Remnant Network - 6

Kopp Disclosure

(John 3:19-21)

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"The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever

trusts in the Lord is safe."

Solomon

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    A geezer within five years of me from either side came to see me to complain as only geezers within five years of me from either side can: "I don't like how you write on KD and I don't like how you write newsletter columns.  I don't like your books.  It's almost as if you're coming from another planet or something."

    Rejoinder: "Nanu. Nanu."

    Response: "Not everything is funny, Dr. Kopp, and if you think your writings are funny..."

    Rejoinder: "I'm not always trying to be funny; and some people just don't get my humor.  So be it."

    Response: "Why can't you write like me and other writers?"

    Rejoinder: "Aside from that sounding a tad narcissistic, I'm not you.  I like humor and metaphor and think of my style as Daliesque or Vonnegutian or..."

    Response: "You always talk about never selling many of your books; so maybe if you listened to people like me who don't like how you write..."

    Rejoinder: "Got me there, my three points and a poem, friend.  Really, you're right!  Obviously, I've never had a bestseller and, according to the last stats, I'm running about a trillion to one behind sales from those Joel and Ricky guys."

    Response: "You're not listening to me!"

    Rejoinder: "Au contraire!  I'm listening just fine; but I'm not agreeing with you on how I should write. Darlin', there's a difference between listening and agreeing.  I'm listening but not agreeing."

    Response: "You make up words and don't complete sentences and use fragments and..."

    Rejoinder: "Whoa!  You've really taken a lot of time to analyze me.  Are you sure there's not something else going on here?"

    Response: "I'm not getting anywhere with you."

    Rejoinder: "Actually, I'll think about all of this and..."

    Response: "I want you to change how you write for people like me.  You're my pastor and I expect you to do things like I want you to do them."

    Rejoinder: "Though the comparison is like a BB gun to heavy artillery, I recall Picasso saying he could paint like Raphael at 12; yet it took a long time before he could see deep enough to paint abstractly."

    Response: "This is useless."

    I took that to mean I am useless in her, uh, book.

    She left and I haven't seen her since.

    Get out Greg Holden's The Lost Boy!

    It's a song for Opie and...

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    That's a long introduction to mentioning Thomas Horn's recently released Blood on the Altar: The Coming War Between Christian vs. Christian.

    A local street preacher who was special ops in Vietnam and South America whose obsession is eschatology bought it for me because he said it has a lot about remnant in it.

    It does.

    It's also got a lotta funky stuff in it in a hyperbolically eschatological kinda way.

    Frankly, it's beyond me because my eschatology is pretty simple.

    Jesus came and will return and will win; and those who love Him will share in the eternal celebration despite some persecution along the way to victory.

    Moretheless, here are some quotes that caught my attention in a remnant-encouraging-consciousness-raising John 16:1-3 and Revelation 20:4 kinda way:

    "When you see prominent Christian authors being featured in the mainstream press and talking about Christianity and Islam serving the same god, you know that the battle is looming...[between religious Christians and Christians who love the Jesus of the Bible]..."

    "If a Christian calls homosexuality a sin or speaks negatively about Islamism, he is branded...as 'homophobic' or 'Islamaphobic'..."

    "If a judge can order an independent cake maker to go against her conscience to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, how long will it be before pastors are required to perform gay weddings or face criminal prosecution?"

    "J. Vernon McGee, one of the most beloved Bible teachers of the past century, surprised his listeners with the declaration that, in America, true biblical believers will ultimately have to go 'underground'...he added the observation that the attack against them will come from the denominational churches."

    "Today, giving a serviceman a Bible is illegal."

    "The basic tenets of the church are being rewritten...[by mainline denominations]...to placate fleshly desires."

    "The greatest threat to the remnant has been nominal Christians...[in mainline denominations]...who joined the new movement of the religious spirits in their nations!"

    "...Western culture has entered a post-Christian era.  As a result, the Christian church is deeply polarized...The dividing line is the authority of Scripture."

    "Instead of being Christ's missionaries to the lost world, mainline...[denominations]...are now...the world's missionaries to the church."

    "Even the outspoken antitheist Christopher Hitchens...[has]...a better understanding of Christianity than what most...mainline Christians express...[When Unitarian minister Marilyn Sewell said she was a liberal Christian who doesn't take the stories from the Bible literally, he said...]...'I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus...was the Christ and Messiah, and that He rose again from the dead and by His sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.'"

    "...[Mainline denominations are]...challenging and rejecting God's revealed understanding of moral right and wrong as much as the secular community."

    "...not all that is labeled 'Christian' actually is consistent with classical Christianity."

    Horn's book also mentions Francis Schaeffer's last book The Great Evangelical Disaster on several occasions; citing one of the most poignant purposes of the faithful remnant as antidote for the apostasies of mainline denominations: "Here is the great evangelical disaster - the failure...to stand for truth as truth.  There is only one word for this...accommodation...the church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age...As Bible-believing Christians, we come from a variety of backgrounds.  But in our moment of history, we need each other."

    Summarily, the faithful remnant as antidote to the apostasies looks up, stands up, speaks up, and acts up for Jesus by the book as supported by 2K years of confessional, traditional, historical, and common sense Christianity.

    In short, the faithful remnant declares.

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    The next KD will feature an example of one church's formal declaration as part of the faithful remnant.

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Blessings and Love!