OR MAN CAN BOW TO CHRIST ALONE WHO EASILY CAN SEND HOLY SPIRIT TO SAVE HIS PEOPLE, PRODUCING GOOD FRUIT OF JOY/PEACE/RIGHT.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

guess my half German is showing with this blitzkrieg of comments to win the battle in the war for Christ>>>

insecurity breeds conniving treachery & compensatory egotistical defense (like saying, “they left not because I/we did anything wrong at all, but only because they are unholy/have no faith/whatever”!>/inability to self-analyze to correct self, nor group-analyze to correct group..)

Are you faithful?

There are two notable differences though: The Westloop messages and some of the LA messages.

I’ve expressed to many leaders that this continues to happen because the gospel has yet to meaningfully penetrate and evangelize the strong sense of honor that is so prevalent in UBF. Until repeated messages, conferences and Bible study explicitly deals with this, it will continue to happen.

If you keep face, and play the authority game and promote the KOPAHN worldview, no one pays attention to real problems. As soon as reality hits KOPAHN, you are ushered out the door as if you never existed. You are then spoken about as someone who died.

It was so re-assuring to me to meet AN for example (the Abraham of Faith of USA who was driven out of Toledo in 2001). We always talked about him as if he and his family were deceased. But to my surprise, he is alive and well and his family is doing well… and living not far from my family.

I agree. I too long for the day when the Spirit will sweep through ubf and transform the ministry.

ubf people have recently starting talking about the Holy Spirit and studying Galatians and even started talking about church discipline, etc.

Yet the same 6-stage training pattern continues to be an insult to the Holy Spirit.

I share what I learned about the Holy Spirit from lesson 4 of an ordained pastor’s bible study with me: Be Armed! Lesson #4

I learned that the Holy Spirit empowers, purifies, reveals, unifies, and testifies. These are all things ubf missionaries claim to do. And this is at the core of the problems at ubf ministry: The shepherds usurp the roles of the Holy Spirit. That is evidenced by the repeated emphasis on “spirit” (lower case) in the ubf 50th anniversary lectures. Those lectures talk about “ubf spirit” and quench the Holy Spirit. Therefore, ubf members are generally blind to the Christian teachings in the Holy Scriptures.

So then ubf people (like myself in the past) kept the Spirit in the background of our lives, resisting (Acts 7:51), quenching (1 Thessalonians 5:19), grieving (Ephesians 4:30), insulting (Hebrews 10:29) or even blaspheming (Matthew 12:31-32) the Holy Spirit.

in truth, man should humbly admit that everything from man is interpretation of what we think God wants/meant, only God Almighty knows for sure what he means

official religion in Jesus’ time killed him & now has too often gotten off track with priest abuse of children/coverup by bishops, health/wealth mentality, cult-like egomania/powermonging or whatever;

religion must not run rampant & ruin man, it must be properly managed/controlled by man, from the bottom up, since from the top down has often failed…religion must be a tool to serve man’s effort to worship God, not a ‘weapon of mass obstruction’ (hindering connection with God)

but the Lord Jesus Christ is sending Holy Spirit joy to subdue man’s folly.
HALLELUJAH!

man can work for decades trying to serve God wrongly, sincerely or for ill gain;
either way fruit is deformed/twice child of hell often produced;

OR MAN CAN BOW TO CHRIST ALONE WHO EASILY CAN SEND HOLY SPIRIT JOY TO SAVE HIS PEOPLE

ah, i have a right to be anywhere Christ pleases, he owns the earth not man;

so like acts we can whisp around in the spirit like the wind:)

seriously, doesn’t matter if go/stay, what matters is true to God in self, wherever

“When I left, there were those who tried to talk me into staying or coming back, but they were unaware of much of what went on behind closed doors. It’s always easy to give people advice without the benefit of the details… Same old story with this congregation and probably others like it: the would-be peacemakers have little to no idea what goes on behind closed doors. And for those that do, their preferred tack is just to poo-poo it and wish for everyone to get along without addressing the real issues.”

Many people have given me much advice about how to deal with problems in the organization. Most of them haven’t got a clue what has actually been going on behind closed doors. And the actions that they advise me to take (e.g., “Why don’t you go and talk to the leaders privately about your concerns?”) are things that I’ve been doing for years.

