John MacArthur: Raising the Error Alert

Here's a great article by John MacArthur. In this short burst, he clearly articulates what many of us have been saying for several years: good, solid Bible teaching is in short supply in America's pulpits today.

Here are a few quotes:

Why do so many evangelicals act as if false teachers in the church could never be a serious problem in this generation?

Biblical ignorance within the church may well be deeper and more widespread than at any other time since the Protestant Reformation.

Bible teaching, even in the best of venues today, has been deliberately dumbed-down, made as broad and as shallow as possible, oversimplified, adapted to the lowest common denominator-- and then tailored to appeal to people with short attention spans.

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Ignatius! The future of youth ministry . . . or are we there already?

Many thanks to Todd Rhoades over at the Monday Morning Insight blog for this little gem.

Watch this hilarious mockumentary about a seriously pathetic youth-speaker-wannabe. There arent' really "ministers" like this out there . . . are there?


Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

Where's My Bailout? Great post on God, the Church, and the Economy

Perry Noble, senior pastor of NewSpring Church in Anderson, S.C. , serves up some good advice for Christians in these troubled economic times. Listen to this:

"The reason our country's in such bad financial shape is we let our need for greed consume us . . . When the stock market started going down, your god died and you don't see him resurrecting any time soon," Noble noted. "You think the economy has a hold on you when you don't understand that God actually has a hold on the economy."

Strong words; good preaching. Read more here.

John Piper: Testing David Wilkerson's Prophecy

Maybe you've heard about famed preacher David Wilkerson's scary prophecy everybody's been talking about? Has he heard from God? The only way to tell is to test the prophecy against the true standard of the word of God.

Bible teacher John Piper does just that in this post from his blog. In short he says:

What shall we make of this? . . . Two things give me pause . . .

First . . . God might have said this. But it doesn’t smell authentic to me. Too prudential. Too reminiscent of the embarrassing Y2K excesses.

Second, my confidence level drops when the Scriptures are not handled carefully.

But my own effort to be discerning says: Stick with the Bible, David. It is scary enough. And it is absolutely true. And your credibility will never fall.

Good stuff. Read all of Piper's post here.