And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. (2 Corinthians 11:12)

The Lord Has His Witness On The Internet

This is a brief follow-up to the Apprising Ministries piece Encouragement Concerning The Emerging Church And Jay Bakker; therein I hoped to offer inspiration to my fellow soldiers who labor in the still developing field of online apologetics and discernment ministry along the oft-ugly Internet Front of what Dr. John MacArthur aptly called the Truth War. In that article I wanted to make sure they knew that their work is not in vain as evidenced e.g. by next month’s Theology After Google (TAG) conference and the Pastors’ Social Media Boot Camp in Dallas-Fort Worth this April 9.

I told you that the latter “social media” event is to be the first of a series of camps to be run this year by JoPa Productions, the company formed by Tony Jones, heretical “theologian in residence” at the Emerging Church (EC) of his equally heretical pastor and JoPa partner Doug Pagitt. And the website for TAG tells us that along with the quasi-progressive process theology of Philip Clayton, because supposedly “Progressive Christian theologians have some vitally important things to say,” TAG promoters are:

also inviting a selection of senior theologians, and well as some of the younger theologians (call them “theobloggers”) whose use of the new media (blogging, podcasts, YouTube posts) is already earning them large followings and high levels of influence. (Online source, emphasis mine)

And I also gave a personal example of how teaching on the Net is reaching those to whom, and about whom, it’s written. I said that if you wish to see their reaction when one aims proper biblical theology at their heretical teachings you can just click on my name Ken Silva, and you’ll see for yourself, this labor in the Lord is being read by the very people we’re trying reach. Specifically I pointed you to a tweet intended for gay affirming “pastor” Jay Bakker from John Harrison aka tragic_pizza, who incidentally, tells us he’s “a Commissioned Lay Pastor in the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley.”

What’s important for you to see now is that Bakker proves the effectiveness of Internet ministry, which the upcoming EC social media conferences also confirm, when today he tweets a quote from my post yesterday:

“Bakker is the head Outlaw [read: no Law] of a largely biblically illiterate, and rather rapscallion bunch,”~Ken Silva (Online source)

For context, what I’m referring to above is that recently a group of largely biblically illiterate, and I say a rather rapscallion bunch spiritually who call themselves Outlaw Preachers (OPs) have galvanized around Jay Bakker, as you can see e.g. in Meet Outlaw Preachers. And their ignorance of the historic orthodox biblical Christian faith is often demonstrated in comments that one OP writes and then it’s Retweeted, as is the one below by one of the OPs, a practicing lesbian by the name of Jules who tells us she’s “in a dance w/ Abba”:

RT @pastornar: The Christian life is not about sin management but about intimacy with God. #outlawpreachers /co-signing that. (Online source)

This is a common theme of so-called Progessive Christianity that one hears often around the Liberalism 2.0 which is the sinfully ecumenical Emerging Church aka Emergent Church—that morphed into Emergence Christianity. What’s missing here though is the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins in the Name of Jesus, which is the “sin management” that must precede any hope at all of  any intimacy with the one true and living God of the Bible. As I’ve said before, as a pastor-teacher, it happens to be part of my job—in keeping with our opening text above—to:

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction…[and to] hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. (2 Timothy 4:2; Titus 1:9)

And so I do; the Lord be praised that He’s giving us the forums He’s giving, for example, to someone like myself. Consider that I live in a rural NH town of some 15,000 people, with no book deals, no television outlet, and no radio program; yet I’m being enabled by Jesus to do my job in such a way that one with much more of an outlet than I, like Jay Bakker, can be corrected, rebuked, refuted, and called to hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught—so that not only he is reading what I write—but so also are many of those whom his neo-liberal theology is infecting world-wide.

False Teaching In The Public Arena Must Be Confronted In The Public Arena

I’ve also told you that if leaders within the visible church at large, who do have such forums where they even have the opportunity to share the platform with men like Bakker, had been doing this job all along then you would never have even heard of a Ken Silva or an Apprising Ministries. In closing this for now, let’s put the below whiny argument to rest biblically. Once again Bakker plays his martyr card:

Ken Silva has never reached out to me personally not evan twittered me, I have never evan met this man who continues to accuse me and many (Online source)

Jay Bakker is going to have to grow up as a pastor-teacher (see—Ephesians 4:14-15), meaning he’ll have to become much more familiar with what the Bible actually teaches, if he plans to be teaching it in the public arena. In fairness to him, Bakker’s hardly the only one who uses that particular argument above. Pastor Bob DeWaay has done a good job debunking it in his Critical Issues Commentary article Discernment in an Age of Deception. DeWaay correctly points out:

Many times, after publishing an article that disputes the claims of someone’s published work, I am asked if I had talked to the person privately. There are those who claim that debating ideas in the public arena should not happen unless there was a prior Matthew 18 process of adjudication…

the admonition in Matthew 18 to go to your brother in private if he has sinned is often used to suggest that public teachings should be adjudicated privately. However, Matthew 18 does not address debate about the orthodoxy of someone’s public teaching but how to deal with one of Christ’s sheep who have strayed into sin…

false teaching cannot be allowed into the church for precisely the reason Jesus tells us to care for the flock…there is no need for this process because the “facts” are already public knowledge. What is needed is to compare the teachings to Scripture, not determine if the person is committing a sin and hiding it. At issue in public teaching is the integrity of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, not sin in the local fellowship. (Online source)

Now Bakker’s more than welcome to show me where I’ve misrepresented him by saying he’s gay-affirming, but he can’t; because that’s a major part of his whole Outlaw Preachers shtick. As I said in Because I Love Jay Bakker And LGBTQ People, while everyone has every right to feel about and/or to believe whatever they want to (within reason), what someone feels and/or believes has exactly zero to do with what the Creator has already clearly said concerning the unrepentant practice of sexual immorality with a member of the same sex i.e. homosexuality.

So the critical question then becomes: Does “Gay Affirming Pastor” Jay Bakker Really Love Gay People? Well since I do, as long as the Lord continues to sustain me, I’ll continue warning anyone who’ll listen that EC OPs like Bakker, and practicing lesbian “Christian agnostic” Adele Sakler of Queermergent, are simply using the exact same rhetoric in “affirming” LGBTQ people as liberals like John Shelby Spong years ago. And as I showed you in Why No Condemnation For Christians Who Are Homopressive even Spong himself admits, and agrees, that “it’s obvious” homosexuality “is condemned in Scripture.”

Thus the fact remains, the deviant lifestyle of having sexual relations with another of the same sex simply cannot be supported from the Bible.

See also:

HOMOPRESSIVE AS JAY BAKKER

OUTLAW PREACHERS KHAD YOUNG AND JAY BAKKER DON’T LOVE ENOUGH

EMERGING CHURCH AND ADELE SAKLER TRANSFORM GAY AGENDA IN EVANGELICALISM

BUT DO EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY AND BRIAN MCLAREN REALLY LOVE GAY PEOPLE?

THE SIN OF HOMOSEXUALITY IS DIFFERENT

BIBLE OUTS GAY MARRIAGE

THE NEW CHRISTIANS WITH CHRISTIANITY WORTH BELIEVING—NO SOLA SCRIPTURA: YES, WOMEN PASTORS AND QUEER CHRISTIANS