I find this commenter to be right on…

“The saying is that the fish rots from the head, and the leadership has a lot of influence in how the body tends to go. If the leadership is not headed the right direction, it will be probably just be a fight if you are going at cross-purposes to them. Barring a miracle, you aren’t likely to change the leadership. Conversely, if the leadership is going the right direction, even if the current state of the body is pretty bad, the body is likely to eventually begin rising to the leadership of the leaders. So if the leadership is something you can support, then “stay” may be the default choice.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/pilgrimsroadtrip/2013/06/stay-or-go/

It is somewhat ironic that my paradigmn-shift in faith stemmed from bible study, and thoughts about the Trinity (although I didn’t have the 3 awesome ortho- words at the time).

Last year I did a personal study of Job and Romans, as well as an entire bible review based on the word “grace” (charis). From Job I learned the passionate, furious love of God for people. And from Job’s friends who were rebuked by God in the end, I could start to see the falsehood embedded in the good-sounding words of Job’s three friends (I suspect those 3 friends represent 3 main theological systems found among today’s Christianity, but I haven’t investigated that yet).

One of the problems with Job’s friends… can’t remember which one(s)… is that they had a linear view of faith. They saw only a pendulum swinging back and forth between what we could call “left” (liberal views) and “right” (conservative views). Human beings are not that simple, and suffering of people (like Job) cannot be adequately explained by such linear thought processes.

The Trinity gives us a much more robust thought process. Instead of liberal vs. conservative splits/fights, the Trinity offers us a circular transformation process in which we strive to bring our pathy, proxy and doxy in balance with each other. People have various levels of each and we grow seemingly by emphasizing one while not neglecting the others.

I’m attempting to “grow” only by keeping these 3 in balance, which means I often need to stop and let one of them catch up.

Anyway, there you have today’s random thoughts…(really just trying to get my name to be bigger in this month’s word cloud :)

1. I agree that neo-Reformed churches emphasize doctrine. But I’ve been reading Piper’s Desiring God, which is all about orthopathy. Although I disagree with some of Piper’s public stances, I do believe he sincerely wants to put enjoyment of God at the center of his life, and at some level that may be more important to him than doctrine. (Perhaps he sees enjoyment of God as the most important doctrine and practice.)

2. My naive understanding of Emergents (which is a broad term) is not that they are seeking emotional experience as much as they are trying to create loving, gospel-centered and outward focused community. They de-emphasize certain aspects of doctrine, but they are all about practice.

So to make things clear: No I do not consider myself an Evangelical. Yes I have gone outside orthodox Christianity (based on Hebrews 13). And by the way, I’ve met Jesus in a whole new, deeply personal way outside those gates.

Yes I question anyone who says “You must submit to me and my truth”. No, I will not simply adopt any belief without first rigorously testing it in the public arena.

I see that by doing all these things, some core convictions are growing in me; convictions I am happy to discuss and modify as necessary.

Often my thought process on various issues is like this: Convince me otherwise. If someone can convince me, I’ll gladly adopt and change my belief.

The bottom line for me is: We’re all on a journey of life together, and most likely that journey will continue when we see each other in Heaven.

These days I don’t bother attempting to conform to some perceived idea of how I should be. Instead, I’m just being “me”. And yes, that is a rather scary thought, at first.

I think Nouwen and others have illuminated a remarkable path of self-discovery. I’ve come to realize our Spirit-led transformation and real growth as Christians takes on a whole new meaning when we lay down our false pretenses and examine ourselves. In fact, the difference is so remarkable that I might even say the sanctification process doesn’t really even begin until we face the facts about our self and start living as “me”.

Of course, too much navel-gazing and we become “curved inward” (i.e. the fancy word Ben uses that I can’t remember right now). And then we become locked in the prison of “self”.

But I find it worth the risk. I am learning far more about God and other people as I continue on this journey of self-discovery.

* heart (orthopathy)
* mind (orthodoxy)
* strength (orthopraxy)

Sorry for making this generalization, which is obviously not full proof, but which helps me sort things out somewhat in my head.

* Doxy churches emphasize doctrine, perhaps Reformed, so called “angry Calvinists.”
* Praxy churches emphasize activity/mission, perhaps UBF, Willow, Rick Warren.
* Pathy churches emphasize emotion, perhaps emergent, pentacostal.

Sorry if this might come across as offensive to some.

After leaving, I was able to begin the reconciliation process with many people outside UBF and some inside. The wall of UBF heritage was clear to me as I started sharing my honest thoughts and questions. It became the deciding factor: either submit to the heritage or leave.

