Worldviews
The Newsletter of the Apologetics Resource Center
January/February 2004

Special Grace Issue!
If you did not re-subscribe to our bimonthly newsletter for 2004, this will be your last issue. Even though it's free, we still need to be good stewards of the donations that our partners in ministry invest with us. We do not want to lose you.

We believe our newsletter and ministry offer valuable information, edification, exhortation , and challenges to the Body of Christ. We also encourage you to prayerfully consider supporting our ministry monthly, or however the Lord leads. We can deepen and expand this ministry only as God leads the Body to partner with us. "Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will provide will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in everthing for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God…" (Read 2 Cor. 9:10-15).

Please see the renewal coupon at the end of our newsletter. (renew online)

Some 2004 Ministry Goals
1. To integrate our ministry into 6 strategic cross-denominational churches who will in turn impact sister churches in their denomination.

2. To continue to conduct conferences and seminars in churches inside and outside the country as God directs.

3. To open another ARC office in Montgomery, Alabama, Kansas City, Missouri, and beyond.

4. To continue to train apologetics workers through seminary curricula and Bible colleges.

5. To conduct a major symposium in Birmingham, October 8-10 on the Church's and Christian's role and responsibilities in government, politics, and culture (more details to come).

6. To conduct a major conference to Christians from Africa (and open to the public) exposing the heresies of the Word-Faith (Name-it-and Claim-it, Health & Prosperity) teachings.

7. To continue to produce six quality issues of Areopagus Journal per year and increase our subscriber base. (The next issue is on Christians and the Arts. See response form at the end of the newsletter.)

8. To continue to provide counsel and information packets to the hundreds of requests we receive for help each year.

9. To continue to produce books, entries in books and encyclopedias, for adults and students.

10. To develop an extensive program to train high school seniors and college students to impact the leaders of tomorrow.

11. To deepen our understanding and ministry in the largest yet most neglected mission field: Islam.

12. To expand our ministry to the largest unevangelical mission field: the cults and other world religions.

Pray with us that we can raise $50,000 for a down payment on a much needed larger operations center to more effectively minister. We have not even been able to unpack one half of our library. Also pray that God will provide us with a youth specialist.

Welcome Megan
I am pleased to announce a new addition to our staff, Megan Thompson, who will serve as the administrator for ARC. She replaces Page Dollar who with her husband Jason, just had their second child, Anna Noel, on Christmas Eve. Megan is married to Jeromy, a former student of Southeastern Bible College.

Wednesday Evenings with ARC
Briarwood Presbyterian is one of our participating churches and hosts a "Family Night Out" on Wednesday evenings. With dinner from 5:30-6:30, a nursery is available, and Pioneer Club (for K-4 through 6th Grade) and gym.

From 6:30-8:00 there are various classes offered. ARC will offer classes beginning Wednesday, February 4th on Islam followed on Wednesday evenings thereafter on topics such as Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, New Age, Word-Faith as well as answering common objections to Christianity and conducting an open forum for Q & A. Come and bring your friends, Christian and non-Christian. Call our office for more details (403-0102).

Upcoming Conferences & Seminars
1. Evangelical Ministries to New Religions will hold its annual conference this year at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, January 29-31. Details on registration, plenary sessions, and 35 workshops can be found at www.emnr.org.

The ARC Staff, Steve, Clete, and myself will conduct workshops on Roman Catholicism, Islam, Creflo Dollar, and How to do Research. The public is welcome.

2. The Collegiate Evangelism Conference sponsored by the Alabama Baptist Association, Friday p.m. and Saturday, February 6-7 at First Baptist Church Trussville. We will speak on the role of apologetics during the college years and on Islam and Reaching Muslims in Your Neighborhood.

3. Conference at Westminster Presbyterian in Butler, PA (outside Pittsburgh) February 29-March 3. The topics include Islam, attacks on the Bible's authority, and postmodern relativism.

4. Other conferences scheduled for January-February are as follows:

February 1-4: Defending the Faith Conference at Fair River Baptist Church in Brookhaven, MS. Topics discussed will be "In an Age of a Different Jesus", the Trinity, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, New Age Movement, and Word-Faith.

February 7: Word-Faith Seminar at a Pastor's Conference in Greenville, Alabama.

February 8: Seminar on Islam, Pinetucky Baptist Church, Oxford, Alabama.

February 15: Seminar on New Age Movement, Pinetucky Baptist Church, Oxford, Alabama.

