Mike Ratliff makes some interesting observations about the Visible Evangelical Church in this Post.
However, all that God had taught me through that massive intervention was still working through me and I could not be comfortable with the man-centeredness and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism being handed out there, even though I didn’t know exactly what to call it at that time. However, God did and when the Pastor there tried to do an end-run and bring in the Purpose Driven paradigm, I knew what that was and tried to resist it, failed, and left. That was in 2006.
Works righteousness is insidious and has invaded and polluted so much of what most people think of as Evangelicalism. Those who are in bondage to that may believe their sanctification is really up to them, and their continual failures at it keep them in despair because of that, but we are obligated to tell all who will hear that that is not the message for Christian sanctification found in the New Testament. As long as God allows me to tell the truth about this to his people, I will and I pray for all the captives to be free and those leaders who misunderstand God’s Word about these doctrines to surrender to the truth and then preach it.
2006 was about the time I was maturing in my understanding of the faith. Leaving behind some of the Ways and Practices and Behaviors I was finding in the Church also.
