You may be wondering, "does Jesus indeed frown on us dividing over doctrine?" Click here to continue reading.

Heather Clark over at Christian News Net describes it this way: "Calisi then laid prostrate Engle’s feet, clutching one foot with his hands. Engle placed both hands upon Calisi’s back as he did so. When Calisi stood, Engle moments later fell to the ground prostrate at Calisi’s feet and kissed one shoe, as others gathered around to lay hands on them. Calisi then spoke against what he called a “spirit of division” between Christians and Catholics." (Clark, “Lou Engle of The Call Kneels, Kisses Foot of Catholic Leader as Act of ‘Reconciliation’,” Christian News, 4/10/16).

The video shows the two throwing themselves to the floor in prostrate humility, each proclaiming that Christians and Catholics must unite in the name of unity. The kiss started with Matteo Calisi, the Roman Catholic leader appointed by Pope Benedict, who founded United in Christ, an organization that strives for ecumenism between Christians and Catholics. Telling the audience that division between Christians and Catholics is a “diabolical sin,” and that Jesus “doesn’t care” that Christians and Catholics disagree on biblical doctrine, he did what many Christians find unthinkable.

That’s a question that was resoundingly affirmed by Lou Engle in the sound of one sloppy wet kiss. The NAR-affiliated false teacher Lou Engle, founder of the “Azusa Now: The Call” exchanged foot kisses with a Roman Catholic leader live on stage in front of a cheering audience of 100,000+ packed into the LA Coliseum this past weekend.

Christian pastors and leaders should be warning about Alpha, not promoting it. By doing so, these leaders are showing a lack of concern for those who are blindly following them and their man-made programs.

Please take the time to listen to these two messages and to read one of his articles posted on his web site. His web site is very important. Please click on the link and add it to your favorites.

In order to bring awareness to Brian Brodersen and all other Calvary Chapels and evangelical churches choosing to go this direction, Understand The Times has made the decision to post several links from the web site of Take Heed Ministries based in Northern Ireland. The speaker of the messages and the author of the article that follows is my good friend Cecil Andrews from Northern Ireland.

Recently, Brian Brodersen, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, sent out an endorsement of Nicky Gumbel’s Holy Trinity Brompton Alpha Course program. While Alpha is very well known in North America and around the world, it seems that Brian Brodersen and many other pastors know very little about Alpha.

Ever since I wrote the book New Wine or Old Deception in 1996, I have had a serious concern about the direction evangelical Christianity has been heading. The book was written and then published by Chuck Smith’s publishing ministry, the Word for Today. It was written as a warning to the church with regard to the “experience-based” Christianity that was happening at that time known as the “Toronto Blessing.” To continue reading and for endnotes, click here.

The saints Jude was referring to are those who have embraced the gospel according to the Scriptures. As Paul told the church at Corinth, there is another gospel, another spirit, and another Jesus. The saints had been led astray by the serpent, and they did not know they had been deceived. Paul was trying to get them back on track. Some paid attention; most did not.

As we are living in a period of church history when many are straying away from sound biblical truth, we need to contend for the faith that was “once delivered to the saints.”

There will be many who will not understand the significance of this post. We will help you connect the dots.

On April 14, 2016, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa’s senior pastor Brian Brodersen made the following astonishing remarks on his Facebook page, [1] “What a fantastic introduction to the new Alpha film series! Good one @nickygumbel https://t.co/BvmvHbbZbL .” That link Brodersen provided leads to Alpha Course leader Vicar Nicky Gumbel of the UK. As researcher and berean Mark Jeffries stated recently on Facebook, Brian has partnered with HTB [Holy Trinity Brompton] in the last few years in organizing his “Creation Fest” [2] [UK] – But this, this is an outright endorsement!!” [3]

There is another side to all the fanfare, a glaring something that for the most part remains unspoken or deliberately avoided. There is indeed another side to the River. As believers, it is time we cross over and take a long, hard look.

The River Revival movement--encompassing the Toronto Blessing, Brownsville Revival (or Pensacola Outpouring), Dominion, Latter Rain, Word of Faith, Rodney Howard-Browne's laughing revival, the Kansas City prophets, and an arbitrary mix of all or some of the aforementioned--is flowing into congregations worldwide. Given impetus by these major doctrinal tributaries, this movement's teachings have led multitudes away from the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into a dangerous realm of subjective experiences, mysticism, and blatant heresy. Closely follow the curves of this river and you'll find spiritual deviations at first overlooked. After all the hype, the wild manifestations, the wonderful testimonies, the flamboyant prophecies, and the earth-shaking visions, the discerning eye will gaze upon a farther shore, where an entirely different, frightening story unfolds--a story of broken lives and shattered faith, of rebellion and of merchandising a substitute "anointing."

