The Presiding Bishop, Katherine Schori, finally stated outright her answer to the question of whether she thought that Jesus is the only route to salvation or are there other ways. In the past her reply as been that she “does not keep God in a small box” but this time she answered in a manner that squelches any speculations about her beliefs. She said the she believes that there are other ways for man to achieve salvation. She claimed that she could not elaborate on the mechanism and that how it worked did not concern her, she was simply positive that there are multiple avenues to salvation, that God would not create just one path (I guess that this is regardless of what He actually says).This statement follows on the heels of her comment at the opening of General Convention 2009 that salvation was not for individuals and that it was arrogant for an individual to claim a personal relationship ship with his or her creator. I ask now, as I asked then, “now who’s putting God in a small box?”

I have to wonder where she comes up with these views. They are not found in scripture no matter how liberally you wish to interpret the Bible. Just as Jesus (God incarnate, remember?) teaches us that salvation is granted on an individual basis to those whom God gifts with His precious grace, Jesus (God incarnate, remember?) tells us explicitly that

“No one comes to the Father except through me”
(John 14:6).

In making her statement she denies not just Holy Scripture but the words of Jesus Christ himself. She is not simply setting aside the authority of Scripture she is implying that Jesus (God incarnate, remember?) is at best not telling us the whole truth and at worse he is bold face lying to us. I’m sure she won’t see it this way but if one honestly reviews her words how else can they be taken and still truly reflect what she claims to believe?

Is Presiding Bishop Schori proclaiming heresy or is she only guilty of misinterpreting and misunderstanding the intentions of God as He has revealed His intentions to us in scripture or is she deliberately ignoring the Word of God and replacing His plan for the salvation of man with her own? That is a question I would like to explore and share with you, gentle reader, my thoughts. First lets us start with her belief that salvation and a relationship with God is not about the individual. Her words:

“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”
“That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.”
“We are our siblings’ keepers and their knowers (sic), and we cannot be known without them – we have no meaning, no true existence in isolation”

In Genesis 15:6 “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” That bit of scripture sure sounds like Abram had a right, individual relationship with God. Not only did Abram have a right relationship with God but God credited Abram as righteous because Abram believed the LORD. Admittedly, Abram is a special case in that God had called him away from his home and leds him to a land that God promised to give to the offspring of Abram. What about the average Joe? Does the average believer need to be concerned about his individual sins or with the sins of the group or clan he belongs to? Scripture answers this for us as well.
The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.

“But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live.
(Ezekiel 18:20-22)

Here we have God dealing with the individual not the group or the clan. The sins of the father are not visited about the son. The father is held accountable for his sins on an individual basis and the son is held responsible for his sins. If either should turn from their sins and call upon the name the Lord they will be accounted as righteous. These are two of many quotes from scripture that completely dispute the Presiding Bishop’s declaration of “the great Western heresy” God dealing with me as an individual does not put “me and my words in a place that only God can occupy” It puts me and my choices in the exact spot that God wants them to be, where he can judge me based on my individual faith for my sake and my sake alone. Is the god that Presiding Bishop seeks to have us follow so limited that he cannot be with all men at once? Is the god of Bishop Schori incapable of being infinite and omnipresent? That does not sound like the God of the Bible who knows all things and is everywhere and every when. How can the God who tells me that

“even the very hairs of your head are all numbered”
(Matthew 10:30)

be so limited in his dealings with his creation that he cannot take time for me, one on one? How can a God who knows that level of detail about every human being that lived, lives and will live not deal with his creation individually? How could God be a just God if he judges based on the group? Did not Abram barter with God to spare Sodom if 10 righteous people (individuals) be found and did not God agree to spare Sodom for the sake of ten righteous people?

Perhaps Bishop Schori worships a different god than the God of the bible. Perhaps she pays homage to a god who is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent but is instead a limited god who is incapable of being with his entire creation at once. Perhaps her god is not even a creator god but one who wishes to be a usurper god and a destroyer of creation?

Of course One True God deals with us individually and offers salvation to us on an individual bases. To suggest otherwise flies in the face of scripture as it is read. To suggest otherwise denies the revealed plan of God for the salvation of man and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. To deny God’s ability to save individuals and to have a right relationship with individuals slams shut to door to the Kingdom of God. It slam shuts the only door to the Kingdom, Christ Jesus.

