Seeing that I’m preparing for upcoming speaking engagements and travel, I’ll just toss something on here as a filler to keep this blog from becoming too dead (though I have a new and top secret project that I’m working on which will be available sometime in the future…maybe…).
Some folks shared a video with me on Facebook recently. It was a video of a typical “America needs to return to the Lord and stop legalizing all this sin!” sort of videos that tend to trend on places like Charisma magazine.
I didn’t have much time to watch it but I finally did today while I had lunch, and I commented on the page in which it was shared. Folks like my comment, and I then shared it on the page where the video came from. Not 5 minutes had passed and my comment was deleted, and I was blocked.
Wow.
I’ve had disagreements with a few people online, but I’ve never been silenced that quickly!
Some folks cannot take any disagreement at all. What seems ironic to me is the speed and aggression with which my voice was removed from the conversation when the video is about how Christians aren’t speaking up on important issues. Laire Lightner treated me exactly like the secular media treated Christian voices on the issue of same sex marriage.
“Agree with us or SHUT UP!”
So, for those folks who didn’t get to see the video and my comment, here’s the video (by ‘prophetess’ Laire Lightner):
And, here’s my interaction with it:
I appreciate Laire’s conviction about the need for lukewarm Christians to stop being lukewarm, but this whole video is actually quite mistaken for several reasons:
1. “The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” – Isaiah 1:1
You know what’s not mentioned in that passage?
‘Merica.
Isaiah 1 isn’t written to ‘Merica.
Isaiah 1 isn’t talking about ‘Merica.
As a non-American, it’s always hard to communicate exactly how offensive it is to constantly hear the American myopia about their own role in God’s plan for the ages.
God’s not American.
God didn’t write his promises to ‘Merica.
Israel was around 3,000 years before ‘Merica, and Israel will be around long after ‘Merica is gone.
‘Merica could burn to the ground, like many of the other western nations are (i.e. most of Europe), and God wouldn’t owe anyone an explanation for ANYTHING.
2. The church didn’t remove prayer from the schools. The church didn’t legalize abortion. The church didn’t legalize same sex marriage.
The secular courts of a secular country did.
The church isn’t a political institution…but the church does play a role in this all. Still, it’s not the Church’s ‘fault’ that the laws of the land changed.
The great commission isn’t “Therefore go into all the world and institute the law of Israel as the law of the land in every foreign country in which you find yourselves…”
Just for refresher, it’s this:
“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
– Matthew 28:18-20
3. God is displeased with the churches today because they tolerate false prophecy like this.
Laire is clearly a passionate woman who apparently has been involved with the church for a long time. Sadly, she has somehow come to the conclusion that the inscripturated word of God is insufficient to warn the world of the immediate and ultimate consequences of moral rebellion against God.
Why is God so incompetent that the word he wrote through his prophet Isaiah NEEDS to be added to by Laire Lightner? What’s worse is that she comes preaching whitewashed moralism (just like the false prophets in Israel’s history). How does that help anything?
It’s ironic how Laire says that Jeremiah is her favorite prophet. Jeremiah mentioned people like Laire:
“I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I have dreamed, I have dreamed!’ How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal? Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the Lord. Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the Lord, who use their tongues and declare, ‘declares the Lord.’ Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them. So they do not profit this people at all, declares the Lord.”
– Jeremiah 23:25-32
Laire had her bible in her hand, and yet she glossed over Isaiah chapter one. She read a few phrases from Is. 1:7-9, and that’s it.
It doesn’t look like she has a very high view of scripture if it’s not even worth reading.
4. Laire said to her audience “How, on God’s Green Earth, are you a Christian and are you against what almighty God has said in his word? Why? Because you think that you are better than God…”
Wait a minute.
Why is that surprising?
Laire does exactly the same thing. She claims to speak for God and claims that God commissioned her to do something that his prophet Isaiah could not do.
That’s REALLY arrogant.
This would be where someone might make an appropriate application of Matthew 7:1-4.
5. But Laire says that if the church in ‘Merica doesn’t turn back to God, he’s going to treat them like he did Israel…and God directly revealed this to her.
Then Laire says:
“Back in 2007 God told me ‘I’m very displeased with the church and I’m going to use you to call my people back to repentance; to call the nations back to repentance..through the prophet Isaiah.”
Isaiah wasn’t enough?
God had a real deal prophet, who wrote Scripture, but that wasn’t enough to reach ‘Merica?
