Lyrics for the g_orey of ….?

Guess who's lyrics these belong to?

I’m so dope I’m impressing myself
Challenging rappers of my status dogg is bad for your health
It’s like swallowing rat poison straight of the shelf
Or slitting your wrist then changing ya mind
But ain’t no one around to help, dudes hear spit they like holy Toledo
Cuz when it comes to this rapping, I’m the one like Neo
I’m Jackie Chan, bet a hundred grand I could take out five
of ya man’s with one wave of my hand
Your whole caravan get smacked right in front of ya fans
I’ll have screaming “No Mas” like Roberto Duran holla
They call me Boney Soprano, Young Luchiano, Bone Guevara
Raps Sammy the bull Gervano, I’m sick wit tha flow
Lyrical tactics and back flips, spitting ridiculous mathematics
Like it’s gymnastics, when I die, be sure to place in my mic in my casket
And tell the world that I was fantastic, and that’s it!

For the answer please go to Real Clear Theology blog where Dr. Svendsen has a very interesting discussion on rap groups, rap lyrics and how they might not square with anything recognizable with the gospel. Now, I know that many, many will object saying:

1. You don't understand the nature of rap music.

2. You need to be relevant to today's culture.

3. You are not spiritual.

4. You cannot judge the artist.

5. Look at all of the converts he is bringing.

6. There is nothing wrong with showing yo lifestyle to the world to show how much you are blessed.

…among many other objections.

However, it really comes down to two questions: How much is too much and do the ends justify the means? We are much more pragmatists than we care to admit, buying into this whole "all for the glory of God bit;" when in fact, what we are trying to do is fit is into the patterns of a secularized mindset.  Dr. Svendsen really took a lot of words out of my mouth, so I advise you to head over there and take a look. Oh, and about the above objections:

1. Yes I do. But at the expense of being relevant, how much is too much. Please look up the fallacy of the beard on this one.

2. See answer 1.

3. Err, this doesn't nullify the argument and my spiritual thermometer is broken and therefore cannot visibly be seen. :/

4. Yes I can. What I cannot do is judge the artist unrighteously while I have a huge hummer coming out of my eye. <– it's all about the bling.

5.  Ends do not justify the means. Also, what kind of idea will people get when they "come to the kingdom of God?" Can they believe that they are emissaries of God to shoot people with a Holy Ghost machine gun?

6. Again, who is the one that is supposed to be impressed here: God or the rest of the world? I vote for A and if all you are worried about is how people in the world perceive you then we have misplaced our priorities.

Enough of me. Go to his site. 

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Memo to Mr. Osteen from John Wesley | By Ben Witherington

Memo to Mr. Osteen from John Wesley

posted by Ben Witherington at 1:36 PM  

Found here

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If the Church Doesn’t Clean Its Laundry, the World Will Do It For Her

And that's not good…

CBS News has learned Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is investigating six prominent televangelist ministries for possible financial misconduct.

Letters were sent Monday to the ministries demanding that financial statements and records be turned over to the committee by December 6th.

According to Grassley's office, the Iowa Republican is trying to determine whether or not these ministries are improperly using their tax-exempt status as churches to shield lavish lifestyles.

The six ministries identified as being under investigation by the committee are led by: Paula White, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, Eddie Long, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn. Three of the six - Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar - also sit on the Board of Regents for the Oral Roberts University.

A spokesperson for Joyce Meyer Ministries provided CBS News with an IRS letter to the ministry dated October 10, 2007, that stated: "We determined that you continue to qualify as an organization exempt from Federal income tax." The letter could not be independently verified in time for this story. The ministry also pointed to audited financial statements for the last three years that are posted on the organization's Web site.

In a statement, Benny Hinn's spokesperson, Ronn Torossian, said the ministry was in the process of determining the best course of action in response to the Senate investigation. "World Healing Center Church complies with the laws that govern church and non-profit organizations and will continue to do so," Torossian wrote.

In a statement to CBS News, Creflo Dollar called his ministry an "open book" and said he would comply with any "valid request" from Grassley. But he noted that the inquiry raised questions that could "affect the privacy of every community church in America."

The other three ministries did not respond to requests for comment from CBS News on Monday.

Because they have tax status as churches, the ministries do not have to file IRS 990 forms like other non-profit organizations - leaving much financial information largely behind closed doors.

The letters sent Monday were the culmination of a long investigation fueled in part by complaints from Ole Anthony, a crusader against religious fraud who operates the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, which describes itself as a watchdog monitoring religious media, fraud and abuse. "We've been working with them for two years," Anthony told CBS News. "We have furnished them with enough information to fill a small Volkswagen."

