John Macarthur Sermons Unleashed...well soon!


For those who have not heard. It looks like GTY (Grace To You) the MacArthur Ministry has decided to open up the vault of sermons. There official statement....




What an opportunity for you to store of a wealth of information for Biblical Growth and discipleship. It is going to be such a blessing. Pass the word on. To go direct to GTY click here.


Also for those who have emailed and prayed for Jeff and I as we hit downtown Pontiac last night. I want to thank you for your prayers. The harvest is huge and the time is at hand. Although we did not get a chance to open air the reason was due to the fact we had so many one to ones the crowd was gone by time we were done. Be in prayer for those people that heard the Gospel and pray that we will continue the work and grow in boldness. To God be the Glory.

God Bless,

Ligonier Ministries Esv Bible




In honor of Reformation day (October 31st) Ligonier Ministries is giving there Reformation Study Bible away for a donation of any amount. What an awesome deal with a much anticipated version. If you remember anything about there deal on this Bible last year then you know it will go quick. Take advantage of this wonderful gift for your library. You can find out more here.

Two Years of Marriage and I got holes in my shoes.



I know, strange title and weird picture. Let me explain....

I got them on our wedding night as we traveled up to beautiful Traverse City on a weekend honeymoon. Well that did not go so great but was the best weekend of my life. We traveled about 5 hours to get there and arrived in town at about 9 p.m. and we were very tired and could not wait to get out of the van. Well I guess everyone else in the world on the first week of October decided to get rooms and the whole city was sold out!!!! AHHHHHHHHHH We are in the middle of nowhere and this is the only city anywhere around for hours. So we had to race other couples (who had the same problem) to a resort about 1.5 hours north. We arrived at about 1 a.m. and very tired and cranky and I think we took some snowmobile tracks or something to get there and in a conversion van (dont ask). Needless to say I remember waking up thinking.....I wonder where we ended up so I pulled the curtains away from the huge window and 4th floor patio I was taken back by the most amazing view I have yet to see. It was Northern Michigan, Torch Lake, and Fall colors as far as the eye can see. What made it more amazing was I was a married man. Not only a married man but I was married to the most beautiful women in the world. As that thought pounded on my heart and the sweet thoughts of our Gracious God who has shown me mercy time and time again it hit me....Where are the roads? All the sudden I realized it was trees as far as my eyes can see but not one road. "Where are we" in a panicked mind set. "How did we get here if there are no roads?" Well we went out of the building and to the parking lot and I was ok. We then when on a little tour and then headed back to Traverse City to stay the night there but all in all it was the most wonderful time of my life.

Two years later I have holes in my shoes, baby spit up on my shirts, day after day of running the kids to something, homework, two little ones crying for my wife at the same time and neither one wants me and I could not be more thankful for any of it. Holes in shoes to some means garbage. Holes in shoes to me means a marriage that is walking strong. Praise be to God.


Below are two pictures of the lake we woke up to after driving lost for almost two hours and in the pitch black of night......



Deeper Conference





I just wanted to pass along two snippets of great messages by some of our greatest preachers on American Soil. The first you can listen to it here. This is Ray Comfort talking on why we need to evangelize and how to vote your conscience. GREAT STUFF and very convicting if you are unsure of what moral decisions you should MAINLY consider when voting. We know politics wont change this nation and one man will not come in and change it all although the old political marketing schemes still work on unsuspecting Americans....We need change.... government bad..... neither candidate who promises this (which they both do) in of themselves can change this nation and make it brand new. We have a much bigger problem. People need Salvation and the hearts of men to go from God haters to God lovers. Our hope is not in the presidential race (although we need to vote how God would want us to) but our hope is in Jesus Christ and the preaching of the Cross.

In the words of John Macarthur...

We can't protect or expand the cause of Christ by human political and social activism, no matter how great or sincere the efforts. Ours is a spiritual battle waged against worldly ideologies and dogmas arrayed against God, and we achieve victory over them only with the weapon of Scripture. The apostle Paul writes: "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

God is not calling us to wage a culture war that would seek to transform our countries into "Christian nations."
God has above all else called the church to bring sinful people to salvation through Jesus Christ. Even as the apostle Paul described his mission to unbelievers, so it is the primary task of all Christians to reach out to the lost "to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me [Christ]" (Acts 26:18; cf. Ex. 19:6; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9). If we do not evangelize the lost and make disciples of new converts, nothing else we do for people--no matter how beneficial it seems--is of any eternal consequence. Whether a person is an atheist or a theist, a criminal or a model citizen, sexually promiscuous and perverse or strictly moral and virtuous, a greedy materialist or a gracious philanthropist--if he does not have a saving relationship to Christ, he is going to hell. It makes no difference if an unsaved person is for or against abortion, a political liberal or a conservative, a prostitute or a police officer, he will spend eternity apart from God unless he repents and believes the gospel.

The second message is by Paul Washer and it just slaps people around with major conviction. Me first. Listen by clicking here.

In Christ,

Ringing the Bell on Rob Bell



For those that don't know Rob Bell is an emergent pastor from Michigan and some have called him the next Billy Graham. He is respected widely among evangelicals as coming with a "new" twist on an old religion. He is making it "relevant" and "exciting" for a younger hip generation. Anyone who has been on the scene of Christianity for any amount of time has either came across his Nooma videos or his book "Velvet Elvis". The purpose of this blog is to do what so many others have done already. Explain to a younger more impressible group of evangelicals just what the gospel is and identifying bad teaching. I do this with a humble heart knowing I am talking to Pastors, youth pastors, lay leaders, elders and many others. I want to take journey into the teaching of Rob Bell and why it must be rejected by those "Commanded" to protect the sheep.

For a clear gospel link click here.

