I’m becoming a Panera Bread junkie. The free WiFi connection has me hooked.

Found one right near work in Bowie, MD.

Got a good sammich, gives me a chance to interact (at least visibly) with other folks and just observe.

One thing I noticed…. some mighty phine ladies frequent this place. Don’t worry, the smiley is just for effect. I look, admire, move on.

I thought MacArthur was on point with his recent series ‘Delivered by God’ where he talks about how the modern church has an extreme LACK of discernment…. but wow… looking at some of these matches on eHarmony.com, I see it so much more clearly.

I have about 105 ‘new’ contacts sitting in my in-box. Some are months old – folks who signed up to eHarmony only to not pay the membership fee. More than a few folks are ‘sneaking past’ the membership thing and posting e-mail addresses in their profile so you can contact them without going through eH’s set-up. It’s a bit of a loss to them, actually. eH’s questions and stages of communication are set up very well and do make you think a lot more carefully about the folks you’re talking with/to.

Anyway – this evening’s chill time has me flipping between the Bible Gateway (I’m using the ESV translation of Matthew 7 for my commentary on Matthew 7:1-12) and my eH stuff. One of the questions they ask on eH is who has been the most influential person in your life. I kid you not: I’ve deleted about 7-8 women who said OPRAH.

Yes, Oprah.

The same Oprah who grew up in the church here in B-more, yet now denies that Jesus is the only way to heaven. I mean, hey, she’s had three gazillion new agers on her show over the years, what else did you expect ?

I’m not a ‘eat the meat, spit out the bones’ person with too much. When T and I were together, she ordered a tape series on courtship from Clepto Dollar (yes, I know his name is Creflo). By her accounts, I had a fit. Okay, I did have a bit of a fit about Clepto. He’s a heretic and not a brother in Christ. I have no problem saying it and it’s based on the fact that he believes Jesus was NOT God until after His baptism, rehashing the ancient heresy of adoptionism. Not only didn’t he have a problem teaching it – he boldly states (in the above MP3) that he knows what he’s teaching might be considered heresy, but he believes he’s right.

To those who think this is a ‘minor issue’, keep in mind the following:

When Creflo Dollar comes out and teaches that Jesus was not God the Son
when He entered humanity, red lights go off all over the place for me
(and if you believe the scriptures, they should for you too!). John
1:1-14 vs Creflo…..guess who wins. No matter how many people attend
Creflo’s seminars, he’s a heretic if he gets this point wrong (and he
does). He is NOT a brother – and falls under the condemnation of 2

Peter 2 and Jude 8-17.

The Bible teaches a Jesus who was fully God and fully man. Philippians 2:6 makes it clear – He was in the form (morphe – intrisically who He was/is) of God, but did not consider His equality with God and the perogatives thereto a thing to be held onto by force, but emptied Himself and became a servant.

No, He didn’t empty Himself of ‘being God’. That’s impossible. God can’t stop being God anymore than God can SIN or make a rock so big He can’t lift it.

But think of this. Imagine being a billionaire – a la Gates or Trump. You know what kind of lifestyles they lived. Imagine Trump saying one day ‘I am a billionaire, but I shall set this aside along with all of the honor, respect and servitude due me because of my position and go live as a beggar.’ Trump’s riches are still his – at some points during his visit to the mean streets of the ghetto as a dirty homeless man, he pulls out a hundred dollar bill and gives it to another homeless person who is at the end of her rope. Trump never stopped being a billionaire – he just took on a new role. For Trump to go from billionaire to homeless status – silk sheets to dirt, grass and cardboard beds – is the equivalent of him becoming ‘nothing’ and emptying himself.

Now this analogy isn’t perfect. But take it and multiply it times INFINITY. This is what the God of the Universe gave up to deal with the problem of human sin. He, the Father of Eternity, to whom all praise is due and before Whom all will bow one day and take an oath (Phil. 2:9-11, Isaiah 45:23)….. took on the likeness of human flesh and the role of a servant. He was truly human – yet still God. Never stopped being God.

When He (God the Father) brings His firstborn into the world, He says “Let the angels of God worship Him.” (Hebrews 1:6)

Elect angels (God’s angels) don’t worship anything or anyone else but God.

Thus, if the angels worshipped Christ as He came into the world, they acknowledged that He was God as an infant.

