Category: Musings

What Are You Calling Insufficient?
 A Word from Chris Hohnholz

It is my firm conviction that the attitudes we see in Christian culture regarding #Asbury, shows such as #TheChosen, and “evangelism campaigns” like #HeGetsUs have a common denominator: the denial (be it tacit or explicit) of the sufficiency of Scripture.

In each instance, any effort to demonstrate discernment, to examine these issues and see if there is Biblical truth to any of them, is often met with animosity, scorn, or ridicule (or a combination of all of them). These things have become something of a golden calf within modern evangelicalism and any attempt to biblically examine or question their warrant for Christian use is equated with questioning God Himself.

Why is this? I believe it boils down to the idea that Scripture simply isn’t enough for many professing Christians. Studying, understanding the true meaning, and determining the application of the Scriptures is time and mind-consuming work. It is not flashy or adrenaline-pumping. It doesn’t give us instant gratification but forces us to examine God’s Word and what it means. It requires us to measure ourselves against it as the standard. It is laborious but rewarding beyond measure.

Yet, in our 24/7 world where access to any kind of entertainment or information is merely a mouse click away, we think the Scriptures themselves simply are not enough. We need something more. Something visual, something experiential.  We think that the world will not come rushing to Jesus unless we give them glitz, glam, and feelings of euphoria.

We then look outside the Scriptures for our answers. Madison Avenue style advertising, Hollywood story-telling, and top 40’s music charts certainly draw in the crowds, so why not adopt these ideas? If it even brings one person to Christ, let’s do it, right? Wrong.

Yes, God can draw a straight line with a crooked ruler but that is not what He has given us. His command is not to woo and emote people into the kingdom. It is to make disciples. It is to proclaim the whole of the gospel. To preach on the sinfulness of sin, the just wrath to come, and the only means of escape through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This message doesn’t scintillate the senses but it brings about conviction within the heart. It doesn’t produce immediate emotion that can be led and manipulated. Yet, it will produce a result. Either conviction that brings about repentance and faith or the continued hardening of an already rock-hard heart against Christ. The difference is in what or whom we trust.

When we look to the Asbury-style events, the TV shows, and media campaigns, we trust in our own cleverness and the ingenuity of man. When we do the laborious work of studying Scripture to show ourselves approved, we trust in God and His Word alone. We trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to regenerate and transform. We are not the means of salvation. We are merely God’s instruments as He does the work through us by the proclamation of His Word.

Why do some of us call these movements and campaigns into question? Quite simply because we wish to be Bereans, comparing the claims of these things against Scripture to see if they be true. When the rest of the professing Christian culture gets up in arms about this, simply remember that where they would rather trust in the means of man, we are looking to God and His Word alone as the true means of discipleship.

 

Ounce of Prevention

When the gorgeous actress Catherine Zeta-Jones decided to get married to the then-reigning champion of infidelity, Michael Douglas, she showed she’s not just a looker, she’s a thinker too.    Their prenuptial agreement contained a $5 million-per-instance-of-adultery clause.  Nothing like a strong contract. If you want a relationship filled with devotion and the knowledge you are cherished, it might be better to take a pass, or you could go for the money.

My church is following suit.  Dancing around what looks like a good time, but with a binding contract just in case.  When I told my pastor what I’m about to tell you he responded that she has been put under a firm contract to not deviate from solid Christianity.  Forgot to ask if we get $5 million an occurrence.

Still, the burning question is why.  Why venture into a relationship with someone you must contain with a strong contract?  Go for a guy you know loves you enough to be faithful.  Go for someone to instruct the women in your church who is well, Christian.

You see we invited a sparkly blonde darling of the American church to speak.  Her name is Jennie Allen.  You can visit her website and she’ll tell you all about herself.  She’s a “Bible teacher, author, and the founder and visionary of IF: Gathering. I love God and I believe in this generation of women”.

Jennie is bursting with bubbly deliciousness and yet her IF: Gathering leadership team is a who’s who (not to be) of the current spiritual movement.

Jen Hatmaker has been a close associate but no longer publicly appears with the team, perhaps it’s because her open advocacy of homosexuality is getting cumbersome to explain away. If you think same-sex marriages can be sacred, as Jen asserts, by all means, hang with this crowd.

Ann Voskamp has written a book called One Thousand Gifts. Here’s an excerpt:

I Fly to Paris and Discover How To Make Love To God

“God lays down all of His fullness into all the emptiness.  I am in Him.  He is in me.  I embrace God in the moment.  I give Him thanks and I bless God and we meet and couldn’t I make love to God, making every moment love for Him?  To know Him the way Adam knew Eve.  Spirit skin to spirit skin.  The intercourse of soul with God is the very climax of joy.”

My skin crawled to such an extent on this one, it disappeared for three days.  I had to talk it out of a hole so that I could re-clothe myself and continue typing. 

Less creepy but just as dangerous are the rest of the gals Jennie surrounds herself with. 

Kay Warren (Rick Warren’s wife)

Joyce Meyer

Christine Caine of Hillsong Church

Beth Moore

Latasha Morrison, Black Lives Matter supporter.  Check this out, is scripture on her mind?

I believe it’s safe to say, all are woke and completely asleep.

Yet, how about Jennie herself?  Let’s use her own words.  This is from her Dream Guide.

