The following articles provide brief biographies of Celebrity Christians to Avoid. These are professors of the faith; and not necessarily adherents to the faith –
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Upcoming Rethink Conference Provides List of Celebrity Christian Globetrotters to Avoid
November 29th, 2007, by David Dansker
In determining conferences to skip in the upcoming seminar season, examining the list of Celebrity Christian Globetrotters scheduled to share their wisdom at Crystal Cathedral’s Rethink conference in January 2008 may be helpful. The following are a few Bio-observations for some of these influential icons:
Lee Strobel – is a best selling author and former teaching pastor of Willow Creek Community Church (under Bill Hybels) and Saddleback Church (under Rick Warren). It was Strobel who thought that the case for Christ was yet to be presented and, ignoring the fact that the task had already been completed and complied in the New Testament by Apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, produced an effort that contributed only to distracting from the authorized version; and showed, as does his enlistment with this conference, that he is also unable to fathom the case for discernment.
Jay Sekulow – is the Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). Sekulow’s appearance at Rethink is difficult to explain, unless it is the product of too much arguing. One of the identifying characteristics of a good attorney is his ability to argue a case from both sides, and one of the biggest liabilities of an attorney is an inability to remain on the side he has chosen. Is this conference appearance the result of too much ideological plea bargaining?
John Ortberg – is the teaching pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. His appearance at Rethink is easier to understand. This is the same Presbyterian USA denomination that sided with Palestinian homicide bombers and against Israel when the later began building a wall to protect themselves. PCUSA enacted their own brand of economic sanctions by calling for financial divestment from companies doing business in Israel.
It is also the same PCUSA that allows the local presbytery to ordain homosexuals, and denies “the singular saving lordship of Jesus Christ,”1 and from which thousands of lesser luminaries have been able to flee, with their congregations. Not so with the Ortberg, under whose leadership, and despite its prestige and wealth, or perhaps due to it, his church remains affiliated with PCUSA to this day. So much for the “teaching” pastor.
Notes:
1. Lillian Kwon, “Dissident Presbyterians Offered New Home in EPC,” Christian Post, Jun 26, 2007. http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070626/28167_Dissident_Presbyterians_Offered_New_Home_in_EPC.htm.
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Posted in Rethink Conference, Conference Speakers, Megachurches, Israel, PCUSA, Celebrity Christians, Christian News |
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Teletherapists To Be Employed At Crystal Cathedral To Ensure Rethinking
December 13th, 2007 by David Dansker
The list of speakers scheduled to participate in Crystal Cathedral’s Rethink conference in January 2008 reveals promoters will be practicing mental stealth. Of course, a gathering of global influencers would not be complete without a cadre of Teletherapists. They are necessary to persuade attendees to embrace new relationships with unsaved globalists, and to take on new ministries to the emotional needs of the rising global consciousness; instead of ministering the gospel of grace to the lost and the perishing. The lineup includes:
H. B. London – billed as the “pastor to pastors” at Focus on The Family, where he is employed as Vice President, Ministry Outreach, Pastoral Ministries.1 This purported shepherd-of-shepherds recently earned recognition for assisting in the restoration of fallen New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard; restoring him not to the cross of Christ, but to the serpentine staff of psychotherapy, of which mastery Haggard is now in hot pursuit for his own salvation, and the salvation of others whom he hopes to one day earn a living from; being paid to likewise restore them, to Freud, Jung, and Maslow and the gang.
Appearing here in the conference line-up of speakers, London proves once again that he is not only unable to lead pastors, he can’t even lead sheep, or himself, in the right direction: which would be as far from the bazaar as possible. Instead, he is put on the hook as a lure to entice the young and simple in the faith into the camp to be made merchandise of. Certainly it must be a proud moment for Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family to have helped to give this man legs to walk, and a mouth speaking great things.
Dr. Tim Clinton – is a licensed counselor and marriage and family therapists, and an ordained minister. It is obvious by his other pursuits which one of these opposing views the doctor holds to be superior to the other, and which one he views to be only supplemental to his practice. Clinton is also the President of American Christian Counselors, an organization of other licensed therapists, and the Executive Director of the Center for Counseling and Family Studies, and Professor of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Liberty Theological Seminary. In this last position, it is interesting to note that should pastors reach out for encouragement from a supposed bulwark of theology and doctrine, they will be shown the real power behind the stone, and nursed back to competency with the sour milk of Freud and the gang.
Dr. Les Parrott – is the founder of the Center for Relationship Development at Pacific University. Like his colleagues, Parrott’s concentration is on preaching relationships between other people; married people, unmarried people, and people who are doing the things that were formally reserved for married people, but very little in the way of establishing and maintaining a relationship with God. This is because his Psychology Bible (DSM IV) neither asserts the existence of God nor views relationships with Him as healthy (a diagnostic category has been derived for the treatment of persons to ease them out of a religious view). He is an appropriate choice for officiating in this marriage where “prominent thought leaders become you thought partners.”2
Dr. Henry Cloud – an author and clinical psychologists with a consulting practice who “works with leaders in a wide range of organizations and corporations.”3 With his new book The Secret Things of God: Unlocking the Treasures Reserved for You, Cloud justifies plying his craft on Christians. By asserting the dichotomy of the psychological mind existing separately from the spiritual heart, Cloud suggests the two are at impasse without the power of his psychotherapy to bridge them. He then implies that his work will allow the victorious Word that ineptly gets “locked in their minds” to get activated in their hearts.4 Of course, the Bible alone would never do because that is just full of the secrets that get locked in the head, and can’t find their way out to help anyone without the power of psychotherapy to set them free. Not to mention, Cloud would make far less royalties only selling bibles.
