The "Emerging Church" Has Some Real Problems

I’ve been reading an excellent book by Thomas Horn (Blood on the Altar: The Coming War Between Christian vs. Christian). I sought further help on one of his subjects, the Emerging Church, online. So I internetted an interview between two giants in the faith:  John MacArthur (Author of 150 books, pastor, radio preacher, president of Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles) and Phil Johnson (Retired U.C.-Berkley law professor, father of the “intelligent design movement.”) They’re both in their 70's now, but their hands are on the pulse of the church—and they’re very, very concerned about the church’s faithfulness to Scripture. I thought I would focus on their concern and highlight part of their interview here.

One of the biggest threats to God's church is, would you believe, a church movement called the “Emerging Church.” So let’s start by defining it. Wikipedia says: they are post-Protestant, post-evangelical, post-liberal, post-conservative, and post-charismatic. Further, the movement hates preaching; they believe instead on “conversation” with people. This is to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue. VERY important note: There is no central creed in these churches. What those involved DO mostly agree on, is their disillusionment with today's church--and they support the deconstruction of modern Christian worship. They believe, instead, that there are radically diverse perspectives within Christianity. They say they are creating a “safe” environment for those with opinions ordinarily rejected by modern conservative evangelism. They believe that non-critical interfaith dialogue is preferred over "dogmatically-driven" evangelism. The movement “went public” in November 2004, when they were spotlighted in an article in Christianity Today. (I'm not saying Christianity Today likes their stance). But they’ve been around since at least 1996.

The second way to get to know how the Emerging Church, is by a few relevant quotes from their founding father, Brian McLaren. In a separate interview, after he "mistakenly" spoke of God in the male gender, he had this to confess: “This is as good a place as any to apologize for my use of masculine pronouns for God…I avoid (their) use because they can give the false impression…that the Christian God is a male deity.” On the subject of the atonement, Jesus’ sacrifice for us, he calls it a “violent view,” because it presents God as the “greatest existential threat to humanity.” On the return of Christ, a reader from Sweden asked: “If Jesus isn’t coming back…what about judgment or the resurrection?” His answer was psychobabble, but you can tell he's giving it a thumbs-down: “Jesus does say ‘I will come again.’…but I think it’s a mistake to assume that when he says those things, he means what we mean…with all our dispensationalist, premillennialist…or whatever categories. The hyperbolic imagery of the New Testament, moon turning to blood..etc. is political language, signaling the fall of powerful political luminaries. Also…Jesus didn’t come just to evacuate us from earth to a future heaven but to show us how to live and make this world more and more beautiful by following Jesus’ example which would eventually lead to God’s “kingdom come on earth.”"

You can see the attack on foundational Scripture there.

Another leader, Rob Bell, also attacks fundamental doctrine: he doesn’t believe Scripture was inerrant when he mentions his greatest discovery—“the Bible as a human product.” He also denied the reality of hell and promoted universalism (its definition: Everyone gets saved!) in his book Love Wins.**(see note below). In summarizing the movement’s view, he says “This is not just the same old message with new methods. We’re rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion…” Mr. McLaren agrees; he believes in inclusivism—that other religions (those that deny Christ as God) lead to salvation, too. For instance, he does not think we should convert Buddhists to Christianity; we should make “Buddhists followers of Jesus.” (Buddhism is usually atheistic, so a “Buddhist Christian” is an oxymoron. Acts 4:12 doesn’t apply any more, I guess.)

Now that we’ve read a bit of this strange group, let’s let John MacArthur tell what he thinks. He’s smarter than me anyway.  He first distinguishes the emerging church movement from Modernism. Modernism was a product of the Enlightenment during the Renaissance in which they made human reason, not Scripture, the determinant of ethics.  He says “out of that came the worship of the human mind, and (in effect,they were saying), the mind trumps God.” The Emerging Church, on the other hand, is post-modernism…In both cases, they assault Scripture. (This movement) "is a denial of the clarity of Scripture....they think we can’t really know what the Bible says. Whether it’s about sin or virtue...they don’t like rules, so their ‘out’ is…(they say) “Well, it (Scripture) is not clear.” This is just another way to set the Bible aside.”

Scripture claims to be clear, however, and God holds us responsible: ”A wayfaring man though he be a fool need not err.” (Isaiah 35:8). Dr. MacArthur also charges their leaders that “the reason they deny Scripture (clarity is because) men loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19). The light is there, they hate the light, they run from the light. The issue is not that Scripture is not clear, it is crystal clear.” Dr. MacArthur charged them with running from the light because he believes they’re heretical—which he says later on in the interview.

I would like to take the topic of homosexuality to get a thorough example of their approach. I’m sure you know (unless your head is in the sand) that the homosexual agenda is that we should all tolerate, all agree with them, not finding anything morally wrong. Scripture, however, won’t let us do that. It’s condemned in Leviticus 18:22, where God says to men:

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.

As Romans 1 points out, it is among the worst deviations that men come down to, after God “gave them up” in their insistence to defy Him.

Scripture is crystal clear on this subject, is it not? Not according to Emerging Church leader Mr. MacLaren, who says: “Many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality. We’ve heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence…that alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think…the biblical arguments are nuanced and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex.” The phrase that sticks in my craw--"no position has yet won our confidence." Our judgment is the final word:  it trumps God, evidently.

But Dr. MacArthur insists that the truth is clear; it’s bad for the practicing homosexual, but it’s still the truth. He says, “the truth is what I will defend. It’s not personal. I’m not mad at people. I’m not trying to protect my own little space. That doesn’t make me popular in all circles, it creates just the opposite.” He maintains that it’s impossible for Christians to agree with the latest world's view: “there is no possible accommodation …Christianity would have to be reinvented to accommodate itself to any pattern of (worldly) culture thinking.”

