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Truth in Conviction offers insights related to politics, religion and social happenings in the US and worldwide. The columns' philosophical base is conservative. Regarding
religion, it is evangelical. Concerning social matters, it is grounded in biblical ethics.
Swank has BA and MDiv degrees with graduate work at Harvard Divinity School. Married for 49 years with 3 adult children. Author of several books and thousands of articles in various Protestant and Catholic magazines, journals, web sites, and newspapers. Writer of weekly religion column for PORTLAND PRESS HERALD newspaper, Portland ME. |
Mon Feb 15, 2010
MY TRUTH-TELL SCARES NAZNET
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
I scared NazNet. NazNet shut me down so that I cannot access NazNet via my server.
Why did NazNet shut me out?
Truth.
NazNet has got by with deceit for so long that NazNet’s founder Dave McClung and staffers Scott Cundiff and Hans Deventer along with former staffer Barbara Moulton thought their lie-trail could go on forever.
It has not. Their trail has been exposed as heretical. NAZNET DISTORTS at http://naznetdistorts.blogspot.com/ has set forth in detail the outrageous anti-Bible claims on NazNet.
That scares McClung in particular. He has ingratiated himself as a politician among ecclesiastical politicians throughout the Church of the Nazarene. He is also wealthy as a businessman. McClung believed that he then could get by with his heretical web site without discipline.
In truth, McClung as a cyberspace Pied Piper was creating an Internet “church” in competition with the Church of the Nazarene. That gave McClung some sort of jollies kick, evidently.
However, I am not a part of any political network in the denomination. I don’t believe in that kind of egocentric opportunism for it opposes the Christian ethic.
Therefore, I exposed heresies on NazNet and so cut through the NazNet heretical deceit trail.
For instance, NAZNET DISTORTS reports on such NazNet heresies as these:
The unsaved do not go to hell when they die. They are annihilated. A loving God would not permit eternal punishment for the damned though Jesus stated such. This is per Hans Deventer in particular. Cundiff agrees.
The unsaved go into an “intermediate state,” the details not defined on NazNet but defended by moderator Hans Deventer. Question: how does an intermediate state, such as believed by Roman Catholics, mesh with Dementer’s annihilation of the wicked at death?
Deventer is a master at such contradictions. They do not bother him. He spins contradictions on one point on NazNet and then spins others elsewhere on the web site. That is no problem to Deventer as he cavalierly weaves his so-called theological yarns as biblical truth.
Further heresies: The souls of all mortals hopefully will go to heaven, none going to hell. Deventer says that he hopes God believes in universal salvation, that is, that all souls end up in eternal bliss, none excepted. That is nowhere found in the Bible; however, Deventer created his own doctrines contrary to the Word of God.
Again, how does universal salvation mesh with an intermediate state upon death and the annihilation of the wicked? Obviously, none of this poses problematic to Deventer, the end-of-the-line when it comes to theological certainty.
More heresies: The Bible is fallible. It has mistakes in it. It has errors throughout its pages. Deventer states boldly that he does not believe the Bible, except for Jesus passages that provide salvation. In other words, Deventer wants heaven when he dies and so he wants Jesus as Savior; all else can be dismissed.
Regarding suspicions about the Bible, who can believe in a literal flood in Noah’s day in which scores of humans were drowned under the directive of God? What kind of loving God could see that through?
Further, who can have faith in a believable God instructing Israelites to wipe out pagan peoples? That must not be accepted as historical. Therefore, it must be folklore.
Cundiff accents especially that the more one researches Scripture, the less one knows anything about God. So don’t study the Bible over a lifetime for it will lead you to a fading God. Deventer concurs.
The more one reads on NazNet the dictates of Deventer and Cundiff, the more one realizes they are more Unitarian than Nazarene. McClung counters none of this theological liberalism on his own site.
NazNet moderator Deventer also champions infant baptism throughout the Church of the Nazarene. Nowhere in the Bible is an infant baptized; yet Deventer presses for it to be embraced globally.
The emergent church’s infantile glob with no moral absolutes believed in is enthusiastically embraced by NazNet moderators Deventer and Cundiff, thereby countenanced by founder McClung.
For more heresies, click onto NAZNET DISTORTS at http://naznetdistorts.blogspot.com/
NazNet does not want any more heresies uncovered. Therefore, NazNet is afraid of me and my truth-telling. Consequently, my server has been shut down from a bridge build to NazNet, as if I cannot get access elsewhere.
The bottom line is evident: NazNet is frightened of my truthful investigative quest to expose NazNet as a prime enemy to the Church of the Nazarene. McClung states his site as a “friend” to the Nazarenes; but the facts prove otherwise.
