Decay of the Christian Church
The Flaming Sword Newsletter
By John Torell
January 2002
During the year 2001 God gave me two subjects on which to preach. First, that “HARMONY WITH GOD BRINGS TOTAL HEALING TO THE PHYSICAL BODY” and secondly “UNDERSTANDING THE KINGDOM OF GOD,” a total of 52 messages. The second series is still going and will probably last throughout 2002. I have covered the five books of Moses and we are currently in the book of Revelation.
As I have to dig deeply into the Bible to present this message, one thing has been crystallized in my mind, and that is the greatness of God in His eternal glory and the pettiness in mankind who for the last 7,000 years has been doing the same thing over and over again: trying to become wealthy and powerful on this earth, enjoying as many earthly pleasures as possible, and waging war to achieve these goals.
Political systems come and go, rulers come and go but the eternal values of God endure from generation to generation. There will always be wars on this planet, there is always going to be a struggle for power. Rulers are going to talk about just causes for waging war, which is a cover up for the naked truth, keeping the standard of living as high as possible and controlling as much territory as possible until Jesus comes back.
What really matters is for each person on this earth to make peace with God through Jesus Christ, repent and be born again and receive eternal life in heaven once we die. All the great empires in the past boasted about A JUST CAUSE to wage war, in order to preserve that particular empire. Young men were sacrificed on the many battle fields, while the political rulers lived in luxury, fulfilling every lustful desire coming from their hearts. The Babylonian empire, the Hittite, Persian, the Greek, the Roman, these lasted from a short time to more than 1,000 years. But today they are buried in history, the people are dead and most of them are in hell, their riches and glory vanished.
Napoleon dreamed of ruling the world with all people speaking French, England tried to build an empire second to none, and for awhile the boast in London was that the sun never set on the British Empire. Now the sun has gone down for the British. Joseph Stalin planned to conquer the whole world; today the Soviet Union is no more and Stalin himself is burning in hell. Adolf Hitler was going to build the 1000 year Reich which lasted twelve years and was vaporized in fire and smoke.
As Christians, we must take care that we do not get caught up in current political events, regardless of how high the pitch. As we head down for a final showdown with evil, which will take place under the reign of the Antichrist, let us focus on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and do what He has told us to do, evangelize and reach one person at a time for the Lord Jesus Christ and get them saved for eternity.
Let me use this newsletter to comment on different events which are unfolding before our eyes at this time.
THE DECAYING OF FORMER STRONG DENOMINATIONS
A good friend of this ministry, Robert Manly in California, just wrote me a letter and told me that he and some of his friends had no choice but to leave the Southern Baptist Church where they have been members for a number of years. Here is what he wrote:
“My church is being Pastored by a man that subscribes to the new cult of the Southern Baptist Convention and several of us are leaving looking for a new home.” He then sent a clipping that explained what this new “cult” is. The headline of this report is “LIBERAL BAPTISTS CALL FOR NEW PARTNERSHIP, CELEBRATE MOTHER GOD.”
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) was formed in 1991 by liberal Southern Baptists, and they have just held their 10-year anniversary in Atlanta, Georgia. At this convention there were many speakers, but the most well known was the former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter. Mr. Carter proposed to the delegates at the convention that a new alliance should be formed to cooperate on social issues.
Currently The Baptist General Convention of Texas, the Baptist General Association of Virginia and Baptists Committed have joined the CBF in discussion concerning the new alliance. Jimmy Carter was hoping that the European Baptist Federation and the American Baptist Churches USA would also join the talks.
Mr. Carter sharply attacked those conservative Baptists who are attempting to take a stand against homosexuality and women pastors. Here is a direct quote from his speech, reported in Baptist Press, June 2, 2001:
“The complexities and details and arguments about political intrigue and control and women deacons or women pastors or homosexuality, those things in God’s eyes fade into relative insignificance, as did circumcision in the first few days of the church.”
The damage by Jimmy Carter is great. He is a friendly, easy going person, doing a lot of social work, like building housing for the poor and feeding the hungry around the world. Thus, he is perceived by people in the world as a nice, warm friendly human being and when he is spewing out the apostasy teaching from the pit of hell, people will accept it. People do not listen to evil men, so the Devil knows how to package his lies to a gullible group of people.
The three-day event also featured a worship service sponsored by Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM), an auxiliary group of the CBF and an annual Baptist Women in Ministry breakfast. During the worship service participants worshiped God as “mother” and eliminated the references to God as “Lord” and “King.” (Baptist Press, 6/2/01)
In Religion Today, July 2, 2001, the breakfast sponsored by BWIM was written up in a feature story, and I am quoting the following from this article:
“The annual Baptist Women in Ministry breakfast reflected feminist God language, culminating in a litany (a written prayer, in which the pastor reads a portion and the congregation reads a response) read by BWIM members about their discomfort at calling God ‘Father, Lord and King.’ During a litany, the participants chanted in unison that they can say the words Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit, no problem. God the Father is an altogether different story. . . .