But Brian McLaren, a founding father of the Emerging movement doesn’t believe MacArthur has good motives. McLaren was asked again where he stands on the homosexuality issue in Leadership Journal in January 2006 (Leadership Journal is also produced by Christianity Today). His answer was anything but crystal, as usual, since he switched the subject to attacking motives of the questioners instead. He first accuses conservative Christians of, quote, “wanting to be sure that we conform to what I call “radio-orthodoxy,”(a slam on radio preacher MacArthur and others), i.e. the religio-political priorities mandated by many big-name religious broadcasters.” After spreading this bit of slander, he says “I hesitate in answering the homosexual question…there is more to answering a question than being right or even honest…we must understand the question beneath the question…we want to be sure our answers are appropriate to the need of the moment…We fear that the whole issue has been manipulated…by political parties…whatever we say gets sucked into a vortex of politicized culture-wars rhetoric...  I know what you guys' motives are, and I condemn them." (If their motives are to defend Scripture, that's reprehensible, I guess).  He suspects our motives in speaking against homoseuals are political, stir-up-the-crowd stuff.  There are those, frankly, who have that in mind.  So it's best to stick to Scripture.  We should also pay less attention to depending on political parties to maintain Christianity. He has a paranoia about that, some of it justified.

Really, a big question he touched on is, how do you evangelize the homosexual? They hate the church, feeling condemned if they just enter a conservative one. So they never attend. They avoid us; if we approach them, they may push us away, since we've become stereotypes to them. So we do not know them, unless they're family. The Emerging Church has decided to, as Dr. MacArthur says, "capture these ignored people by “sanctifying the culture." But the Bible doesn’t adapt to culture. It confronts culture. The Emerging Church, on the other hand, not only is unwilling to believe the clear statement of Scripture, but it wants to let the culture define what Christianity should be…whatever the current sin that needs to be tolerated in the culture is, they’ll buy into.”

Dr. MacArthur then talks again about big movements in history. He summarizes Pre-modernism: “there is truth and it comes from God, it has a supernatural source…men believed in God or they believed in the gods.” What follows is Modernism (which I’m figuring covers 1750-2000).  He summarizes it as: “there is truth and we can find it by human reason…not revelation from God, not the Bible, but human reason.” But Modernism wasn’t a good idea in practice: “the world got worse than it has ever been…the totalitarian world…fascism, Nazism, Communism, and the massacre of millions and millions of people in the name of human reason.” (For instance, most Lutherans didn’t have any trouble grabbing a gun to obey Hitler). Getting up-to-date, he says: “Now the idea of post-modernism says, “We give up. There may be truth, but we can’t know it. It may be from God, but we can’t know…so we embrace mystery…you have your truth, I have my truth…truth is whatever you think it is, whatever you want it to be, it’s intuitive, it’s experiential..but it’s not universal and it’s not knowable, universally knowable.” Mr. Johnson, the interviewer, responds, “That’s why these days the highest values, the sole remaining virtues, are things like tolerance, ambiguity, mystery..” (To me, this “mystery kick” opens the door to searching in the occult; people still want plain answers to life's issues, which they're not getting in this psychobabble.) Dr. MacArthur says, “Oh, Brian McLaren says ambiguity is really a good thing (Mr. McLaren has been quoted as saying, ”Certainty is overrated”)...it gives people a license to invent their own religion, really…no one is permitted to challenge it…it is wonderful if you want to sin without any guilt. And I think that’s at the bottom of this…they hate the light because their deeds are evil.”

He also charges, “It’s not a theology; (they say they) don’t teach…and the word “sermon” scares them… no, we want to have a conversation. But the only part of the conversation they don’t like is when you say, ”That’s wrong. That’s sinful.” So their conversation...never has an objective…that’s another way to negate the Word of God. You can deny that it’s from God. But don’t tell me God has spoken but He mumbled. The worst thing we could do would be to soften the edges of what really is clear in Scripture.” (They claim) “the Bible is irrelevant, you can’t stand up for an hour and exposit the Word of God, you’ve got to tell them stories… To quote one of their leaders, “The bible (small “b” is their idea) is no longer a principal source of morality as a rulebook. The meaning of the Good Samaritan is more important than the Ten Commandments —even assuming the latter could be remembered in any detail by anyone…” A bit of sarcasm on the Ten Commandments there. These guys should work for the government, the way they're light on our obligation. By the way, some of the most revealing McLaren quotes are on this website: http://carm.org/brian-mclaren-quotes-ignorance-bliss-theology.

Dr. MacArthur feels that (they should say) “since we don’t know what it means, why would we teach?  Nobody has a right to impose on anybody else their ideas.” They take a sort of reverse humility in confessing their ignorance. To turn truth on its head, they believe that if someone claims to know what Scripture means, they have committed an act of pride. To quote MacArthur:  “It is an attack on the clarity of Scripture and they elevate themselves as if this is some noble reality…which they call humility…(it’s) a celebration of ignorance.”

They also have this feature: “They’re really, really aggressive at tearing down the church, tearing down historic theology...that have been a part of the church’s life for centuries…that’s the lowest level of assault there is. Anybody can shred and destroy without having to build something back in its place…(they) just shred what people believe and walk away, leaving chaos everywhere…the egotism of it is pretty frightening. And the church is filled with people who have no foundation.”

He gives a few words of warning to those looking for a church home: "I don’t think a person should go to a church that isn’t answerable to a doctrinal statement…(if you do), you need to get out of there because you’re at the whim of a guy who can invent anything he wants any time. This entrepreneurial approach to the church is a very serious breach…" (There) “may be Christians who are seduced by this; in their ignorance they are the children tossed to and fro, carried about by every blowing wind of doctrine.” (Ephesians 4:14). Mr. Johnson, the interviewer, says: “And every man does what’s right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6). Dr. MacArthur maintains that young people from a denominational church that often lacks life and fails to exposit Scripture, these are the likely victims of this movement: “I don’t think (the Emerging Church) is nearly as appealing to the non-churched people as to the marginally churched young people."   The young attached to "Emerging" "are reacting to the superficiality and…the legalism of (their church).”

