RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
NEWS ALERT – FALSE VIEWS
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 24:3
JANUARY 18, 2009
We are starting a new series and it’s called Ripped from the Headlines. Today we are looking at distortion: distortion of the Bible, distortion of the Christian message.
Most people look forward to Christmas. They look forward to opening gifts. Most people look forward to Easter. They look forward to the Easter Egg hunts. They look forward to good food. They look forward to time with the family and time with friends, and as Christians we feel that way, too. Most of us look forward to Christmas and Easter and good food, and Easter Egg hunts, and gift giving, and family and friends. But as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, Christmas and Easter have deeper meanings for us. We remember the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, his incarnation, his coming into our world, and his atoning death on the cross, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into Heaven; these things are precious to us.
But I must admit, I approach these two holy days with a certain amount of fear partly because I know the secular media will publish cover stories relating to Christ, the Bible, and the church or religion. You just see it consistently where every Christmas and every Easter, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, The Economist, it doesn’t matter what the magazine is, Life Magazine, Look, whatever, all tend to have religious, Christian publications. This has been true throughout the years. I subscribe to Time Magazine and Newsweek and US News and World Report and The Economist and many other magazines. I subscribe to the magazines because I want to be abreast, I want to be aware of what is going on in the world that I might respond as a pastor. And the secular world is absolutely fascinated with the claims of Jesus Christ, with the authority of Scripture, and indeed the Christian faith in general. So there are just tons of secular publications focusing on religious themes. My concern is that often times they approach the subject with prejudice and they wind up distorting the truth regarding the Bible, or distorting the truth regarding Christ.
This morning I have two teachings and the first teaching concerns media distortion of the Bible. But I do want to say, I want to acknowledge, that there are many wonderful people in the media. I want to acknowledge that there are many Christians who serve in the media and also people who serve in the media who are wonderful and noble people with great integrity. I recognize the fact, as I’m sure you do, that there are many wonderful people who serve in the media, but I also want to say that there are people in the media who have anti-Christian agendas. I think that is clear and, at least in my mind, obvious, that there are people out there who have anti-Christian agendas and it affects their performance as regards the media. Some media distortion might simply be based on ignorance. Certainly, we live in a culture and we live in a nation where there is, with regard to the Bible, growing illiteracy. Fewer and fewer people are knowledgeable with regard to the themes of Scripture and with regard to the themes of the Bible.
In fact, just this last week as we had the BCS championship game between Florida and Oklahoma, and of course Florida won that game, and some of you feel good about that. Some of you feel bad about that. Some of you don’t care about that, but of course the quarterbacks of both teams, Oklahoma and Florida, are Christians. The Florida quarterback, Tebow, had John 3:16 on his face printed beneath his eyes. John 3:16. Here is the amazing thing: according to the USA Today many people across America had no clue what in the heck John 3:16 is, or what it means, or anything about it, and so, they googled to try and find out and all across America that night it was the number one thing googled. It was the number one probe, “What does John 3:16 mean?” Hard to believe. I’m incredulous that we’ve reached this point in our country where just massive numbers of people have no, not even a minimal, understanding of the Bible. We also live in a country and a time where there are a lot of people who just don’t know much about Christ. Many people just never give Jesus Christ a thought, and other people who do think about him are kind of confused.
It’s not so much ignorance. Sometimes there really is a hostile agenda. There are folks in the media who do have a hostile agenda and they have as their purpose, at least in part, is to discredit the claims of Christ and the authority of Scripture. I have this magazine in my hand and you see it on the screen. This was the Newsweek publication just before Christmas, kind of their holiday special, their Christmas publication, and it has a Bible on front with a cross and it says, “Holy Bible,” and then, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” I was very curious and I wanted very much to open it up and read it because I know as a pastor who has studied for many, many years and researched history, there is no major religion in all of history that has endorsed gay marriage or sanctioned gay marriage. In all religious structures and systems, marriage has been defined as between a woman and a man, and foundational to the growth of a family. I know this is a controversial subject, obviously, and you know the same.
