Christopher Hitchens Now Knows That God Is Great

My friend, Joshua Williamson, recently alerted me to the sad news that the famous staunch atheist Christopher Hitchens has died from cancer. What Josh said is worth repeating and a good reflection of the Christian worldview:

Sad news. Leading atheist Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62. He was the author of the book, "God is not great". Mr. Hitchen's now knows that God is indeed great. I hope that Christopher placed his trust in Christ before he died.

It is true that Christopher now knows that God is great beyond his comprehension. Christians led the way during Hitchens' battle with cancer praying for him and writing to him in pleading calls for repentance. Christopher was clearly taken aback by the compassion of Christians who had been the subject of his vitriolic scorn for many years. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair in September 2010:

These are my first raw reactions to being stricken. I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if — as my father invariably said — I am spared.

Ultimately none of us are spared from the ultimate statistic - that one out of one people die. I cannot take any moral high ground over Hitchens for all his years of fist shaking at God. I was no better - God's grace to me was unmerited favor so why should I pontificate? Like Josh, in the wake of Hitchens' death we can do nothing else but fly the flag of hope that God can save the worst of sinners at the latest of moments. Death bed conversions should not be treated as normative, nor should we plan on seeking God later in life after we have sown our wild oats. Romans 1 serves as a stern warning against those who persist in sin to the point of God "giving them over" to hearts so hardened that they, like Esau, cannot find repentance.

Spurgeon once preached to his congregation on why he believed the Bible contains only one death bed conversion - that being the thief on the cross. Spurgeon suggested that God only included one of these stories in the Bible to remind the complacent that it is very rare, and remind the hopeless that we are never without hope.

I do hope to see Christopher in heaven. God derives great glory from saving the worst of sinners. How do I know this? Because He saved me!

It's Time To Meet Your Stalker

My good friend Josh Williamson is a thundering open air preacher in Australia. One of his more prominent sermons concerned the recent statistical fact that everyone has a stalker. Now Paul Washer has revealed who he is . . .



Paul Washer tells us that he is very acquainted with death. The fact of the matter is that we will all become more and more familiar with it as every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every year rolls on - and you might not even have that long.

It is helpful to understand the major benefit of funerals. They can't do much for the guy in the box but they do remind us that our day is coming. Oh the futility of worldly carnal pursuits - they flee like dust through our fingers. Let us flee instead to the Lord Jesus Christ Who can never lie and is on record saying:

I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. (John 11:25b-26a)

Update From Australia

Warning: contains food references that may be meaningless to people who live outside Australia.

My family is now more than half way through our trek down under and it has been so great to escape the icy tundra of Scandinavia for the sub-tropical atmosphere of Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. It has also been a great blessing to have Grandma and Grandpa at arms length to play with the kids and spend time getting to know them better. One of the major challenges has been not to gore food that I have been deprived of for the last four years. I have spent my fair share of time thus far devouring Tim Tams, meat pies, musk sticks, Chico Babies, Fruit Tingles, Solo, Crunchie Bars, and all the other good stuff that Elvis would have eaten if he grew up in Australia. And it's great to eat cuts of meat carved straight off the side of a cow rather than one of those pathetic european sausages full of random animal parts from random animals.

Coming back after four years has also helped to give some much needed perspective on how beautiful this part of the world is - and it can all be viewed in a t-shirt for 12 months of the year (even though Denmark has great summers the other eleven months are problematic)! The kids have spent almost the entire first month here in the pool and it has been great to see the bare flesh on their arms and legs once again. Going outside of the house no longer requires the logistical planning equivalent to invading a small country (my wife always points out that I am a man who is highly prone to exaggeration - which is why I said "small country" ok)!

It has been exciting to catch up with many of my old friends and a whole stack of new ones who have tracked me down through my blog and youtube videos. Several preaching invitations have ensued and I have been more than willing to accept those offers (for those of you in Brisbane and South East Queensland who are interested, I will be preaching in Brisbane two times on Sunday May the 8th. Firstly at 9:30am at Hope Christian Church and at 6:00pm at Christian Witness Ministries Fellowship).

