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Visit right now and see for yourself.
The South African elections of 2009 are almost at its end. Citizens voted on 22 April, and the IEC has announced that the final results will be made available at 17:00 today.
What has so far transpired is surprising and at the same time not surprising. What is surprising is that the ANC almost got the ⅔ majority it was hoping for. By late yesterday, the ANC had around 66.8%. However, with more voting districts reporting in, the ANC has now slipped by a fraction down to 65.9%. This is according to the results from the Independent Electoral Commission at 15:32 today. These results most likely are the final results.
What has surprised many Christians, especially those involved with Christian political parties such as the ACDP and the CDA, is the absolute dismal performance of these parties in these elections. The ACDP, at this point, has only 0.81% of the national vote. That is half, percentage wise (1.6%), of what they had in 2004 at the last national elections. In physical votes, the ACDP is still 108,000 votes short of the 250,272 they made in 2004.
If we look at the 1.6% of 2004, and we extrapolate to the number of voters this year (so far counted) at more than 2,000,000 more, then the ACDP should have had 281,794 votes in these elections if they simply held their ground. Which of course means that the ACDP is 139,136 votes from breaking even. But, I suppose, this can be expected when party leaders make statements way before the elections to the effect that the ANC would not get 50% of the vote! How did he think he knew that? When Christian politicians make baseless statements like that, how can the electorate take their political parties seriously?
The ACDP and the CDA for that matter, must be very saddened by the results of these elections. The reasons for this result must be myriad, but I am more and more convinced that of the millions so-called Christians in this country, a majority are Christians in name only! The ballot papers don't lie! "They speak with forked tongue!" On the one hand they say that this and that and the next thing are morally wrong, and then promptly vote for parties that stand exactly for those moral sins. But, this must be left for another post.
One thing that is forgotten by Christians in times like these is that God is sovereign over this earth and his plans and decrees will stand. Not voters, nor the ANC, run this country! God remains on His throne, and He still is the ultimately sovereign ruler over all the earth!
Did these election results catch God off guard? Not in the least! God "made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. (Ac 17:26)" The ANC, and indeed the nation of South Africa will exist only as long as God determined. God "makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away. (Job 12:23)"
"(10) The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. (11) The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. (Psa 33:10-11)"
We must not forget, God used a donkey to speak to Balaam. He also used the evil king Cyrus to release the Israelites from their bondage. Surely, if the Lord used a donkey and the evil king Cyrus, He could still use Jacob Zuma to accomplish His purposes? Whether the ANC believes it will rule forever or not, at the appointed time, God will bring the ANC and its evil to a very abrupt end. Only God's counsel will stand!
All of this makes me think of when Moses went to speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Who will dispute that God was sovereign during the saga of the exodus from Egypt? During the rounds of Moses' "negotiations" with Pharaoh, this Egyptian did not want the Israelites to go. Hey, that would cause economic collapse, and what do you know, the Egyptians would then have to do all their work themselves!
Now, why is it that Pharaoh did not want to let the Israelites go? God hardened Pharaoh's heart! Several times the Bible tells us that God hardened Pharaoh's or the Egyptians' hearts (Ex 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:20; 14:4, 17). It is quite startling that God accomplished His work by hardening the heart of the Egyptians.
God was sovereign then, and He is sovereign now. We must not think for one moment that God is no longer on His throne. Evil may not be ultimately destroyed today, or even tomorrow, but in the end there can only be one, and that is Jesus Christ!
We must not think for a moment that an election in which so many people, some professing to be Christians, would vote for evil, can derail God and that He no longer cares. In God's eternal decree, He is busy working out His plans that will lead to the end of time and this world as we know it!
We must NOT rely on politics and be amazed when politics fail! Only Jesus Christ stands true, and His rule has no end!
