Rose42

After reading Mark Galli's editorial about Trump I found it left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because Trump is a sinner but the way he wrote it. So I looked him up. What I found made me angry. This isn't Christianity. This article is from 2010.


--snip

All of this leads us to Christianity Today's senior managing editor, Mark Galli, and his article of July 15, 2010, titled "Divine Drama Queen," which is his characterization of the God of the Bible. We've reprinted here extensive excerpts of CT's God-demeaning/man-exalting article (albeit reluctantly, due to its wicked content) as further evidence of this "evangelical" magazine's continuing slither into the last days' apostasy. What Galli has written is CT's latest installment of corrupting the faith, generated from decades of undermining the Word of God and distorting the God of the Bible. Editor Galli makes this so obvious that what he writes needs few comments on my part. Nevertheless, his writing is in italics, and my words appear in brackets and regular type:

I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming.

When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting.

Take his conversation with Hosea....He orders Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife; she becomes a symbol of Israel's unfaithfulness to God. This is no down-on-her-luck-but-with-a-heart-of-gold prostitute like those so often portrayed in movies. This is some sleazy woman who, even when given a chance at a decent life, keeps "whoring."

God then tells Hosea to have children with this woman. When the children are born, he tells Hosea to call the first Jezreel, explaining, "I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel." The second, God calls No Mercy, because "I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all." The third he calls Not My People, "for you are not my people, and I am not your God" (Hosea:1:1-9
).

This God is like the volatile Italian woman who, upon discovering her husband's unfaithfulness, yells and throws dishes, refuses to sleep in the same bed, and doesn't speak to him for 40 days and 40 nights.

(I refrained from drawing conclusions up to this point on my first reading of this article because I suspected that Galli would indicate his own misunderstanding of God. I guessed wrong. This is the kind of blasphemy that one would expect from militant atheists and humanists, such as Richard Dawkins, or foul-mouthed, Christ-mocking comedians like Bill Maher. It is total blasphemy—a mischaracterization of God as well as a denigration of His perfectly holy character.)

We may think this a crude depiction, except that Jesus—God with us—seems to suffer the same emotional imbalance. He rants about Pharisees and Scribes—or "snakes" and "hypocrites," as he calls them. So upset is he over sacrilege in the Temple, he overturns tables and drives people out with a whip. And then we find him lamenting, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate!"(Matthew:23:37-38
). This God knows nothing about being a non-anxious presence. This is a very anxious God, indeed.

(It's difficult to restrain anger here. The Creator of the universe, the sacrificial Lamb of God, who paid the full penalty for our sins, and His Father, who sent Him to the Cross for our sake--they suffer from "emotional imbalance"?! They—whose Word tells us to be anxious for nothing—they are anxious?)

I'd rather have a God who takes sin in stride. Why can't he relax and recognize that to err is human. I mean, you don't find us flawed humans freaking out about one another's sins. You don't see us wrathful, indignant, and pouting. Why can't God almighty just chill out and realize we're just human?

(Has the reader been manipulated by Galli into fleshing out his own similar thoughts about God? Will he now set the record straight?)

It's that little phrase, "we're just human," that may be the rub with God. Sin seems to be a big deal to God because apparently we're a big deal to him. That little phrase, "we're just human," signals that we may not be as big a deal to ourselves....(God) believes that to be human is to be destined for glory. As Peter put it, he has "called us to his own glory and excellence," that we "may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter:1:3-4
).

(So much for repenting of the character assassination of God the Father and God the Son. Instead, Galli panders to mankind's self-image, dangling before us the "glory" of humanity. He then leads the reader to the next step, self-deification—the same lie that Satan offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis:3:5
).)

That's right: he (God) thinks "just humans" can become nothing less than gods. Not in the sense of beings who should be worshipped, but beings who have become, in the fullest sense, bearers of the image and likeness of their Creator....He created beings with deep awareness of themselves and their Creator, who could envision the absolute heights they could scale and the perfect love they could enjoy, and who knew they could have all this forever and ever....