I have stayed true to the facts on NazNet. I have cut through NazNet’s deceit. NazNet cannot tolerate any further exposures and therefore, playing the coward, NazNet has shut me out.
NazNet is afraid of me.
But it won’t work. I will continue to investigate and report the truth.
Read YES, YOU CAN BELIEVE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT GOD at http://www.michnews.com/J_Grant_Swank_Jr/jgs021010.shtml
OBAMA: WHEN BLACK IS NOT RACIST
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
I am not racist.
My wife and I adopted a black baby when he was 2 l/2 months old. We gave him my name. We have loved him dearly.
In the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, we ministered in a black community, lived in the black pastor’s parsonage, worshiped in his black church and thoroughly enjoyed making friends of black parishioners.
We were reared in homes where prejudice was not. In other words, our parents were not biased. We never picked up on bias. And so we grew into adulthood being colorblind. We were most fortunate in that respect.
Therefore, when I now refer to black people, it is not with prejudice. It is reality.
Black Marxist Muslim Barack Hussein Obama was swooned into office by countless blacks because he is black. Blacks fawned him, cried over him, stroked him and lauded him as the new messiah.
Many whites who are against prejudicial treatment of any peoples were more than in favor of a black becoming President. Therefore, add those figures to the blacks-for-Obama voters and you have quite a mob.
However, by now we should understand that electing any mortal into a public office should never be because of his skin color. Never.
We have a black man in the Oval Office who is totally inept. That is not because he is black. It is because he does not know how to be President. He was never qualified. His shallowness now blats in our faces every morning upon awakening.
I don’t know of many Americans who now proudly tout Obama as President because he is black. I think his color has basically disappeared as a qualifying reason for him sitting in the White House.
It should have been just that when he ran for the office.
Black as his color should have meant nothing. Yet the Oprahs of the nation colorscaped the entire country with color and more color. It was a loyalty thing for black people to adore and vote for the black man from Illinois.
Was he qualified? That did not make any difference. He was black.
By now America should certainly wise up to the logic that skin color be shunted. It’s not the all-in-all for casting a ballot in favor of anyone.
PRESIDENTS’ DAY & THEN THERE IS OBAMA
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
Marxist Muslim Barack Hussein Obama has brought such confusion and depression to the title “United States President” that celebrating Presidents’ Day leaves one in a quandary.
How can we really sit back to contemplate the high office of U.S. President while knowing that the chief enemy of America sits in the Oval Office? It is such a sad and dangerous dilemma.
Yet how to rid the White House of this horrific mistake. He sits there with his czar shadow government, profiling dictatorship images while grabbing executive privileges for everything his heart desires.
He bypasses legitimate channels, ignoring the Congress now cracked via Senator Scott Brown’s vote and marches forward to behead the nation.
Presidents’ Day should be a time to honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln’s natal days in February. However, now even the term “President” conjures up our drudged present tense.
Obama in his first year-plus has done nothing commendable for this country. Nothing.
Instead, he has lied repeatedly. He has broken promise after promise. He has followed through with his loyal-Islamic code, otherwise known politically correctly as his “ideology.”
Yet a nation of millions wakes up captive to this anti-white, anti-Jew despot every morning. When we go to sleep at night, we pray that when awakening the nightmare will be gone. But he is still there.
Further, Michelle talks to Barbara Walters about her amazing husband. Of course Walters smiles throughout for she along with her liberal moral relativists cannot think reality.
The liberal ethical relativists along with mob hysteriacs swooned this Illinois, Nation of Islam child onto Pennsylvania Avenue. And now the intelligent citizenry is stuck with the worst irony our history will ever have to endure: a Muslim cultist so soon after 9/11.
ADDENDUM: THINKING OF PAST PRESIDENTS COMMENDABLE
President George Washington wrote a prayer addressed to “O most glorious God, in Jesus Christ” and ended it with this: “Let me live according to those holy rules which thou hast this day prescribed in Thy Holy Word. Direct me to the true object, Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Bless O Lord all the people of this land.”
President Thomas Jefferson: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis — a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
President Andrew Jackson: “I nightly offer up my prayers to the throne of grace for the health and safety of you all, and that we ought all to rely with confidence on the promise of our dear Redeemer, and give Him our hearts. This is all He requires and all that we can do, and if we sincerely do this, we are sure of salvation through His atonement.”
Patrick Henry: “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, property, and freedom of worship here.”
President Abraham Lincoln: “The ways of God are mysterious and profound beyond all comprehension. ‘Who by searching can find Him out?’ God only knows the issue of this business. He has destroyed nations from the map of history for their sins. Nevertheless, my hopes prevail generally above my fears for our Republic. The times are dark, the spirits of ruin are abroad in all their power, and the mercy of God alone can save us.”
