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Local Church Controversies
The local churches and the ministry of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have been the subject of controversy in two major areas over the past fifty years. To a large extent these controversies stem from the rapid increase and spread of the local churches in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the 1970s they became a target of opposition of fledgling countercult ministries. Unsupported criticisms of anti-social behaviors led to three libel litigations. In addition, some criticized the teaching of Witness Lee on the nature of God, God's full salvation, and the church. History Interaction with countercult ministries By the 1960s the writings of Watchman Nee had become popular among evangelicals, including many in Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). In 1968 Campus Crusade's national field director Jon Braun, who had read Watchman Nee's , and all of the regional directors under him left Campus Crusade seeking the New Testament church. A short time later Braun joined a group led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Churches (affiliation)
The local churches are a Christian group which was started in China in the 1920s and have spread globally. The basic organizing principle of the local churches is that there should be only one Christian church in each city, a principle that was first articulated by Watchman Nee in a 1926 exposition of the seven churches in Asia in Revelation 1:11. The local churches do not take a name, but some outsiders referred to the group as the "Little Flock" as they sang from a hymnal entitled ''Hymns for the Little Flock''. From early on, members of this group emphasized a personal experience of Christ and the establishment of a pattern of church practice according to the New Testament. Though assemblies identifying as "local churches" can be found worldwide, there are no definitive statistics available on membership, partly because the largest number of members are in China. Estimates range from five hundred thousand to two million members worldwide. History Origins The development ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gordon Melton
John Gordon Melton (born September 19, 1942) is an American religious scholar who was the founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion and is currently the Distinguished Professor of American Religious History with the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he resides.Baylor University,J. Gordon Melton, Distinguished Professor of American Religious History. Retrieved 12 April 2016 He is also an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. Melton is the author of more than forty-five books, including several encyclopedias, handbooks, and scholarly textbooks on American religious history, Methodism, world religions, and new religious movements (NRMs). His areas of research include major religious traditions, American Methodism, new and alternative religions, Western Esotericism (popularly called occultism) and parapsychology, New Age, and Dracula and vampire studies. Early life Melton was born in Birmingham, Alabama ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Passantino
Robert Passantino (11 August 1951 – 17 November 2003), was an American author and journalist who wrote on subjects related to Christian apologetics, philosophy, and the Christian countercult movement. Career Passantino lived and worked for most of his adult life in Costa Mesa, California, and received instruction in Christian teaching and practiced as a professing member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. He emerged as an apologist for faith in Evangelical Christianity during the 1970s. He and his soon-to-be wife, Gretchen, had already begun to collaborate in a ministry of Christian evangelism toward adherents of the Jehovah's Witnesses when they became acquainted with the Baptist pastor and countercult writer Walter Martin. Martin was the founder of the apologetics ministry Christian Research Institute. In 1974 Martin relocated the Institute from New Jersey to Southern California where he re-established his ministry in association with the Melodyland School of Theology. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hank Hanegraaff
Hendrik "Hank" Hanegraaff (born 1950), also known as the "Bible Answer Man", is an American Christian author and radio talk-show host. Formerly an evangelical Protestant, he joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2017. He is an outspoken figure within the Christian countercult movement, where he has established a reputation for his critiques of non-Christian religions, new religious movements, and cults, as well as heresy in Christianity. He is also an apologist on doctrinal and cultural issues. Career Prior to becoming a leading figure in the Christian countercult movement, Hanegraaff was closely affiliated with the ministry of D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida. During his association with Kennedy in the 1980s, he applied memory-based techniques (such as acrostic mnemonics) to help develop and spread strategies and methods for personal Christian evangelism. His work resembles memory dynamics techniques developed in speed-reading courses and in me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (born 1958) is a Finnish theologian. He is Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is an ordained Lutheran minister (ELCA - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and an expert on Pentecostal-Charismatic theologies. Biography Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen was born into a Finnish Lutheran family. As a teenager, he would eventually become affiliated to a local Pentecostal church in his homeland. Later in life, he has been ordained as minister of ELCA and serves as part-time associate pastor for Finnish Lutheran Church in California and Texas (under Southwest California ELCA synod). After receiving a M.Ed. from the University of Jyväskylä, Kärkkäinen pursued a M.A. in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He returned to Finland and was ordained as a minister of the Full Gospel Church of Finland, pastoring a local congregation from 1989-1991. In 1991, he moved his family to Thailand and taught at the Full Gospel Bible Colleg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Systematic Theology