Bishop Schori would have us believe that there are more avenues to salvation and the Kingdom of God in defiance of the Word of our savior Jesus Christ. How can she claim to be a Christian when she disputes the Word of the one upon whom our faith is based? If there are other ways to salvation then it would be completely unnecessary for Jesus to be crucified in the first place. His atoning death upon the cross would have had no meaning and his resurrection would be reduced to astonishing parlor trick and nothing more. What would it say about a god who sends his only son, perfect and sinless, to filled with the all sins of mankind, to order his obedient son to be beaten and humiliated and then to suffer an agonizing death upon the worse instrument of execution ever devised by man, all for absolutely no reason. Who would wish to worship such a god as this?

For that reason and that reason alone Bishop Schori is guilty of heresy and perhaps of even worse. Her words reduce the kind and loving Creator God who seeks to heal His creation in to a sadistic monster who finds amusement in the torturing and killing of his only Son, presumably for His own entertainment and no other reason. This is the god that the Presiding Bishop is offering her church. The gospel she has concocted is no gospel at all but the promise of certain damnation for anyone gullible enough to accept her words at face value. Just stop for a minute and think of what her words imply and what promises are held forth in them.

She is distorting the truth of the gospel to appease some unknown force that motivates her. Sadly, she may even believe the words she speaks and does not realize the implications of her “new thing”. Perhaps she should sit down and read a little more closely at what Christ tells us.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”
(John 14:6)

That seems cut and dry to me. It does not end with “or one of these other ways.”

She wonders how she can tell a Buddhist or and Muslim that they are facing eternal damnation because God only created one way to salvation. Since she claims not to be concerned with the mechanism, perhaps she should be equally unconcerned about God’s reasoning for creating only one way to redemption. Besides, the offer of redemption is open to everyone. Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or atheist need only to reach out to Christ and accept his atoning death upon the cross to be given the gift of salvation and the right to call oneself a child of God. God is not excluding anyone. When Christ died upon the cross for the sins of all mankind, the invitation to each individual in the world was extended to join with the resurrected Son of God as the people of God. The only requirement was the RSVP of belief.

Bishop Schori, however, views this as an example of the intolerance of Christian belief. It is ironic that in her quest to be seen as an accepting and tolerant person of God who will show everyone the real way to salvation she is in fact putting up a detour sign on the narrow path that points to the broad road that leads to destruction. She tells us that the belief that Christ is the only way is a work and that salvation is by faith along but this is self-contradictory. Belief in Jesus as mankind’s only hope is not a work because one can only believe this if the One True God calls that person to belief with his gift of grace. If the Muslim does not believe then it is because God has not called him. This is the word of the Lord:

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. (John 6:44).

Bishop Schori recognizes that one must have faith in something so is she implying that simply believing that we are saved gains us salvation? Can we believe just any old thing and that is good enough to see the Kingdom of God? Can I commit any sin I want just as long as I believe that I’m going the heaven or are the specific sins that it is ok for me commit and others that I cannot. If this is the case where do I find the list? How do know what is acceptable and what is not. If it feels good can I just do it? What if it feels good to walk in to a crowded café with a bomb vest on and set it off so that I kill about twenty or thirty innocent people? Will I still be saved because I have faith that I am being saved?

Her whole view of spirituality and Christianity is a contradiction and an appeal to be all things to all people. It is truly a postmodern theology that deconstructs itself upon closer examination and offers no true salvation. All it gives to the believer is faux sense of rightness with something other than themselves and a false validation that their sins are not really sins but gifts from God. As long as one does not delve to deeply into questions that those who promote this false doctrine do not want to be asked, a follower of Schorism can sleep at night with a false confidence that everything is going to be okay. If you love your sin so much that you are unwilling to cast it away for an eternity of bliss then I guess this is the way to go.

If anyone would bother to spend a little time examining the Schori Doctrine of Salvation they will quickly come the conclusion that it really leads nowhere, especially to salvation and the Kingdom of God. It has no basis in scripture or in any Christian tradition. It is nothing more than some feel good ideas strung together on gossamer threads. At best it is Gnostic but probably it is more demonic than Gnostic. I remember John Lennon telling us that whatever gets us through the night is alright, alright. From my current perspective I do not believe that this is true. Eventually a night will come in which the darkness will never go way but there will be a large contingent of people waiting for the dawn. Waiting and waiting and waiting. Thank you Ms Schori.