He needed Laire Lightner to come along and twist the meaning of Isaiah 1? (see point 1)
6. Her whole form of “Christianity” is the disgusting ” ‘Mericana Moralism Christianity” that is anything but ‘Christianity’.
I mean, just think about what would happen if Laire got her wish.
What would happen if Christians made gay marriage illegal, and made abortion illegal, and forced every child in school to pray every day?
Would ‘Merica be ANY better off than it is now?
Would it?
No.
Would ANYONE get saved?
No.
‘Merica needs the gospel, not legislated morality.
This call back to “God” is a call back to blind and dead ‘orthodoxy’.
7. Speaking of orthodoxy, she says that “orthodox Christianity means you follow orthodox Christian principles, and one of those principles is that the word is the infallible word of God.”
That’s so close, and yet so far.
Christianity isn’t a set of arbitrary principles that are over and above the scripture.
Orthodox Christianity is the form of Christianity that is taught rightly in the Scripture. The Scripture, not “Orthodox Christian Principles”, tell us about the nature of the Scripture.
Ironically, she shares “what God has shared with me” rather than what God has said in the Scripture.
That’s the subtle difference that is the difference between light and darkness.
Laire Lightner needs to repent of her claims of being a prophet and deceiving ‘Merica with promises falsely ascribed to God.
Now I understand that most will not agree with what I have to say. Few do.
Still, for those that get it and understand that legislated moralism isn’t the gospel, or that being “biblish” isn’t the same as being biblical, it’s important to point out and articulate the ‘almost Christian’ worldview that comes out in videos like this. This sort of “2 Chronicles 7:14″ type of ‘Christianity’ isn’t actually Christianity. A return to morality isn’t a return to Christ. It’s religious traditionalism at its worst, coming at us from a sincere woman who cries in the video and appears very passionate.
She cries. How can anyone say anything negative about someone who’s so passionate about something that they cry about it?
Don’t forget:
“Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, ‘Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these.’ “
– Ezekiel 8:14-15
Truth isn’t decided on the basis of emotion, sincerity or even tearful devotion to God (or a close approximation).
Truth is revealed in the Scripture, and that truth is uncovered by actually reading and rightly interpreting the Scripture, not having dreams about it.
Until Next Time,
Lyndon “trying to get away from these sorts of issues…honest!” Unger
***Update – June 31st***
Apparently someone posted a link to this post on Mrs. Lightner’s Facebook wall. The link was deleted, the person was blocked and then sent a message:
Interesting. I’m apparently a Calvinist; those nefarious people who are responsible for making Laire Lightner a…false prophet?!?
Beyond the fact that Calvinism is one of a small number of issues I haven’t tackled on this blog, the video was referred to me when it was posted in a Calvinist group on Facebook by Laire’s husband, David Lightner (who apparently lied to get into the closed group so that he could post the video). He then condemned the entire group as “legalists who are absolutely miserable!” when they didn’t all mindlessly embrace it as a true prophecy. So, pretending to be a Calvinist in order to share the video with Calvinists before complaining that Calvinists are attacking?
Uh…Seems Legit.
The largest irony of this all is that Laire Lightner is actually brainwashed by her secular culture. She has bought into a strain of thinking that no reflective Christian should buy into; characterizing reasoned disagreement as “hate.”
Someone disagreeing with you isn’t “hate.”
Someone saying that you’re in serious and demonstrable error isn’t “hate.”
Saying that someone is twisting the scripture isn’t “hate” if a person can substantiate the accusation.
BUT,
Calling for Christians on Twitter to kill themselves for protesting the current cultural morality is “hate” (i.e., like the examples here – explicit language warning).
Online, I get slammed by commenters all the time, but I don’t think they’re simply venting hatred at me. I understand that they’re disagreeing with me, on a propositional level. Some people do so ignorantly, but rarely hatefully.
In fact, I have some friends who I disagree with rather excessively (especially when they show up on my Facebook wall and come after me repeatedly), but I recognize that “hate” doesn’t even really enter into the equation. On certain issues, we’re have irreconcilable differences. On other issues, we’re in wonderful agreement.
Like the fact that forcing someone to listen to Coldplay should be classified a war crime.
So the irony continues: Laire Lightner condemns Christians for embracing the cultural morality when she embraces the morally relativistic (that’s another way of saying “postmodern”) thinking that fuels that morality.
Is there an object lesson here?
Feel free to toss your thoughts in the comments!
