The spiritual confusion of the ecumenical movement was evident in a statement from the recent Mighty Men Conference in Nashville. The event featured American Idol’s Scotty McCreery, country rocker Charlie Daniels, and “drumming sensation” Stikyard.* The conferences were founded by Pentecostal evangelist Angus Buchan in 2004 in South Africa. In America they are organized by Pentecostal pastor G. Allen Jackson of World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They are similar to Promise Keepers events, featuring messages geared for men mixed with a large dose of ecumenicism, permeated with charismatic kingdom-building heresy, and fueled by contemporary worship. Jackson says, “Music is a big dynamic in the way we make worshiping God authentic. The [music artists], who have a heart and their own inspiration meshed right into the music, are another asset of this ... event” (“Mighty Men Conference USA’s first time in Nashville,” PRNewswire, Nov. 17, 2013). To think that authentic worship is created by borrowing the world’s sensual party music is spiritual insanity and biblical heresy. God taught us the essence of true worship through the Old Testament Tabernacle, and it was to include no element of the world. Everything was to be done in accordance with God’s Word with no admixture of human thinking and pragmatism. Everything was sacred. The holy oil and incense were not like anything in this world. The sincerity of the worshiper does not make unscriptural worship acceptable to God. This was evident when God killed Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire (Lev. 10:1-3) and Uzzah for merely steadying the ark with his hand (2 Sam. 6:6-7). (* Stikyard’s rendition of “Nothing But the Blood” is on YouTube. For a generation addicted to rock & roll, Stikyard’s pulsating, near trance-inducing percussion is glorious, but in my estimation, the mixture of godly lyrics with such a worldly sound and presentation is blasphemous. It’s like an actor reciting the third chapter of John in a clown’s suit. The message is negated by the presentation.) (Friday Church News Notes, December 6, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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