Further, we can simply refer to the word Lord (Kurios) itself. In Matthew 2:6, Christ is called both Savior and Lord. Of course, we know that Christ was Savior in a salvific sense (humanity’s savior). Linking to Isaiah 43:10-12 as well as Acts 4:10-12, we know that there is NO OTHER Savior (in the sense of the savior of humanity) but God. Therefore, the angel informing Joseph in Matthew 2 is directly telling Matthew that the Person in Mary’s womb was not just a man – but God.

Jesus wasn’t called Immanuel for nothin’.

All that said, Clepto Dollar denies this. He is, therefore, not bringing ‘the doctrine of Christ’ and falls under the condemenation of 2 John 9-11. I am not to treat him as a brother in Christ, but as an unbeliever and my message to him and all those who hold his viewpoint is repent and believe the gospel.

That said, back to the whole thing with me and T back then. She got on me (and we had these arguments frequently – some of it my fault for coming across with too critical at times in my presentation) about ‘bashing folks’. She said I should learn to ‘eat the meat and spit out the bones’. I let her listen to the full 45 min sermon from Dollar and she admitted finding it disturbing… and as of the last time we talked about it, she said she’d no longer listened to Dollar on anything…even the tapes she brought from him.

One illustration among many that I could draw from.

Now, it’s months later, I’m single and reading profiles on eHarmony.com. No, I’m not going to come across like Shai Linne and say ‘sometimes I think the anti-Christ might be Oprah! It’s puts me in a true rage she pumps the new age – on television! Like…FIVE DAYS A WEEK!/Yet, only a few guage, that this won’t get you saved…from hell, so listen! Cuz my God came to speak!/ He’s warnin’ you to flee from the wrath to come/by puttin’ faith in His matchless Son”

Okay, maybe I will from time to time, as needed.

But within the body of Christ, I have a bit of a sliding scale on who I listen to, read and let influence me. Admittedly – I’m a Calvinist. I’m a firm believer in the Doctrines of Grace – at the same time, I don’t listen to every Calvinist equally. Some are stiff as overstarched shirts – and I may catch some good doctrinal stuff from them here and there…. and leave them alone on other issues. Likewise, there’s some good non-Calvinistic preachers who ‘get some stuff right’… but usually, they’re fairly sound and orthodox on major issues. An example of this is A.W. Tozer – not a Calvinist (in his outward theology), but his heart was on fire for the Lord and it showed in the stuff he wrote on the cost of discpleship and holy living.

But when it comes to non-Christian folk…. sorry, but on spiritual issues and who you let influence your life… no non-Christian should be your major influence if you’re a believer.

Sure, you can find something edible to eat in the garbage can. But you have to dig through all the other filth, waste, refuse and such in order to get to it. And the stuff you do get that you could eat might be covered in other garbage that shouldn’t be eaten.

There’s a whole plethora of good Christian examples to pick and choose from in church history. This is one of the problems I have with ‘Purpose Driven Life’ – it recommends people like Ghandi as examples to follow. Uhmmmm…. Ghandi was an idolater. His reason for following the path he did was based on his religious philosophy – a philosophy, which, at its’ core, is anti-Christian because it is based on man’s works and not God’s grace.

Likewise, Oprah’s “I made it out of the ghetto and didn’t let anything stop me” example looks good before men, but ultimately, it’s based on philosophies that presuppose man’s autonomy outside of the God of the Bible’s sovereignty. “I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul”….. and all other anti-Christian-worldview nonsense.

The non-Christians’ work ethic is not based on ‘If the Lord wills, we will go to such and such a city’ (James 4:13-17), but on ‘tommorrow, I will do such and such and nothing will stop me because I am determined’. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:16) And if you’re building your influences around the philosophies of folks who do not have a Christian worldview, your new ‘god’ becomes opportunity, not the YHWH of the sciptures.

Folk need to be MUCH more discerning in who they let be their major influence.

For the record, I have no problem with self-determination, hard work and working to get where you are in life – even setting major goals and working toward them. But such should always be done within the framework of attempting to find out whether or not it is the Lords’ will for a person to succeed at a particular task. Sometimes our ‘best laid plans’ are not the ‘best thing for us’ (Romans 8:28) and God prevents them, no matter how ‘determined’ we are. Much of todays’ ‘Churchianity’ masks humanistic determination of this sort with ‘Christianese Confessions’ which we should recite daily because ‘our words shape our reality’.

No my friend, God IS reality. And His will is the only one that gets accomplished infallibly – the first time He says it will happen – no need for daily confessions, as though some extra-dimensional mystical force must be constantly appealed to in order for His will to come to pass.

And with that, it’s 9:15pm. I need to get back to my building, get my things, pack up and drive home.

Soli Deo Gloria.