We all know this is a very controversial subject and just recently in the state of California Proposition 8 was passed, and that surprised many people, certainly surprised me. Proposition 8 defines marriage traditionally. Proposition 8 defines marriage as only between a woman and a man, and it passed in the state of California. So, in the state of California as a result of Proposition 8, marriage will be defined as between a woman and a man. Of course, the gay community was very upset. They are partially upset at Rick Warren because Rick Warren and the Saddleback Community Church in California really helped get Proposition 8 passed. Rick has great influence and he has a lot of wonderful people and it’s one of the largest churches in the country. I think they acted very lovingly, but very energetically to see Proposition 8 passed, and there is a lot of resentment from gay communities. It’s carried over to the inauguration on Tuesday because Barak Obama will be inaugurated as our 44th President of the United States and he will place his hand on the Holy Bible and he will recite that 35- word oath of office, but he’s asked Rick Warren to say the pastoral prayer and as gay communities across America have protested, he’s now asked a gay pastor to also participate in the ceremony. So, we understand the controversy that surrounds these things.
I want to say to you, and I know this to be a fact, that Rick Warren is a very loving guy, and Rick Warren doesn’t hate gay people. He loves gay people, he loves people, and he doesn’t want to see gay people suffer. He doesn’t want to see gay people assaulted or abused and certainly would stand firmly against any hate-crime. But he does believe in the sanctity of marriage, as it’s defined in the Bible and throughout history. I feel the same way. I have a sacramental view of marriage. I view marriage as instituted by God and regulated by his commandments. The Bible is so clear that God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman. In that sense, it’s not so much about homosexuality as it is about marriage and what we believe about marriage.
I wanted to see what Newsweek would do with this. I opened it up and I started to read the article and it was just a jaw-dropping experience for me: just incredulous at the argumentation, angry at times. Here they have a Bible on front, they are going to give the religious case for gay marriage, and basically all they do is attack the Bible because the Bible doesn’t support gay marriage. So, really their argument is this: we don’t follow what the Bible says about how to wear or cut our hair, and we don’t follow what the Bible says about animal blood sacrifice, so why in the world do we care what the Bible says about homosexuality? That’s Newsweek’s argument. I’m just amazed, first of all at the ignorance of the Bible, and furthermore, I don’t think it is ignorance. I think there is an agenda behind this.
Understand, New Testament and Christian scholars and for the most part Jewish Old Testament scholars, Torah scholars, would agree on this: you have two different kinds of law in the Bible (three, if you count civil law), ceremonial law and moral law and they are not the same. God gave the ceremonial law to the people of Israel as a chosen people, and he gave that ceremonial law for a specific purpose at a specific time. The ceremonial law included everything from ablution to purification rights, dietary restrictions and even things about hair regulations whether they simply have to do with male/female or Nazarite vows. Ceremonial law was given to the people of Israel and primarily for health and hygiene. God gave the ceremonial law to the Israelites for health and hygiene. It saved lives. The instruction in the Levitical dietary laws not to eat pork saved lives because at that time people could not prepare pork in a healthy way. Over time preparation of food has changed. You get to the New Testament and the Levitical dietary laws, and most Bible scholars would agree, the ceremonial law is repealed in the New Testament under Christ.
But this has nothing to do with the moral law. The moral law is still binding. The moral law is Old Testament and New Testament and represents an immutable God. So, the moral law is centered on the Decalogue. It’s centered on the Ten Commandments as found in Exodus and in Deuteronomy. The moral law is defined throughout the Torah and throughout the Old Testament, and then throughout the Sermon on the Mount and throughout the New Testament the moral law is clarified. Sexual conduct and all of God’s will regarding to our human sexuality is part of the moral law. It’s part of the moral law and it’s found all through the Old Testament and the New Testament, not just in the book of Leviticus. Now you come to Matthew 5, and you see our Lord Jesus Christ and he talks about the moral law. He says, “Do not think I have come to abolish the moral law, I have come to affirm it and to fulfill it. I promise you that not one jot or tittle of the moral law will ever pass away because God is immutable, and he does not change.”