Dr. MacArthur speaks again to the clarity of Scripture. (Jesus) “says things to them in His day like this, ‘Have you not read? Have you not heard what Scripture says?’ He didn’t say to them, “Oh, look, I know why you’re having a tough time with Me, because the Old Testament is so hard to understand.” Then he brings up the example of the Gentiles, who were totally ignorant of the Old Testament…"Paul (who assumes the regular people are smart as he) builds these massive cases of understanding the Christian gospel based on the sacrificial system from the Old Testament…Thus, to come along and say that the Bible is not clear is then to accuse God, and (accusing) the Scripture itself of claiming something for itself that it can’t deliver. (Charging God like that is) pretty serious.”

**Note: Mars Hill Churches was the focus of the Emerging movement.  But Rob Bell was removed as senior pastor of his Mars Hill church in Michigan in 2011 after his beliefs were revealed in the book Love Wins. But he has come back, preaching at sold-out conferences in the U.K. and Ireland lately.
Another important name in the movement is Mark Driscoll.  He was removed from a separate Mars Hill pastorate in October 2014, most particularly because he called women "penis homes" and other misogynist remarks--plus, he's being charged with plagiarism.  It was also revealed that church money was used to pump up his book sales so he could make the NY Times Bestseller List. But he has come back, after taking in $1.1 million in donations in 2 years, he built a $1 million church in Phoenix, and has even been called upon to evangelical conferences.
Brian McLaren is still going strong, too:  His latest book, The Great Spiritual Migration, includes the following crazy quote:

“Christianity, we might say, is driving around with a loaded gun in its glove compartment, and that loaded gun is its violent image of God. It’s driving around with a license to kill, and that license is its Bible, read uncritically. Along with its loaded gun and license to kill, it’s driving around with a sense of entitlement derived from a set of beliefs with a long, ugly, and largely unacknowledged history.”


 Acknowledgement: Thomas Horn, Blood on the Altar and Christianity Today

Escaping Hell: God's Negative Promises (Part 2 of 2)

I trust you have learned much from our Part I essay on God’s negative promises. An unpleasant task, but worthwhile. Let us complete the task in Part 2.

II Tim 2:11-13 says:
This is a faithful saying: 12…If we deny Him, He also will deny us.13 If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.

Many times I have heard sermons on v. 13 alone. The message the uplifting pastor gives is, if we practice sin, God will still remain faithful and see to it that we will go to heaven. Because we’re saved, the pastor says. But, folks, that’s not what the verses say. Taking the two verses together, it really says this: God will remain faithful in His promise as to what He does with people who deny Him. He will deny us! (Matthew 10:33). Don’t read anything positive in the statement “He cannot deny Himself.” Read it as follows: if He doesn’t carry out His negative promise, He would be denying His perfection. Yes, He is faithful to carry out a negative promise as well as a positive one. Thus, we obtain an opposite meaning compared to the sermons—because the pastor doesn’t look at the previous verse, verse 12. Context is crucial.


Romans 8:13: For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live

We must consciously sacrifice worldly thoughts and behaviors. We cannot continue to live “according to the flesh,” pleasing our lower nature. Or we “die”—another reference to hell.

James 2:13: For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment

Showing mercy is an extremely important Christian fruit. Look at Luke 16:19-31 for Jesus' startling presentation on that subject:

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. 20 But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, 21 desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell] from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 24 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’ 27 “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”

Note the following: The rich man is in hades--on the way to hell. Why such a horrible reward for his behavior? I mean, he’s rich—doesn’t that mean that God loves him, and would make sure he went to heaven? No, bad assumption. He was in hades because he refused to show any mercy to the beggar, whom he passed every single day and refused to lift a finger. Yet, you say, this seems to be an extreme punishment for him not being merciful! Here, the rich man is suffering in great torment—extreme heat, parched tongue, flames—all truly what hell will be. Think about that—would God do such a thing? Well, if we question Him doing it, it probably means we have no inkling of how much He hates sin! Don't forget, God was willing to give up His only Son, to die a horrible death, because He loved us—and yet we stomp on His love by ignoring His Son’s words to us to follow His commands. Finally, notice that the rich man, tormented as he was, gets not one simple request fulfilled—he doesn’t get his tongue cooled, not a word is said to warn his brothers. Why? His time of mercy has passed. “Judgment is without mercy,” as James 2:13 above says, since he had shown no mercy. No second chances! Once in hades or hell, you get no mercy, you’re in hell forever! Let us learn from this and show mercy to the downtrodden. Make no excuse for yourself, thinking “they wasted their life, and deserve to be there.” God knows our every thought. Don’t we want God's mercy in judgement for our many sins when we die?

Revelation 14:9-12: Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name. 12 Here is the patience of the saints; here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.

When the hunger of the end times comes, it seems that having the "mark" imprinted on us is the way to get the needs of life met easily--food, clothing, medical care (Revelation 13:16-17). People will be fearful that without the mark, they may starve, or die because of poor health. The temptation to take the mark will be almost impossible to ignore.

Yet the angel warns us that if we do take the mark, we get hell, we get the wrath of God, we get tormented with fire and brimstone—forever. Is the trade-off worth it? If we believe God’s Word is Truth, it actually makes sense to starve to death (although I think God will perform miracles to keep that from happening), in order to gain heaven instead of hell. Here are your choices: Do you prefer a couple months or years of filling your belly, and then death and hell forever? Or do you prefer possibly death now, and heaven forever? Forever is a lot longer than a couple years. Heaven is unspeakably better than hell. If you believe that God speaks the truth, it’s no contest which way to go. Yet most people are predictable; their immediate needs are as far as they see. So Scripture speaks of a great apostasy (falling away from Him and His truth) in those End Times. And we may be in that unfortunate "End Times" generation. Will we fall away to satisfy bodily needs?  Can we resist that temptation, believing in a certain heaven--and believing in a certain, horrible place called hell.  We need to pray and be mentally prepared--and our families as well. Sad to say, many will be unprepared--a lot of “Christians” will make excuses to God while they apostatize and take the mark. To their eternal destruction. He will stick to His promise, regardless of their excuses. II Thessalonians 2:3 clearly says that there will be many who will be weak and fall away:

Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition


II Chronicles 15:2: And he went out to meet Asa, and said to him: “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.