Another great thrill during this trip has been the opportunity to go out open air preaching again with my Bullhorn Guy Fraternity friends. And speaking of open air preachers, my arrival has coincided with the departure of my good friend Joshua Williamson from Operation 513. After many years of delivering pizzas so that he could buy tracts and get through Bible college, Josh has now taken up a full time pastoral position at a Reformed Baptist church in the provincial city of Goulburn. We are all going to miss Josh's big voice thundering down the main street of Brisbane but I am so thrilled that he will be able to provide for his young family and devote himself fully to the noble pursuit of preaching. It was great to see you off last weekend Josh. And I was not alone, I know that every lame sissy boy liberal pastor, college lecturer, and Baptist Union appeaser in Brisbane was also thrilled to see you leave town.

Many of the readers have heard about Josh when he has featured on Wretched Radio and TV. In commemoration of Brisbane's loss and Goulburn's gain, here are a couple of great videos from when Josh was featured with Todd Friel on Wretched TV during his last trip to the USA. They feature an open air sermon followed by an interview with Todd:





Miss you already Josh . . .

I Just Visited Hillsong Brisbane

Newtaste just commented on a recent post where I discussed some new information that had come to light regarding Hillsong's removal of a line from a Bible verse. Newtaste said that:

In the past few months, the invitation to accept Jesus and/or the prayer has included saying sorry for sinning, asking Jesus for forgiveness, turning away from sin and the reality of Hell. It is not at every Hillsong service, and it was lacking on Sunday night at Norwest, but the elements were there on Saturday night at Waterloo and have been at Norwest on previous Sunday nights. There has been a noticeable change at Hillsong, noticeable to me anyway.

Cameron, you may well have influenced the change, as it was at the end of a sermon by Joel A'Bell that I first noticed it. Who knows!! But it is probably time for you to move on to another topic.

Newtaste, I have two things to say in response to your comment:

1. I hope you are right, and

2. If you are right, then that information is taking a long time to filter into Hillsong's Brisbane campus.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends Josh Williamson and Heath from Perth decided it would be interesting to check out a Friday night service at Hillsong's Brisbane campus during my tour down under. It was a kind of surreal experience because it was the same place that I studied twelve years ago back in the day when it was Garden City AOG.

One of the first things I noticed was that they had assembled a very impressive rock band for their worship services (disclaimer - my assessment of musical prowess may only be quoted at the risk of your own personal credibility). The music was deafeningly loud and I am still undecided as to whether that is a revelation of their volume or my age (41 at last count).

The crunchy guitars (just trying to sound relevant ok) certainly did little to bury the lack of theological content in the songs as did the smoke machine (smoke machines were cool on Countdown in the 70's - another worthy nominee for my Lame Attempst At Relevance Series). But that was all par for the course as the night progressed. To my surprise the sermon started out surprisingly good with an excellent word study on the Greek word "Skandalon" (where the English word "scandal" comes from). I braced myself to eat my words. But here's the question - if you were to preach a sermon on scandals surrounding the life of Jesus, where would you finish that sermon? I would have thought it to be a no-brainer that it would have to culminate with the greatest scandal of all:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:21-23).

Instead, the sermon that night never ventured such lofty highest. In fact it stayed mired in the realm of moralistic stories until it closed with a tragic attempt at a gospel presentation which featured a denial of God's Sovereignty (perhaps unwitting), no mention of sin, no mention of judgment, no mention of the atoning work of Christ, and drumroll please - no mention of repentance. Newtaste, I see no reason to amend my assessment of the Gospel according to Hillsong.

Josh Williamson did try and speak with the preacher after the service but was rapidly brushed aside. Heath went up into the post service follow up room but nobody spoke to him. Like I said - par for the course!