Anthony said after twenty years of working with media organizations to expose televangelists, he saw little reform. He says that's why he turned to another tactic, going straight to Grassley. He is confident that Grassley's inquiry will be different, "What we hope is that this will lead to reform in religious nonprofits."

The structure of many televangelist organizations - in which the leadership is often concentrated in one person or one family - has itself been the target of criticism. "Churches like these are ruled as a dictatorship," says Rod Pitzer, who directs research at Ministry Watch in North Carolina, which provides advice for donors to Christian organizations.

Pitzer welcomes the Senate committee investigation. Ministries lacking accountability, he says, "give a black eye to churches and Christians who are trying to do things in the right manner."

By Laura Strickler © MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Found Here

Well, at least someone is doing something about it.

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What the church needs now, is love, sweet love…

No amount of theological enquiry, seminars or admonition could get one over the starboard bow like media can - and funny media at that. These two videos pretty much describe the state of the prosperity crowd now a days, including those meddling is soft porn prospertiy gospel.

AND

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Prosperity Secret!!! Please Click on the Mp3 and Listen on How YOU can Prosper!!!

The astute and discerning folks over at Apologetics.com have made this available through their site. It is a great analysis of the Propserity/Positve/Osteenish type ideas that are floating around as "gospel." This is especially relevant after the the Joel Osteen interview with Larry King (transcript found here).

Enjoy!

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Lee: Strange Fire on Defiled Altars

This article speaks for itself. Just like the Piper video I posted some time ago, this editorial piece by Lee Grady is finally making headway in what has been one of the worst times of spiritual abuse and charlatanry in the church today. Although I do not always agree with Charisma magazine, Lee Gady has done an outstanding job of pointing out these false prophets of our times.

Coming from a hispanic and pentecostal heritage myself, for too long I have endured the theological free loaders that have lived off of innocence of the somewhat doctrinaly anemic brothers and sisters who are taken adavntage of time and time again. I can personlly attest to times when people like Paulino Bernal would preach about the "five desires" where you can literally buy your desires from God. There have been times where I have spoken to pastors across the border where they have literally turned over their personal items and sometimes even deeds to their land in order to get these and many other health and wealth assurances.

I applaud Lee Grady and the many others who boldly point out these people that do more damage than good. The excerpt from his editorial piece is below.

"That’s why I fear for many of the men and women who claim to be God’s mouthpieces today, particularly in the charismatic/Pentecostal movement that I serve.

When I read Leviticus 10, I wonder why the ground has not opened up and swallowed some of the careless spiritual clowns who are masquerading as bishops, apostles and prophets.

A case in point: Bishop Thomas Wesley Weeks III, who is now facing charges of assaulting his wife, recently stood in his pulpit in Atlanta during a marriage conference and proceeded to teach married couples how to use profanity during sex.

Yes, the man who allegedly kicked and punched Juanita Bynum in a hotel parking lot last month told attendees at a “Teach Me How to Love You” event that they should get over their hang-ups about cussing. The bedroom, he said, is the place to get down and dirty.

“Don’t bring your salvation into the bedroom,” he said in a sermon segment that has been posted on YouTube.

“All those special words that you can’t say no more because you’re saved … save that for the bedroom!”

It is bad enough that Weeks told his followers that it’s OK to use filthy language with your wife during lovemaking. It’s worse that he said these things as a minister speaking from a pulpit during a church service. Thankfully he didn’t bring a bed on stage and give a demonstration—but now that he has taken pulpit crudity to a new level, someone else is sure to introduce Pentecostal porn to an audience somewhere.

Weeks’ comments didn’t surprise me. There are so many crazy things happening in pulpits in this country that I’ve become numb to their impact. It seems that in many segments of the church today, false prophets and backslidden preachers can introduce the most bizarre doctrines imaginable and still get shouts from the crowd and plenty of donations in the offering plate.

Meanwhile, a growing number of television preachers are resorting to the most inane tactics to raise money. A popular trend this year is the “Day of Atonement Offering”—in which Old Testament scriptures are strained to the breaking point to make a case for buying special blessings from God. Thanks to this “revelation,” you can click on a Web site icon and give your Day of Atonement Offering to win divine favor. (And of course every dime of that money goes to an evangelist who uses it to purchase houses, cars, plastic surgeries and more airtime so they can spread this nonsense to more naïve people.)

