IS CULTURAL RELEVANCE THE ULTIMATE TEST OF A CHURCH?

According to Rob Bell, it is:

·       "We're moments away," Rob Bell said. "I think culture is already there and the church will continue to be even more irrelevant when it quotes letters from 2,000 years ago as their best defense, when you have in front of you flesh-and-blood people who are your brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and co-workers and neighbors and they love each other and just want to go through life with someone." http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2015/02/rob_bell_on_gay_marriage_were.html

Bell claims that the Church is not relevant as long as it quotes New Testament letters. Instead, our opinions have to be formed through our culturally conditioned eyes – what we see.

“Culturally conditioned eyes?” Certainly! In the past, almost every culture and religion informed our eyes that there was something wrong with same-sex sex. It is only today, in our “aware” and “advanced” culture that our eyes tell us otherwise.

Why? Certainly, it has a lot to do with our power elites – the mainstream media and the universities – which have silenced any speech to the contrary as “hate speech.” However, for Bell, these molders of public opinion are wiser than the Bible.

But why should we regard the Bible as the wisdom of God rather than the wisdom of man, trapped within their own myopic cultures? This, of course, is a lengthy discussion, but let me just present several considerations in support of the Bible as God’s Word:

1.    MIRACLES   http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2016/06/enemy-testimony-and-how-it-serves-to.html

2.    FULFILLED PROPHECY  http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2011/04/lord-our-righteousness.html

3.    CHANGED LIVES AND SOCIETIES http://mannsword.blogspot.com/2014/01/confessions-of-nihilist.html

4.    INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONSISTENCY

5.    THE NATURE OF SCRIPTURE