A current river is flowing, which many believe to be of God. Removed from its proper setting in the 47th chapter of Ezekiel, which speaks of a stream gushing out from the Temple of God, this passage in Scripture is today used to promote a last days vision for the church. In its proper context in Ezekiel, this wonderful prophecy is an encouragement that God has not forgotten His covenant people of Israel. But overstepping the sanctity of scriptural boundaries, this passage has been reshaped into the comfortable doctrines of the shallow believism and sensual manifestations that mark a massive shift in the church. As believers, we have taken a hairpin turn from the preeminence of the Word of God to a relative, experiential, and terribly apostate faith.

I know the feeling first hand. I have more than once been called legalistic and have been accused of "going down a hard path"--one of my own making, of course. I had been told repeatedly that I was spiritually immature and had not understood the importance of such works as Rick Joyner's The Final Quest --despite its un-biblical concepts and many outright contradictions to Scripture.

Brothers and sisters, something is seriously wrong here. Brutalizing the saints with a threat from an angry heart is not the Bible way. But it is becoming quite a fashionable pastime for leadership to silence even well-intentioned criticism with threats and ridicule. It has been going on from both the Toronto and Brownsville pulpits for years and has spilled over into many other groups in the church today. Name calling and ostracizing are common methods to silence critics. Names like hypocrites, Sanhedrin, and God mockers are merely a sampling of the invective aimed at Christians who are concerned about doctrinal error. Nobody wants to be labeled a Pharisee or heresy hunter. But that is often the penalty for daring to step out and ask for a public, biblical accounting of doctrine and practice.

Two plus two still equals four. His meaning was quite plain. If you want to end up like that evil-hearted couple, just go ahead and do some serious inquiry into the teachings or manifestations of this group.

This manipulative pastoral attitude of squelching sincere inquiries was recently brought home in a frightening way. A friend of mine attended a local church service, knowing that the pastor was fully in support of the so-called Brownsville revival. She was nonetheless unprepared for the chilling threat from the pulpit. After reminding the congregation of the judgment deaths of Ananias and Sapphira for opposing the Holy Spirit, the pastor looked directly at the congregation and said, "If you think about questioning anything that goes on in this service ... well, you just be careful!"

But God doesn't work that way. Throughout the Bible are examples of those who love the Lord who questioned authority when it was wrong. And what's more, "prove all things" is clearly God's instruction to the believer (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Many other Christians find themselves in this same predicament, especially those with a genuine heart for the truth. When some doctrine foreign to biblical Christianity is introduced into the congregation, they want to inquire about its origin and validity, but fear holds them in check. If it comes from the pastor, who surely must be more spiritual than the rest of the group, then God must simply have approved it. Therefore, questioning or opposing the pastor or church leadership is seen as opposing the Lord Himself.

In my own case, association with a cutting-edge group offered me security and personal power, and for years, the paranoia of offending God kept me from asking too many unsettling questions. It's ironic that, in a fellowship that taught a watered-down version of the fear of the Lord, it was fear that motivated me to stay put.

Why do people ignore warning signs? It's like a motorist painting over his oil pressure gauge so he won't notice the depleting measure. But the reality of the situation will become evident enough when his engine seizes up, and the car comes to a sudden halt. I've discovered that in the spiritual arena most people will do exactly this: they take pains to look the other way when something bumps up against their doctrine. As a Christian, there's no quicker way to start a fight with a friend than to tell him that some of his most fervent beliefs are wrong. I know. I've lost my share of friendships that way. The problem comes when folks aren't willing to deal with the uncomfortable. And the horror of it is that in spiritual matters, we're dealing with eternal things. While the person who ruins his vehicle can at least purchase another, the human soul is irreplaceable....

Like physical signs of pain, there were signs in our church that something was terribly wrong.But just like the person who ignores the pain and avoids going to the doctor, we too ignored what should have been so obvious. That is, until it got so bad that avoidance was no longer an option.

In the case of my former congregation, our pre-supposed love of the Word of God, along with our ignorance of and opposition to nearly every scriptural warning about false doctrine and seducing spirits in the church, left us open to bizarre teachings and practices. As we embraced mysticism, our biblical parameters melted away. Yes, we were sincere, but what we were wanting was diametrically opposed to our relationship with Jesus Christ.

These are critical days for the body of Christ. We are in the epoch of church history spoken of by the apostle Paul as "perilous times" (2 Timothy 3:1). What makes the danger all the more imminent is that not much of the church believes it. Many of us have owned the glorious but erroneous vision of an end-times remnant walking in unconquerable power, transforming entire societies. The result has been nothing short of catastrophic. How soon we forget. Every cult in the world has sprouted from the fertile soil of deception, always initiated by a drastic move away from the primacy of the Word of God into the nebulous, self-defining atmosphere of experience. At New Covenant (my former church), our desire to accumulate otherworldly wealth (i.e., supernatural power) had ushered us into a contrived system of personal spiritual elevation much like such active cults as Mormonism and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

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