St Michael's Uniting Church in Australia

Have Your Say

New Faith throws out the Ten Commandments

Felicity the Solitary
11th October, 2008
9:45am

Bless you Francis, for you have courageously dipped your post midlife crisis toe in the water here. Please continue on your quest for truth. If my existentialist father Ian ( you were at Ormond together, we lived in Blackburn) were alive he would be asking ' Has old McNab woken up yet?' Such a question from my father is a great compliment. Philosophers, Existential Psychoanalysts and Phenomenologists are teachers of Presence, seek to learn from them. We are underground Christians here in Melbourne and around the world, rejected by the church, thrown out as heretics, derailed off our period of discernment (POD) to train as ministers yet have written and spoken and taught on Presence for years. Yes, I am a Christian, Christ is the Great Illuminator to these truths but I have not yet found a church that understands Christianity. The mainstream church to date is the sad tragic result that has NOTHING to do with Christ's teachings. Look to the philosophers!
Robyn
6th October, 2008
10:33pm

I'm glad I took the time to find out what all the controversy was about. I'm a Uniting Church member and hearing Rev McNab's sermon in context I found I lot that resonates with me about the idea of a new faith. I think the ads are a great way to get a certain group of people in the community listening, the stateline story an added bonus. Really though, if St Michaels has the courage of its convictions then you should probably acknowledge that you no longer support the basis of union of the Uniting Church, and strike out on your own, which would stop the focus being on church disunity and give air to your actual message.

I also found it ironic that in talking about the "New Faith", the Rev was wearing 18thcentury garb, the music was played on a pipe organ, and the old version of the Lord's prayer was said at the end! But that didn't take away from the important reflections of the four sources of unhappiness. I hope more people get to hear and respond.
michael
6th October, 2008
8:55pm

i totally refuse to believe your views,and well maybe the churches you know people are not going to ,but my church is expoloding from the seams, we dont have to focus on changing for the times ,the times has to change for christianity,and to put it in simple being a christian is not focusing on mumbo jumbo, its having a personal relationship with GOD,
Melanie
6th October, 2008
4:18pm

As a Christian, I am highly offended by the billboards currently displayed around Melbourne insulting God's Word. Please remove them.
Romayne LLoyd
5th October, 2008
8:44pm

Some societies are stuck in the miry clay of moral relativism, some struggle under the burden of legalistic theocracies. In a religious vacuum we find excessive or inadequate political systems, sometimes they run side-by-side. "Man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness." (Romans 1:18) "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images ... ('the indelible instinct to worship is perverted by being centred on the wrong object'). Above all things we must be vigilant in what we consecrate lest it not be in accordance with the heart of God - including scholarship. Even the well-intentioned does not always serve us well!Scripture has never been more relevant, as we see playing out before us prophetic human history. By the Grace of God in our Lord Jesus Christ and by His Spirit may we be found not wanting. Amen.
Felix LIm Tsung-Hsien
4th October, 2008
3:00pm

I admire the guts of Dr. Ncnab for standing up to express his outspoken attacks against the traditional Chirstain beliefs and the role of the church of the modern millineum .

He is just another radical example of the fact that whenever the church comes under criticisms , its defensively whimpish tactics are to react in making claims of hereasy and apostacy .

It all began form the piont of view of the refrom puritan circle of Luther-Calvin when Luther nailed his 95 thesis in wittenberg condeming papal expoiltations with his radical expostions of salvation by grace alone sola gracia fide which sparked the commencement of the reformation.
The entire world of christendom was shaken down to its knees . The reason being that the role of the Roman catholic church was shaken to its core when the bible and true salvation only made possible in Christ meant that the gospel revolution of the day making the bible accesaible to the people saw a transistion of power from the papal to the politerate. Calvin being more contraversal than Luther exposulted his far more radical outcry of salvation by God's predestined sovereign grace alone and limited atonment of sin for the elect . There is also the doctrine of the priesthood of beleivers . This significant ramifications were that the role of God's sovereignity and true gospel restoration to divine glory of man's fall from sin and its accussured fate on humantiy is no longer in the hands of the tall poppies of the church and those up there in a guise of a religious beauracy
but reinforced in te lifes of God's chosen few who are truly previdleg and be blessed for all time and beyond all time.

"for God is pateint and longsuffeirng that not all should repent and perish".

