Slice of Laodicea

It’s brown wrapper time at Lifeway Christian Stores. WorldnetDaily is reporting that Gospel Today magazine incurred the ire of the Southern Baptist leadership that owns the stores, and they are only selling this month’s edition from under the counter. The five ladies featured on the cover were all dressed in black. Clergy black. The headline reads, “Female Pastors: Breaking the Glass Ceiling”. Looking like the line-up from The View, these stylin’ clergy babes are busting through the gender barriors in church and they’ve made it to the pulpit. This offends the Southern Baptist leadership, as well it should, and the magazine has now been relegated to porn status. But wait! Before that round of applause for LifeWay, shouldn’t there be just as much outrage over false teachers like Robert Schuller, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, et al whose books are earning the Southern Baptists a big chunk of change? These are men who are telling us that sin is the lack of self-esteem, that there is no hell, no Second Coming and no need for a substitutionary atonement, and that the Bible is not the product of Divine fiat, but rather a human product. Shouldn’t these books be sold from under the counter, too? Come to think of it, if you took all the books by false teachers, all the Jesus junk, all the trashy T-shirts and worthless CD’s and put them under the counter where they belong, there wouldn’t be much left on the shelves to buy.