I have no personal vendetta against these spiritual hoodlums, but lately I find myself praying: “Lord, when will You clean up Your church? When will you send Your holy fire into the sanctuary? When will You turn over the tables of the moneychangers and drive the charlatans out of Your house?”

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Building Interest In Our Gospel Step By Step In a Non-Defensive Way

Dear Friends of M&T,
 
Below is a write up of a recent pre-evangelistic encounter that I hope will shed some light on how to engage others spiritually without making them defensive. It also suggests some ways to build future pre-evangelistic bridges based on current interaction with others. My prayer is that it might stimulate your thinking in the area or pre-evangelism.
 
Blessings,
 
Dr. Dave Geisler
 
 A few days ago I was working out in the exercise room at our apartment complex and a young Chinese guy (in his late 20’s) came in and started working out on the treadmill right next to the one I was on. Let’s just call him Raymond (that is not his real name). After about 10 minutes, Raymond was huffing and puffing and instinctively I looked over at him and said to him “If you think it is tough now, wait till you are my age.” That seemed to pique his interest to engage me in a conversation. I explained to him that up until I turned thirty, it wasn’t so difficult for me to “stay in shape” but when I got into my mid 30s it started getting more difficult and then when I turned 40, it was as though I hit a brick wall! That led to other conversations such as where he worked, what he did for a living, and etc. I told him that both my wife (who was a Singaporean) and I were teachers, she at NTU and me at East Asia School of Theology.
 
I realized that at this point I could have tried to engage him in a spiritual discussion since I mentioned that I was teaching at a seminary. However I realized this seemed a little too soon and abrupt and could make him defensive right away. He told me that he just started working out and since I am now in the exercise room almost every day, I knew I would bump into him again. As a result, I decided to wait for another opportunity to lay a plank in building my spiritual bridge. A few minutes later such an opportunity arose when I laid the ground work by telling him that my wife and I had moved to Singapore three years ago and shared with him some of the things I really liked about Singapore. This provided the platform for me to say “As a parent it is especially nice to know that when my daughter becomes a teenager I can feel confident she would be safe walking down almost any street in Singapore.” I told him that I could not say the same thing in my country, the U.S. (this was designed to set up what I was going to say next to engage him in spiritual dialog).
 
I said, “I don’t know if you know much about the religious history of the U.S. but  about 30 - 40 years ago the youth started rejecting belief in God. Now the problem is that once you have given up believing in God, you lose any foundation for believing in any kind of morality and each person does what he or she thinks is right.” I further said that “This has led to more and more moral decay in the U.S. society”. Then I asked him “Have you ever heard of a Christian writer named C.S. Lewis?” He replied that he did. I said that C.S. Lewis was an atheist who finally realized that without the existence of God there was no basis for saying that something was either right or wrong. I explained further that one day C.S. Lewis realized however that his argument against God was actually an argument for God! I told him that initially C.S. Lewis had difficulty believing in the Christian God when there was so much injustice in the world until one day he realized the flaw in his argument. He asked himself “How could I know that something was unjust unless I had some kind of standard of justice to measure the injustice by.” Furthermore he concluded, “How could I know that something was ultimately unjust unless I had an ultimate standard of justice in which I was measuring the injustice by?” So in reality C.S. Lewis discovered that his argument against God was actually an argument for God! Certainly this seemed to pique his interest. About a minute later he confessed to me that he has a friend who gave him a book that answers some of the questions people have about the Christian faith. (It was interesting that he would volunteer this info. and seem to suggest to me that he was potential open for further spiritual interactions). So from all of this I knew then he had a Christian friend in his past who tried to help him better understand the Christian faith. At this point we were both at the end of our workout routine and I could see that I had given him much to chew on for a while until our next encounter so I did not seek to engage him in further spiritual dialog. When you are engaging someone spiritually and you sense you are only going to get so far in one conversation, sometimes it is better for you to pull the plug on the spiritual part of the conversation first. That way the other person doesn’t feel “pressurized” to buy what you are selling and it helps to keep the door open for further discussion.
 
Next time I see “Raymond” I will try to pick up from where I left off and say to him something like, “Oh I remember last time we talked you mentioned that a friend gave you a Christian book for you to read. I am curious, was there any particular reason that he gave you that book?” Was there any questions or issues you were trying to resolve in your own mind? By asking these two questions I am trying to discern what his major barriers to the gospel might be. This is an example of a follow-up question I would ask next. Hopefully I’ve laid some ground work that might make it easier for him to want to continue the spiritual dialog in our next conversation (1 Cor. 3:6).

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