Dr. Mcnab's rather confrontational views this century is nothing new at all in retrospect . The so called traditional belivers critics are missing out on his point entirely . The crux of the matter in question is the relavance of the gospel in tody's century and that the church is competely out of touch in meeting people's needs. A statement of this nature is a reflection of the UCA article of beleifs built on the its interpretation of true gospel credentials as taking on the examplary role of christ in meeting people's needs and community welfare in realtion to the great comission. It really has nothing to do with the doctinal question of christ's divinity, his sonship and the 10 commandments and getting caught up in the reel of its bungling red tape .

As a hyper-calvinsit separatist and follower of the primitive baptist order of the strict and particular Baptist church here in Auburn which rejects traditional gospel beleifs and that the great comission is no longer rellevant but only relevant to the apostles of Jesus's day, I personally take a very strong stance against any church which seeks to popularise te gospel and making the church appeling to people and salvation by grace for all people and all Christian beleivers .

This is because the primitive baptist movement in its sepratist perpective taking on a more radical anti-conformist stance against the church which has unquestionalaly stood for God's sovereignity since its inception. Based on God's sovereign power to judge and to rule , absolute prdestination comes as a pacakage and perogative of God's sovereign rule . Consequently, only the exclusively chosen mysterious few known only to God's predestined and fore-knowledge by his free and sovereign grace alone can be saved and would remained worthy to be saved and to inherit the price paid by Christ's limited atoneemnt for his elect. This itself makes preaching the gospel and all evangalical outreaches to save all nations and caring for human welfare and meeting the needs of the community and the great comission a load of nonsense.
Mankind being sinful in nature has compeltely no hope of any redemption thelogically , societically and ethically . while only god alone is holy, Mankind is conversely sinful. Luther in his bonfdage of the will taught that humanity's free will and choice is always to sin and disobey god because of our fallaen nature through Adam and Eve. consequently, all human customs and that all fatih traditions including Christian tradition are wrong and offensive to god. God alone only has the sole right chooses who to save because Human sinful nature will always reject Christ as the true incarnate of God and his true inner witness and the truth of the gospel , thus resulting in that only the predestined sinner would take a personal interest in the merits of christ sin atoning salvation and the light of the gospel truth and to recieve the evidences of divine mercy and to worthily remained as his true and faithfully obedient flock and to be readily made worthy, pardoned and scantified into uponn the return of his glory .
"come to him as a living stone , rejected by man but chosen of God and precious"
1 peter 2:4

" But offensive to the unbeleiving and disobedeint who are condemed to whom God has pre-appointed"

1 Peter 2: 9 - 11

" that you are drawn out of the darkness into his marvellous light to the praise and glory of God.
You have once not recived mercy but now have received mercy".

May I also add that the purpose of the 10 commandments and the Levititian laws and order that followed in the Mosaic covenant to be reinforced on the hebrew nation was God's way to scantify and to preserve his especailly chosen people. Important as they are still in their own right , it was "a shadow of things to come" for Christ alone came to establish the new convenant so as to redeem his people from the cruse of the broken law and for the prospective gentile who would come into the fold in the restored order of the fate of nation of Israel to be true and faithful subjects in line and fulfilment of the Abrahamic convenant . Hence the phrase that Jesus said to te adutress woman to be stoned "daugther your fatith has saved thee. Go and sin no more". "Let him who has no sin cast the first stone" is a great lesson on its own . It is not merely a symbloic parable to the power of forgiveness but a reference to christ himself as the first stone laid down for his elect and the subsequent price of redemption to follow.
So who is to cast the first stone?

For this reason, the Zion stirct baptist separatist order refutes the great comission and moreover teaches that Christianity is a false and corrupted religion and wrong . Christendom and the church is completely corrupted and blasphemous becasue Christ's role on earth as God incarnate and son of God was and concurrently God's only true prophet was the first reformed nazarite separatist jewish priest or Rabbi . His intention was never to form a new faith or a new religious world order but to restore the hebrew nation as its preappinted messiah and salvation extentable only to the exclusively chosen gentile.
The monothiest diety of the Hebrew race insturcted through the prophet Jeremiah to keep tot he ancient paths and walk in the way that is good. For this reason , All walks of post modern living or a so called post modren or contemopary church is just not on and it is ok for the church to remaining unappealing to the majority people .
For such is the mystery of God's eternal sovereign power and his love for the elect . The christain church especailly liberalism has loss the plot completely on God's sovereignity , his eternally immacualte power and glory and his trult everlasting convenant .
Bill musk in his book on the "hidden face of Isalm " published in 2006 states that Middle eastern muslims have a better understanding of God's sovereignity. The western world and te christian church on te other hand, has lost it all and it is therefore unable to understand Islam and its intircacies of the Mulsim middle eastern world and the way God re-anct's his rule and judement even in the daily lives of its people.