In a previous article (The Renewing of Our Minds), I kind of implied that the lack of good Biblical education and quality Bible study habits by many in the Church laity was in large part at fault for the heresies being introduced and practiced in many of the traditional mainstream protestant churches. I think now is the time to say it out right. If every day, average Joe Christians had been picking up and reading their Bibles daily, taking God’s word to heart and then living out those commandments it would have been a lot harder for the invaders from secular society to infiltrate the Church. By not truly knowing or understanding what Christ’s message is and relying solely on someone at the pulpit to educate the masses then the curse of false doctrines taking hold within Christianity was inevitable. The divide that we now see between those who adhere to the gospel as it came down from Christ Jesus though the Apostles and those who claim that God is doing some previously unannounced “new thing” was inevitable.

Those of the secular liberal clergy who lead many of the churches realize that anyone who has or gains an understanding of Biblical teaching and principles will be able to challenge the authority of the minister’s words using sound Scriptural arguments. Paul verified this when he wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16). To counter this, the first thing that worldly Church leaders tend to do is question the true authority and authenticity of Scripture and when they deem that the time is right they replace Scriptural authority with Church traditions which are open to a more ambiguous interpretation by clergy. Once again in Scripture the apostles warned of this the author of Jude reminds us, “They said to you, ‘In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.’ These men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the spirit.” (Jude 1:18-19). What these supposed servants of the Lord are saying is “the Bible got some stuff wrong and we will tell you what it really means based on what the Church believes.” Because many Church goers have been relying on the pulpit to explain things to them for so long they do not question this heresy or even see it as a heresy. It is just the status quo to them. Just sit in the pews and let the minister tell them what is and is not God’s will.

Now this is where the worldly fun begins as the liberal clergy starts looking around at society and examining what is going on. Their efforts here are to make the Church conform to societal norms and worldly behavior. When the world decides that killing the unborn is a good thing then the worldly church leaders jump on the band wagon. Many farfetched claims are made to justify what many consider out and out murder. They claim that it is better to terminate the child than to have it grow up unwanted in an abusive environment. They claim the mother will have a better life if left unimpeded by a child that will bring her standard of living down.

One I hear a lot is that the fetus is in reality just a parasite in the woman’s body. It is a simple clump of cells that use the woman for nourishment and development and are doing this against her will. Funny but I’ve never heard of a parasite that contained half of the host’s DNA and the other half being generally a voluntary donation to the mother’s reproductive system. I am no biologist but I don’t think that this fits the true definition of a parasite. Anyways, they cannot have a bunch of pious Christians running around talking about sin and damnation and pointing out to everyone that abortion is an abomination in the eyes of God. It is murder of the innocent and anyone who has any honest understanding of Scripture will know this.

How a Christian Church, a place where God’s word should reign sovereign, could consider this abominable doctrine a valid Christian belief and then preach it to its members as something acceptable to God is beyond me. Even more astonishing is that many people who claim to be members of the Body of Christ can accept this deviation from God’s law as a valid exception to the “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) commandment. Admittedly I’ve only been studying the Bible for a couple of years but I have yet come across any exceptions or mention of extenuating circumstances in which God will authorize the breaking of one of the commandments in the Decalogue.

Another area where the Church has looked over society and said this is good is the area of same sex marriages. When society seeks to establish same sex marriages then the secularly led Church must seek to do the same and looks first for ways in Scripture to justify this. The Lord, however, is very specific when it comes to marriage. He tells us in the opening chapters of Genesis, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Since that will not work they look to science and genetics and tell us that since people are genetically predisposed to homosexual behavior then God the Creator must approve. After all He created the DNA that caused someone to become a homosexual. We are told that if Moses had known about genetics when he wrote Leviticus then he never would have put the prohibitions on same sex sexual relations in the law. Moses may not have known about genetics and DNA but I’m fairly certain that the Holy Spirit did as He guided Moses in the writing of the Pentateuch and moved Moses to include restrictions on this type of behavior.

Still many mainstream Churches are telling us that we are not behaving as Jesus would have us behave. We are not being tolerant of our homosexual brothers and sisters and we should welcome them into the Church with open arms and tell them that it is just fine and dandy if they want to participate in an act that God has strictly forbidden. They do not have to repent from such behavior because even though God told us that it was wrong He apparently was only kidding because He genetically made them to desire this sort of activity. I hate to break the news to the heretics but science it determining that God seems to have made alcoholics and drug addicts genetically predisposed to over indulging in alcohol and drugs but they are still expected to repent, ask forgiveness of their sins and renounce the sinful behavior. I do not think that the Holy Spirit would be able to live and function in a practicing alcoholic. Once the alcoholic repents and renounces his sin the Lord removes the urge to drink and strengthens him to remain alcohol free.