February 22: Seminar Word-Faith Movement, Pinetucky Baptist Church, Oxford, Alabama.

February 28-29: Missions Conference, General Apologetics, Main Street Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Mississippi.

ARC's New Office!
We are excited to announce the opening of a new Apologetics Resource Center office in Kansas City, Missouri. The Director there is Keith Gibson. Keith planted a Southern Baptist church in Kansas City in 1990 and will continue to serve and partner there as well.
Keith earned his Master's degree at Palm Beach Atlantic College after attending Southwest Baptist University. He has studied and taught courses on apologetics, hermeneutics, Church History, world religions and cults, modern church movements, and systematic theology. His specialty areas are general apologetics, hermeneutics, scripture - twisting techniques, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jewish evangelism, and aberrant Christian groups.

Keith reveals, "I feel that I have been preparing for this type of ministry for most of my Christian life." Keith will be contributing to our newsletter as well as Areopagus Journal. Keith is married to Doreen and has five children, ages 6-16. Pray for him as he raises support for this work.

In addition, we are taking the initials steps to establish an office in Montgomery, Alabama. Pray for Vic Minish, who teaches at the Birmingham Theological Seminary extension. Their family including Vic’s wife Amy and their six-month old daughter Ava, will be seeking support.

WDJC-A.M.
It came to our attention recently that WDJC 850 AM is running a radio program 7 days a week called "Born to Win", led by Ron Dart, head of a group called Christian Education Ministries, seven days a week.

Ron Dart was a leader in the former cult called the Worldwide Church of God, headed by the late Herbert W. Armstrong. After Armstrong died, the successor eventually began to move the cult to orthodoxy. Most of the former leaders left and began a succession of new cults. Ron Dart is one such leader.

Like Armstrong, Dart's group denies the Trinity, teaches Baptismal regeneration and salvation by keeping the Law, especially the Saturday Sabbath.

We contacted the general manager of WDJC twice, talking to the production manager and describing the obvious major problem of airing a cult program on "Christian" radio. We urged the general manager to call us back. Yet, no phone call came. I wrote him a letter and copied the pastors of the churches we work closely with. Still, WDJC-AM has not responded.

Therefore, it is time for us to warn the Christian public of the "wolf in sheep's clothing", preying upon the Body of Christ with the assistance of WDJC-AM. We have a Biblical responsibility to do so (Matt. 7:15; Eph. 1:11-16; Titus 1:10-13). This should be the "straw that breaks the camel's back". Coupled with broadcasting heretical word-faith (health & wealth) programming (i.e., Kenneth Hagin, Charles Capps), this station cannot be called "total Christian" radio. More realistically, it is a commercial station targeting a Christian market. Dart's group has begun a church following in Birmingham.

We had the same problem with WDJC several years ago which resulted in a strong letter of concern from 25 local pastors/church leaders sent to WDJC and it's owner, Crawford Broadcasting. We also checked with the FCC's lawyers who said WDJC didn't have to carry programming contrary to it's mission. We made a very reasonable proposal recommending Crawford and WDJC adopt a standard evangelical doctrinal statement which at least all teaching programs would sign before being contracted. Yet, then as now, not even a response was given by the station or Don Crawford. All they did was let the cult's program run its course and didn't renew it.

The Courts & Culture
A monumental sign of the cultural slide toward paganism is the liberal disposition of many of the courts in America. Called activist courts, they are actually legislating from the bench -- a function of the legislative branch of government.

Apologetics serves the function of education and exhortation to the Body of Christ to challenge this slide in the following ways:

(1) legally; (2) voter pressure; (3) writing letters to editors; (4) articulately persuading others in conversations and (5) sharing the gospel and wholestically discipling new and old Christians in this area.

In fact, those engaged in the areas of apologetics are, in a real sense, operating either as a plaintiffs attorney or a defense attorney (sometimes both), representing the Christian faith.

The following are some recent examples written to arouse and motivate you to pray and prepare to engage in the above ways:

1. In June 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to strike down a Texas state law against sodomy, ruling that what homosexual acts men and women do in private has no government or legal stricture. Chief Justice Rehnquist, Thomas and Scalia dissented. This means that all state laws will be challenged by pro-homosexual groups and will be overturned. The objection from conservatives is that the court has become an activist in legislating, usurping the legislative branch's constitutional function. As Christians we raise the question, "By what standard can the court define right and wrong in ethics?"
The alarming response made by the more moderate, swing vote justice, Sandra O'Conner, is that the Court needs to rely partly on European Court decisions, which it did in the anti-sodomy suit. She stated, "Over time we will rely increasingly or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues." Justice Breyer agreed stating that because of commerce, democratic and cultural exchanges, the world is "becoming more and more one world through globalization."

