This is a video clip from Evangelical Phillip McCart, pastor of an outfit called Grace Collective Church (Baptist), waxing eloquent on Hebrews 12:1, with all the latest AV media, as only an Evangelical personality cult homilist can do. Sadly, it was brought to my attention with approbation by an Anglican friend:
I'm just gonna leave this here. #ToughAsNails
Posted by Phillip McCart on Monday, January 25, 2016
I attended an Evangelical church service several years ago where the same message came across from the pulpit: If you're making preparations for yourself and your family, you are most likely betraying the subchristian essence of your purported life in Christ.
Bollocks, I say. And to my Anglican friend, if he's looking in, this stuff isn't Anglican.
I find it intriguing that McCart mentions the plight of Syrian Christians. Unmentioned by Pastor McCart is that the suffering Syrian Christians are fighting back with force of arms. That, at a minimum, means the strategic stockpiling of weapons, ammo, and the material necessities of life. I wonder if Pastor McCart would cast similar aspersions at these two Syrian soldiers bearing AK-47s and accoutrements:
Or this Pakistani Anglican guarding his church with force of arms and being saluted by Bishop Brian Iverach.
Or this Christian man from the United States who has gone to the Middle East to fight ISIS:
I grow so weary of these pietist preachers spouting what is in essence dispensationalist theology, most of whom in all likelihood have never served in the Armed Forces and who have probably never read a lick about Christian resistance theory or D.A. Carson's indispensable book Exegetical Fallacies. If they had read that book and taken its content seriously, they would never engage in the either/or fallacy (we either submit to martyrdom or take up arms) and the non sequitur fallacy (biblical verses about the inevitability of persecution commit us to Christian pacifism).
"Embarrassing" indeed.
Here endeth the rant.