Church Weekly for 4 May 2008
My dear readers,
1. "Household pets take priority"
In many homes, households pets receive more care and attention over the children. When this happens in a Christian home, it is a symptom of parental dereliction of duty. Their young are left at home in the care of the "idiot box" TV - the "instant child-minder" to soak in whatever pours out of the devil's junk library, while they walk their dogs or attend the "Dog Obedience School." In a matter of one generation, an entire community turns pagan, to the glory of the god of this world.
2. Parents, "Train up your child" is your once-a-lifetime blessing
The first few years in the child's life are the most crucial and precious years. It is "LOVE THEM or LOSE THEM!" Love your child for the Lord, who gave you the child, or lose him to the world. The TV is the sure way to consign children to the god of this world. TV cartoons are not harmless or neutral. They are godless and mindless, your child's tender and impressionable mind waits to be impressed. What sort of "mind food" do you feed your son or daughter? Think this through seriously and in prayer. Why throw away your once-a-lifetime opportunity of winning your child for the Lord?
"Prevention is better than cure." A few years of "Family Worship" in your home with parental prayer and serious Bible instruction is better than waiting for the child to become a teenage delinquent, needing institutional corrective instruction and counseling, while broken-hearted exasperated parents sit at home, regretting.
Again, think this through. It's no small matter. It's your child, which brings me to the heart of the problem: FAMILY WORSHIP! In January 2008 we launched "Family Worship in every home." As the saying goes, "You take the horse to the water but he won't drink."
What is the answer? Pray! Pray for God's mercy to create "soul thirst" which will cause you to want to drink the "water of life" which is the soul-reviving Word of God, the Lord Jesus Himself. Delay no more, dear reader. One year of preventive Family Worship now is better than ten years of remedial counseling in later years. Absolutely.
3. "Beware of Amusing Children with TV/Videos
Friday Church News Notes
The following is excerpted from Training Your Children to Turn Out Right, an excellent book by David Sorenson (Northstar Ministries, 1820 W Morgan St, Buluth, MN 55811, 218-726-0209).
"I am convinced that discipline of the mind itself is a major key to learning. ... Parents are guilty on two scores here. First, many a parent errs by encouraging shallow habits of entertainment. Children are allowed and even encouraged to sit and watch TV entertainment. Let us assume that what they watch is not spiritually and morally harmful (though often it is). Yet, they are allowed to essentially place their minds in neutral. They are tacitly encouraged to just sit there and be entertained. The word `amuse' is made up of the basic word `muse' which means to think and the alpha prefix `a' which means to negate or `not.' Therefore, to `amuse' one's self essentially means to not think. And that is exactly what an entire generation of American children are doing. Whether it is cartoons, or videos, or other video entertainment, many children are tacitly encouraged to seek to be amused. Children are conditioned to be mentally lazy and pursue only what entertains their little minds. When it comes to buckling down and actually concentrating, they just shift gears mentally back into neutral and seek something to entertain themselves again. Secondly, parents are guilty of not taking the initiative and [training the children] themselves, sitting them down and training their minds to concentrate on things which may not be interesting to them but are things which they ought to learn" (Christian News Mar 24 2008). God's Word say, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Prov 22:6 ).
4. New Evangelical Apostasy Friday Church News Note
When light associates with darkness and truth associates with error, the result is always the corruption of light and truth. "Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners" (1 Cor. 15:33 ), and, "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (1 Cor. 5:6 ; Gal. 5:9 ). This is evident in the history of New Evangelicalism. It is a movement that originated in the late 1940s and described the mood of positivism and non-militancy that characterized the post-World World II generation. It was a generation that was tired of fighting and that rejected the dogmatism and separatism of its fathers, the old-time fundamentalists. Harold Ockenga, who claimed to have coined the term "neo-evangelical" in 1948, described it as "a repudiation of separatism" (Ockenga's, foreword to The Battle for the Bible by Harold Lindsell). The new generation of evangelicals determined to abandon a militant Bible stance. Instead, they would pursue dialogue, intellectualism, non-judgmentalism, and appeasement. What was the result? In 1978, only 30 years after the New Evangelicals repudiated separatism, Richard Quebedeux documented the dramatic changes that had already occurred. In his book The Worldly Evangelicals, Quebedeux observed that the acceptance of evolutionary theories and the rejection of biblical inerrancy had become common place. He wrote, "The position affirming that Scripture is inerrant or infallible in its teaching on matters of faith and conduct, but not necessarily in all its assertions concerning history and the cosmos, is gradually becoming ascendant among the most highly respected evangelical theologians" (p. 88). Quebedeaux also observed that "the wider culture has had a profound impact on the evangelical movement as a whole" (p. 115). This is a direct result of their repudiation of separation. He documented how that "in the course of establishing their respectability in the eyes of the wider society, the evangelicals have become harder and harder to distinguish from other people" (p. 14). He described how that evangelicals had a developed a tolerant attitude toward drinking, smoking, rock music, Hollywood movies, abortion, profanity, pornography, homosexuality, and that "EVEN MARIJUANA, now virtually legal in some areas of the United States, is not as forbidden among young evangelicals as it once was" (p. 119). A large number of independent Baptist churches are heading down the same path that the New Evangelicals trod 60 years ago, and they will doubtless end up in the same mess, because the road of compromise runs never up but only down and leads only to apostasy. (Christian News Mar 24 2008)
5. My Elusive Sabbatical Year
I had reduced it to six months, thinking it would be easier and more workable. Come January 2008 it was "Business as usual," sometimes even busier than ever! Finally we managed to get away for two weeks. That was instalment one. Today (28 April) we take off for instalment two, hopefully for two weeks, again to Sofitel, Senai. Brethren, pray for us. God bless you all. And, THANK GOD FOR A PEACEFUL ACM 26.04.08. The Lord is good.