“BWIM treasurer Sally Burgess told the crowd she believed more Southern Baptist women would be ordained to the pastorate ‘because I believe God is good and She knows what She’s doing.’ Speakers also referred to the Trinity as ‘Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,’ language promoted by various feminist theologians in mainline Protestant denominations to replace the ‘patriarchal language of ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’”
FROM WHERE COMES SUCH A BLASPHEMOUS TEACHING?
People familiar with the Jewish Cabala immediately identify this teaching. The Cabala has divided up their god into three parts, the male, the female and the messiah essence, the latter being reincarnated in every century. This diabolic teaching is in total harmony with the old pagan worship of Cybele, the great mother of all the gods, dating back to the time before the flood, when 200 fallen angels had taken up residence on Mount Hermon, located in what is today called Syria. It also fits into the teaching of the queen of heaven, that goes all the way back to Babylon and Semiramis.1
The Devil duped the Greeks, and they placed the gods they worshiped on mount Olympus. In Greece he was known as Zeus with a host of female gods, all birthed by Cybele. The Vikings called him Oden and called the home of the gods Valhalla.
This garbage teaching would have been impossible to get into fundamental Christian churches as long as the Bible (the King James Bible in the English speaking world) was held in high esteem and ministers upheld God’s Word and preached repentance from sin, the blood of Jesus in the atonement for salvation, the necessity for being born again, and then living a holy consecrated life.
To get control over the ministers in the United States, the Devil could not take out the generation that was in the pulpits. So he decided to go after all divinity schools, and destroy the curriculum. Through the Order of Skull and Bones in the 19th century, university after university fell under the control of Satan, first Yale, then Princeton and all the rest of the Ivy League schools.
Around 1900 this hell crop of new divinity graduates began to fan out all over America and the fight had begun. D.L. Moody, his right hand man, R.A. Torrey, Billy Sunday, and many others fought it hard. They called for prayer meetings and held revival meetings and up through World War II Satan was unable to break through the lines of God’s people.2
But by the end of the 1950’s, almost all seminaries of all American denominations had been taken over by the hell crop of professors, which had been produced at the Ivy League schools. And once they were in control, the destruction of future pastors began.
When I was called into the ministry on April 16, 1967, my pastor (a staunch Bible believing conservative fundamentalist Southern Baptist preacher), told me something strange. “John, you need to go to seminary to learn a few things, but when you graduate, throw away all the books they will have you buy.” I did not understand this, but once I came to the seminary, it did not take me more than one day to know what he was talking about.
MY INTRODUCTION TO HIGHER LEARNING IN THE SEMINARY
I will never forget the introduction meeting held on September, 1969 at the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, California. Being 30 years old at that time, I was one of the older students enrolling. The professor who spoke at this orientation meeting did not mince any words. He began at once to say this “Students, this is not a camp meeting where your faith in God is going to be built up, rather this is an academic institution where we are going to teach you academic truth as written down by men. In order to maintain your personal faith in God and in Christ, it is up to you to handle that through personal devotion time.”
There were about 100 men beginning their studies that fall, and probably most of us were in shock at what we heard. But it was going to get worse. As the classes began, the destruction of our faith began. All the professors at the seminary had at one time or another held the position of pastor for a Southern Baptist Church, but their zeal for the Lord had long ago vanished and they had developed into a proud group of intellectuals, bragging about their doctor’s degrees and the graduate work at some Ivy League divinity school.
THE BIBLE DESTROYED
The professor in charge of Old Testament Studies told us that we should not rely upon the written books making up the Old Testament as being genuine. Instead we were taught and given books which stated that Moses never wrote the five books of Moses, but this was written down by different scribes who were trying to put together some oral traditions.
The prophet Isaiah never wrote a book, instead that book is the work of at least three disciples who, after his death, tried to put things together as they happened to remember them. The book of Daniel was a forgery, written some 100 years before Christ by some Jewish freedom fighters trying to rally the people against the Romans.
In other words, don’t preach from the Old Testament saying “thus says the Lord,” instead glean some principles and make it into a mild philosophy which could help people in their daily lives. Don’t talk to people about the miracles recorded in the Old Testament, they never happened, it was all fabricated in order to build the faith of the people of Israel.
For example, the professor told us that when the Israelites crossed over the Red Sea, the water was only a foot deep. Someone then remarked to the professor that God must have done a miracle when he drowned the entire army of Pharaoh in just a foot of water. The professor did not think that this was funny.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea uopn the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
And Jesus said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be damned.