Yes, it’s possible to be forsaken by God--if we forsake Him. What, you thought He was a God of unconditional love, patient forever, faithful to keep us safe to the end, etc., etc.? Guess you had the wrong idea about Him. If you’re smart, you need to read His Word about what He thinks, rather than guessing and hoping your way through. Let us not mentally create God to be what we want--but what if He isn't what we desire of Him? We can't spend time on speculation that often turns on self-deception. Scripture is the best way to find out truly about God.  It also says we guess wrong about what God is thinking. As Isaiah 55:8-9 says:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Ezekiel 33:13: When I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, but he trusts in his own righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous works shall be remembered; but because of the iniquity that he has committed, he shall die

“Die” refers to hell. You say you had your one moment of receiving Jesus, you got Jesus' righteousness--but your life hasn’t really changed? You say that you behaved when you were young, but now your plan is to sow your wild oats before you get old, then repent of it all and get saved again? Convenient assumptions…but big mistakes; that trend doesn't happen. I have an 86-year old friend, who is obviously close to death.  No way can I get him to think about a judging God.  Keep in mind:  As the Ezekiel verse says, He seems to be a “what have you done for Me lately” God. He is patient with us when we ignore Him for a time, but His patience has a limit.

Matthew 7:21,23: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven…And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!

God promises hell to those who have the “lip service,” yet they “practice lawlessness.” These are people who say, “It’s all right to sin..I’ll confess it later,” or “Now that I’m saved, I can sin and not lose my salvation. Sinning just makes me lose fellowship, or lose a crown.” Such people encourage lawlessness. Their theology opened the door to sin. If they walk through it--they’re on their way to hell, regardless of sincere theology. They haven’t read their Bibles about expectations God had for them to fight sin.

John 5:29: … and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation

Note the key to the resurrection of life: Doing good. This presumes a faith in Christ and new birth previously.  But faith cannot be alone and live. This agrees with the book of James which speaks of “dead faith,” James 2:17:

Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

That “faith” won’t get you to heaven; you end up in hell. Works, fruit, are necessary to maintain salvation. See my blogs on “initial…final salvation,” and “Paul v James.”

Psa 37:10-11: For yet a little while and the wicked shall be no more; Indeed, you will look carefully for his place, But it shall be no more.11 But the meek shall inherit the earth, And shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace

Thank God--no more wicked people!

IN SUMMARY: In Exodus 34:6,7 God describes Himself and emphasizes His mercy and patience

And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation

See also Nehemiah 9:31 and Psa 145:8-9 and Micah 7:18. BUT as I said in my opening remarks, you need to see the other side of God to get the true picture. He is jealous (Exodus 20:5), gets wrathful and avenging over sin, even slaughters people for their sin; in fact, He hates some people! (But there is room for sincere repentance.)  See Psa 11:5

The LORD tests the righteous, But the wicked and the one who loves violence His soul hates.

It’s important to see both sides of God, that He is faithful to His promises, even if that means people go to hell. Let us never forget that fewer people make it to heaven—most people make up their own view about God, and consign themselves to hell. See Matthew 7:14 for proof that this happens to the majority of people:

Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Never forget this sobering fact.

Acknowledgement to Daniel Corner, writer and preacher

Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger

Planned Parenthood is the oldest, largest, and best-organized provider of abortion, sex education, and birth control services in the world.  It now operates in 150 nations. But the story of Planned Parenthood could never have begun without the story of Margaret Sanger.  It was her impetus, her drive, her single-minded obsession that eventually gave birth to the giant baby-killer.  She died in 1966, but Planned Parenthood has grown and achieved far beyond her greatest dreams.  Yes, from 1978 til’ now, Planned Parenthood has murdered over 7 million babies. What an accomplishment. (Results prior to 1978 were not kept—typical of the organization’s accountability even until today). 

Well, which side of Margaret Sanger’s  story would you like to hear?  My local library has a book in the Juvenile section, no less, that is unrelenting in its praise.  She was a wonderful, progressive woman—according to them.     

But my library does not have the book that I chose to review:  Killer Angel, by Dr. George Grant. He is the author of over five dozen books on American history, politics, theology, and social issues.   This book  is a “Cliff’s Notes” of his great work, Grand Illusions, an even more  thoroughly documented biography of her effect on mankind.  She is up there with Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler—and living in the same time period, no less—if you want to find out who was the greatest murderer of innocents the world has ever seen.   How could she be lavishly praised in most of our secular literature, while the other homicidal tyrants are vilified? I maintain that it’s because our culture has silent agreement with her.  That would be another paper.

Her story begins predictably enough.  Born in 1879 in Corning, New York, daughter of Irish Catholic parents, the sixth of eleven children, her home life was never happy.  Her father drank, beat his sons, and worked sporadically, so they suffered much from hunger and privation.  He was a radical atheist, and mocked the religious devotion of his neighbors and his wife.  Margaret was baptized and confirmed in secret in by her mother in 1893, and had a spark of religion; but her mother’s death and father’s cynicism turned her into hatred of religion by the time she was 17.  

