1) "Firstly, I DID NOT say you cannot rejected their invitaion.
Hwat I was saying was to those who said they just THROW the
postcard away when his/friend gave to them. What does it
show."
Response:
Yes you did say that you disapproved of their action of throwing
away this postcard in such a fashion and under the aforementioned
circumstances; and my point was that in the circumstances in
question, one cannot assume that their having thrown the postcard
away in such a fashion is an act for which they should be liable to
be held culpable by God.
In fact, under the same set of circumstances, it may very well
behoove someone to throw away the postcard in such a fashion, so
that if he were to have felt himself compelled by his conscience to
throw it away in such a fashion (and under the selfsame set of
circumstances in question) it may very well be a sin for him not to
so throw it away.
This is the fundamental point that you have still pathetically
failed to grasp.
2)"Of course, we don't force people to go if they really don't want
to. City Harvest Church is a charismatic church. The way MANY of
them do is about the same but don't take it as a force or a
pressuring things to go. WE DO NOT FORCE PEOPLE TO GO. "
Response:
Stop trying to introduce red herrings into this discussion. No-one
ever stated that your 'church' had 'forced' anybody to attend its
services; and I am myself perfectly willing to concede, for the
purposes of this discussion, that no-one from your church had ever
compelled anyone else to attend your church's services through the
use of force or other coercive means.
What I was objecting to rather, was your making it out that it
would in every set of possible circumstances be improper that
anybody should ever see fit to reject openly your invitation to him
to attend the services of your church, by way of, say, throwing
away a postcard that had been given to him by someone from your
church, in the very presence of the person who had so given it to
him.
3) "REMEMBER we do not want your sympathy kind of money."
Response:
Again, this is wholly irrelevant because by your very own admission
you want people who 'willingly' give regularly to your church's
coffers of their monthly income.
In any case, what if your church's position that it doesn't want to
accept money given to it out of sympathy, is precisely a feature
that renders it more probable than not that, all other things being
equal, the average-income earner who finds himself (for whatever
reason) attracted to your church's teachings and practices, will
give regularly to your church's coffers out of his monthly income;
and, more specifically, what if the leaders of your church were to
be aware of the fact that this particular feature of your church
can so be made to serve as a selling-point in the way that I have
just described?
Can you deny that many advertisers, in hawking their products,
appeal to a potential buyer's sense of pride, by way of the
insinuation of the message that these products are so expensive as
to be beyond the reach of the lower-earning classes of
consumers?
4) "The money they gave is not for them but for GOD. We use a these
funds to build church,school,hospital in other countries such as
Banda Ache & Malaysia."
Response:
I won't question their sincerity in their use of the funds that
they may have at their disposal, because I certainly am not in a
position to be sure that every instance of their use of these funds
is adapted by them to serve as a means to the end of their own
enrichment.
However, I do question their teachings and their practices and the
lavishness and flagrant ostentatiousness of the lifestyle of some
of their principal representatives.
Their defects in this regard serve to mark them out collectively as
a so-called 'church' that truly does not have any mission from
God.
5) "You may be know the goodness in it. When you know it, ou may
think it ortherwise. I am not trying to change your mindset but to
explain why and how the things we do."
Response:
On the contrary, you haven't explained anything in the sense of
your having been able to justify your position in the teeth of the
various criticisms that I have directed against it.
Far from therefore 'knowing the goodness in it, I stand firm in the
conviction that I know that what you have is at best a 'form of
Godliness, which lacks the power thereof'.
6) "We are imperfect people including people. So don't think that
CHC people should be a perfect people and set an example for
others. We are all human, we do sin also."
Response:
Indeed we all sin from time to time, and nobody is expecting anyone
in your so-called 'church' or anyone else, for that matter to lead
lives that are wholly free from sin; this again is another red
herring that you are deliberately introducing to obscure the real
issue.
I fully admit that it would be unfair for anyone to single out the
people of your church for criticism on the grounds that they have
failed to be 'a perfect people' and so have failed to 'set an
example for others'; but I also fully deny that this was precisely
what anybody had ever been trying to do.
You have confused a sinning person who is under no illusions as to
the fact that some of the patterns of his behaviour are sinful,
with another person who may sin not a bit less than the first, but
who, unlike the first person, continues to suppose that some of the
patterns of his behaviour which are in fact sinful, are patterns of
behaviour that are in conformity with God's moral will.
To my mind, this is the problem with your so-called 'church': not
that its members sin, but rather that it promotes teachings and
practices that directly and indirectly endorse a lifestyle that in
my view would be repugnant to God.
There is all the difference in the world between a sinner who is
willing to acknowledge himself as such, and another person who is
as much a sinner as the first, but who refuses to acknowledge that
some of his beliefs are false and that some of his habitual
patterns of behaviour are sinful; and who accordingly therefore not
only acquiesces in the fact that he is disposed to certain patterns
of behaviour that are objectively sinful, but who also even
commends these patterns of behaviour to others.
Stop fogging up the real issue, just as the Devil would have you
do.
7)" How many peoples here think that CHC will not be able to build
a builing in 1998(Economic Slump). Maybe you thought of that right,
but we proved it wrong, not by the work of man but by the words of
GOd."
Response:
So you think that you that the building of your so-called 'church'
or the purchase of it at a time when the economy was in the
doldrums, can serve to prove that the building of it or the
purchase of it was not by the 'work of man' but wrought by 'the
words of God'?
But if God makes the sun shine on the good and on the evil, how
then can you be sure that the working of this accomplishement was
not the operative effect of the kind of grace that God should be
willing to give to anyone, regardless of whether or not such a
person should truly be a child of His?
How can you be so deluded as to see in the building of a 'church'
or the purchase of the relevant premises and structures, a miracle
which ought to establish for everyone concerned that whatever it is
that your church should have accomplished in this regard, was a
work that had to have God's approval?
How dare you effectively equate the building or purchase of a
structure by means of funds that were raised by the solicitation of
donations, with the working of a miracle by God which has enough of
a warrant about it as to commend itself to any reasonable person as
a miracle wrought directly by God?
You are truly deceived.
Ps. Keep up the good work, Fugue!