For the purpose of this blog and detecting heresy we have to start with what the gospel is NOT....

I just want to tackle the BIG baby food, obvious foundations for Christianity. Like Hell, The Bible, Salvation and touch on a few doctrines like the substitutionary atonement of Christ and universalism. These are the issues that those who are in the faith should be able to detect and call out those who deny them.

Lets take a look...

Rob Bell on the need for salvation.

Rob Bell:
“You can’t get enough points to get in with the Big Guy. You can’t do enough good deeds and then God will like you. One of the things the Spirit does is remind us that we belong. Period. Just exactly as we are. You are loved by God.”

Really Rob, how is that the Bible says things like God is angry with the wicked everyday? God will judge the world in righteousness? No murderer or liar or fornicator will enter the kingdom of Heaven. A man MUST be Born again to enter into Heaven. How Rob? If we are all loved by God just the way we are then why send Jesus? This is a flat out heresy line.


Rob Bell on the Bible's accuracy.

Rob Bell:
“The Bible is a collection of stories that teach us about what it looks like when God is at work through actual people. The Bible has the authority it does only because it contains stories about people interacting with the God who has all authority”
-Velvet Elvis, p.65

“…it wasn’t until the 300s that what we know as the sixty-six books of the Bible were actually agreed upon as the ‘Bible’. This is part of the problem with continually insisting that one of the absolutes of the Christian faith must be a belief that “Scripture alone” is our guide. It sounds nice, but it is not true. In reaction to abuses by the church, a group of believers during a time called the Reformation claimed that we only need the authority of the Bible. But the problem is that we got the Bible from the church voting on what the Bible even is. So when I affirm the Bible as God’s word, in the same breath I have to affirm that when those people voted, God was somehow present, guiding them to do what they did. When people say that all we need is the Bible, it is simply not true. In affirming the Bible as inspired, I also have to affirm the Spirit who I believe was inspiring those people to choose those books.”
-Velvet Elvis, p.68

[The Bible is a] “human product…rather than the product of divine fiat”

Wow, now the textual criticism and the historic agreement of the Bible is so elementary to any Bible believing seminary. For such a popular speaker to not only be able to actually explain how we Got the Bible we have today and how we can trust it but also to wash it away as just a book...just a human product. Rob, why believe any of it?

Rob Bell on Hell.
Come on this is an easy one.

”When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter–they are all hell on earth. Jesus’ desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What’s disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.”
- Velvet Elvis, p.148

“Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live, which story we choose to live in, which version of reality we trust. Ours or God’s.”
- Velvet Elvis, p.146

On the Fall:

“I can’t find one place in the teachings of Jesus, or the Bible for that matter, where we are to identify ourselves first and foremost as sinners. Now this doesn’t mean we don’t sin; that’s obvious. In the book of James it’s written like this: ‘We all stumble in many ways.’ Once again, the greatest truth of the story of Adam and Eve isn’t that it happened, but that it happens.”
- Velvet Elvis, p. 139

On “Ultimate Reality”:

“I don’t follow Jesus because I think Christianity is the best religion. I follow Jesus because he leads me into ultimate reality. He teaches me to live in tune with how reality is. When Jesus said, ‘No one comes to the Father except through me’, he was saying that his way, his words, his life is our connection to how things truly are at the deepest levels of existence. For Jesus then, the point of religion is to help us connect with ultimate reality, God.”
- Velvet Elvis p. 83

On the Nature of the Atonement:


“So this reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross he was reconciling ‘all things, in heaven and on earth, to God. This reality then isn’t something we make true about ourselves by doing something. It is already true. Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making.”
- Velvet Elvis p. 146

On the Virgin Birth:

“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?

But what if, as you study the origin of the word “virgin” you discover that the word “virgin” in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word “virgin” could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?”
-Velvet Elvis, p. 26

On Faith:

“Who does Peter lose faith in? Not Jesus; he is doing fine. Peter loses faith in himself. Peter loses faith that he can do what his rabbi is doing. If the rabbi calls you to be his disciple, then he believes that you can actually be like him. As we read the stories of Jesus’ life with his talmidim, his disciples, what do we find frustrates him to no end? When his disciples lose faith in themselves….. Notice how many places in the accounts of Jesus’ life he gets frustrated with his disciples. Because they are incapable? No, because of how capable they are. He sees what they could be and could do, and when they fall short it provokes him to no end. It isn’t their failure that’s the problem, it’s their greatness. They don’t realize what they are capable of….God has an amazingly high view of people. God believes that people are capable of amazing things. I’ve been told I need to believe in Jesus. Which is a good thing. But what I’m learning is that Jesus believes in me….God has faith in me.”
-Velvet Elvis, pp. 133-134


Let me end with a couple videos that show how heretical Nooma videos are. If you have played them to your church STOP. You are not examining the teaching with the BIBLE.



The Biblical Response


The Gospel...Unkind?




You be the Judge!!!!

John Macarthur




Great experience this past week at Woodside Bible Church in Troy. What made it so great is the preaching of the word by Bible Teacher and numero uno of living preachers/theologians was none other than John Macathur. He preached on the prodigal son and I promise it was like no sermon you have heard on the text. He managed to condense five messages worth of material into one sermon and it just blew my mind. It got me even more excited for hermeneutics and the exposition of the word. I am just so thankful to had heard it. I also had the honor of asking Dr Macathur a question during the service. And in the way that only Piper and Macarthur can do he took it back to the word, applied it, chewed it up and threw it back at me to were I think I got reprimanded or excommunicated or something. But seriously the question was on the impact of evangelism in ministry and his answer went right to it. Saying that everything "in" the church we will do better in heaven. The church is meant to strengthen believers and make there lives a living testimony for the gospel and to proclaim it in a lost a dying world. It was great.