And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
The book of Revelation was a despised book. Here was the spin on that book. The apostle John had been taken to the prison colony on the island of Patmos. He wanted to communicate with his church in Ephesus, and therefore he wrote the book of Revelation as an allegorical coded book, which had nothing to do with the future, and that he had not had a heavenly vision, he just tried to outsmart his Roman prison guards.
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life; and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
I was not a popular student with the professors, since I challenged them over and over again. Finally, one professor told me this: “I don’t care, John Torell, what you believe, but I demand that when you take the tests, you will answer according to the teaching criteria you have heard.” I told him that I would comply with that, as long as I could put in my rebuttal at the end of the test. He had no other choice than to accept it, and for the next three years that is what happened.
There were many students who dropped out of school and the ministry all together, totally disillusioned. Others became so angry that they left and just started a ministry of their own. Just before I started the seminary, a young student by the name of Arthur Blessit spent one year at Golden Gate, and then moved on to his world wide ministry without a degree.
One of my friends at the seminary was Robert Hymer, who later moved to the Los Angeles area and has become a strong fundamentalist preacher, defending the Bible and the works of God. But most of the students became brainwashed and went on to become pastors and missionaries, toeing the line and not making any waves. Thus, the Devil was successful.
The seminary had become a “factory” turning out “social engineers” who did not know the power of God, nor could they point lost people to a loving God who wants to interact with people. We were taught to send people to doctors and psychiatrists and if things became very bad, refer them to a mental institution. During my second year at the seminary I took a class as an intern counselor at the Napa State Mental Hospital.
A number of the staff did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, and the belief system of the professors went from almost being an agnostic to a humanistic faith in Jesus as preaching a social gospel, but void of any redemptive power.
Also during my second year, a young man working in the administration at the seminary became suicidal on a weekend. Since he and his wife were attending the same Southern Baptist Church in San Rafael and they were about our age, we had become good friends. That Sunday morning in church his wife came with tears and told me that her husband had locked himself in the bathroom and was going to kill himself.
As soon as the service was over, we rushed over to their apartment and were able to talk him into coming out and speaking with me. I realized that the man was infested with demons, and that afternoon I did what Jesus did when he was here on earth, I cast out the demons of the man and he became like a new person. We then prayed for his wife who had asthma and cast the demons out of her. She was set free and healed from her asthma. For a number of years they had tried to start a family, but were told they could not have any children. In one year she gave birth to their first child, and then to one more. Of course the man could not report his healing to his supervisors, but all the people on the staff knew that he no longer needed the psychiatrist to whom he had been sent.
This man moved on in the Southern Baptist Convention and later on became a top leader. But, in order to advance, he had to break all ties with my wife and me and not talk about what God had done in his life.
THE MORAL DESTRUCTION
Theology and Philosophy were two subjects which were required of all students. After the staff had supposedly destroyed our faith in the Bible as the Word of God, we were then introduced to what I call “THE GERMAN GRAVE DIGGERS.” Instead of studying the life work of men like the apostle Paul, John and Charles Wesley, Charles Finey, D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday and R. A. Torrey, we had to study the writings of men like George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834); Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889); Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) etc. Another very depressing person void of faith was the Danish religious thinker Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) .
We were introduced to what was known as “HIGHER CRITICISM“, developed by the German Johann G. Eichhorn (1752-1827) which cast doubt upon biblical text and caused the student to lose his faith in the reliability of the Bible. The German clergyman and former missionary Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) was held in high esteem by the professors. He was the leading so-called scholar to “demythologize” the New Testament. These are the men who destroyed Christianity in Europe.
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary was the dream of hard working Southern Baptist pastors, who had come out from the south and labored hard to establish Bible anchored churches in California. These were simple men, having faith in God and washed in the blood of Jesus Christ. They wanted to established a learning center, where young men could be trained to become future pastors. What they did not know was that the school would be stolen from them, and taken over by men with reprobate minds.
When I started at the seminary, there was a student attending from the Assemblies of God denomination. Since at that time the Assemblies of God did not have accredited schools which could offer a degree in divinity, many Assemblies of God future pastors would attend Southern Baptist Seminaries. Once this student graduated, he began pastoring Assemblies of God churches.
Eventually he ended up in the city of Roseville, California. But to my sorrow and surprise, I found out that the man had resigned from the church and instead had opened a counseling clinic which today is a money making enterprise. The man is using his training in psychology to work with people with emotional problems. There is no room for Jesus here, instead counseling and mind altering drugs are used on people who are hurting.
At the time of my stay at the seminary, there was a total of six seminaries run by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), all destroyed by the liberal agnostics. For the last 30 years these “preacher factories” have produced men of no faith, week and totally dependant upon worldly methods to run churches. Even men like Charles Stanley and Ed Young, among the best the SBC has today, if you listen to them, you will find that they are using new Bible translations and they are not stating, “THUS SAYS THE LORD!” Instead they are using the principles from the Bible to teach Christians how to believe and live.