It is one thing to argue about the framers original intent of the Constitution as it relates to the issues of Church and State, and another thing to use international legal decisions to guide legal opinions here. At least with the former, there are more narrow guidelines and an inescapable Christian heritage within which to debate.

2. Emboldened by the Supreme Court decision regarding Texas' anti-sodomy law, the liberal Massachusetts Supreme Court found in November that the State's ban on recognizing homosexual marriage is unconstitutional. The Court gave the State's legislature 180 days to change the state's marriage laws to benefit or sanction homosexual marriage.
This has prompted calls for a national constitutional amendment defining marriage to be one man and one woman. Otherwise a domino effect will occur opening the door for a marriage redefinition that the public would have called impossible until now.

3. For example, what about polygamy? On what basis is marriage defined as one man and one woman being joined? Now a convicted fundamentalist Mormon polygamist in Utah has logically appealed his conviction based on the Supreme Court's decision in Texas.
But the Court actions have hopefully begun to backfire on homosexual activists. Whereas before the legal decisions, public opinion was slowly moving toward a relativistic, "tolerant" perspective on these issues, but the stark reality pricked people's consciences. The Pew Research Center poll found that after the ruling, 59% of Americans are opposed to homosexual marriages, to 32% who are not. Before the ruling it was about 50/50. In liberal Massachusetts, though, the results were 50% in agreement with the ruling and 38% opposed.

4. Public schools in 9 states now cannot recite the Pledge of Allegiance if it contains the phrase "One nation, under God." So says the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (2-1). The court argued that upon challenge, the inclusion of "under God" in 1954 by Congress advanced religion and is therefore a violation of the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. It is a swearing of allegiance to monotheism, the ruling states.

The President and Congress disagree. The Senate immediately passed a resolution 99-0 supporting the current Pledge of Allegiance and asked the Senate counsel to intervene. The one dissenter on the 9th Circuit Court noted that if the majority's reasoning stands, our "album of patriotic songs in many public settings will also go" (God Bless America, America the Beautiful). He also added "currency beware" as our money is inscribed "In God We Trust".

Do we pray it reaches the Supreme Court? Pray that conservatives are appointed and confirmed to any vacating spots on the Supreme Court, and most of all, pray for open doors to share the gospel. Also pray for more and more Americans who will acknowledge "In God We Trust," no matter what the Courts do.

5. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear the case of Joshua Davey who is fighting to retain a $1,125 Washington State scholarship. He had earned the scholarship but when he decided to use it for tuition at Northwest College, a private Christian school, the state rescinded the grant. Why? Because Wash. State, like 36 other states, has restrictions on government funding of religion. Davey indicated he would major in pastoral ministry along with business management.

Ironically, the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found for the plaintiff Davey, stating that the Washington criteria suppressed religious points of view and violated the free exercise clause of the 1st Amendment as well as the 14th Amendment's equal rights protection clause.

Washington officials appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that tax payers should not be forced to provide funding that could violate their individual consciences, for furtherance of religion.

The culture continues to slide downward and there are well-funded forces that are bent on eradicating religion for the public square. We need to be just as determined to be salt and light.

Hot Spa Religion
Our newsletters regularly remind us that our culture is dominated by humanism and cosmic humanism (new age). Its message is that what is important is individual self-expression, self-discovery, self-realization, and self-fulfillment as life's supreme goal.

Too many Christians, like the frog in the kettle, have slowly succumbed to this view and have not only become ineffective, but are experiencing the negative consequences. Evidences of this hot spa religion are the sharp increases of divorce among "born-again" Christians, a preoccupation with supernaturalism in signs & wonders, a popular but perverted growth of the heretical Word-Faith (name-it-and-claim-it) theology, rampant indulgence in pornography, and a preoccupation with leisure activities, and accumulation of faddish things.

The solution is simply to understand the implications of "seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness", of being transformed by learning to abide in Him (John 15) and thus bear fruit, and to have our minds transformed by His Word, and to intentionally live to engage people, ideas, and institutions with God's truth.

Da Vinci & Company
There are other factors that are steadily corroding and eating away the moral backbone of our Western culture. The Bible reflects that there is a process taking place when man hardens his heart. The process involves a turning away from God, replacing him with self-centered, pleasure seeking activities and a worship of the creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:18-25).