Grown up, at first she was a material girl.  She married into money at age 29 to William Sanger, an architect.   She had three children soon after.  They lived in Manhattan, but she was restless of housekeeping and kids—so she convinced William to move from their suburban neighborhood to a chic neighborhood where there was lots of shopping and a real night life.  Once they moved, her husband, a free-thinker, immediately began attending Anarchist and Communist meetings in Greenwich Village.  Margaret tagged along, unimpressed—she mocked the rag-tag revolutionaries.  But she listened to the well-honed speeches by John Reed, who learned his trade from Russian Bolsheviks, and was suddenly tuned in.  She shed her bourgeois habits and plunged headlong into the maelstrom of rebellion and revolution.  She began farming out her kids to friends and neighbors, and went into hospitality, regularly inviting Communists and liberals into their home for meals and talk. Outside of those get-togethers, she had almost no connection with her husband.  She joined the Socialist party—a conglomeration of Mugwumps, Anarchists, Progressivists, and Communists--and volunteered to be a women’s union organizer.   She then formed a special attachment to the words of Eugene Debs, who raved about the evils of Capitalism, and who ran several times for president (though one of his campaigns was run from his penitentiary cell).  But on women’s issues, he was in favor of sexual liberation, feminism, and birth control--subjects that were right in her wheelhouse. 

She tried labor activism for a while, and even midwifery.  But she met Mabel Dodge, a trust socialite, and began rubbing shoulders and talking with the high-income intellectuals like Eugene O’Neil, who introduced her to free love.  As typical, she jumped in feet first.  She had already suggested to her husband that she would like to sexually experiment with different partners, but despite his puzzled hurt, she often resorted to free love to quench her hunger for meaning in life.  Her husband tried to change things by taking her to Paris, but there she spent much time in learning advanced contraceptive methods.  She abandoned her husband—and her marriage—and returned to New York now looking for income.  She decided to become a writer.  Her first issue of The Woman Rebel (its subheading:  “No Gods and No Masters”) showed the darkness of her mind.  She denounced marriage as a “degenerate institution” and sexual modesty as “obscene prudery.”   Two of her issues even defended political assassinations.  But she mostly wrote about contraception and sexual liberation.  One issue irresponsibly recommended “Lysol douches” and “heavy doses of laxatives” to stop pregnancy.  She was promptly served with a subpoena indicting her for lewd and lascivious articles.  Five years in the federal pen awaited her.  She fled the country under an assumed name—her Socialist friends forged her a passport.  She had to get a permanent babysitter for the three inconvenient children. 

While she was a fugitive in England, she was fascinated by lectures on Thomas Malthus (the man is still considered an economic guru, by many).  He maintained that population would always grow faster than production of food, and land available.  This would cyclically lead to a crisis shortage of food, resulting in massive deaths—either by war or by famine, so there would be enough food for less people.    Unfortunately, Malthus decided that the only responsible social policy was to managerially limit the growth in population. (But he was totally wrong on his growth in food assumption--productivity innovation has been vastly successful in providing enough food). Listen to his mind-blowing suggestions to "solve" the food problem:  “All children born beyond what would be required must necessarily perish…we should facilitate…this mortality…by encouraging destruction.  Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits…we should crowd more people together, and court the return of the plague…and build their villages near stagnant pools.  But above all, we should reprobate (disapprove of) remedies for diseases, and restrain those…much mistaken men who use charity, relief, and missionary outreaches.”  Note that most of these monstrous suggestions would kill the poor--and, by the by, the well-to-do would thrive.

This unbelievable idea (the opposite of Christ, who protected the poor and sick) was destined for unpopularity in a moral culture, but…Neo-Malthusianism that arose later, developed palatable arguments that saved the day for Malthusians. (I.e., they developed excuses to cover up their death-theology).  The thesis was, again:  the physically unfit, the poor, and the incompetent were the ones “chosen” for suppression and isolation.  The “Neos” felt the best way to gradually eliminate them was through teaching them three things:  contraception, sterilization and abortion.  Well, Margaret agreed with this (prejudicial) doctrine and began preparations to lecture and educate the world.   In order to take the moral “high ground,” she reasoned that she should preach on how these three unholy solutions would lessen the threat of poverty, sickness, racial tension--all "due to" over-population.  “As has been scientifically proven,” she added.  A lie. Plunging headlong for scientific "proof," she read up on all the quack science of the day:  Phrenology (the idea that the shape and size of the skull proves mental ability and character), craniometricism (we can determine race and gender by the shape of the skull), Oneidianism (free love), lambrosianism (the idea that criminals have low foreheads, close-set eyes, and small pointed ears), Hereditarianism (the idea that heredity plays a significant role in determining character and human nature).   They also believe in the power of genetics to solve many human social problems), and Freudianism (sex, of course). 

But her favorite offshoot of Malthusianism was Eugenics, the idea that while we want to control breeding, we also want to increase desirable heritable characteristics.  Let others talk about restricting immigration or cutting off welfare; let others experiment with sterilization that produced nothing but sad stories that blew apart families; let others suggest an “extra-child tax,” or elimination of medical subsidies to “oversize” families, or eliminating paid maternity leave; but her thing was to help eliminate “bad racial stocks” and to “engineer the evolutionary ascent of man.”  Very noble.  In fact, many universities loved the Eugenics idea so much that her groups were endowed with departments that taught eugenics—we’re talking Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford in particular.  (Where have the Ivy League schools gone?!) Funding was provided by the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations.  Regardless of the big names, this was immoral; it was malevolent voodoo science; it was genocide, it was White Supremacy, because they zeroed in on the poor and the minority races to eliminate, as we shall see.  

Hitler picked this eugenics idea up himself and extrapolated it--kill the Jews, and you have improved the Aryan race.  What is less known is that he forced sterilization, encouraged free sex among the virgin girls that looked Aryan, and also killed the mentally ill and disabled.  Genocide became the wave of the future at the time (in the early 1920s)—I’m sure Stalin wanted to achieve the same noble goals when he killed fifteen million Russian and Ukrainian kulaks (rebellious peasants who resisted forced collectivization). Mussolini killed four million Ethiopians, two million Eritreans (Russia massacred them too), and a million Serbs, Croats, and Albanians.   And I should say that Hitler didn’t stop with Jews; he killed two million Slavs and a million Poles—both pollutants to the Aryan race.  At this time Mrs.Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which would in 1942 become Planned Parenthood (they went international in the late 1940s).  