The conditions I have described to you are not confined to the SBC. There is, to my knowledge, no evangelical or Pentecostal denomination in the United States today which has not had their theological schools perverted. The only well known school today, which is still adhering to the Bible, to my knowledge, is Bob Jones University. It has been criticized and ridiculed for many years. When candidate, George W. Bush, spoke at the school during his election campaign, the liberal perverts in the United States howled and forced Bush to say that he did not agree with the policies of the school. I am sure that there are small Christian education centers here and there in the United States, but most of them would not be accredited.
WHY DID I STAY AT THE SEMINARY AND GRADUATE?
There were many times when I wanted to leave the seminary, but God spoke to my heart to stay, to resist, rebuke but finish my classes. At that time I could not see why, but later I understood why God had me stay. First of all, my prior education was in mechanical engineering and I had worked for some six years in the civil engineering field so I did not know how to study and write term papers.
The unbelief that was spewed out against me in the classes forced me to dig deeper and deeper into the Bible, and instead of losing my faith, it grew by leaps and bounds. I learned to stand up to well educated agnostics with multiple doctor’s degrees without backing down and being intimidated. I devoured the subjects of church history, archaeology and missions.
By having to produce hundreds of term papers, I learned how to do research, find the facts, organize them and then present the result in written form which could be read by others. My wife and I learned to depend upon God, not man, for our earthly support and to know that God is and that He will never leave us nor forsake us. We were really sent into the den of lions, but God protected us from being devoured and killed spiritually.
However, I do not recommend any young person today, who is called by God into the ministry, to attend Bible colleges or seminaries unless you have a personal mandate from God Himself to go. Instead I have gone back to the old way practiced by the church as described in the book of Acts. Young people were trained directly under a senior pastor with hands on in the ministry, and in due time they would get their own church.
This is how the apostle Paul raised up Timothy, Titus and others. But you have to find a pastor and a church that is true to the Word of God and that has not compromised in doctrinal integrity.
A SPIRITUALLY DESTROYED GENERATION
What we must realize now is that the people in charge of politics, business, the medical field, churches, education, the court systems, the law enforcement agencies, all the military branches in the United States, banking, finances, real-estate, etc., were mostly born after 1937. They have been raised and educated after World War II and indoctrinated with liberal views, void of moral character as taught in the Bible.
The “hippies” or the “flower children” of the 1960’s and the drug infested rock and roll generation of the 1970’s are now politicians, military officers, judges, doctors, police officers, nurses etc. and they are now making their mark on American society. This is the Dr. Spock generation, raised on television and driven by one emotion, their own selfish egotistical desire to gratify their perverted cravings. If you really want to know how bad these people are, look at the former president, Bill Clinton, and his wife Hillary. They are not unique, they are representative of their generation.
These generations have moved the homosexuals out of the closet and made it a crime to label homosexuality as a sin. They are the ones spewing out the pornography and the filth over TV, the internet and in the movies. When you look at the so-called pop diva “Madonna” you will see “a glorified whore,” or the unashamed prostitute, Britney Spears. Michael Jackson was accused as a pedophile, but with his money he bought himself out of that. O. J. Simson hired a “dream team” of attorneys and got away with murder. The list is long and the decay is all around us. The bottom line is this, DON’T EXPECT DECENCY AND JUSTICE FROM A GENERATION THAT IS PERVERTED! THEY DON’T HAVE IT, THEY DON’T KNOW ANY BETTER.
ARE ALL THINGS LOST?
The answer to that is NO! In the midst of this dragon seed, God has a people and He is pulling lost people out of the cesspool and into His kingdom. Just like in the days of Elijah, there are men and women who have not bowed their knees to Baal.
And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?
And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.
And the Lord said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria:
And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room.
And it shall come to pass, that him that escapeth the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay: and him that escapeth from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay.
Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
Our children in our home church in Sacramento, Resurrection Life of Jesus Church, are precious and hungry to learn more of God, singing praises and worshiping the King of kings and Lord of lords. We have young men and women, totally sold out to God, who we are raising up as ministers and missionaries for the future. Jesus said, “Occupy until I come”, and that is exactly what we are doing here in this ministry. If you have not joined us yet, come and be part of us, regardless of where you live.
If you live too far from us, maybe in another state or nation, you can subscribe to our weekly services. We record our Sunday morning worship/testimony time and sermon on cassette and CD. Additionally, the sermon is made available on our website so you can listen and follow the sermon outline. We can pray with you over the telephone and you may contact us.
LET US MAKE YEAR 2002 TO BE A BANNER YEAR FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD!
THE DARKER IT GETS THE MORE WE CAN SHINE!
MARANATHA !
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