Also part of this deceptive, death producing process are false teachers (Eph. 5:6-18; 2 Tim. 3:1-8). This was made abundantly clear again this Christmas seasons, as it usually is during Easter. Perhaps you saw the steady stream of very liberal programming on A&E, Discovery, and various history channels presenting "scholarly" views on the life of Christ and evolvement of Christianity.

It was one liberal speculation after another attempting to undermine the historical and Biblical account of Christ.

Also disputing the historical account of Christ is the widespread fascination and promotion of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, a fictional novel based on historical "facts". It has sold over four million copies thus far.

And then there are the news magazines. Time, U.S. News, and Newsweek again took advantage of the Da Vinci Code and a major Christian celebration to attack the Christian faith's foundation -- the reliability of the Bible.

Time's story, titled "The Lost Gospels", featured liberal scholars Bart Ehrman (UNK), Elaine Pagels (Princeton), Helen King (Harvard), the Jesus Seminar, as well as popular cultural currents such as the Da Vinci Code, the Matrix trilogy, the sharp rise of new age practices and beliefs, as "ongoing challenges" to the verities of historic Christianity.

Ehrman's view in his recent book, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, pushes the view that the canonization of the 27 books of the New Testament and the Christianity that evolved was the result of a human political power struggle over competing ideas, and many other viable views of Christianity lost out.

You need to understand the evidence for Christianity and the weaknesses of these opposing views, especially for the authority of the Bible. Ask for our information packets on Da Vinci Code, Canonicity of the Bible, or ask any question dealing with authority, infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. More and more people are being prejudiced against considering the claims of Christ everyday as they are being fed a steady diet of this liberal propaganda. Yes there is an agenda, but as Jesus said, we can know the truth and it is the truth that will set men free.

U.S. News released a "Special Collector's Edition" around Christmas, titled "Mysteries of Faith." In a section titled "Who Wrote the Bible," the author writes, "Most Biblical scholars today -- from liberal skeptics to conservative traditionalists -- agree that there is little direct evidence to say with certainty that Matthew, Mark, Luke or John wrote the gospels that bear their names." Referring to the gospels, "Some experts believe the gospels were redacted or edited as they were copied and circulated."

It goes on to discuss the resurrection accounts saying, "Post-Enlightenment scholars began critically examining the Scriptures and other records in their quest for the historical Jesus…on how the gospels differed on some important details and dramatic elements that some skeptical scholars found too incredible to believe."

Postmodern Attacks
All of these and more attacks on the authority of God-Christ-the Scriptures are generated out of a now dominant postmodern relativistic worldview. Even our own Birmingham News sports regularly features articles undermining and demeaning the evangelical faith. For example, only January 2 it featured both the Da Vinci Code and liberal Princeton scholar Elaine Pagal's new book, Beyond Belief, attaching the postmodern commentary, "This is a time when many Americans, some searching for spiritual meaning, others weary of church hierarchies, are asking legitimate questions about religious authority."

Walter Cronkite sent me a letter. Okay, it was a form letter. He wants me to join The Interfaith Alliance. It seems that Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberson, James Dobson, Ralph Reid, and the Religious Right are "Religious political extremists," who manipulate religion to further their radical intolerant political agendas, and discriminate in the workplace against gays and lesbians.

The Interfaith Alliance is particularly disturbed over Christians, that is Religious Right extremists, violating "separation of religion from government" by getting involved in politics. They want me to join them "in the coming election season to inform candidates, elected officials and the media" in their perspective "in shaping political participation." In other words, they are the ones who want to shape politics, deny others who disagree with them, and call "intolerant" those they can't tolerate. Oh, and it must be okay to call people derogatory names while being "people of faith and good will." Therefore it is okay to try to stop people you don't agree with in a "tolerant" society.

Cult News
We continue to bring the message that cults are the largest yet least evangelical mission field we have in America and some countries. Do you have a friend or relative in a cult? Do you have contact with someone who is a Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or even Roman Catholic? We can and want to help you reach them with the gospel. Contact us for individual help or indicate a specific information package on the order form at the end of this newsletter.

A recent story in the Birmingham Post-Herald newspaper presented a positive story on Mormon missionaries here locally. The Mormon propaganda received help from an uninformed reporter who referred to Mormonism as "another Christian denomination." The story noted that in 1980 there were 4.6 million Mormons, but by 2002, they had 11.7 million members with 5.4 million of them in the U.S. Alabama has 28,000 members. There are 60,000 full time missionaries who give two years of their life to their mission. If enough Christians would begin to meet and witness with them regularly, we could neutralize their effort and see some of them come to Christ.