She also wrote a book, The Pivot of Civilization, a disgusting 284 pages of turgid, hateful words.  The book, like Malthus, hates charitable organizations—“they help spread misery and destitution…dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human waste.”   She unashamedly called for the elimination of “human weeds,” calls for the “cessation of charity,” for the segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted,” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.”  (This was before abortion was legal).  Lest you question who she had in mind, she later writes that the “dysgenic races” included “Blacks, Hispanics, Amerinds” (Native Americans), and, would you believe, “Fundamentalists and Catholics.” (Such a book, if written today, it would be labeled racist and hate speech.)   But the book drew rave reviews.  If you were non-Aryan, if you were Red, Yellow, Black, or certain Whites, all were noxious in her sight. (She had some of Hitler’s cronies over for dinner from time to time—it was obvious she agreed with their genocidal plans.)  Later, she planned to have Planned Parenthood deliberately place the abortion clinics in particular neighborhoods with these minorities.  Or, as she called them, “these feeble-minded, syphilitic, irresponsible, and defective” people. 

These statements made her a star among the influential intelligentsia in England.  With the help of Havelock Ellis, whom she adored for his radical ideas and his unusual bedroom behavior (though he was impotent, he staged orgies, established a network for homosexual liaisons, and helped provide mescaline and other psychotropic and psychedelic drugs). The two of them plotted what would be politically expedient to broaden her popularity base.  It was decided she would have to tone down her rabid pro-abortion and socialistic stance (remember, this is still only in the 1920s), and she needed to take charge of her children once again, to show that she had family values.  But she could keep pounding on Eugenics in her lectures, since it was popular.  Thus prepared, she came back to America to launch a brilliant public relations campaign.  The authorities were intimidated to drop all previous charges; then she went on a 3-month speaking tour here.  She garnered controversial press coverage everywhere she went—but the upper income crust in America loved her, as did England.  This was right after the Great War, and people were doing everything they could to remove the scars of war—they were drinking, dancing, and forgetting.  Predictions for the future of America were bright.  Racial hatred was still active (this was only 40 years after Reconstruction.)  Many theologians chimed in that we were entering in the Biblical Millennium.  But her enthusiasm and popularity led her to be too bold—and she made a mistake.  She set up an illegal birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of New York—populated, of course, by immigrant Slavs, Latins, Italians, and Jews.  But within two weeks, the clinic was shut down as illegal—but she was only sentenced to 30 days in the workhouse. No problem.  As soon as she was released, she founded a new organization, the Birth Control League, and began to publish a new magazine, the Birth Control Review.  

Despite criticism from evangelist Billy Sunday, she still garnered praise from people like Theodore Roosevelt, and got her intellectual friends—H.G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Julian Huxley, Havelock Ellis--to write articles for her.  It became a popular magazine.   By 1922, her fame was secure, and she went on a round-the-world lecture tour.  She took a less-radical stance.  She could no longer publicly talk about the “choking human undergrowth of morons and imbeciles should be segregated and sterilized,” —but that statement WAS recorded in the Review and in private discussions.  But, think how all you needed to know about the mindset of Hitler was to read Mein Kampf (it was quickly translated into English), so all you needed know about the real mind of Margaret was to read the Birth Control Review.  It had articles of Fascist diatribe, of limiting immigration—by race; and Margaret herself wrote favoring concentration camps for all “dysgenic stocks.”  (The truth is, nobody important commented on either).  By her estimation, as much as 70% of the population fell into her undesirables.  Margaret and her cohorts really had their work cut out for them in their goal to limit these people. 

But they were more than up to the task. Later, in 1939, she designed a “Negro Project,” as she called it, in response to requests from Southern states’ public health officials—as she called them, “men not generally known for their racial equanimity”—yet she was willing to work with them.  As she put it, “the mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously…the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”  Her group wanted to hire three or four “Colored Ministers…with engaging personalities…to propagandize for birth control.”  She wrote, “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”  (This is the testimony of a friend and feminist, Linda Gordon, in her book, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, 1974, page 229ff.)  Further, she said, “Let’s appear to let the colored run it.”  Another compatriot said, “I wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be trusted with…a clinic …except under white supervision.”  (This reminds me of a quote by G.K. Chesterton, a theologian and philosopher, the only intellectual voice at the time opposed to her ravings: “Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other’s”).  Thus, this was a ruse concocted to get blacks to cooperate in their own elimination.  Sadly that project was quite successful.  Margaret’s dream of discouraging “the defective…from their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning” was beginning to be fulfilled.

In 1925 she hosted an international birth control conference, in which the attendees for the first time were together in claiming a high goal of unrestricted abortion in every country as soon as possible.  One of their themes was captured succinctly n the following group statement:  “The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, he simpleton, the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers—intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying gel.”  

Despite her stunning success, Margaret was miserable.  During one of her many long absences, her daughter caught cold—and died of pneumonia.  Her reaction was to forget by having more sex—and she began indulging in the occult.  She attended séances, and applied into a Rosicrucian gathering (they claimed occult powers and knowledge).  She also applied into Theosophy (they believed in karma and reincarnation).  And she married again—in 1922—into big money; this time, to a Mr. J. Noah Slee.  But first she made him sign a prenuptial agreement that she would have her own apartment, feel free to come and go as she pleased, have friends in behind closed doors—and he would have to phone her from the other end of the apartment or seek her secretary to ask her for a dinner date.  I don’t know how he could have missed her intent here, but the milquetoast signed.  Slee never saw too much of her after that. 

She may have been terribly unhappy, but she was terribly rich now too.  As befits her obsession and work ethic, she spent most of his money on her cause—traveling and getting in front of every microphone she could—day or night. She was a tenacious organizer.  She applied for every grant, appealed to every foundation, and pleaded for funds from many corporations and—from charity organizations, no less.  Planned Parenthood got its name and began reaching out for affiliates in 1942.  Her greatest coup was when her organization got a tax-exempt status from the IRS.  So she got treated as a charity.  How ironic, considering how she felt about them.