One of my convictions formed through this process was that unity does not mean submitting to a certain theological system or organizational heritage or personal shepherd. Unity is possible when we first submit to Jesus as King, and when we seek the bond of peace and acknowledge one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and one Father, realizing that grace has been given to each one as Christ apportioned it via the Spirit (not as we determine).

Our family’s decision to leave was for the sake of our own health and desire to no longer stand by idly as our friends were mistreated, but to be united with them. I’m learning that the unity Jesus prayed for and Apostle Paul went to jail for, has far more to do with loving human beings by embracing differences than with identifying similarities based on doctrines.

So I think we should all put our Christian litmus tests away and start asking each other questions honestly in order to learn and share what we’ve learned, as we journey together as citizens of the Kingdom and look forward as aliens here on earth to our city in Heaven.

Anonymous mentioned a quote above in the original article of this thread: “Ecumenical people put fellowship before doctrine. We, as Evangelicals, put doctrine before fellowship.”

Althought I really don’t like these kinds of black and white labels that divide us, this one is helpful to a point. People are so complex that we can’t fit each other into such tiny boxes. However, I am clearly becoming an ecumenical-first person now. I am so because I have gone through a transformation process. I used to be evangelical-first.

I believe that putting doctrine before fellowship is precisely why Christianity has been splintered into more than 30,000 denominations. In reality, if we go that route of doctrine-first, we would end up with 7 billion denominations, one for each person on the planet. With a doctrine-first approach, we end up in isolation, even from our wives and children, because we all have flawed doctrine at some point and we all see dimly. Only Jesus had perfect doctrine, and he was killed for it! If you keep redefining who your neighbor is, and love only those people who have closely-related doctrines, you end up in an ever-shrinking circle of people, until really you end up alone.

I’ve given all that up. And I am filled with such amazing peace and joy! I now believe firmly that orthopraxy (how we act) is far more important than orthodoxy (what we believe). Both are important. We do need balance. But I am seeking to let Christ in me mold me into improving my orthopraxy, realizing there are a lot of people out there who simply need a friend.

So I would say love has a lot more to do with orthopraxy than orthodoxy. I would say that love is much more about being a friend and keeping unity in fellowship in spite of differences, than about putting up walls of truth and demanding someone to jump over them.

Thanks for continuing the conversation in a respectful way.

When I wrote about those clear teachings of the Bible being not so clear, I was thinking about the passages of the Bible that are commonly used as proof-texts to support the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment for everyone who does not profess faith in Jesus Christ. I’m glad that newer translations of the New Testament keep the words “hades” and “gehenna” instead of collapsing them into the English word “hell”, which evokes ideas and images that may be quite different from what “hades” and “gehenna” meant in the first century. For me, the question that needs to be discussed is what those images and passages meant to Jesus and his followers. That question cannot be settled merely by quoting some verses in English and declaring that the meaning is clear. There may be a consensus among any particular group of like-minded Christian scholars (e.g., neo-Reformed) about what these passages mean, but other scholars have drawn different conclusions, and their views ought to be considered on their merits, not simply dismissed as being wrong because the Bible is clear. It should be possible to dialogue about these issues in an intelligent way. That’s all I’m saying.

BTW, I’m not suggesting that you and I need to have that dialogue here and now. I’m not competent to make arguments for or against any particular view of hell. I need to learn from others who are more knowledgable than I. I’m ready to listen to anyone who can make a compelling case for their views. But, from my perspective, quoting some verses in English and declaring that the meaning is clear is not a compelling case.

Btw, my German Luther Bible has “Lustknaben, Knabenschänder” instead of “effeminate, homosexuals”. These German translations have a quite different, much narrower meaning. Both have to do with child abuse and prostitution. And if you read on in 1 Cor 6 it is mainly about prostitution, so this makes sense. So while the translation you chose may be clear, the meaning of the words μαλακοι and αρσενοκοιται in the time of Paul and their application to all kinds of homosexuals today is not so clear. Particularly, female homosexuality is definitely not covered by these words, so I think at least in this regard it is a wrong translation. Even if it would be true that God also condemns female homosexuality, a translator has no right to put more into the translation than is written in the text. I really don’t understand why many American Evangelicals are so obsessed with condemning homosexuals and even condemning people who do not condemn homosexuals. It reminds me more of the behavior of hypocritical Pharisees than what would Jesus do. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6rSjrBhUIA for a concrete anti-example. Is this the way you want to preach God’s love to the world? I’d rather prefer “false teachers” such as Brian.