"(11) Then I saw heaven opened, and behold,
a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and
True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. (12) His
eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems,
and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. (13) He is
clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called
is The Word of God. (14) And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine
linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. (15)
From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down
the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will
tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the
Almighty. (16) On his robe and on his thigh he has a
name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
(Rev 19:11-16)"
Wazzat? will become a journey of the weird, amazing and sometimes unexplained. It will contain humour, serious bits, and well, all kinds of bits.It happens so often that pastors and churches want to be so relevant in society that they completely disregard the teachings of the Bible. In the end, the gospel is thrown on the dung heap of relevancy, and as a result thousands are left to fend for themselves on a very slippery slope on the wide road leading to hell.
"(13) Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. (14) For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." (Mat 7:13-14)
The problem with that search for relevancy, as Rick Warren is so eagerly searching after, is that it actively attempts to widen the narrow gate that leads to life.
The problem with this scenario is that it is not the narrow gate that is really being widened (since that is an impossibility), but the way from the hard road that leads to the narrow gate of life is lost. Instead of finding this road again, the road that leads to the wide gate of destruction is found.
This seems to be the road that Rick Warren has chosen. Only time will tell!
On Larry King Live this past Monday, Rick Warren, on the issue of Prop. 8 (which changed the California constitution to say that marriage is between one man and one woman), said:
"During the whole Proposition 8 thing, I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement, never -- never once even gave an endorsement in the two years Prop. 8 was going."
However, just weeks before the 2008 U.S. elections, Rick Warren said the following:
"The election's coming just in a couple of weeks, and I hope you're praying about your vote. One of the propositions, of course, that I want to mention is Proposition 8, which is the proposition that had to be instituted because the courts threw out the will of the people. And a court of four guys actually voted to change a definition of marriage that has been going for 5,000 years.
"Now let me say this really clearly: we support Proposition 8 -- and if you believe what the Bible says about marriage, you need to support Proposition 8. I never support a candidate, but on moral issues I come out very clear."
This last quote stands in clear contrast to what he said on Larry King Live, which makes Rick Warren a liar. It is impossible for him to have forgotten what he had said on such an important issue just five months ago.
What is the meaning of this?
Does Warren so badly want to curry the favour of the ungodly that he would be willing to lie on national, no, international television?
You can read the whole story at Rick Warren disavows support for Prop. 8.
Update:
During Hitler's time, Christians rose up everywhere in disagreement with Hitler.
Will your pastor address the issues of the day and take a decisive stand against growing evil in society?
Or is he spineless? Like these:
"A group of Christians -- including one activist who tried to shut down some newspaper stands in the neighborhood that sold porn to minors -- wanted to warn a large church in central San Diego of the dangers of pornography in their neighborhood. Upon approaching the anti-porn activists one Sunday morning, church officials started to become hostile when they asked the activists to leave the public sidewalks outside the church. They didn't like the presence of anyone distributing literature to their congregants. Yet all that the anti-porn activists wanted to do was warn members about what was happening near their church."
Read James Lambert's "The silent, spineless clergy."
The church is currently standing on the edge of a precipice, and in spite of the dangers it faces, it still listens to teachers of false doctrines and heretics, as if they are brothers of the gospel.
The church has indeed lost its core beliefs, and indeed does not believe that they are that important. If the church believed that its core doctrines were really important, it would have stood its ground against the heretics and false teachers of our day.
James McDonald tackles McLaren in a blog post:
"I do not view Brian as an ‘erring weaker brother,’ worthy of sympathy or olive branches, but rather as a dangerous false teacher who repackages mainline liberal theology. (Have the past 50 years not been adequate to see how liberal theology empties churches and damns souls?)
"More dangerous still is that McLaren packages his false teaching and denials of Scripture as solutions to some of the excesses currently plaguing evangelicalism—the danger being his winning over of young people who have legitimate complaints about the current church, but who lack the discernment to see that his solutions are often unbiblical even when his critiques are fair."
Read McDonald's post, "The Public Rebuke of False Teachers."
Mark Johnston, the Senior Minister of Grove Chapel in Camberwell, London, has just completed a series of articles on the Apostle's Creed:
Creeds are important to the church. Creeds solidifies in our hearts and minds what we believe, and it protects us from false teachings and heresy.
Indeed, creeds are needed in the church today more than ever before!