So, you can understand how I as a pastor would be concerned when I look at stuff like this, and they confuse moral and ceremonial law and they don’t view the moral law with respect. Then they even confuse the moral law with blood sacrifice, animal sacrifice, not understanding the Bible at all. The sacrificial system was instrumented by God to show mankind the severity of sin in his sight. All of the sacrificial system pointed to the substitutionary atonement that would come at the cross. So, in the sacrificial system in Judaism, you have Yom Kippur, the high priests would go into the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle and then the temple, and he would sprinkle the blood of animals on the Mercy Seat on the Arc of the Covenant seeking to atone for the sin of the people. Then he would take the sin of the people symbolically and vest it on a scapegoat, send the goat out into the wilderness, symbolically removing the sin of the people from them. It was all about the seriousness of sin and a longing to find atonement for sin. Jesus came to fulfill all that. He is the fulfillment of the sacrificial system and gave his blood in sacrificial atonement for the sin of the whole world. He, in a sense, fulfilled Yom Kippur. The true Day of Atonement was that day at Calvary when he was nailed to that cross.
But that has nothing to do with the moral law except for the fact that we should take morality seriously because it required the death of Christ. What the Bible says about homosexuality simply represents an immutable God and how he views us. Now he loves us all. Whether you’re gay or whether you’re straight, God loves you. We are all called to compassion but understand biblically the Bible says homosexuality is a sin. You might not like that. You can’t change that. It’s part of the moral law. It’s Old Testament. It’s New Testament. It doesn’t mean that we should hate anybody. It doesn’t mean we should condemn anybody. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t love everybody. We’re all messed up. But the truth is the truth.
There is this agenda though. There’s this agenda in the secular media that often times involves a very anti-Christian agenda. I think ultimately, at bottom, it has to do with suffering. I shared with some of you how years ago I was a singles pastor. It was part of my responsibilities at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora, Colorado. When I worked with the singles group this young woman came to the singles group who was a graduate student at DU. She was brilliant and just a great gal. She was not a Christian; she made that very clear to us when she came to the singles group. “I’m not a Christian,” she said, “but I want to check out this Christianity and I want to check Christ out and check out the claims of Christ and see what I think.” So, she joined our groups. She was in our Bible study group and she went to our social times and she prayed with us and played with us. At the end of two years, many folks in the group had really grown to love her and I’m confident she also loved folks in the group.
But she came to me after two years and she just said, “I want to say goodbye. I’ve come to say goodbye. You’re not going to see me again.” She really looked teary-eyed. I said, “What’s going on?” She said, “Well, I told you when I came here, I was going to check out Christ, and I have and I’ve reached my conclusion.” I said, “What is it?” She said, “Well, I’ve decided that he is who he claims to be. I believe that. I believe he is the Son of God and I believe all that. These two years in the ministry here I’ve seen too much, heard too much, felt too much not to believe, and yet I reject Christ.” I said, “Help me understand.” She said, “I reject Christ because I’ve tried to be honest with myself and in the core of my heart, I know I want to run my own life. I don’t want anybody, I don’t even want Jesus, telling me how to live or how to run my life. I want to run my own life.” She left, and many years have passed and I’ve not seen her since.
But I’ll say this today; she was more honest than most people. I mean across this country and around the world there are millions and yes billions of people who just want to run their own lives, and they might not articulate it like that, and they might not even be honest with themselves, but that’s really their heart’s desire: to run their own life. They don’t want anybody telling them what to do. Spiritual things are ok as long as they don’t interfere with that agenda of running their own life. So, you can dabble in spiritualism or any kind of spiritual thing as long as it allows you to still run your own life. You don’t have to relinquish your life.
I think this is part of the agenda of radical secularism. I read this book the last couple of weeks I was out in the desert and read America’s Secular Challenge written by Herbert London who is head of the Hudson Institute and a brilliant guy. He talks about radical secularism and its agenda and how in radical secularism there’s this view of man that represents philosophical materialism. So, man is just matter. And that’s a view of man that’s very shallow and really does not compete in the world of ideas, but it is the view of radical secularism. It’s a tragic view of man: just a material view. With regard to the soul, with regard to spiritual things, in radical secularism, there’s this multiculturalism that’s expressed in relativism, and moral relativism, so that whatever your view of the soul is it’s ok, whatever view – they’re all equal. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the soul or not. They have an agenda and the agenda is to discredit Christianity, the Bible, any moral authority; that agenda allows the person then the free then to have self-reign and to do whatever they want to do in life. They have moral relativity. If you have moral relativity, it’s, “hey, your opinion is as good as anybody else’s opinion. Just do what you want.” They really have a strong desire to discredit the authority of Scripture. I think that’s going on in media distortion of the Bible.
