2 Timothy 4:1-3

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

In The Presence Of The Lord

Here God the Holy Spirit tells us through His Apostle Paul that every Christian–and even more specifically pastor-teachers in this epistle–are in the very Presence of God the Father and God the Son. Our command as Christians is to Preach the Word; this would be telling people exactly what the Bible actually says, and what is commonly missed here, is we must also tell people about the absolute truth of just Who Jesus Christ of Nazareth–the living Word of God–really is.

Next we see the job of the true child of God is to correct, rebuke and encourage – which is precisely what the real Jesus of Nazareth did (see–Matthew 23; 2 Corinthians 11:4, 14-15) – because the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. This time has more than arrived when will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. This means people are assembling false teachers like Rick Warren and Brian McLaren and Joel Osteen to tell them exactly what they already wanted to hear. And we are now watching pastors–particularly those who are women–within the Evangelical community cave-in on biblical truth.

The Time Has Come

I give you this pathetically nauseating case in point from the website Out of Ur hosted by the editors of Leadership Journal. Watch how this false teacher actually seeks for someone to tell him exactly what he already wanted to hear. Then after extensive searching and much Scriptural gymnastics with the biblical texts by apostatizing seminary professor and noted Evangelical biblical scholar Dr. Craig Blomberg, pastor Mike Sares finally wrests these Scriptures until his itching ears are finally satisfied:

A few days before Christmas, pastor Mike Sares got a call from his associate. “Mike,” he said, “Mary Kate Makkai has agreed to read one of her poems at the Christmas Eve service. It’s really, really good, but it’s got the F-bomb in it several times, and I just thought I should check with you about that.”

Mike Sares pastors a congregation called “Scum of the Earth” in Denver, Colorado. No, Scum of the Earth is not your typical congregation. Scum calls itself “a church for the right brained and the left out…My inclination on the phone was to say ‘go ahead and do it,’” says Sares… “I called two pastor friends of mine, I called a seminary professor, and I called some of my supporters (pastors at Scum raise their own support). The two supporters were dead set against allowing the F-word. These were good people whose combined time in the faith had been seventy years. They simply thought it was inappropriate for that kind of word to ever be used in the context of a worship service. I got a big fat ‘no’ from them.

“However, the pastors were a bit more gray about it. They saw that Mary Kate was at a critical stage in her journey back to God, and they advised me to be careful not to squelch her. I felt that asking Mary Kate to clean this poem up before presenting it in church would be like asking the widow to wipe off her coins before dropping them in the offering plate.”

Beyond the pastoral implications of his decision, Sares also explored the theological and biblical issues with Dr. Craig Blomberg from Denver Seminary. “Dr. Blomberg said that the Bible is obviously a wonderful book, but if you take some parts out of the broader context you’re going to find some fairly dark things: incest, sodomy, murder—all sorts of terrible things. Mary Kate’s poem was about someone coming back to the Lord, which is a wonderful context. In the middle of that context, she quotes someone else who is very angry at life. Context became central to our discussion…”

(http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2005/11/expletive_undel_1.html).

Sares called Makkai and gave his permission to read the poem,…Before Makkai stood up to read, Sares thought it best to issue a disclaimer. “I told the congregation that the next piece was R-rated,” Sares recalls… “If anyone was offended by street language, or if they have children, they may want to leave the sanctuary. We really don’t have any children at Scum, so that really wasn’t a factor, but I wanted to be safe.”

When she finished her emotional and stirring presentation there was absolute silence. Was the church in shock, or awe? After three seconds, Sares reports, the place erupted with thunderous applause. “It was the single most powerful moment I have ever had in a worship service. People were weeping, it was incredible”

(http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2005/11/expletive_undel.html)

There was weeping all right, but unfortunately these deceived could not hear that it was actually our Lord Himself, wounded as He is in His Own house. Where exactly in the Bible do we see that someone should be asked to leave God’s sanctuary because the world is more welcome there than His Own children? And the depressing truth is, that although there are other pastor-teachers like myself who have gone outside the camp with our Master, the majority of what professes to be His Church largely ignores our warnings as we labor for Him unnoticed and without much support or encouragement.

The Holy Spirit grieves as He watches the Body of Christ become even more desensitized to sin, and thereby accepting of such obvious false prophets as Kim Clement and Rod Parsley who regularly turn the Church of our Lord into something you’d expect to see from the WWF. O beloved, let us weep and cry out to God for help for the time has come when the egregious ecumenical man-pleasing purpose driven emerging word faith evangelical church would rather listen to this kind of foolishness by apostate men like Sares:

“Since that Christmas Eve service we have done regular poetry readings; it’s just a part of what we do at Scum. And we still give artists a lot of freedom to express themselves. That is always going to make some people upset, but sometimes you have to use the dark strokes to bring out the bold colors.”

If you listen very closely you will hear the Voice of our Christ: Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods… Yet my people have forgotten me; they burn incense to worthless idols, which made them stumble in their ways and in the ancient paths. They made them walk in bypaths and on roads not built up… This is what the LORD says: Do not listen to the prophets…they are prophesying lies to you. Do not listen to them…if they are prophets and have the word of the LORD, let them plead with the LORD Almighty that the house of the LORD…not be taken to Babylon… He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit of the Lord has said…