The Saddleback Civil Forum
18 Aug 2008
The Bible forbids us from welcoming into our homes anyone who is not teaching the doctrine of Christ (2 John 10-11). Now, this doesn’t mean that we can’t invite unbelievers to our homes for supper; after all, the best way for anyone to find a friend in Jesus is for them to first find a friend in us. As Lottie Moon once said, “We must make friends before we can make converts.” What this does mean, however, is that anyone publicly preaching another gospel or another Jesus should never be welcomed into our homes nor bidden “God speed” by us, lest we lend legitimacy to them, encourage them in their “evil deeds,” and end up a “partaker” with them in the spoiling of men’s souls.
This past Saturday night, Rick Warren, pastor of the largest Southern Baptist church in America, welcomed Barack Obama and John McCain into the house of God, bidding them both God speed in their bids for the presidency. When it comes to John McCain, I can’t say that he preaches another gospel, since he never preaches the gospel at all. McCain rarely mentions his faith and on those rare occasions when he does it is always without any specificity. On the other hand, Barack Obama definitely preaches another gospel and publicly proclaims an allegiance to a “Jesus” of his own making, not to the Jesus who walked the pages of sacred Scripture.
According to Barack Obama, “all people of faith—Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone—knows the same God.” Furthermore, anyone believing in “a higher power” is free to choose whatever path to God they prefer, thanks to the fact that Obama’s Jesus accepts “many paths to the same place.” Of course, the place that all these different paths lead to is not necessarily Heaven, since the good senator says that he doesn’t “presume to [know] what happens after [we] die.” In spite of being unsure of Heaven’s existence, Obama is certain that there is no Hell. His Jesus, the good senator assures us, “would [never] consign four-fifths of the world to Hell.”
Unlike Senator Obama’s Jesus, Jesus Christ clearly taught that knowing Him was the only way to know God and that believing in Him was the only way to Heaven (John 17:3; 14:6). He also spoke of the absolute certainty of Heaven and Hell, Heaven being a place of eternal bliss for all who receive Him and Hell being a place of eternal torment for all who reject Him. Contrary to Mr. Obama’s assertion, knowing what happens after we die is not a matter of presumption, but of whether or not we believe what the Bible says. Obviously, Mr. Obama does not.
If inviting those whose false teachings undermine the true teachings of Jesus Christ into our houses lends legitimacy to them, how much more legitimacy is leant to them when we invite them into the house of God? When Rick Warren says to Barack Obama in God’s house, not to mention in the houses of millions of television viewers, “You’ve made no doubt about your faith in Jesus Christ,” how much legitimacy has Warren leant to a man who is publicly preaching a false gospel that undermines the true Gospel that Christians have been called to declare and defend?
Unlike Warren, I have nothing but doubts when it comes to Obama’s Christian faith. Not only does Obama claim to be a disciple of Christ, despite the fact that he goes around denouncing and discarding Christ’s teachings, but his professed beliefs are contradictory to Christianity’s cardinal doctrines. Drawing outside the lines of the definitive Christian faith clearly leaves Mr. Obama outside of the ranks of true Christianity, regardless of how hard the good senator tries to draw himself up as a disciple of Christ. Merely saying “Lord, Lord” may be sufficient evidence to convince the likes of Rick Warren that Obama and others are Christians, but it’s definitely not enough for Him who said, “Not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
Following Saturday night’s “Saddleback Civil Forum,” there was no rejoicing in the presence of the angels over some sinner’s repentance. What there was, however, was rejoicing in the presence of Democrats over their candidate’s comfortableness in a Southern Baptist church. As one of the Democrats’ chief political advisers put it, “Barack Obama showed that he is comfortable and at home with evangelical Christians.” This is quite a feat for a Democratic candidate for the presidency, since the Democratic Party has long championed the profaning of our culture, the undermining of our morals and the redefinition of Christ’s Great Commission as bigotry and intolerance.
Contrary to Democratic spin on Saturday night’s forum, I don’t think Barack Obama’s comfortableness in Saddleback Church had anything to do with him being a new kind of Democratic candidate. Instead, I think it has everything to do with what’s going on in our churches. For years now we’ve convinced ourselves that the only way to win a world at enmity with God is to make that same world comfortable in our churches. Apparently, we’ve been incredibly successful, so much so that even false teachers of false gospels now feel right at home in our pews and with our pastors.
Unfortunately, all of this conformity to the world has not translated into the conversion of the world to Christ, but into the world’s comfortableness in our churches and our churches’ comfortableness with the world. Rather than advancing the cause of Christ, our churches have been steadily losing ground to the world for some time. The more congenial we’ve gotten with it the more ineffective we’ve become at converting it. Truly, our churches befriending of the world has blurred the Gospel to the point that Barack Obama can not only claim to be a Christian, but be christened so by one of evangelical Christianity’s most prominent pastors.
According to the Bible, sinners are not supposed to be comfortable in the congregation of the righteous nor are churches supposed to be chummy with the world (Psalm 1:5; James 4:4). I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a church within which Mr. Obama will be comfortable, but one within which he’ll come under conviction. Rather than feeling at home, I want him to squirm under the conviction of the Holy Spirit until he renounces the false gospel he preaches and the fictitious “Jesus” he professes, and confesses that Jesus Christ alone is Lord.
Don Walton
|