(Nowhere in Scripture do you find the word "god" (with a lowercase "g" ) ever used to denote a righteous person or entity.)

...And yet God gambled. He has thrown everything into this grand enterprise. He made the creation of these beings not a matter of course or compromise, but a matter of life or death. Everything was on the line with this roll of the dice. To win meant for these creatures a bliss that only God knows. To lose meant death and eternal destruction. There was no holding back. God was going to make human glory a winner-take-all proposition, even if it killed him.

(God gambled? Does he mean that God doesn't know how things will turn out? This is the heresy of Open Theism, which denies God's omniscience—denies that He is the God of prophecy as He proclaimed in Isaiah:46:9-10
: "Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done....")

So when things start going south, we find him throwing dishes and slamming doors....God rants at us as an Olympian curses himself for losing concentration during a crucial part of the race. Or as a novelist chastises herself for lazy writing. For the righteous perfectionist (versus the neurotic perfectionist), every detail matters. God wants nothing less than perfection, because he knows that perfection is the only way for us to become what he created us to become: godlike.

(Galli must be having flashbacks to his college Greek mythology classes. At least I hope that's his excuse. Of course, he could plead insanity. How much more irrational could one be than to posit a "righteous perfectionist" who throws dishes, slams doors, rants, and curses himself. Again, this is unashamed blasphemy. It is anti-Christianity from Christianity Today.)

When the stakes are so high, of course, the consequence of failure, even in the smallest detail, spells disaster. It's like a space shuttle—one of the most sophisticated and marvelous of machines—crashing to earth because of a faulty oil ring. When God sees the space shuttle hurtling toward its destruction, he weeps, he rants, he pulls his hair out. And something inside him dies. Our God cares about us frail, fickle, weak human beings because he knows something we often forget: we're not "just human." He'll go to any length to get us to grasp and live into our glory, even if it kills him.

(Our glory? What about the glory of God that Galli has dragged through the gutter of his paganized imagination?)

This is why the Bible traffics in such dramatic language. There is nothing cautious, careful, or reasonable about the human enterprise. It's about being lost or saved. Living in darkness or in light. Knowing despair or being filled with hope. Death or life. The Bible is not interested in a religion that merely improves the human condition, or makes life manageable. It's not about success or happiness or helping us all get along. These are paltry aspirations. No, what God wants is to raise the dead and make gods out of sinners.

(No! Once again, that was Satan's goal.)

So what we have, for better or worse, is a melodramatic God. He yells and throws dishes, and walks off in a huff, slamming the door behind him—and then he turns around and gives his life for us. In a foreshadowing of Jesus, he says to Israel through Hosea: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?...for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath" (Hosea:11:8-9
). He's anything but calm and collected, reassuring and reasonable. He's as mercurial as gods go.

(God is) like the crazy uncle in the family. At some point, you have to let your friends know about him, but you'd just as soon avoid having to introduce him.

I much prefer reasonable religion with reasonable expectations, and a God who doesn't get bent out of shape every time his people trip up. But then again, I don't love as God loves. Not God. Not others. Not myself.

(So, are we to suppose that Galli was just trying to get our attention with his blasphemies for effect? Did we misunderstand his "literary cleverness"? No. What he paraded before us was a mockery of God akin to what Jesus suffered from those who gathered to watch Him being crucified and to what every God-hating humanist has since voiced.)

The road to **** is paved with reasonable religion with a non-anxious god. Most days, I'm pretty happy driving down that road. But I keep running into this Crazy Fellow along the way. At every stop light, he jumps up and down to get my attention. He pounds on my window asking me where the heck I think I'm going. He stands on the front bumper, shouting at me to turn around. When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. He's such a drama queen.

