How – and How Not – to Deal with a Heretic. - Comments (4)

Category: Articles,Doctrine,GES: Hodges, Wilkin, et.al.
Author: John Malone
Date: 20th August, 2007 @ 05:14:35 PM

I’m a bit surprised at how poorly my brothers understand about how to deal with a heretic. It could be there is too little shepherding to go along with their teaching, and the lack of “laboratory” experience is paralyzing – even crippling – them.

I am up against being sorely misunderstood – not that I will allow that to deter me – in the matter of the Hodges-Wilkin-Bryant-Niemela (HWBN) heresy, which is sometimes known as the “Crossless Gospel,” as dubbed by Tom Stegall (a brother of like mind and like background with me – we were each formerly in the Roman Catholic Organization (RCO)), a pastor in the Milwaukee area.
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“Now Faith.” - Comments (0)

Category: Articles,Doctrine
Author: John Malone
Date: 7th August, 2007 @ 10:49:43 AM

To the believer, faith is not now what it once was. That simple truth is so basic – indeed so fundamental – that one wonders how this simple idea has escaped the consideration of so many of God’s people. {An enemy has done this!|Mat 13:25-28} {“Now faith”|Heb 11:1} adjusts our viewpoint. It takes our thoughts from the past to the present. (more…)

I Lose Zane Hodges: Spring, 2005. - Comments (10)

Category: Articles,Doctrine,GES: Hodges, Wilkin, et.al.
Author: John Malone
Date: 2nd August, 2007 @ 06:20:08 AM

Due to my position with respect to Robert Wilken of the GES, and the conclusion that he is a heretic – a schismatic person – I considered that it would provide useful background to publish this email exchange I had with Zane Hodges shortly after the 2005 GES conference.

While at the conference, I appealed to Wilkin in connection with a workshop conducted by Bob Bryant. I attempted to draw the attention of others to this problem, including Dr. Elliot Johnson and Rene Lopez, but I consider that I was pretty much alone in being outraged at Bryant’s position, and, as I look back on it, his devious behavior that decorated it.

While Wilkin did not at that time simply tell me that Bryan’s position was also his (and Hodges), he emphasized that it was merely “a workshop” and that it thereby did not represent the position of the GES.

Such duplicity!

Subject: GES Conference Workshop, 2005

Zane,

I have some few things to write to you about, and the better part of them will be in an email or emails to follow.

This one is about something very disturbing to me that came from two of the final workshops of the conference earlier today.

The first workshop – and the one I attended – was conducted by Bob Bryant, and was named “Eternal Security: Do you have to Believe It?” Frankly, I thought the premise posed a useful exercise, and was a {reinforcement of 1 John 5:10-11.|1jo 5:10-11}

But in the course of the session, Bob ticked off a few doctrines that he was not addressing – the Deity of Christ, the resurrection, and maybe a couple of other truths – and disposed of them as not saving truth. I interrupted him to say, “Do you mean necessary but not sufficient?” He refused to answer that in the affirmative or negative, but more or less told me to shut up, perhaps more politely.
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GES’ Bob Wilkin: A Heretic’s Vagaries and Intrigue. - Comments (11)

Category: Articles,Doctrine,GES: Hodges, Wilkin, et.al.
Author: John Malone
Date: @ 12:27:34 AM

Friday night, as promised, I attended the “Regional Conference” of the Grace Evangelical Society (GES) hosted by Community Bible Church (CBC) in Omaha, a church my family and I formerly attended in Omaha. I was among the 100 or less in attendance, and so were a half dozen of my friends. Perhaps 20% of the attendees were from the host church.

I went to this conference to expose Bob Wilkin. It’s one thing to teach what he does. It’s a whole different thing to disguise it, slip it in, and be guileful about it. And it’s even another thing to do it here where I live, among people I know.

As George, the former temporary head coach in Hoosiers told Head Coach Norman Dale, “Look, mister, there’s two kinds of dumb. A guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and, a guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter. The second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.”
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A Protestant in the Midst of Apostasy. - Comments (4)

Category: Articles,Doctrine,Roman Catholicism
Author: John Malone
Date: 25th July, 2007 @ 02:38:48 AM

Peter Smagacz is 58 years old and glad to have left the Roman Catholic Church. He left it 35 years ago.

I read an article sent to me that was published on Omaha’s daily newspaper, the Omaha World Herald, that described Smagacz’ one-man “protest” at a Luis Palau “Heartland Festival” in Omaha. The event was said to have attracted 105,000 visitors, a record. I suppose, hyperbole being what it is, the crowd was likely half that size, but still large.

Palau is known among Bible believers to be “soft on Romanism,” and far too ecumenical to be Biblically sound. Many of us consider that ministries like Palau’s yoke themselves with unbelievers, contrary to Bible principles set forth in {2 Corinthians 6:14,|2cor 6:14-17} and {Revelation 18:4.|Rev 18:1-5} The more skeptical among us – call us jaded – know that men like Palau don’t become prominent in this country without somehow accepting that Roman Catholics are essentially Christian.

Otherwise, Romanists would have destroyed him by now.
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Dealing With Doctors. - Comments (0)

Category: Articles,Behind the Lines
Author: John Malone
Date: 19th May, 2007 @ 03:11:40 AM

“The Lord helps those who help themselves,” the physician told us.

My wife and I looked at each other, but she only saw me with her left eye.

That’s because she has lost nearly all vision in her right eye, a large “choroidal ocular melanoma” obscuring almost all vision in her right.

I do not often mingle with doctors.

My father died from cancer at 65 – when I was 36 – largely at the hands of incompetent physicians.

One of my very best friends became an M.D., but our relationship was built upon our fellowship in the Scriptures after I had led him to Christ while he attended medical school at the local Jesuit institution.

He died from cancer when he was barely 42.

My next door neighbor was a brilliant neurosurgeon. We used to talk about technology, medicine, and the Scriptures. We were real friends. He died of cancer when he was 45. Before he did, he was restored to his early faith in Jesus Christ, and wrote hymns on his Alabama death bed.

One of my heroes, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, began his radio career after cancer treatments, and went home shortly after my father.

Since those men were taken home by the Lord Jesus, my only contact in the “medical world” has been a brilliant research physician who is remarkably unorthodox, and a chiropractor: someone distinctly NOT in the “medical world.”
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My Wife - Comments (0)

Category: Articles,Behind the Lines
Author: John Malone
Date: 8th May, 2007 @ 10:46:37 PM

Today my wife was diagnosed with a serious malady.

I am asking my brothers and sisters who read this web site to pray for her in this matter.

The Lord is able to deliver her.

And me.

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We are grateful to the Lord today to learn that my wife’s (Karen’s) prospects, though very serious and damaging, are not as dire as they could have been.

The Lord is taking our part with {those that help us.|Psa 118:7}