Some of our readers may remember our Journal article Who Will Be First in the Kingdom? which looked at some of the teachings of Vision Forum. In the article, one of the issues we looked at was an article by Brian Abshire which stated that God does not permit women to vote. There was a flurry of activity and a number of threats from Vision Forum regarding the article (these along with our responses are on our blog site under Vision Forum/Patriarchy). The Vision Forum article stated:

American Christians saw the “height” of Christian activism as banning alcohol while at the same time affirming a woman’s right to vote. Both ideas were unmitigated disasters; God has not allowed the civil magistrate to outlaw wine and God does not allow women to vote (cf. 1 Tim 2:11ff).

Oddly, the original article was removed from Vision Forum’s website sometime in 2008 (but the original July 15, 2005 article is on an archive site). Doug Phillip’s publically talked about he and his wife Beall voting in the election. It seems this article needed to be taken down, because, as we pointed out in our article and blogs: (more…)

On a fairly regular basis we are asked who or what gives us the right to declare a teaching false or to question the teachings of others. After all if Rick Warren writes, “Whenever God wanted to prepare someone for his purposes, he took 40 days,” what right does MCOI have to point out that none of the examples he gives in The Purpose Driven Life support his claim as we did our article “The Purpose Driven Claim” in the Summer 2004 MCOI Journal?

Or what right do we have to question Bill Gothard and his claims in his (more…)

Vision Forum posted their letters to MCOI on Friday, September 21, 2007. This is an updated explanation of our response which follows:

On August 20, 2007 we received a letter from Vision Forum dated August 17, 2007 . It was 15 pages in length of which 3 pages were endnotes. At their request in the letter I called to confirm I had received it, typed a short response that I had received it and prepared it for mailing. A couple of hours later Wesley Strackbien and Michael Gobart called as I was leaving for a meeting. I agreed to talk for a few minutes (it ended up being nearly an hour). After receiving the letter which had been done prior to our conversation Wesley Strackbein sent another letter on (more…)

We received a letter from Rev. Dr. Brian M. Abshire, Teaching Pastor at Highlands Reformed Church in response to our article Who Will Be First in the Kingdom?. After writing Pastor Abshire called and we spoke for a while. I found him to be kind, open and very much a gentle man. I had suggested that he upload his letter to his website as our article is public and our response would be as well. His letter, with very slight edits is posted on his website under the title CRITIQUING PATRIARCHY AND VISION FORUM. Our response was sent out on:

August 29, 2007

Rev. Dr. Brian M. Abshire
Highlands Reformed Church
1817 E. Whispering Springs Ln
Colbert, WA 99005

Dear Pastor Abshire, (more…)

Many of you are aware that our current Journal article “Who Will Be First in the Kingdom?” has received enough interest that we put the Journal online earlier than usual. We have recently received a letter from Bob Renaud at Vision Forum Ministries answering the questions we had asked in January. Within a few days of that we received a letter from Pastor Brian Abshire, the author of “Biblical Patriarchy and the Doctrine of Federal Representation” one of the articles we quoted from on the Vision Forum website. Pastor Abshire also called last week (just as I had hit the send button with an email acknowledging receipt of his letter). I found him to be kind and enjoyed our visit by phone. I won’t be responding to his letter at any length in this blog piece but (more…)

Doug Phillips – New Paganism?

A number of years ago Dr. Albert Mohler spoke at an EMNR conference and in his talk shared a story about Bishop John Shelby Spong. According to Mohler, at the Lambeth Conference, Spong had committed a cultural and political boo-boo. He had been pressing for the ordination of homosexuals but was unable to get the majority to agree at the time because the bishops from Africa held firmly against it. In a moment of frustration Spong lashed out with, “The reason the African bishops believe the Bible to literally is because they have been so recently converted from paganism.” To which the Bishop from Uganda responded, “The reason Spong doesn’t believe the Bible is because he has so recently been converted to paganism.”

I have thought a lot about this exchange lately. It is easy for many of us to write off liberalism, the Emerging Church and Postmodernism as an embracing of paganism by church leaders and their followers. And, to be sure, it is. But, do some segments of conservative believers embrace other forms of paganism (more…)