“It really is as simple as this.  Do the best you can in this world and as you’re going, love God and give Him away to people.” (Not Christian, not even close)

“When we create and thrive for the good of others, you’re participating in God’s redemptive work of making the world better.”  (This one neither)

If you think this is Christianity, you need to get a Bible and read the thing.  Jennie should too because she said “the Enneagram is the tool that has helped my interior work most profoundly.”  Don’t know what that is?  It’s a guide to show you your deepest, purest essence, created under admitted demonic influence and developed for over 100 years with ‘spirit guides’.  The creators admit it has elements of  Kabbalah, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, and as they put it ‘Christianity’.  A witches’ brew of blended lies.

I like my Christianity the way I used to like my whiskey – neat.  Undiluted, pure, strong.  The good stuff.  I’ve knocked off the whiskey but my taste in Christianity is only getting more discerning.  I’m not going to swallow a cheap blend because in the end it’s the most expensive of all.

 

So it looks like we’re passing on prevention but using a contract as a safeguard.  The pound of cure is still coming.  God help us.

 

 

“There was a moment when Moses had the nerve to ask God what His name is.  God was gracious enough to answer, and the name He gave is recorded in the original Hebrew as YHWH.

Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels.  But scholars and rabbis have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants.  When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing. YH (inhale): WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.  A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.  Even an atheist would speak His name unaware that their very breath is giving constant acknowledgment to God.  Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filling their lungs.

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly.  Is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.  In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst.  In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down.  When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.

When I think about it, breathing is giving Him praise.  Even in the hardest moments!

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought.  God chose to give himself a  name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive.  All of us, always, everywhere.  Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips.”

~Sandra Thurman Caporale

In 56 AD Nero became emperor of Rome.  One of his plans was to tear down a third of Rome to build what would be known as the Neropolis.  The Senate did not agree to this ‘Build Back Better’ scheme.  Something weird happened next, a fire broke out. Hang on, that was normal in hot summers like the one on the night of July 19th 64 AD, but this fire burned for 6 days, then reignited and burned for three more.  After it was over, two-thirds of Rome was gone.  Tacitus, the aristocratic Roman historian, wrote that gangs of thugs prevented citizens from fighting the fire, under threat of torture.  There is support for the theory that Nero let the fire burn intentionally and indeed his majestic series of villas and pavilions set upon a landscaped park and man-made lake, was built in the wake of the fire.  Nero was under suspicion, so he took the easy way out, he blamed that new sect of non-conformists, the Christians.

Rome in Flames

America is currently in turmoil, fanned by flames of media induced fear.  What’s our response?  Blame the unvaccinated. At first it was more along the lines of ‘take the shot and get a free donut’.  Which is reminiscent of “Come here little girl and pet the puppy in my van.”  Later it got a little more testy as I’ve heard people like me labeled stupid, selfish and stubborn.  Just days ago I heard an oncologist say that higher cancer rates can be laid at the feet of the unvaccinated.   

Oh really?  I’m going to quote now from Dr. Peter McCullough, cardiologist and vice-chief of internal medicine at Baylor University.  He’s a trained epidemiologist who has been published 700 times in peer reviewed journals.  His unassailable position is that we are pushing a ‘vaccine’ that is non-lethal to the virus, but very lethal to humans.  Hard data from Medicare just confirmed that from January to September of this year, 48,500 Medicare patients died within 14 days after receiving the vaccination.  Considering that only 18.2% of the population is on Medicare and if we extrapolate from that data by multiplying by a figure of 5 – that leaves us with potentially 225,000 dead within 14 days of the vaxx.  Statisticians can now commence to have kittens, but my point is still valid.  There are a lot of dead bodies stacking up.

Dr. McCullough goes on to say that this vaccine program is the “Biggest biological catastrophe in human history” and adds that the vaccines have had “zero impact on the epidemic curve.”    One thing virologists know and have been shouting from the rooftops – you never vaccinate into a pandemic.  The Delta variant has achieved antigenic escape.  What this means is that the vaxxed and unvaxxed  provide bodies in which the Delta variant thrives and the fact that we’ve seriously messed with nature means that the only major strain we’re seeing now is Delta.  Why would it mutate?  It doesn’t need to, it has beaten the shot.

The continued deadly drumbeat of “Get the shot” is in McCullough’s words a “complete and total abject failure of our public health system.” 

What’s the missing part of this whole puzzle?  Preventive care.  I wonder how many patients in Idaho have sought help from their physicians only to be told to stay home, go to the ER if you have trouble breathing or get noticeably worse.  Are they being offered early therapy?  Ivermectin, hydroxychloriquine?  Anything?  Dr.McCullough asserts that “there has been a suppression of treatment in order to promote fear, isolation and the vaccine as the only solution.”  He also states it’s “immoral, unethical and illegal to treat patients inadequately.”

Ah, if it were only inadequate treatment, we can all make peace with that.  Yet Pfizer whistleblower Melissa Strickler  speaks of the vaccine glowing with toxic luciferase and graphene oxide compounds.  Almost enough to make me want that donut but not quite.

Then there’s a physican, Dr. Thompson in Yorkfield, Illinois, who has done what every doctor should be doing.  He asked a patient’s permission to run an expanded immune system panel after the 1st shot and then again after the second shot. Here’s what the medical testing showed:  After shot #1, the granulocyte and Killer T cells jumped up.  This indicates tissue damage and a high rate of viruses the Killer T’s needed to kill.  After the second shot, the Killer T’s absolutely tanked.  Tissue damage indicators stayed very high but the adaptive immune system was shot.  If this condition persists, any patient with these numbers cannot fight off viruses or cancer.  But, no, go right ahead, blame the unvaccinated.  That’s what I would do if I were an oncologist who supported the public health system and the push for a money making machine of a vaccine.

The question for these doctors:  Are you a Health Hero?  Or a Health Nero?  Time will tell.