Thank you for your kind perusal

Felix Th Lim
Leo
4th October, 2008
2:13pm

I have nothing about anyone creating a 'new' faith and if they can get a following good luck to them but please Dr Nacnab, a question. Are you really not a humanist who happens to like 'some' of the things a 'supposedly' obscure person called Jesus said? From what I have read so far it seems so to me. I feel you should own up to what/who you really are and leave the Christian church. By the way in your sermon you said that Jesus said 'live life to the full!. Perhaps it says that in the New Revised Progressive Version, (edited by the Jesus Seminar Scholars) But according to the standard time-honoured translations Jesus is quoted as saying, "I have come that you may have life to the full." Just a slight difference in interpretation but a mile of difference in truth. Jesus could give life in all its fullness because he is the Son of God, otherwise Dr Macnab, yes, all we could have him say as a jewish peasant is something akin to your translation.
" I know whom I have believed..." and Dr Macnab I certainly won't be becoming one of your disciples any time soon. The old faith works fine for me and it is a joy living in relationship with the Lord. I pray you meet him one day by faith! Then you can give up your search for this 'elusive' God who according to you seems to exists but then again maybe he/it doesn't.
Sue Hecker
3rd October, 2008
8:16pm

I saw the billboard on the TV and at first I thought that is a bit strong, then I thought no it is interesting provocative, I want to know more what is this discussion. At last a true and frank discussion of the bible and spirituality. This is 2008, this is Australia we are not blind followers we are an intelligent positive loving community. Finally a church that challenges Melbourne a contemporary society that is facing contemporary challenges. I may just come along to my first service in 15 years. Thank you
Christina Dimon
2nd October, 2008
8:35am

Dr. Macnab: it makes me sad that you have chosen to start a religion that is lawless in the sense of throwing out the Ten Commandments, reducing Jesus Christ to only a "Jewish peasant," even though He is called Immanuel--"God (is) with us,"and is the only one who could and did die for all of our sins. Also, He is the only one who is fully divine and fully human. God did not give the Ten Commandments to Moses to present to the children of Israel to be the cosmic killjoy; they were and are still statutes for living, making us aware of sin, so we can go to God to be saved from eternal condemnation. When the serpent tempted and deceived Eve, he is the one who sowed discontentment and introduced negativity to that one forbidden tree with its fruit. Therefore, to throw out the Ten Commandments because they are viewed as negative is of the devil, as is misrepresenting Moses as a genocidal mass murderer!
God and His word does not change. Jesus is the ONLY way to come to God to be saved from sin, and having a relationship with, and an abundant life in Him.

Do you realize that you are allowing yourself to fall under the category of false teachers, being deceived and doing the same to others by taking several religions and the Christian faith, and uniting them to draw people, only for them to not get the truth and salvation and lose their souls? ( 1 Timothy 4) It really and truly grieves God. He would rather you, repent of this than for you to perish and have to separate you from Himself someday ( 2Peter 3:9, Matt 25:32-46). While you are still alive, it is not too late for you to change your mind and actions.
Adrian Suttie
2nd October, 2008
1:51am

I think that any "New Faith" is on shaky ground if it is founded on false statements such as "THE TEN Commandments, one of the most negative documents ever written." The first few commandments are summed up as "Love the Lord your God" and the remaining commandments are summed up as "Love your neighbour as yourself" (Matthew 22 & Romans 13). Murder, adultery, theft, covetedness and lies are hardly prescriptions for a positive life. Even if you disagree with the warnings against idolatry, the Ten Commandments fall well short of being "one of the most negative documents ever written". I suspect that this campaign has been a mischievous attempt to generate publicity while being careless with the truth.
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St Michael's Uniting Church in Australia - Have Your Say

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New Faith throws out the Ten Commandments

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