These speakers are among those being exalted by Crystal Cathedral for their vain imaginations which are the products of their own reasoning, and the successes they have had in deceiving others with their stratagems. They measure each other by worldly standards, and they are led away by their own conceits. Their carnal reasoning is actually against God; they do not come from Him, they do not express Him, they do not rely on Him, and He will not have them used for Him.
All the “latest thoughts and perspectives,”5 or strategies, of these icons are contrived to wage campaigns after the manner of physical warfare, and rely on the weapons wielded by the flesh. The weapons of psychoanalytic observations and manipulative therapies are weapons of the flesh. The eclecticism of modern Teletherapists in applying human techniques to alter thinking and behavior are all strategies and schemes derived and employed by sentient beings relying on their own devices. They are not of God; neither are they for the Christian (2Co 10:3-5).
Notes:
1. Pressroom Biographies, H. B. London, Jr., Vice President, Ministry Outreach/Pastoral Ministries, Focus on the Family.
http://www.focusonthefamily.com/press/focusvoices/A000000029.cfm
2. Rethink, Why Rethink: Rethink Tanks – Learn and Share.
http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=2 (accessed 10-8-07).
3. Rethink, Speakers.
http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com
4. Editorial Reviews of Dr. Henry Cloud, The Secret Things of God: Unlocking the Treasures Reserved for You, by Dr. Henry Cloud. 2007.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Things-God-Unlocking-Treasures/dp/1416563601]
9. Rethink, Rethink the Details.
http://www.rethinkconference.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=6
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Reframing Your God: Psychotherapy at the Pinnacle of Babel
September 23rd, 2007 by David Dansker
Probably the single most powerful force plunging the Protestant church into apostasy is psychotherapy. With its pretense of science, aura of state licensing, and seductive dichotomy of body, spirit, and mind as equal parts in holistic health care; the pursuit of mental health, with its manufactured aliments and theoretical cures, has eclipsed the quest for spiritual growth and discernment.
Stephen Arterburn – For an example of how ludicrous these psychotherapy theories have become, and how brazen their attacks on the Christian faith, consider Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, by Stephen Arterburn. The book description alone sounds an alarm:
Everyone needs a way to break free from the pain of their past. By explaining and illuminating a psychological technique known as ‘reframing,’ bestselling author Stephen Arterburn puts readers on the path to freedom from old wounds….
Reframe Your Life instructs readers on how to view hurtful events through a more informed frame of reference, allowing them to look at dark moments from a broader perspective than the events themselves and empowering them to step into a brighter future.1
But is this architectural exercise of creating a museum in the imagination where exhibits are constructed of past sins in order to dress them up in decorative framing “the path to freedom from old wounds,” or a menagerie created by psychotherapy which locks the wayward into a curatorial obligation of servitude to the past? Moreover, the pertinent question here is, should a Christian obtain this book to seek help?
Steve Arterburn is the founder of New Life Ministries, a counseling and treatment ministry, and the host of the nationally syndicated radio show “New Life Live.” Although Arterburn describes his ministry as “faith-based” on his website, a call to his counseling network revealed that the great majority of the counselors used by New Life are state licensed psychologists.
It should also be noted that the term faith-based does not mean exclusively Christian, or based on Christian doctrines. In fact, the most that Publishers Weekly could say in their review regarding any biblical principals to be found in Reframe Your Life was that “a gentle faith perspective is woven through the book, with a special section on Reframing Your God to help readers get their spiritual lives in harmony.”2
The sad truth is that for the person without God this psychobabble is the best the world has to offer: reinventing the past and flirtations with a customizable God concept. More tragically, it functions much like an inoculation to the real thing. For the Christian, this is psychoheresy: the mingling of psychological theories with biblical principals to compromise or contradict biblical Christianity. Indeed, a treatment in such a work devoted to reframing your God raises the question as to whether or not blasphemy is committed. Christians should not consult this work; much less support it by purchasing it.
Notes:
1. New Life Ministries, product description of Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, By Stephen Arterburn (July 2007).
2. Publishers Weekly, review of Reframe Your Life: Transforming Your Pain into Purpose, By Stephen Arterburn (July 2007).
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Christian Psychologists: Heal Thyself – New Disorder Spreads In Disorder Business
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007, by David Dansker
A new term was coined recently for the profession that is unsurpassed in neologisms. Psychology, with its clinicians and psychotherapists, now has a disorder that they themselves must watch out for in each other. Syndromophilia is the abnormal condition in psychologists of having a strong tendency to classify human behaviors as symptoms of mental diseases; combined with an affinity for diagnosing these new disorders, and authoring and providing treatment for them.