President Grover Cleveland: “All must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christ results in the purist patriotism, in the most scrupulous fidelity to public trust, and in the best type of citizenship.”
President Woodrow Wilson: “America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scriptures.”
President Dwight Eisenhower: “Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Begin is the first — the most basic — expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus With God’s help, it will continue to be.”
NAZNET PASTOR SCOTT CUNDIFF’S ‘DOUBLE-LIFE’ EXPOSED
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
To read the Alvin, Texas Church of the Nazarene web site, one would conclude that Pastor Scott Cundiff ministered in the old-fashioned Nazarene way.
Cundiff states on the site that he cares for his people in the “classic gospel southern style.” His services and daily devotional offerings are characterized in that fashion as well. In other words, to belong to Cundiff’s church family is like being “down home holiness” folk.
“Classic gospel southern style” would convey that Cundiff’s preaching focused on inviting worshipers to be saved. Then he would preach sermons on believers being sanctified. All this is standard in that holiness denomination since its inception in 1908.
Cundiff’s sermons would be based solidly on the Bible as the trustworthy Word of God; that is, if one believed his “classic gospel southern style” of sermon preparation and delivery. The Bible would be considered the Word of God—entirely, without doubt.
One would then assume that Cundiff’s exegesis of Scripture would be carefully focusing on holy writ as divine revelation—no question. That’s the “Nazarene way.” The Bible is God’s infallible, inspired communication.
After all, is not God capable of providing a revelation that is perfect? If God is God, then His Book is without error.
John 17:17: “Sanctify them through Your truth. Your Word is truth.”
However, Cundiff has lived a theological double life now exposed to his South Texas District colleagues and the General Superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene.
Also, this exposure has been communicated to his NazNet colleagues for Cundiff is one of founder Dave McClung’s long-time moderators on NazNet. However, these NazNet colleagues have known of Cundiff’s double life all along for they are a part of it.
While giving the impression to his Bible belt congregation that he is an honest biblically faithful preacher, Cundiff espouses disbelief in the Bible on NazNet. He is joined by fellow moderator Hans Deventer from the Netherlands. Both of these NazNet staffers are permitted their heresy push by McClung—over years. NazNet is in fact a prime enemy to the Church of the Nazarene.
Cundiff and Deventer have posted often on NazNet their conclusion that the Bible is laden with errors. Deventer goes so far as to state that he does not believe in the Bible, except for passages related to Jesus. After all, believing the sections about Jesus provide Deventer with salvation and heaven. The rest of the Book can be discarded.
Cundiff holds basically to the same.
Cundiff witnesses on his church site to being a trustworthy biblical preacher and teacher. But in fact on NazNet he is a cavalier theological liberal who shunts the Bible as a take-it or leave-it. In truth, on NazNet Cundiff comes across as being more Unitarian than Nazarene.
Note this on NazNet as posted by moderator Scott Cundiff:
“In a devotional I dealt with the command given by God to wipe out entire people groups as part of the occupation of Canaan. Writing from a devotional point of view my take away is that there’s that about God, an ‘otherness’ that is beyond us and that passages like that are reminders of that fact.
“Van de Beek is right. No matter how hard one tries, it is impossible to reconcile the many commands to kill enemies in the Old Testament with the commands to love our enemies in the New.
“Even more difficult is the portrait painted of God as a violent and genocidal child killer in the Old Testament (Noah’s flood, the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the slaughter of the Canaanites and Amalekites), and in Christ the lover of children in the New.
“Van de Beek admits as much. He confesses that ‘The more one wants to let all of Scripture speak for itself . . . the more unclear the Bible becomes. The more we believe that the whole Word is revelation, the less we know who God is.’”
Read that again: “’The more we believe that the whole Word is revelation, the less we know who God is.’” That is provided by Cundiff on NazNet, the latter allowed by NazNet founder McClung.
To the above quotes, Deventer exclaimed his ecstatic approval related to Cundiff’s skepticism concerning the Bible’s trustworthiness.
So there you have it: NazNet moderator Cundiff believes that the more we research the Bible, the “less we know who God is.” At the same time, Cundiff plays “holiness, Bible-believing” preacher to his Texas worshipers.
With all this deception, McClung repeatedly states on NazNet that his web site is a “friend” to the Church of the Nazarene.
Not so.
Read more about Cundiff at NAZNET: STUDY BIBLE, WATCH GOD FADE at http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5187366-naznet-study-bible-watch-god-fade
Read still more about NazNet heresies at NAZNET DISTORTS at http://naznetdistorts.blogspot.com/
Read “Yes, you can believe in the Old Testament God” at http://www.michnews.com/J_Grant_Swank_Jr/jgs021010.shtml
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