I disagree that these texts are unclear.

“If any man is preaching a gospel to you contrary to what you have received, let him be anathema.” (Gal1)

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals… will enter the kingdom of God… such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the LORD Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”(1 Cor 6:10-12)

And for the record this is not something I will be doing again. If you want to sue us, then sue us. But if you comment here, be aware that you are making public comments, comments that have already been archived by Google and other search engines anyway, which cannot be changed.

More info about the problems of changing usernames on comment history in threaded WordPress blogs:

http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/73999/remove-the-deleted-user-comment

All in a day’s work I suppose.

There’s a well known saying: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” If you don’t want your material on this website, then, for heaven’s sakes, stop posting comments.

As for anything that appears on this website written by “Anonymous,” I’m not going to waste even a minute of my time trying to remove it, because as far as I’m concerned, it was written by someone who has already disavowed and disowned it.

And I certainly will not give you admin rights to log in to this website.

Nor will I ban you from this website. If you don’t want to be here, then just stop coming. It’s that simple.

Instead of improving the quality of the site by contributing more Evangelical and Biblical articles or comments, you start to condemn others to hell and demand that your orthodox Evangelical comments and articles are removed, so that only the “unorthodox” articles remain? How logical is that? You start to talk about copyright? Is that now also part of Evangelical orthodoxy? I’m lucky that St. Paul did not know about DMCA and so we can freely quote him here.

You concluded from the site title that it was an evangelical website. Why that? The title is actually “For friends of UBF”. In my view, this just implies that the website is for people who in some way or the other care for UBF and their members. What really is “evangelical”, and what is an “evangelical website”? Can you please define it for us? Is it part of the evangelical statement of faith to believe that all liberal Protestants and Catholics and Muslims go to hell, and must the webmaster of an evangelical website censor all commenters who doubt this?

I really would like to discuss the following claim with you two: “Muslims will also go to hell. First, because Jesus is the only way. And also because anyone who dies in unbelief, who dies in their sins, unregenerate, dies without a sacrifice for their sins.”

Let’s be more precise here. Let’s take a real orthodox Muslim, who tries everything to please God according to his religion and to what he has learned about God in his childhood and culture. Let’s assume the Muslim is a very loving and wise person, as many Muslims are, not one of those hateful radical Islamists. Our Muslim just had the disadvantage of not knowing about Jesus, because in his culture, he had no chance to get in contact with the Bible and genuine Christians. Let’s assume this Muslim had lived an exemplary life, and yet understood that he was not sinless, but he trusted in the forgiveness of God (which is also mentioned in the Qur’an).

Does such a Muslim go to hell? Did Jesus’ sacrifice not cover his sins as well? Does it only cover the sins of Evangelical™ Christians? And, what exactly does it mean if the Muslim goes to hell? You claim “When people die outside of Christ they go to hell forever. A place of infinite torment and duration.” So our Muslim, who loved God and hoped to go to paradise so much, will find himself tormented forever. Just for not knowing Jesus? Is this really your God?

We could go a step further and think about Native Americans. They really had no chance to learn about Jesus before the Europeans visited them, right? And when those “Christians” came, they killed nearly all of them. Not much chance for most of them to learn about Jesus.

Ben, Joe, maybe can we have a separate article about these questions?

During all my years in UBF I had suppressed such questions, with the subterfuge that I should only care about my own sins, and not about others (Lk 13:45). But then, why should I engage so much in “world campus mission” if I did not really believe that these students were lost without all my activities? On the other hand, if I believed this, why did I not work more, day and night? Why didn’t I stay in front of the door of a student in a dormitory the whole night, praying loudly (as some other UBFers really did)? Why didn’t I go to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan to preach Jesus? Or at least harass all my colleagues at work, my parents, my relatives, my friends, until they start professing Jesus?

Talk about “cognitive dissonance”. When my little son became 5 or 6 years old, he started asking me questions like the above about the loving Muslim, and I found my former cognitive dissonant Evangelical self could not answer even such simple questions. I really felt like the king in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. It was a sobering moment.

But I’m still all too willing to discuss with other how they solve this dilemma.

