“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5, NASB)

Raised In A Christian Home?

On Slice of Laodicea Ingrid Schlueter posted that Citizenlink which is part of Focus On The Family:

is promoting the new Rocky movie as a Christian film to be marketed to the “faith and values” crowd…Here is the website that will tell pastors how to preach sermons about Rocky. Unbelievable.

As one who is quite familiar with the Rocky series from my secular days I would be the first to say that there are some life lessons which can be gleaned here and there. By and large however, they are to be taught in reverse. By that I mean Rocky is about the old adage “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” with a little bit of Ben Franklin’s highly inaccurate “God helps those who help themselves.”

The fact is Jesus came into the world in order to help fallen mankind see that although his pride tells him otherwise the absolute Truth is that mankind cannot pull himself up nor can he even help himself to stop sinning. But the issue here as to why Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink is promoting the new Rocky movie as a “Christian film” is as simple as this.

Although the following words from the piece actually come from Sylvester Stallone, in order to promote this film as a “Christian” project Focus on the Family’s Citizenlink would have to share this belief:

I was raised in a Catholic home, a Christian home, and I went to Catholic schools and I was taught the faith…

Here the apostate Church of Rome is clearly equated with the true Christian faith. Those evangelicals who would believe this are no longer Protestants and they have turned their back on the Reformation. I tell you in the Lord you had best decide which side of this fence you are on (see–Revelation 3:16).

The reason the Church in America is impotent even as she grows larger is that there is no real power of God to convert anyone. And the issue before you is this: Either Luther was the torch the Lord used to ignite the Reformation or he was a deceiver who tore apart the unity of the Church.

Because the indisputable fact is that the Roman Catholic Church has not changed one iota of their works-righteous sacramental system of salvation since the Council of Trent as I point out clearly and from their own sources in Has The Roman Catholic Church Really Changed?