Jehovah's Witnesses are another large group with whom we have contact. They had over 16 million in attendance at their annual "memorial meal" (communion type meal). They have been averaging baptizing over a quarter million every year. Aside from sending millions into hell, their doctrine of no blood transfusions has killed more Jehovah’s Witnesses needlessly than Waco, Jones-town, Heaven's Gate, and Iraq's war combined.

Another area in which we can provide discernment and help in the New Age Movement with its many varied traps. From yoga to meditation to alternative "medicine", Feng Shui, psychics, and human potential seminars, etc. And there are groups like the Church of Christ (most of them) and Seventh Day Adventism. We are here to provide help, information, and clarity. Contact us via telephone, e-mail or by the form at the end of this newsletter.

Can You Answer?
One of the most difficult issues or objections to the reality of Christianity is the problem of evil and suffering's existence in view of an all-powerful God who is good.

The argument goes this way:
1. Evil and suffering exists.
2. An omnipotent God could prevent these.
3. If God were wholly good, He would want to prevent them.
4. If God were all-powerful and wholly good, then evil and suffering would not exist.
5. Evil and suffering do exist. Therefore, either there is no God, or God is either not all-powerful, or he is not all good.

The above argument is logically consistent, but is it true? We have been teaching a series this quarter and this issue is one the class raised most often as issues they needed addressed both for themselves and for unbelievers.

The solution to the apparent contradiction of an all-powerful loving God coexisting with evil in the world is called a theodicy (the vindication of the providentive work of God in creation). We are called and commanded to love God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength. Yet, when evil and tragedy occur, there is a temptation to separate man from God. When one experiences tragedy, whether for a believer or unbeliever, the temptation arises to be angry with God and to mistrust which leads to bitterness and rebellion. A second response is to repress these forbidden feelings, leading to becoming forlorn, to despair and depression. If left without the truth to counter these negative effects, either of these reactions could lead to erecting evidence to demonstrate that there is no God, or that He is either not all loving or all powerful.

Working through this involves the problem of how to maintain or restore a relationship with God in the face of suffering and tragedy while being honest with ourselves and with Him about how we feel. The issue involves figuring out whether the evil and suffering/good God problem is reason enough to doubt or reject the God of the Bible.

In giving an apolgia, our response must be Biblical, coherent, and systematic. It is obvious that much evil and tragedy is inflicted on man and nature by man himself -- choices of a fallen nature. But what about "natural" disaster and still the question that if God is all good and all-powerful, couldn't he prevent any type of evil and tragedy.

The argument presented early in this commentary follows logic but is wrong because one of the premises is wrong -- number three. Finite humans have a functional understanding of good and not an exhaustive one. Could there be a reason consistent with His perfect love and justice -- a reason to bring about a greater good, far surpassing the badness of evil?
Also, man's concept of God's sovereignty is flawed. By "all-powerful" Christians do not mean that there is nothing God cannot do. His power is limited to what is absolutely possible -- within His nature. For example, God cannot sin. God cannot both exist and not exist at the same time.

God's ultimate plan involves the reality of love, compassion, justice, courage, forgiveness, and all virtues. As God reveals, "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve may people alive" (Gen. 50:20). We see the ultimate example in God's "predetermined, predestined and purposeful plan" in delivering Jesus to suffer and die, via the decisions and actions of Jews and gentiles (all of us), for the surpassing good of redeeming the world (Acts 2:22-23, 4:27-28; John 3:16). This commentary is not meant to be exhaustive, but only an introduction. Ultimately our understanding still remains incomplete, for who can know the whole mind of God (Rom. 11:33-34; Isa. 55:8-11)? But I encourage you to order our information packet on "Evil and Suffering" as a real aid in loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Letters
Dear ARC,
We are grateful for the ministry of ARC within the body of Christ and to the world at large.
Enclosed, please accept a check to assist ARC with its financial needs.
May God bless each of you and your families in the coming year of work and opportunities for His kingdoms.

Birmingham, AL

Dear Mr. Branch,
Thank you for sending the information on Harold Camping that I requested at the Coral Ridge Conference.
We have a woman in our church who is totally caught up in Camping’s teachings. I hope your information will help her to understand his error. Thanks very much.

Ft. Lauderdale, FL

(top)