Before we conclude, I have a second teaching and this has to do with Christian distortion of the Bible. I think it’s not just a secular media that distorts the message of the Bible and the message of Christ. I think in the Christian world many have distorted the message of Jesus and the message of the Bible, so I wanted to take just a few moments and look at this. First of all, there are Christians who have distorted the message of the Bible in terms of sotierology, in terms of salvation, in terms of sotieros; how are we saved? What does the Bible say about that? What does Jesus say about that? There are Christians who have distorted this. So, there are some Christians who think that we are saved through orthodoxy.
You know what orthodoxy is? It comes from “orthos,” which means right or correct, but orthodoxy has to do with right doctrine, right thinking. So, orthodoxy is a doctrinal summation of the truth. The ecclesiastical councils that met in the early centuries of Christendom tried to finalize orthodoxy and determine what is truth and what doctrines we hold. From the Council of Nicaea on you have these ecclesiastical councils trying to determine right thinking and right doctrine. Then you had creeds that developed that attempted to summarize core doctrines of orthodoxy. The Apostles Creed came maybe in the latter parts of the first century, certainly in the second century, and then the Nicaean Creed and so, on, many creeds, and then even confessional statements, which attempted in a longer and larger way to define orthodoxy.
I believe doctrine’s important. I am orthodox, not in the Greek or Russian sense in terms of denominations, but in the sense of theological orthodoxy, I am orthodox. I believe that the Ecclesiastical Cow1cils got it right. I believe that they summarized Scripture accurately. I believe that orthodoxy adequately defines the truth of Holy Scripture. But you see, I don’t believe that orthodoxy is the means of salvation. There are some Christians out there that actually teach that if you just think right, you’re saved. If you can sign this creed, you’re saved. If you can sign that creed, you are saved. It’s all orthodoxy, so that right doctrines save you. I don’t believe that. There are people who have right doctrine. There are people who are orthodox, and they don’t even love anybody including Christ. There are people who love Christ and have felt his touch, but they are not completely orthodox. I think when we get to Heaven there’s going to be some surprises. I don’t think everybody in Heaven is just going to be orthodox. Having said that I am orthodox, I believe doctrine is important, I just don’t believe that’s the means of salvation.
There are other people in the Christian world who believe you are saved by “orthopraxy,” from “praxis,” which means action or act or behavior: so right or correct behavior. Right or correct action can save you: orthopraxy. You see some Christians teaching that. I was raised in some fundamentalism and in fundamentalism, that’s how you are saved, at least that’s part of how you are saved. So, you have this long list of things you’re not to do. All the loving things you should do were rarely mentioned, but the long list of things you shouldn’t do that was all there. And if you didn’t do any of those things, if you kept your nose clean and didn’t do any of those things, someday the door would be open for you at the gates of Heaven. You are saved by orthopraxy, and when you look at the religions of the world you see tons of this because the religions of the world generally teach that you are saved by good works. I’m just saying to you that’s not the message of the Bible. We’re saved for good works, but we’re not saved by good works.
So, how are we saved? What does the Bible tell us about how we’re saved? The Bible is clear. We are saved by Jesus. We are saved by Jesus when we come to him and trust him as Lord and Savior. We’re not saved by our righteousness. We’re saved by his righteousness. We’re not saved by our sacrifice. We’re saved by his sacrifice. When you come to Jesus and you come to the cross and you embrace him knowing yourself to be a sinner, and you accept his sacrifice, his substitutionary atonement and you receive him as Lord, in that moment you are saved. And that is the beginning of an incredible journey that never ends. It’s a journey of friendship and a journey that includes the Heavenly Cause. It’s a journey that involves sanctification and growth. But we’re saved, you see, by Jesus. That’s why Jesus said, “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” That’s why the Bible says there’s no other name under Heaven given amongst man whereby we may be saved. Jesus. So, Jesus saves and Jesus alone saves.
