Billy Graham has passed away.
I suspect that Andy Stanley will now be the one who “directs society” rightly or wrongly, about Christianity.
He has recently preached a series of sermons on why people have likely rejected or turned away from Christianity and/or God, but that those versions or beliefs about God, were inaccurate and asks: who told you that? (I wish I could remember the name of this series or how it was worded/titled. Gods of the NO Testament?? Not sure.) But I couldn’t help thinking that people turned away from those things because they heard them in Church, for years, and their lives turned out differently from what they heard. It’s the churches who very likely who told them. Most of the public hasn’t gone to Seminary.
It seems to me as if Andy Stanley is laying groundwork on TV to criticize what has “gone before” in churches and getting ready for some sort of “re-set” as to what the public will be taught. People should be watchful to see where all this goes.
I’ve also heard that Andy has had arguments or disagreements with his dad, Charles Stanley and I think Andy himself has admitted that he likes to read DE-conversion stories (about people who have left the faith). I cant help wondering if sometime in the next few years that he himself may decide he no longer believes anymore. That may not happen. Whether it does or doesn’t is a separate matter.
The main thing with him right now looks to me to be about him trying to convince people that the Christianity folks have left over the last 30 or 40 years wasn’t the “Real” Christianity, and I’m curious to see how he will “define” it all and how he might make it appealing today to get people back into Church, as the numbers are significantly down.
.The sad part is too many people don’t read their New Testaments enough to call him on some of his teachings and challenge or refute him.
Example: will he say that Homosexuality is wrong, as it says, strongly, in the last half of ROMANS, Chapter 1 ?
Example 2: does he preach “Once saved, always saved?”, that you can’t lose your salvation? I believe that is a false doctrine, whoever teaches it. It ignores other clear teaching about “Apostasy”, and falling away, and falling-from-grace, and backsliding.
Where is any preacher on TV on the Daystar television network who will say Homosexuality is a sin? Either they wont, or they will poo-poo it with: welllll, it is, but then so is lying, stealing, lust, etc. That may be true, but you can tell they are really letting it slide. Or, they’ll simply accuse you of “legalism” which is really just a tactic to get you to shut up. These days church attendance is down in the USA. I wonder what tactics will be used to get the public to become Christians and get them back into church? Joel Osteen is wrong. Rock music and blue jeans has been tried. Hyper-Grace and over-emphasizing “love” has been tried. Beware of falsehoods. Where will it go from here?
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