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Our home is now at 2635 East 23 Street (between Voorhies Avenue & Avenue Z) located within Emmanuel Episcopal Church.
Greetings in Messiah to those of you visiting from Issues in Education from all of us here at Messiah's Ministries. We are currently developing a new website with many updated features including MP3 downloads, so be sure to visit us again soon! We are honored to serve in any way we are able, so please enjoy the many articles available here and if you have any questions, feel free to write or call Assistant to Pastor Steve, Mr. Craig Brann at craigbrann@messiahnyc.org or (917) 757-9297
WELCOME TO MESSIAH'S COVENANT COMMUNITY CHURCH
Greetings from Rev. Steve Schlissel, Senior Pastor of Messiah's Covenant Community Church in Brooklyn, New York and overseer of Messiah's Ministries. You are invited to join with us in divine worship each Lord's Day at 12:30pm. We meet at 2635 East 23 Street (between Voorhies Avenue & Avenue Z) within Emmanuel Episcopal Church. For more information about our order of worship, or any of Messiah's ministries, please call us at 917-757-9297 or e-mail MessiahNYC@aol.com. We look forward to meeting you soon. |
“The Covenant is God’s rescuing His people from that which would harm or destroy them; calling them and their children to live intimately with Him in faith, love and obedience, fearful of displeasing Him; lovingly with one another; distinct from, envied by and as a witness to the world; in humble expectation of receiving from Him, at His appointed time, everything He has promised-signed and sealed in blood-through His appointed Mediator.” - Pastor Steve Schlissel
For nearly thirty years, Rev. Steve Schlissel has been helping New York City churches (as well as churches around the country and the world) read the Old and New Testaments as one book. And in July, this Brooklyn native will be braving the wilds of rural Western Pennsylvania to share with the faithful Gentiles here his one-of-a-kind insights on the implications of God's covenant with His people.
If you prefer your Christianity light and sweet, and are determined to keep it that way, it would be best that you not come to this conference. Those whose greatest goal is to have Jesus spit them out of His mouth in disgust (Rev. 3:16) will find these lessons offensive and of no personal value. However, if you are living with the single hope of hearing, "Well done," you'd better not let anything keep you away. :: MORE DETAILS ::
50 Observations concerning Peaceful Secession Now
No effort is being exerted to list these in a careful or meaningful order.
1. A number of American Christians have awakened to Christ's legitimate claims in the political and social spheres. Unfortunately, this realization occurred long after it was needed for it to result in much good.
2. We are taught to pray, "Establish the work of our hands, O Lord." We have become a land which has notified all its citizens that the works of their hands may not, in any materially significant way, be said to belong to them, the people. Over the last nine years, the Retail Trade and Manufacturing sectors have lost about 5 million jobs. Government employment during the same period is up 1.7 million jobs. A little thinking will reveal some interesting realities. Manufacturing in the USA has long been forsaken, giving way in this sector to China and other New New World nations (no longer Third world). America has kept up the appearance of prosperity by an unwieldy dependence on the service sector. Much of the service portion of the economy is sinking (example: information sector lost three-quarters of a million gigs). The government in its entirety is properly in the service sector. Government produces nothing. Yet government is far and away the leading employer, and its edge is growing, pitifully dwarfing every other sector. What's more, while producing zilch in terms of widgets, etc., the government either owns or is buying or seeking to buy ownership interests in several of the remaining sectors. Health services, for example, is entirely shaped and driven by government programs, and no program of the next four years will amount to a blip in pulling back. On the contrary, the essential trend is toward complete and total government-owned health care. Similarly, in the last 6 months, the federal government has gone much further than to pretend to being a mere regulator of the finance sector--it is now THE shaper, shaker, mover and owner of the largest players in the once independent industry. This is not to speak of government control of every sphere of life, from education to transportation. When the Detroit/DC spitswap is done, Washington will even control the transportation we use to get to other transportation. The lesson that every claimant to sovereignty MUST move toward exhaustive control of ALL is becoming so painfully evident, pretty soon even college professors might realize it. All this to say, nothing is left that belongs, in any meaningful sense, to us. Everyone is herewith working for Uncle Sam, either directly or slightly indirectly. The American Experiment has concluded, ironically, on the tail of Communism's colossal failure. :: continue reading ::
Noteworthy observations from our friends in the
Canadian Reformed Churches
WHAT DRIVES THE AGENDA OF THE CHURCH: SCRIPTURE OR CULTURE?
J. Visscher
David F. Wells
Recently I was reading the newest book by David F. Wells called The Courage to Be Protestant. In it he made a number of statements that caught my eye about the relationship between Scripture and culture.
The first statement was this, “It is important to remember that culture does not give the church its agenda. All it gives the church is its context. The church’s belief and mission come from the Word of God…. It is not the culture that determines the church’s priorities. It is not the (post)modern culture that should be telling it what to think. The principle here is sola Scriptura, not sola cultura.” (p. 98)
The second statement came a little earlier in the book, and in it Wells comments on a book written by Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, The Churching Of America1776-1990. He writes, “But what Stark and Finke said was that the content of the faith, its doctrine, had in the past been vital to the success of Christian churches and not, as the seeker-sensitive imagine, an impediment to success. Specifically, they argued that churches that flourish exhibit a high degree of distinction from the culture, of cognitive dissonance….Churches that lose their distinction from the surrounding culture have failed and disappeared.” (pp. 55, 56)
Now, both of these statements made me think about what is happening in a lot of evangelical and reformed churches today. These churches are bending over backwards to the culture in which they live. They are convinced that in order to grow a church needs to be culturally adaptable and flexible. Hence they accommodate both some of their doctrines as well as their practices to what they assume will bring them in step with the surrounding culture and thus increase their curb appeal. :: continue reading :: |
DEFENDING THE FAITH TODAY (3)
F. G. Oosterhoff
Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Harper Collins, 2007. 222 pages.
Intellectual arguments cannot by themselves lead to a saving faith. That is the gift of the Holy Spirit alone. Intellectual arguments can, however, move an atheist to reconsider his beliefs and conclude that he may have been wrong. This happened to the English philosopher Antony Flew (1923), who for more than 50 years had been among the most influential twentieth-century atheistic philosophers. In 2004, however, at a conference in New York, he announced, to the horror of militant atheists worldwide, that he “now accepted the existence of a God.”
Although renouncing his atheism, Flew has not become a Christian. His religious pilgrimage, he says, has been a pilgrimage not of faith but of reason, “an exercise in what is traditionally called natural theology.” Taught by Socrates, he simply decided to “follow the argument wherever it leads.” In his case the argument, which was based on scientific evidence, led to belief in “a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient Being” – a Being that he says is similar to “the God of Aristotle” (who in turn can be compared to the God of deism).
But although Flew does not believe in the God of the Bible, he also does not deny the possibility of either his existence or his self-revelation. The book under review contains (in an Appendix) a dialogue between Flew and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright entitled “The Self-Revelation of God in Human History.” At the conclusion of this dialogue Flew states that he is “very much impressed with Bishop Wright’s approach,” even though he has not been fully convinced. But he does admit that divine revelation is not to be ruled out, since “you cannot limit the possibilities of omnipotence.” He is not sure, however. As he states elsewhere in the book, while some people claim to have made contact with the Divine Mind, he has not been able to do so – at least not yet. But he adds, “Who knows what could happen next?”
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