God seems to have created all of us with various difficulties in our nature that He expects us to overcome in order to show Him our love and to bring Him glory. For some it is lust, for others it is alcohol and drugs and for others it is homosexual desires. God is not telling homosexuals that they are barred from the gates of Heaven. He is simply telling them to renounce their sinful nature, give it to God for Him to deal with and “go forth and sin no more”. The Lord expects the same thing from all sinners who seek the grace and forgiveness of God. No one is exempt for this, “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If any man would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Mark 8:34). Christ is telling us that we (the Church) must be more like him.

Somehow the liberal clergy got things turned around. Instead of the Church being a example of Christ’s virtue and a witness to the world, the Church decided that its views and behaviors should closely reflect that of society at large. The Church was supposed to remain separate from the world even at the risk of persecution. Christ told us “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19). Lately, however, the Church’s response to this seems to be to pull away from Christ and seek for the love and adoration of the world. This is a true heresy and the path damnation. Unfortunately an uneducated laity does not know any better and responds to the liberal Church’s heresy with acceptance and approval.

Now what is left to do? It will be difficult of not impossible for even the regenerate to change the direction that the visible Church is now taking. Many have accepted the heresy and pronounced it good. The liberal clergy have embraced the very things that the Lord our God warned them not to and now teach that these things are in harmony with the will of God. However they cannot produce the Scripture that validates this interpretation. They tell us it is ‘a new thing’ given to us by the Holy Spirit but Paul warned us about new things that have no Scriptural basis. He reiterated, “As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned” (Galatians 1:9). If it were just the teachers of heresy who were bringing eternal condemnation upon themselves that would be one thing. Unfortunately a lot of people will be taking the fall with them. Oh for the want of a desire to read and study the Bible, the souls that could have been saved.

What is left to do? We regenerate are limited in our abilities. God, however, is not so constrained and may have ideas of his own…

The Lord says:
“These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.
Therefore once more I will astound these people
with wonder upon wonder;
the wisdom of the wise will perish,
the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.”
Isaiah 29:13-14

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6710640.ece

Bishop N. T. Wright comments on the vote at the General Convention to ordain practicing homosexuals as Bishops in spite of requests by the Anglican Communion to refrain from doing this

Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops. They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”.

Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying “we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules” is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.

Of course, matters didn’t begin with the consecration of Gene Robinson. The floodgates opened several years before, particularly in 1996 when a church court acquitted a bishop who had ordained active homosexuals. Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional.

That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition

Follow the link at the top of the page. This is well worth it.

The triennial running of the Biblically Focused is underway again at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention ’09. This is an event similar to the Pamplona running of the bulls but instead it involves opening of the church’s proverbial doors and then the Presiding Bishop, the House of Bishops or the House of Deputies start a heated competition with each doing something so egregious and un-Biblical that it sends those who actually believe in the truth and intent of the gospel running to the parish exits in droves. This year Presiding Bishop Katherine Schori wasted no time in getting the ball rolling and jumping off to a commanding point lead over both the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies with these remarks.

“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”
“That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.”
“We are our siblings’ keepers and their knowers, and we cannot be known without them – we have no meaning, no true existence in isolation”

Knowing that both Houses have a few things up their sleeve, I don’t suspect that the Schori will have such a dominating lead for the entire convention; however she did set the bar rather high. Let’s take some time and examine her remarks and compare them with what scripture tells us.

“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”

She calls individual salvation the “great Western heresy” which in itself is a great heresy. To be a heresy something must have be counter to Biblical teachings. To my knowledge there are no scriptural teachings that declare that the individual cannot be saved nor be in a right relationship with God. In fact the Bible teaches us just the opposite. In Ezekiel 18:20-28 the Lord God says

The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.
“But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die.
None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live.
Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?
“But if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin and does the same detestable things the wicked man does, will he live? None of the righteous things he has done will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness he is guilty of and because of the sins he has committed, he will die.
“Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear, O house of Israel: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust?
If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin, he will die for it; because of the sin he has committed he will die.
But if a wicked man turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he will save his life.
Because he considers all the offenses he has committed and turns away from them, he will surely live; he will not die.

This speaks specifically to the individual and states with total clarity that the individual is the one saved. The sins of the father are not visited upon the son and likewise salvation belongs to those who repent on an individual basis. What the Presiding Bishop states runs completely counter to what the Lord teaches us in scripture and is thus a heresy and a false teaching. She doesn’t even have a scriptural basis in which to misinterpret and inaccurately arrive at what she concludes. It appears that she just made this up because she believes it’s a feel good thing to say. In saying this she is attempting to give false hope to unrepentant sinners. A misguided belief that because she declares that as a group their sin is not a sin but is in fact a blessing from God they can indulge in their sin to their heart’s content. Now who is occupying a place that only God and take?