Personally, I believe many Evangelical Christians are dishonest and shy away from thinking about these questions, like I did in the past. Or, even worse, they secretly enjoy the idea that only they will go to heaven and most other people will go to hell and be tormented forever. It’s an eery idea for me to worship God in a church where the majority of people is of that latter ilk.

How does this sound, I would be willing to sign a document stating that I will never again post on this site if you will remove my previous posts! What a great idea! Then you can go back to patting each other on the backs like before. PLEASE REMOVE MY COMMENTS.

Remove my material on this site. Once that is done, you will not hear from me again.

I won’t presume to respond on Brian’s behalf. But I am concerned that you are characterizing him as being un-submissive to the “clear teaching” of the Bible. Perhaps Brian is. But perhaps he also has some serious, substantive disagreements with you about what the Bible actually teaches and what kind of relationship we are supposed to have with the Bible.

Interestingly, I ran across an article today about this very subject. The author wrote:

All too often, if someone refuses to accept our view on a given issue, such as hell, we walk away assuming some sort of moral, psychological or even spiritual defect on the part of the other. Why else would they refuse to adopt our position? Clearly some powerful force is blinding them from the truth.

Then he continued:

…more often than not, when two people of roughly equal intelligence and goodwill disagree, it’s not a matter of blindness. It’s a product of two people seeing the world in a completely different way. This doesn’t mean every perspective is equally valid or accurate. But if we’re to have any hope of evaluating our positions–much less agreeing on a criteria by which to make such judgments–we need to stop writing people off the moment our initial attempt to recruit them to our point of view fails.

I don’t expect you to engage Brian in a careful, long-winded discussion of these topics that you raised, unless you really want to. Not everyone has the time, patience or desire to do that.

However, I think it’s unfair to write him or anyone off until you have thoroughly listened to him and uncovered what he actually believes — not just about his position on hell, but about the interpretive principles that brought him to that position.

In case you’re interested, the full article is available here.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hellbound/2013/01/why-whats-clear-to-you-isnt-to-clear-to-me-postscript/

After perusing legal material, here is what I found.

1. Before publishing articles on UBFriends, we (the admins) do not require the authors to sign copyright transfer agreements. Therefore, the copyright remains with the author. If the author has not filed the material with the U.S. copyright office, then he/she will still have what is commonly known as a “poor man’s copyright.” Which means that the author is free to copy the material, publish it elsewhere, and use it for whatever purpose he or she wishes, without having to get permission from UBFriends.

2. By submitting articles for publication on UBFriends, the author is granting implied license to UBFriends to use the article for the stated purpose of display on that website. Details of what is considered “stated purpose” are given on our website’s Submissions page.

3. The question of who owns blog comments is an interesting gray area. It appears that commenters and the blog owners both own the comments.

http://www.webpronews.com/who-owns-blog-comments-2008-06

By submitting comments, the commenter is granting implied license to the blogger to use comments for the stated purpose of display on the website.

Hope this clarifies matters.

Making copies of the work;
Creating new works based on the original (derivative works);
Distributing the work by sale, transfer of ownership, rental, lease, or lending.

I have certainly lent my work to this site. However I now wish to take it back. For a further explanation of intellectual rights on blogs read here: http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-rights/copyrights/blogging-and-intellectual-property-law

If I suddenly realized that this were a Mormon page, I would ask the same thing, that my articles be removed.

The rules of engagement on this website have always been plainly stated. It’s not fair to suddenly change those rules and then retroactively try to re-write what actually happened, either by adding material or omitting it.

Our Submissions page has always said:

“Material appearing in UBFriends.org may remain in our archives indefinitely.”

Material that is submitted to UBFriends becomes the intellectual property of UBFriends.

If either of those guys were alive and writing articles for UBFriends, I would hope that we would publish them.

I’m not sure if “positive” is the right word regarding SL. Yes, I love him, because he loved me in Christ, and I experienced God’s love and grace through him. Others might want to say he manipulated me in order to use me. But I subjectively felt the unconditionality of his love for me in Christ. As others report, he may not have done so with those who opposed him. But nonetheless God used him to lead me closer to Christ.

If that is “positive” then yes. But I am also objective about his authoritarianism, being a “benevolent dictator,” and his subjective anti-intellectual influence on UBF. Because I’ve said these things, I have been accused of “basing my shepherd,” “bashing UBF,” being unthankful, etc.

So it’s interesting to me that you see it as “positive,” while traditional long standing UBFers see it as anything but positive.