It is sometimes referred to in laymen’s terms as “manufacturing victims,” and may have first been used by psychologist Carol Tavris in her forward to Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology. Tavris was in a courtroom where expert testimony was being given by a pediatric psychologist supporting a defendant who had been diagnosed with Munchausen by proxy; a disorder where a parent supposedly manufactures an illness for a child and perpetuates it by abusing the child to simulate its symptoms. The new neologism is introduced in Tavris’ assessment of the testimony she heard:
No one disputes that some mothers have induced physical symptoms in their children and subjected them to repeated hospitalizations; some cases have been captured on video cameras. There is a term for this cruel behavior; we call it child abuse. When the child dies at the hands of an abusive parent, we have a term for that, too; we call it murder. But many clinicians suffer from syndromophilia. They have never met a behavior they can’t label as a mental disorder. One case is an oddity, two is a coincidence, and three is an epidemic.
Once a syndrome is labeled, it spawns experts who are ready and willing to identify it, treat it, and train others to be ever alert for signs of it. No new disorder is “rare” to these experts; it is “mistaken” for something else or “underdiagnosed.” (forward; emphasis added)
Stephen Arterburn – Indeed, widespread outbreaks of syndromophilia would help to explain the plethora of disorders, and their treatments, being discovered by psychologists who are also professing Christians. They can now treat sufferers of “Faith That Hurts,”1 “Spiritual Abuse,”2 and “Toxic Faith.”3 A person can even be treated after becoming “Addicted to Love,”4 because in pseudo-Christian psychology, just as in the pseudoscience of clinical psychology, all that ails you is a momentary lapse in neologism.
Notes:
2. Ibid
3. Stephen Arterburn, Toxic Faith: Experiencing Healing Over Painful Spiritual Abuse, 2001.
4. Stephen Arterburn, Addicted to Love, 1991.
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Pastor Praises Drunken Decisions As Cure For Finding God’s Will
July 30th, 2007 by David Dansker
Francis Chan – Viewpoints gleaned by pastors through celebrity globetrotting grow stranger and stranger. Addressing a crowd of concert goers at the Verizon Amphitheater in Irvine California on Saturday, Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, told the story of a talented marathon runner who began his career one night on his birthday while inebriated. After sharing many highlights of the man’s running career, Chan used the inspirational story as an incentive for Christians who might be struggling too long to find God’s will.
According to Chan, they are too worried about making mistakes, and God rewards his people based on the just-do-it scale of good intentions: it doesn’t matter if whether it was God’s will or not, the fact that you acted is what counts. Chan recounted an earlier time in his own life when he boldly proclaimed to some students that God was going to use them all to start a church in a specific area, and that in fact it didn’t turn out that way. Obviously drawing great comfort from the runner’s story for assuaging his conscious, Chan rationalized that it was acting that counted, and that false pronouncements of God’s will were thus mitigated and excused.
The marathon runner in Chan’s example for getting Christians out of the starting blocks and into service did not run the race to obtain Christ, as far as we know. The service Chan pitched was social service in terms of aid to Africa, where Chan has visited. It is a very sad day to see Christian leaders dissuade people from seeking to do God’s will, and encouraging them to run another race.
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Rick Warren: ‘I’m Totally Oblivious’
April 8th, 2009 by David Dansker
Rick Warren – apologized for supporting California’s Proposition 8 and announced his new position is to take no position on the subject of homosexuality. Appearing on Larry King Live, Warren explained that he had written a message in support of the traditional marriage definition, but that afterwards he wrote apologies to all his homosexual friends. His back peddling is still in high gear.
When asked by King if he would not comment on or criticize the Iowa court decision permitting homosexual marriage , Warren answered: “Yes. I’m – I’m totally oblivious to – to what – that’s not even my agenda.”1 To make it on to Warren’s agenda you have to commit genocide, or be on the festivities list of celebrating his church’s upcoming thirtieth anniversary.
What prompted Warren’s turnaround was the response his members had to his comments in support of the biblical definition of marriage. “And then all of a sudden out of it,” complained Warren, “they made me, you know, something that I really wasn’t.”2 That’s right, they mistakenly made Warren out to be a Christian pastor. Hopefully, the day will soon come when no one will ever make that mistake again.
Notes:
1 – 2. Rick Warren, interview by Larry King, Larry King Live, Transcripts, CNN.com, April 6, 2009.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0904/06/lkl.01.html
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Conferences to Avoid –
Some or all of these Celebrities will be speaking at upcoming conferences that will feature a conacopia of heresies which should be avoided like the plagues.
Here is a partial list:
Fueling Men’s Passion for Christ
Sponsored by: Ignite
Sponsored by: Willow Creek Church and Bill Hybels
The Awaken Conference Series
Awaken to Evangelism
Sponsored by: Christian Communication Network
National Youth Workers Convention
Sponsored by: NYWC
Lee Strobel
Jay Sekulow
John Ortberg
H. B. London
Dr. Tim Clinton
Dr. Les Parrott
Dr. Henry Cloud
Stephen Arterburn
Francis Chan
Rick Warren