“That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.”

Idolatry… interesting. I would think that picking and choosing from the Bible the aspects of God’s character that one finds acceptable and discarding those things that are troubling is in fact constructing a god of one’s own imagining, in short making an idol. This is precisely what Presiding Bishop Schori has done. She has built a god that agrees with her point of view, holds it up for others to see and claims that this is the real god to worship; a virtual Asherah Pole for the postmodern, Episcopal Church to worship and sacrifice to. In creating her false idol she and TEC constructed a new gospel because the gospel that was handed down to us from Christ and the Apostles is not compatible with the idol that she and TEC have created. Paul warned us about this in Galatians 1:8-12

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!
As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.
I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

How can someone honestly look at the teachings in the New Testament and say that they are the same ones taught to us by Christ Jesus? If anything her approach is to rehash and repackage the first and second century Gnostic heresies. New age feel good-ism to suppress the truth of the Lord and lead the gullible down the wide path.

“We are our siblings’ keepers and their knowers, and we cannot be known without them – we have no meaning, no true existence in isolation”

To be frankly honest here, I’m not even sure what this means. Who is she defining as our siblings? Who are they to define me? My existence and meaning are in the Lord Jesus Christ and without him my life has no purpose and meaning. Without God and the Spirit guiding my steps I can be in a crowd and still be all alone; but with God doing for me what I cannot do myself, I maybe be lost in a wilderness and have all the company I need. Whether in quiet solitude and prayer or in fellowship with my loving brethren I am never alone for I am always in the company of saints and angels, all being obedient to the Lord.

Does Presiding Bishop Schori believe that God is incapable of dealing with individuals and maintaining individual relationships with all His creation? Does she see him as too busy to be concerned with and care for each person He has created and placed upon this world? Perhaps when Christ told us that not a bird lands on the ground without God knowing it and when the psalm said that each of our hairs are numbered and known to God that these words were simply hyperbole?

Now who is putting God in a small box?

Another Pilgrim

Link: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/17/new-anglican-church-poses-dilemma/

In my mind this poses no dilemma except with those who have turned their back on the Gospel that Christ embodied and was shared by the apostles and disciples that through faith believed in Him. We are of one body under Christ Jesus and whether their are two associates that call themselves Anglican or just one, we are all the simply members of the body, each with our own functions and vocations. The dilemma, however, that this poses to the heretical Episcopal Church is that it takes money from their offering plates and places it in the plates of those who are more faithful to the Word of God and the mission of Lord Jesus.

There is no precedent in the communion for a country to have more than one recognized province, and Episcopalians who back the move have maintained that the U.S. and Canadian churches no longer preach and believe historic Anglicanism.

The formalities cap a six-year progression out of the 2-million-member Episcopal Church by Episcopalians over the U.S. church’s increasing doctrinal liberalism, which has prompted many to leave to other denominations, though others have hung on in the hope a conservative alternative would arise.

ACNA spokesman Peter Frank said the gathering will be inspirational instead of legislative. “This is really about mobilizing people to do mission at the local parish level,” he said.

Speakers will include such non-Episcopalians as Rick Warren, the pastor of California’s Saddleback evangelical megachurch, and Metropolitan Jonah, head of the Orthodox Church in America. Also attending will be the Rev. Todd Hunter, a church planter for the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA), one of the 28 groups represented at ACNA.

Episcopal Church spokeswoman Neva Rae Fox said the denomination was “aware” of the gathering and officials were concerned that one of its active bishops, Peter Beckwith of the Springfield, Ill., diocese, may be participating.

A message left at Bishop Beckwith’s office was not returned Tuesday.

More than 70 of the Episcopal Church’s 110 dioceses are in serious financial straits, and its membership is dropping precipitously, with an average Sunday attendance of 727,822.

If the Episcopal Church could only quiet itself and listen to the still small voice that is calling it to repentance, perhaps some of the membership would return to the Church that they once loved. Physically the members of the new providence walked away but spiritually it was TEC who turned its back on the faithful after attempting to woo them into apostasy and heresy. Once the new Anglican Church is fully established it will be too late and the falling of the Episcopal Church will be mostly a silent affair as the truly faithful will have departed for the green grass of true faith and the crashing of the faithless will be just another sound added to the cluster of secular noise that is already deafening.