In 1938, Sweden became the first free nation to revert to abortions (Stalin and Hitler did it coercively).  The forebear of Planned Parenthood jumped into their countries with clinics.  They also persuaded Sweden to accept their sex-education programs for schools.  Knowing Mrs. Sanger’s sexual perversions, we can imagine what that might include.  More European nations allowed abortions over the next 18 years. 

When Adolf Hitler’s holocaust was laid open in 1945, she backpedaled and covered up her many ties to Hitler’s cronies.  She spent strongly on a massive propaganda blitz aimed at the U.S. middle class; she emphasized patriotism, personal choice, and family values (imagine that from her). She won additional endorsements from Eleanor Roosevelt and Katherine Hepburn.  And from Albert Einstein, Nehru, John Rockefeller, Emperor Hirohito, and Henry Ford (a notorious anti-Semite).   But none of these encomiums gave her any joy.  By 1949 she became addicted to both drugs and alcohol.  She was quietly removed from the Board several times, but they found that they couldn’t survive without her.  She forced their hand by dying in 1966, at age 86. 

But Planned Parenthood lived on, and carried her legacy with the same driving spirit as hers.  In the 1960’s, even the middle class loosened up its morals in the U.S.  In 1967, the American Medical Association began calling for the decriminalization of abortion.   So much for the Hippocratic Oath.  About the only powerful opposition voice in this time came from Pope Paul VI, in 1968, whose encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the sanctity of life.  But pretty much everyone ignored traditions--it was the late '60s, right?  Several states loosened restrictions on child-killing procedures (such as, “abortion is OK to preserve her mental health, “etc)—Colorado, California, and North Carolina for starters.  By the end of 1971, half a million legal abortions were being performed in the U.S. each year.  That’s half the rate today, yet it was two years before Roe v. Wade fully opened the doors. 

Planned Parenthood also used Sanger's moral legacy (an oxymoron)--in 1970. Here’s how they did things in the Philippines, where abortion was illegal. Planned Parenthood  offered “menstrual extractions”—vacuuming the uterus—and the procedure was done by those who were not medically qualified.  It was still an abortion, but a tricky play on words enabled them to still kill the baby and avoid the legalities. The authorities let them get away with this simple deception.  They were more brazen in Brazil, where they knew there was a lack of legal enforcement.  Despite sterilization being illegal, they performed it anyway—on 20 million every year at that time.  An internal directive from their office in London (this fact was uncovered in 1981), gave them the OK on deceptions like this.  It said “…action outside the law, and even in violation of it, is part of the process of stimulating change.”  But still they have this great image to the public. The organization is coated with Teflon, I guess.  In a recent video entrapment, they violated three laws, where they were caught (1)  selling dead baby’s body parts, (2) through partial birth abortion, many beyond state limits; (3) without the mother’s consent to the act of manipulating the abortion procedure.  They got off scot-free—despite admitting to these things on tape; then they had the audacity to sue the video investigator.  He had to pay $200,000.  This horror happened  because  their  federal judge had, in the past, helped open and run a Planned Parenthood clinic.  My question is: Where were the Christian churches?  And:  Who determined that this federal judge would decide the case?  Of course, the public knows nothing and cares nothing about this case. Fifty-two percent of Americans now favor Planned Parenthood.

Our tax money actually pays Planned Parenthood over $570 million a year to run their grisly service.  They kill over 320,000 babies annually. ( A big part of the near-million murders here).  Despite their arguments about a range of services they provide, abortion consumes 94% of their expenses.  Let no one kid you—they are about profit.   Smaller clinics are staying in business by adding chemical abortions with RU486 to their offerings, often via non-nurse, non-human presence.  I'm speaking of web-cam hookup with an abortionist at one of the larger mega-clinics. This is a cost-saver, since they don’t need local expertise.  But none of this makes abortion safer–in fact, it increases the danger to the mother–but it does make more centers profitable.

Why are we paying half a billion of our tax money a year to allow Planned Parenthood to kill babies?  Shockingly, 62% of Americans are against defunding Planned Parenthood. We conclude that they like their tax money used this way. 70% of Americans now favor the way Roe v. Wade went.  So we conclude that Americans don’t have much to say against abortion.  No moral anchor! This is America now.  This despite the fact that science is crystal clear on the baby having a separate life from the mother; and you are killing a separate human when you abort.  Why is Planned Parenthood the only organization with a tax-exempt status that is allowed to spend $12 million every two years to elect Democrats—when political bribery by charities is a violation of the law?  Nobody cares.  The unborn need a bigger voice—like God. Since we have not defended the innocent, since we had no mercy on them, God will have no mercy on us--or the babies' murderers--mothers and doctors.  We have judged the babies that they are not worth living.  So God will judge us.    

Escaping Hell: God's Negative Promises (Part 1 of 2)

We all love thanking God for His promises, singing of how He is faithful to keep them. But did you know that Scripture contains many negative promises of His? These are sober warnings about hell—and did you know that He is faithful to keep those negative promises too? Scripture clearly says, more people will go to hell than heaven (Matthew 7:14). We seldom hear preaching on the negative side of God’s promises—only the positive. But we need to know all aspects of God, not just one side, to truly know all about Him. And we should want to figure His thinking--He will use His thoughts to judge us. On what basis does He decide to send us to heaven or hell? Each church has its simple  follow-the-pattern to get to heaven--but sometimes they got their pattern by cherry-picking Scripture. If you're serious about getting to heaven, you really want to know the truth.  You should be rational.  But there really aren't too many rational people when it comes to mortality. Keep in mind, we don’t know God just by thinking about how we’d like Him to be, or picking selected Scripture that we like. So, for a look at another part of the truth, here are some negative promises that God will also be faithful to keep:

Romans 11:22 Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, IF you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off.

