Yeah! Something's insane, for sure!

Sorry to delay the Whitefield post, I'll try to get it up later. In the meantime read just these two Scripture passages:

"He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth." (Is 53:3-7, ESV)

"And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus." (Ac 8:27-35, ESV)

Ok... So, Philip seems to think Isaiah 53 is casting Jesus as the suffering servant, right? And he's not alone in this opinion. All the Gospel accounts - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - apply the description of the suffering servant to Christ.

Now: This suffering servant/Jesus Christ "was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed." Right? CRYSTAL clear.

How in the world do you get from that clarity, to this garbage??

"In other words, Jesus took the rap and we got forgiven as long as we said we believed in him," says Mr John. "This is repulsive as well as nonsensical. It makes God sound like a psychopath. If a human behaved like this we'd say that they were a monster."

Mr John argues that too many Christians go through their lives failing to realise that God is about "love and truth", not "wrath and punishment". He offers an alternative interpretation, suggesting that Christ was crucified so he could "share in the worst of grief and suffering that life can throw at us". (telegraph.co.uk article here)

Unreal. Al Mohler responds to this insanity here.

I get that there are things people in Christianity people might want to run from... I understand that telling someone that abortion or homosexuality or looking at 'harmless' pornography is wrong might be uncomfortble. I get it. But how in the world do you read the Bible and not get the idea of the substitutionary atonement? I'm not a PhD theologian, but even I can see the atonement is the point of the whole book.

If you choose not to believe it, that's one thing. But to say that it's not biblical is just absurd.