When Hillsong Spin Doctors Contradict Each Other

Many readers would be aware of my pursuit of answers and accountability for some of the more disgraceful practices going on within the Fort Knox like environment of Hillsong church in Australia (and their many franchises throughout the world). The two major issues I took up with them last year revolved around their "Mighty to Save" CD and were as follows:

1. Their failure to preach repentance in their gospel presentation which was in direct conflict with their own doctrine statement. (http://myhillsong.com/what-we-believe)

2. The fact that they boldly displayed 2 Chronicles 7:14 on the back sleeve of the CD but deleted the line from the verse that says "and turn from their wicked ways".

In today's post I just want to focus on point 2 here regarding the "Hillsong adjusted Bible verse" and the conflicting excuses that have emanated from the Hillsong mothership because some more contradictory information has just come to light as you will read at the end of this post.

Here is what I said concerning this in my initial correspondence with Hillsong Church (you can read the entire post here):

I noticed on the back cover of the CD liner notes a quotation of 2 Chronicles 7:14 which says:

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

By checking in my Bible I found this verse to be incomplete and is missing the words in bold print:

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Can you explain to me why you deleted the line from that verse that speaks specifically about repentance? I hope you agree that it is very serious indeed to add to or delete information from sacred Scripture.

Robert Fergusson, who is Hillsong's theological top dog, wrote back but would not even give a reason for the deleted line from the Bible verse. He dealt with it by just ignoring that particular issue altogether. As an interesting aside, I was informed just last week by a former Hillsong volunteer worker that Robert Fergusson's academic credential is a degree in Zoology which probably explains a lot, including why Brian Houston deemed him the right man to oversee the theological soundness of the Hillsong empire (my correspondence with Robert Fergusson can be read here).

I then took up the issue of the "Hillsong adjusted Bible verse" with Joel A'Bell who is Hillsong's executive pastor in Sydney. This is what he had to say on the subject (pay particular attention to how alarmed he was by this revelation):

I'm sorry that certain sentences were left off some of the creative liners of that album. I can assure you it was not intentional as it is very obvious what we believe.

(My correspondence with Joel A'Bell can be read here).

Glen from New Zealand decided to write and got this response from Paul Aylett who is the customer service manager at Hillsong Music:

Thank you for your email to Hillsong Music.

We at Hillsong also honour the Word of God. Please see this excerpt from our Statement of Belief,

"We believe that the Bible is God's Word. It is accurate, authoritative and applicable to our everyday lives."

The intent was to represent the Scripture within the parameters provided. A close examination of the verse will reveal that the words ‘I will hear’ has also been removed to allow for the verse to meet the allocation available on the jacket.

Please understand our heart in this matter.

When Glen pressed the issue further due to the previous unsatisfactory answer he got this response:

Hi Glen,

Thank you for your reply.

At Hillsong we place the highest importance on Scripture as previously stated, and in no way are we devaluing Scripture.

Once again, thank you for your feedback.

Regards, Paul Aylett

Three questions/comments immediately spring to mind as I read this dialogue:

1. It is true that "The intent was to represent the Scripture within the parameters provided", if by that they mean that they were using an incomplete Bible verse for an incomplete gospel.

2. How exactly does editing Bible verses to meet the requirements of your own "parameters" reflect that "in no way are we devaluing Scripture"? Putting Scripture at the feet of your own agenda is Scripture devaluation of the highest order.

3. Is this correspondence evidence that repentance is not only absent from their gospel presentation, but also absent from the Hillsong culture?

Well, as I am currently visiting Australia, my good friend and open air preacher Josh Williamson informed me that he had also had some correspondence with Hillsong on this very issue after reading my blog. And lo and behold, he received a new excuse that contradicts the other ones thus far. Helen Tam, another customer service manager at Hillsong Music, had this to say:

In regards to the album Insert for Mighty To Save, at the time of print the purpose of the album insert was to emphasize that we need to call out to God, while it was read over and we spent a lot of time making sure details were covered, unfortunately this part was overlooked. The verse  should be complete, however due to this album been widespread it’s become an irreversible error.

So, are there any readers who would like to try and join the dots on this one? One thing I would appreciate is if more people would write to Hillsong and protest their disgraceful behavior.