(Galli is "pretty happy" driving down the road to ****? God is a Crazy Fellow? God is a Drama Queen? I have two suggestions: 1) Send your reaction to Galli's article to the founder and honorary chairman of CT, Billy Graham, noting what seems to be the ultimate degeneration of what he started, and 2) Pray for Mark Galli, that he will repent. "[Regarding the wicked] there is no fear of God before his eyes" (Ps:36:1
).)

https://www.thebereancall.org/content/christianity-todays-anti-christianity-today

Armageddun Loc: The show me state

We may as well get used to it, we are in the last days. This is just a small sample of the falling away. This past week in close town one son killed his Father with a golf club, another son murdered his Father. Church attendance is dwindling except in mega-churches where the sermons are strictly feel good and how to be happy healthy and wealthy. The main theme of the Bible is redemption or bringing us back to a right relationship to God through Jesus Christ who died for our sins. Even so come Lord Jesus. We ain't seen nothi yet.

Parky60 Loc: People's Republic of Illinois

As a good friend of mine used to say, "You are correct."

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

I've believed for a few decades that Christianity Today had long since deserted any residual faith in the Triune God which their founder, Billy Graham left behind for them.

If this is all the magazine can scrounge up as a senior managing editor, they are not writing for the Bereans, i.e., the born-again Bible readers.

They're writing for the mockers, the elitists who honor only their own self-perceived intellect, and not the God who created them.

The title, Christianity TODAY is perfectly appropriate for them, for it's not the historical Christian faith of which they write, nor is it the historical God of Creation to which they bow.

Rose42

Well said and I agree. I never read their articles much - they always seemed too compromising. I never saw this particular article though. He should be soundly rebuked for it.

Rose42

I don’t think I can get used to those who call themselves Christians saying things like Galli.

You’re right. There are so many out there like him and its only getting worse.

Fodaoson Loc: South Texas

Are we in the premillennial last days or “amillenniall last days?

Fodaoson Loc: South Texas

Amillenniallism is a misnomer . It just fits a different schedule for the Parousia. The destruction of Satan and of the old Earth and heaven the raising of the dead all are different than in premillennialism The end time events are different in the two ideas.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

The Parousia is a theological concept that comes from the Greek word parousia meaning "coming" or "presence." In the study of Bible prophecy, the term Parousia is used in reference to the Coming of Jesus Christ.

In some cases, the Parousia is used in reference to the time when Jesus Christ comes to rapture His people to be with Him. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 says, "For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord." At any moment, the dead in Christ will rise followed by those alive in Christ to be with Christ forever (also 1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 2:19; 3:13; 5:23; James 5:8; 1 John 2:28).

In other cases, the Parousia refers to Christ's return at the end of the seven-year tribulation period. Revelation 19:11-21 speaks at length about this event. Jesus will return in victory and defeat His enemies at Armageddon, beginning His reign upon David's throne in Jerusalem with His people.

It is important to understand that the Bible speaks of two different "comings" of Jesus Christ. Some believe Christ will return only once, at the end of the seven-year tribulation. However, a study of the passages that refer to Christ's coming note many differences between the rapture and the second coming of Christ. Most notably, at the rapture Jesus will come on the clouds to take His people to be with Him. This will take place at any moment and before the seven-year tribulation period. At His second coming, Jesus will come down to earth with His people to defeat His enemies and begin His reign in Jerusalem for the millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:1-7). The following (adapted from www.pre-trib.org/data/pdf/Ice-DifferencesBetweenTheRapt.pdf ) highlights many of these key differences:

RAPTURE
• Translation of all believers
• Translated saints go to heaven
• Earth not judged
• Imminent, any-moment
• Not in the Old Testament
• Believers only
• Before the day of wrath
• No reference to Satan
• Jesus comes in the air
• Jesus claims His bride (the Church)
• Only His own see Jesus
• Tribulation begins

SECOND COMING
• No translation
• Previously translated saints return to earth
• Earth judged and righteousness established
• Follows definite predicted signs, including tribulation
• Predicted often in Old Testament
• All people impacted
• Concluding the day of wrath
• Satan bound
• Jesus comes to the earth
• Jesus comes with His bride (the Church)
• Every eye will see Jesus
• Millennial Kingdom begins

The Parousia is an essential part of the study of biblical prophecy. In discussing the Parousia one should be careful to define to which coming of Christ he or she is referring and to note many of the important, significant differences between the rapture and return of Christ.