Systematic theology, or systematics, is a discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. It addresses issues such as what the Bible teaches about certain topics or what is true about God and His universe. It also builds on biblical disciplines, church history, as well as biblical and historical theology. Systematic theology shares its systematic tasks with other disciplines such as constructive theology, dogmatics, ethics, apologetics, and philosophy of religion. Method With a methodological tradition that differs somewhat from biblical theology, systematic theology draws on the core sacred texts of Christianity, while simultaneously investigating the development of Christian doctrine over the course of history, particularly through philosophy, ethics, social sciences, and natural sciences. Using biblical texts, it attempts to compare and relate all of scripture which led to the creat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard J
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'strong in rule'. Nicknames include " Richie", "Dick", " Dickon", " Dickie", " Rich", " Rick", " Rico", " Ricky", and more. Richard is a common English, German and French male name. It's also used in many more languages, particularly Germanic, such as Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Dutch, as well as other languages including Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Finnish. Richard is cognate with variants of the name in other European languages, such as the Swedish "Rickard", the Catalan "Ricard" and the Italian "Riccardo", among others (see comprehensive variant list below). People named Richard Multiple people with the same name * Richard Andersen (other) * Richard Anderson (other) * Richard Cartwright (disambiguat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fuller Theological Seminary
Fuller Theological Seminary is an interdenominational Evangelical Christian seminary in Pasadena, California, with regional campuses in the western United States. It is egalitarian in nature. Fuller consistently has a student body that comprises over 4,000 students from 90 countries and 110 denominations. There are over 41,000 alumni Fuller is broadly evangelical among faculty and student body. Some hold conservative evangelical views such as unlimited inerrancy while others hold liberal evangelical sentiments such as limited inerrancy which views the Bible as true on matters of salvation but contains error in its recording of history and science. History Fuller Theological Seminary was founded in 1947 by Charles E. Fuller, a radio evangelist known for his ''Old Fashioned Revival Hour'' show, and Harold Ockenga, the pastor of Park Street Church in Boston. The seminary's founders sought to reform fundamentalism's separatist and sometimes anti-intellectual stance during the 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Summary Judgment
In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party summarily, i.e., without a full trial. Summary judgments may be issued on the merits of an entire case, or on discrete issues in that case. The formulation of the summary judgment standard is stated in somewhat different ways by courts in different jurisdictions. In the United States, the presiding judge generally must find there is "no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." In England and Wales, the court rules for a party without a full trial when "the claim, defence or issue has no real prospect of success and there is no other compelling reason why the case or issue should be disposed of at a trial." In common-law systems, questions about what the law actually is in a particular case are decided by judges; in rare cases jury nullification of the law may ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diploma Mill
A diploma mill (also known as a degree mill) is a company or organization that claims to be a higher education institution but provides illegitimate academic degrees and diplomas for a fee. The degrees can be fabricated (made-up), falsified (fake), or misrepresented (practically useless). These degrees may claim to give credit for relevant life experience, but should not be confused with legitimate prior learning assessment programs. They may also claim to evaluate work history or require submission of a thesis or dissertation for evaluation to give an appearance of authenticity. Diploma mills are frequently supported by accreditation mills, set up for the purpose of providing an appearance of authenticity.Luca LanteroDegree Mills: non-accredited and irregular higher education institutions, Information Centre on Academic Mobility and Equivalence (CIMEA), Italy. The term may also be used pejoratively to describe an accredited institution with low academic admission standards a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pacific International University
Pacific International University was an unaccredited, evangelical, Christian diploma mill college located in Springfield, Missouri. Carl Baugh, a 1989 alumnus, was the university's president. Background The school was founded in 1980 as Pacific College of Graduate Studies by Clifford Wilson, PhD, and incorporated in 1987 as Pacific International University in Missouri. It was also sometimes known as Pacific College Incorporated.A Matter of Degree-Carl Baugh's Alleged Credentials from (Originally published in NCSE Reports Vol 9, No. 6, Nov-Dec. 1989.) In 1993, while operating in Australia, the school was accredited by the Higher Educ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Research Institute
The Christian Research Institute (CRI) is an evangelical Christian apologetics ministry. It was established in October 1960 in the state of New Jersey by Walter Martin (1928–1989). In 1974, Martin relocated the ministry to San Juan Capistrano, California. The ministry's office was relocated in the 1990s near Rancho Santa Margarita. In 2005, the organization moved to its present location in Charlotte, North Carolina. Background The establishment of CRI in 1960 is closely linked to Walter Martin. It represents one of the pioneering organizations in what is called the Christian countercult movement, but also relates to the wider history of Evangelical Christian apologetics in the mid-twentieth century. Martin is considered one of the first full-time career apologists to have specialized in Christian countercult apologetics. In 1949, Martin began his forays into the theological analysis of various groups, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormonism and Spirituali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