As I’ve said before, that’s not PC, but understand Jesus died for everybody. He died for the sin of the Earth, the whole world, not just for me or you, for everybody. You have I John 2:1. “He is the expiation for our sins, but not for our sins only. Also, for the sins of the whole world.” He died for the whole world and he can save whoever he wants. We don’t judge anybody. I’m not up here to judge anybody. Hopefully you’re not out there judging people. He died for the sin of the whole world. He can save whoever he wants. We’re not condemning people, but we know this: we know the Gospel. If we believe in him, if we receive him as Lord and Savior, he saves us. He is the means of salvation. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”
You all know Oprah. I’m not up here to attack Oprah. She believes, as she says, in love and compassion and generosity, but you see, she is a syncretist, and she is a pluralist, and I want you to understand how that undermines the biblical message and how that undermines the Gospel. If you are a syncretist and a pluralist, and you believe there are many paths to God, and all kinds of roads to Heaven, you don’t even need the Great Commission. You don’t need to obey Jesus Christ. He said, “Go into all the world and make disciples,” but you don’t have to do that because there are many roads to God and many paths to Heaven. Jesus said, “You shall be my witnesses.” Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” You throw it all out if you buy into syncretism and pluralism. The tragedy is even in the Christian and in the community of churches. There are some in the mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations that have bought into pluralism and syncretism and say there are many roads to God and many paths to Heaven. It’s distortion of the Bible and distortion of the message of Jesus himself, and it’s happening even within the Christian world.
Before we quit, I wanted to say just a little something about the distortion that is taking place in the Christian world ecclesiastically, in terms of the mission of the church and in terms of the mission of the ecclesias. What is the mission of the church on Earth? The Bible is pretty clear, but sometimes that clarity of Scripture is being distorted. I think most of you understand that in the Bible the mission of the church, at least in part, is to take the Gospel to the nations. We see that in the passage of Scripture we had for today where Jesus said, “This Gospel of the kingdom must be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, all ethnicities, all people groups, and then the end will come.” You have this commission to take the Gospel to the world and that’s part of our mission on Earth, the mission of the Church of Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, there are some who think, “Well, in order to fulfill that mission, we’ve got to be popular.” I hope you understand the Bible nowhere says that the Church of Jesus Christ says that the Church of Jesus Christ is going to be popular. The Bible nowhere says that Christians are going to be popular. In fact, the Bible says the opposite. If you want to be popular, you’re going to start accommodating the culture. You’re going to start giving up passages of Scripture and you’re going to start compromising the truth, if you want to be popular in this world. So, what did Jesus say? Jesus said, “You will be delivered up to tribulation and they will kill you. And you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.” That’s what Jesus said. “Behold I send you forth as sheep: lambs in the midst of wolves.” Jesus wasn’t always popular.
Out in the desert I read these other two books, Quitting Church and UnChristian. UnChristian is a great book written by Kinnaman who is part of the Barna Research Institute and it explains how the non-Christian world views Christians. The tone of the book is we need to change because non-Christians don’t like us. This book Quitting Church by Duin basically talks about people who have left the church, or who are leaving the church, across America. Again, the message is obviously the church is doing something wrong and I would not deny that. We’re all messed up and that’s true of us as individuals and certainly that’s true of the church collectively. Churches make mistakes. Certainly, we need to be humble.
But you see, churches were never meant to be popular. I hope you understand that. Christians were not meant to be popular. I was reading John 6 just 2 weeks ago, and in John 6 Jesus is talking to the multitudes and his rhetoric is tough and his call is hard, and so, he is challenging the multitudes and they reject him. The Bible tells us in John 6 the multitudes left him and they rejected him and that even amongst his broader core of disciples, they began to reject him. They turned from him and they walked away. They left him and no longer followed him, it says. But then Jesus turned to the 12 of his inner circle and he said, “Will you also leave me?” They said, “No, Lord. Your words are the words of life. Where else would we go?”
