Contending for the Truth

It is amazing to me what lengths Focus on the Family's Shirley Dobson is running to defend ignoring Jesus at the National Day of Prayer. She can't have it both ways. Her insistence that NDP has been mischaracterized cannot be accurate because what they did is a FACT that is verifiable. Do they honestly think they can spin their way out of ignoring Jesus Christ?

The post below is from slice. Ingrid has been tracking this since the day the Jesus-less prayer by Ravi Zacharias was made public. The spin from NDP and FOF has been shameful considering it is coming from professing Christians. Is there any excuse in the world to deny Jesus Christ publicly? They have fallen in love with the world.

Ingrid writes:

"Focus on the Family is reportedly planning a two-day program series on the National Day of Prayer on May 13 and 14. They are sending out emails claiming that what everyone has heard is inaccurate about Shirley Dobson and the NDP Task Force. I stand by all that we have said. The facts speak for themselves.

1. Dr. Ravi Zacharias, 2008 Honorary Chairman of the NDP, by his own admission, conformed to government demands that there be a non-sectarian, Jesus-free prayer. That prayer was on the Task Force website for the public to read, and we have posted it at this site. There is no Jesus in that prayer. There was also no inclusion of the name of Christ at Ravi’s White House prayer on the National Day of Prayer.

2. Fact 2 that has already been established is that the National Day of Prayer Task Force sponsors interfaith prayer services that they call “Judeo-Christian”. They have gotten away with it for years and that is why they are shocked that anyone would bring this up now. This “Judeo-Christian” prayer service is what resulted in a liberal, Reform rabbi, Rabbi Bruce Lustig, getting up and opening Dobson’s event by claiming that all religions are equal before God in prayer. Shirley thanked him and the event opened on that footing. This is indisputable, and we have posted the audio online.

Further, while we welcome a wider audience’s awareness of these issues, it will be a major mistake for the Dobsons if they choose to get on the air and reference what we have written and said. Why? Because it will simply introduce many of their listeners for the first time to the reality of what happened. This will not help their cause with born-again Christians in their audience who still care about biblical truth. It will also be ironic if they choose to do this because the Dobsons have steadfastly refused to do any programming of any kind that would warn listeners about the dangers of the false teaching flooding into the church. They don’t like to offend and name names unless they’re talking about liberals in Congress. The evangelical church is off limits. Ryan Dobson is a big fan of Rob Bell, and he told a broadcaster friend of mine that in writing. Bell is the one who told Christianity today that he and his wife were excited to discover that the Bible was not the product of “Divine fiat” but rather a “human product”.

If the Dobson family refuses to warn their millions of listeners about men like Brian McLaren showing up at Willow Creek Community Church–a man who rejects the doctrine of hell, the substitutionary atonement and the literal Second Coming of Christ–and in fact have featured Dr. Tony Campolo on their program in the past without ever clarifying that they no longer support him—it will be most interesting to see them warning about Bible-believing Christians by name just because they had the gall to oppose something being promoted by Focus on the Family’s subsidiary, the National Day of Prayer Task Force.

If they choose to go that route, the public will be reminded once again of what the exact issues were regarding the official National Day of Task Force prayer and Dr. Zacharias’s decision, because we will be obligated to make any distortions of the truth plain as widely as possible.