?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I cannot for the life of me find the evidence that Hannah would not haved an answer to her prayers had she continued fretting, etc

We're dealing with neither a sound principle nor absolute law but a spiritual reality called faith. Faith is a gift of God. When God imparts faith, fear will not stop it.

Fair enough, LU. But then, do you maintain along with johniam, that had they doubted they would have burned? I say that's an unwarranted conclusion. The point of the record is not their 'believing', but rather 'who is God'. It's a similar issue to Elijah & the prophets of Baal. The issue was 'who is God'. God showed Himself to be the Almighty as he also did with Nebuchadnezzar. Nowhere does Elijah's 'believing' figure into the story. But the will of God does figure, as Elijah didn't 'believe for' fire from heaven. He was simply carrying out the scenario as God revealed it to him. "...I have done all these things at thy word."

johniam:

I don't believe VP really thought that all believing equals all receiving; he didn't teach it that way. Raf, you're time in twi was in the late 80s/early 90s, right? He just did not teach it that way.

I beg to differ. I was in 70-87. He taught it as an inviolable law with no exceptions in PFAL. He said nothing to contradict that in my years.

Okay, so you don't believe in foreordination...which would obviously go hand in hand with limited knowledge. What, then, do you do with scriptures that proclaim foreordination/predestination? Are they, what, a figure of speech? 'Orientalism'?

How does a proverb being generally true make Proverbs any less the Word of God? Hint: It doesn't.

johnyouare:

Laws can be superceded by other laws, including the law of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abennego's believing.

Okay, my jaw is on the floor. Do you really think their believing "quenched the violence of fire"?? They confessed their faith in God, though they made a critical 'law of believing' error by expressing doubt when they said "but if not..."

I think the Fourth Man who joined them in the furnace had something to do with their deliverance. BTW, the critical isue wasn't their believing fercryinoutloud, it was their steadfast obedience and faithfulness.

There really is a forest if you'll look beyond those trees.

Laryy, you've fallen prey to a common pitfall: that of misrepresenting the Calvinist view in your argument. I suppose that would make it a straw man.

It's an important point in this discussion, and I'll go ahead and assume the Bible as our common text if that's okay with you. Pursuant to which, you'll find that the use of free will in the Bible has very serious limitations, mainly in freewill offerings. Nevertheless, I think it's possible to view God as sovereign (in a cosmic & biblical sense) and leave man's limited free will intact. I say limited because that's all the Bible seems to grant him.

The idea that one is saved because they have 'made a choice for Christ' and by their own free will believed in him is erroneous. Biblical salvation is not so neatly formulaic. We were indeed chosen and foreordained, or so the Bible says. When the Holy Spirit revealed to us Jesus and our need for him, we believed. We were previously incapable of believeing because the natural man is capable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God...they are foolishness to him.

I see limited foreknowledge as a natural outgrowth of the man-centered, freedom-of-will religion represented by Wierwille. Hey, we are in charge, right? Not God...