But I was thinking, you know the seminars and the conferences and retreats I’ve been at where they say if you’re losing people, you’re doing something wrong. I guess they’d be saying to Jesus, “You need to take a look at what you’re doing wrong. You need to take a look there at what you’re doing wrong. You’ve got some people walking away. You better take another look at what you are saying.” But you see, that’s not the Bible. The Gospel isn’t a popularity contest. Churches and ministries are not meant to be some kind of a popularity contest. The Bible says that in the last days many will depart from the faith. This is prophesied giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. The Bible says that in the last days the time is coming people will no longer endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own liking and they will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myth. So, this is all prophesied and it’s happening in our time. I just don’t want you to be duped, not by the secular media and not even by borderline apostasy within the Christian community.
I do also want to say as we quit that part of our mission as a church is to love people. I don’t know whether that will always make us popular, but I think sometimes it will. Part of our mission as a church is to love people, and to show compassion for people. One of the things I loved about UnChristian, and one of the things I loved about Quitting Church, is these books call Christians to compassion and we need to be people of compassion. As I was out in the desert with Barb, Barb’s sister and her husband have a home out there in Andalucia in La Quinta and they invited us to come for breakfast at their clubhouse at Andalucia one morning. So, we got up about a half-hour before breakfast and we were rushed. I brushed my teeth and I shaved and I didn’t have time to shower, so I just put a hat on to cover up my bedhead. I put this golf cap on and we took off to the clubhouse and we met Barb’s sister and her husband.
I got in there to have breakfast and the waiter comes up to me and says, “Sir, no hats allowed in here. This is Andalucia. We don’t allow hats.” I said, “Well, it’s a golf hat and this is a golf resort, and this isn’t dinner, this is breakfast.” He’s like, “yeah, no hats.” So, my brother-in-law said, “Well, go in the bathroom. There is a real nice bathroom and I think there are some combs in there, maybe you can comb your hair.” So, I go in there and there are no combs, but I take some water to kind just rub through my hair. I come back out and I’ve still got my hat on because I know it didn’t look good. So, they said, “Take your hat off,” I take my hat off and they tell me to put it back on. I looked like I’d had my fingers in an electrical outlet all night. My hair is just way out there.
But the hat that I was wearing is a Lazarian hat and it says Lazarian right across the front. And what is Lazarian? It’s a Christian ministry that is just based in compassion. Lazarian builds homes in the emerging world for impoverished people. They build these homes out of Styrofoam and they are very affordable. The Styrofoam is shaped like Legos and you can just piece the blocks together and build the outer walls and the inner walls, and Lazarian Homes will put in the slab and they’ll even connect it to electrical and plumbing, and they pay for the materials. They just like church groups to come help them build the homes. We went with the Lazarian people and we looked in the desert in Pachela Valley at a kind of squalor. This area called Duroville where this Indian named Duro was given by the American government 40 acres, as many Native American Indians were. He was given 40 acres and he decided to make money off the 40 acres and he recruited Mexican Indians, folks from Mexico, to come up and live on his 40 acres. He provided them with trailers 60 years old, many of which had to be patched up and boards put on and stuff, and then took money from them. He became kind of a slumlord.
He developed a slum with 3,000 agricultural workers, sometimes in certain times of the year 5,000 agricultural workers, all living in this slum with little dirt roads. There are 800 dogs on the 40 acres, 300 have been neutered. The others are all breeding. You wouldn’t believe the poverty. So, we walked the streets and we looked at everything. It’s so sad. And these are like migrant workers. They work the fields and come back and they have nothing. There are 10 people to a trailer, but see with Lazarian homes, we could replace each trailer throughout Duroville and build a little home. How cool would that be? Along with Gene and our missions department, because we’re having trouble going to Mexico because of the crime down there in the Juarez area, we’re looking for alternative places to send teams from our church and help the poor.
What’s so important, please don’t sign up for this yet because we don’t have it all in place, and you’re all so great, you jump on it. But we want to be people of compassion, right? The Gospel is empowered by compassionate people, and the Holy Spirit anoints us and uses us, so our call as a church is not simply to take the Gospel to the nations, to take Jesus to the nations, but to love people with the love of Jesus, whoever they are and wherever they are.
We need to close in prayer, but I do just want to encourage you to be strong in the faith, contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, be faithful unto death, God is immutable. God is love, but he’s immutable. Don’t be fooled by media distortion of Scripture, or even borderline apostasy within the church. Be faithful. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.