For God to continue to bless us, including saving us from hell (“cut off” says that), as this verse points out, we need to “continue in His goodness.” What does that mean? It means essentially the same as Jesus says in John 15:8,10:

By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples… If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love

“Abide in My love” is the same as “continue in His goodness.” But to do that, we must bear fruit, and keep His commandments, to truly be His disciples. If we don’t do these, we don’t abide in Him, we’re not saved, and we go to hell. See John 15:6:

If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned

These are “conditions to continue to be saved” that we seldom hear preached. I guess that’s because preachers are saying what people want to hear, not the whole truth. Consider II Timothy 4:3-4a:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth…

Here's another negative promise:

Matthew 6:15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

If we supposed Christians don’t forgive people, then God won’t forgive us. That means we can’t go to heaven—we lose our salvation, we go to hell. Consider Matthew 18:23-35 for additional proof of the necessity of a forgiving spirit--and how you can lose salvation once obtained:

Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 But as he was not able to pay, his master commanded that he be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and that payment be made. 26 The servant therefore fell down before him, saying, ‘Master, have patience with me, and I will pay you all.’ 27 Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt. 28 “But that servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and he laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, ‘Pay me what you owe!’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down at his feet] and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you all. 30 And he would not, but went and threw him into prison till he should pay the debt. 31 So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved, and came and told their master all that had been done. 32 Then his master, after he had called him, said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ 34 And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. 35 “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses

Note how the servant was originally forgiven, but the master retracted that forgiveness and had him “delivered to the torturers.” To apply the parable to us, that means our Master, God, will, if we are unforgiving, withdraw our salvation, and we go to hell. This servant was unforgiving. The servant has no excuse; look at how much he was forgiven himself. But his  original "salvation" was only temporary because it didn’t change his personality; he still turned around and was unforgiving and grudging. God is looking for changed personalities, people who are humble enough to see how their sin looks in His eyes, and appreciate their rescue from the terrors of hell, which we all deserve. If your “being saved” is just a “mental assent” thing, and you aren’t changed—maybe you aren’t saved. It is possible that we deceive ourselves.

Galatians 6:8: For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.

Paul is speaking to Christians here. If they ignore Him six days out of seven, if they focus on the world's ways, they may reap “corruption," or hell. It doesn't matter if they once went forward at church, if they confessed their sin and got saved.  They can still end up in hell (note that "corruption" is the opposite of eternal life in the verse). Why are these people in danger of hell? Not because they refused Christ—it’s because they spend most of their time in self-indulgence. If a Christian does that as an ongoing practice, he can lose his salvation. A lot of people are into materialism and don’t worry one iota about the dangerous cost of loving the world. As I John 2:15 points out, worldliness removes your love of the Father. That makes you unsaved. Remember the parable of the Sower. One of his unfruitful soils was choked by thorns.  These were people who still love the world. For such a person, the Word is choked, he is unfruitful. See Matthew 13:22:

Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world…choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful

Being unfruitful through your life--such as immersion in worldliness will do--is a ticket to hell—John 15:2:

Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away

Gal. 5:19-21: Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Paul repeatedly warned Christians of going to hell for serious sin. (See also I Cor. 6:9-10; Ephesians 5:3-6, and Rev. 21:8). And why are these people in hell? Because they denied Christ? Yes, in their BEHAVIOR they denied Him. By not following His commandments, they show that they do not love Him—that amounts to denial. You single people who like to live together, Beware! Your current pleasure could yield an eternity of suffering in hell! Is the trade-off of temporary pleasure for hell worth it?

Consider I John 5:3: For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.

What is the true measure that we love God? By keeping His commandments. This requires Bible reading, to see what those commandments are. By doing this daily, we love Him, and we abide in Him—and we can turn away from addiction to sins such as the above.We're not talking about the ten commandments, by the way.  We mean the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' many instructions and warnings throughout the Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Matthew 7:19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire

We need to know fruits. A list of fruits is in Galatians 5:22-23:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control.

If we are not consciously cultivating these qualities, if we are not making Jesus’ behavior ours, how can we call ourselves His disciples? How do we become more like Christ? It is unlikely that His characteristics just ossify on us. No, it takes conscious effort. If we don’t develop these fruits as a consistent practice, we are “cut down and thrown into the fire.” Christian, focus on each of these fruits in turn in your daily devotions—cultivate them.

Matthew 10:33: But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven

People assume that this denial has to be verbal. Not the case, as we pointed out  above. If we are ungodly in our behavior, we are denying our Lord, because people look at our actions, not our words. Then what happens? He denies us…and God changes His mind about our destination; we are consigned to hell, not heaven.

Could God do this? Read some interesting verses in Deuteronomy 31. Let’s start with Moses’ words to the people of Israel in v. 6 (quoted frequently by uplifting preachers):

“Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.”

So you say, “Ah, hah! God won’t ever forsake me!” Well, ah-ha, what word did you add to His Word there? “Ever,” right? Well, you only have to read ahead 10 verses (something I’ve never heard a preacher do) to read God’s limitation on His kindness. It may not be forever.  Read of the prophecy of the children of Israel’s sad future, Deut. 31:16-18:

And the LORD said to Moses: “Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, where they go to be among them, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. 17 Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ 18 And I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they have done, in that they have turned to other gods.

Read v. 17 again.  Yes, God changed His mind. When the people forsook God, He eventually forsook them. He is faithful to His Word—if you love Him, He blesses you; if you turn from Him, He tries to win you back. If you won’t come back, He sadly has to part from you. As you read about the servant above, He can RETRACT His forgiveness.

Scripture is clear that only a "few" (Matthew 7:14) go to heaven. Polling indicates 65% of Americans call themselves "Christian," and thus believe they're going to heaven. That's not "few," is it? How do you explain the gap?  Do you believe the people are correct, so God is a liar?  No; I believe in self-deception.  Lots of people who say they are Christian never think twice about God, their conversation is never about the eternal, they don't want to know all about God. They have deceived themselves! They should have asked if John 15:1-6 applies to them. God leaves lots of warnings in His word--but people don't really read the Word 6 days out of 7, they read uplifting devotions instead. God help us to fear Him, and seek the truth.