In her false trinitarian creed, she makes the “rainbow spirit” an affirmation of non-binary queer theory where the triune God is blended with everything in “a gorgeous diversity.” On the contrary, to please God who is binary––separate from us––we must bear his binary image in our sexuality in maintaining the male/female distinction.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a conglomeration of Lutheran denominations, had over five million members when it was launched in 1988, joining three independent Lutheran confessions with nearly 10,000 congregations and 65 synods. But now, in spite of the word “Evangelical,” this union is in decline. One of its churches, in Edina, Minnesota, throws a pagan sparkle into the deep meaning of “decline.”[1] This June, Anna Helgen, an LGBT Lutheran “minister,” stood in her Lutheran pulpit, dressed in pastoral robes, and recited what she called a “Sparkle Creed” as part of the church service. This liturgy was riddled with heresy rarely, if ever, so blatantly expressed in a Christian service.
The creed began:
         “I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural.” 
This statement not only confesses God to be the merging of male and female, but by doing so also makes God “non-binary” in a deeper way. To assume that God is some kind of amalgam of sexuality taken from creation as we live it is to reduce “god” to a creation of our own minds. The Apostle Paul’s confessional statement in Romans 1:25 is totally reversed. Instead of worshiping the Creator, who is distinct from his creation, this “sparkle” confession merges creation and a non-binary “god,” thus destroying the inherent distinction of existence, namely: God is separate from his creation. Helgen’s statement is a total denial of God as Creator of all that exists apart from him. It was amazing that God did not reach down and knock this heretic from her Christian pulpit. That would have been a worship service with lots of unexpected sparkle.
The creed continued:
         I believe in Jesus Christ, their child who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads and saw everyone as a sibling-child of God.
Once “God” is defined by our existence, everything devolves. This statement is deliberately confusing. “Their” child; “two dads”; “sibling child”? The majesty of the Son as a distinct member of the divine trinity is trivialized in the mention of a “fabulous tunic,” probably referring to the rainbow flag of present day homosexual pride celebrations. Helgen manages to get SS Marriage (“two dads”) into her confession, though the Spirit is never described as the Father (if those two are meant to be the “dads”). Helgen tries to make all things spiritual, just the way pagans do. She fails to include any mention of the statements of the Apostles’ Creed: Christ’s appearance before Pilate, his atoning death, his glorious resurrection, and his ascension. There is no “forgiveness of sins,” so the Son is not the Savior, just a cool dude.
         I believe in the rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity. 
In her false trinitarian creed, she makes the “rainbow spirit” an affirmation of non-binary queer theory where the triune God is blended with everything in “a gorgeous diversity.” On the contrary, to please God who is binary––separate from us––we must bear his binary image in our sexuality in maintaining the male/female distinction.[2]
         I believe in the church of everyday saints as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the AIDS quilt. I believe in the calling to each of us that love is love is love is love, so beloved let us love. 
In this creed, it is not God’s love that inspires this church but human-invented love, which includes all manner of sexual desire. She does not turn to our Lord, the very personification of love, to know what love means, as Scripture tells us: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).
The confession ends:
         I believe, glorious God, help my unbelief.
The definition of this “glorious god” is provided by the prayer of another “pastor,” Jeff Sartain, who prayed for LGBTQ youth who come to worship, “embodied by Two-Spirit people.”[3] “Two spirit people” is a synonym for the American Indian term “berdache.” These were homosexual or androgynous priests of godless pagan religion intent on wiping out God the Creator. They worship nature and everything nature produces.
Though journalists classify the beliefs of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as “Christian liberalism,” the creed preached by Anna Helgen is pure satanism or witchcraft. Without mentioning his name, that creed worships the pagan god, Baphomet, an ancient Satanic symbol of the divine, who is a non-binary mix of goat and human. Aleister Crowley, the famous occultist of the last century, popularized witchcraft and believed that Baphomet was an androgyne, with both male and female genitals.
Helgen’s Lutheran heresy is catching on. Quinton Caesar, a Lutheran pastor in Germany, at the conclusion of the recent annual gathering of the nation’s Lutheran pastors, announced: “Now is the time to say . . . ‘God is queer.’”
The outside world needs to know that this is heretical Christianity, and that since the earliest times, the Church has confessed the Apostles’ Creed as the essence of the Christian faith, based on the eye-witness testimony of the original apostles and the teaching of Jesus.
It is no exaggeration to say that this “church” is a form of witchcraft, masquerading as Christian progress. May the true church be warned to maintain Scripture’s revelation of truth in a world seeking to deny that such truth exists. Thus we say with the church throughout the ages:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,who was conceived by the Holy Spiritand born of the virgin Mary.He suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, died, and was buried;he descended to hell.The third day he rose again from the dead.He ascended to heavenand is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,the holy catholic church,the communion of saints,the forgiveness of sins,the resurrection of the body,and the life everlasting. Amen.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1]Matt Lamb, Lutheran female ‘minister’ leads congregation in pro-LGBT ‘Sparkle Creed,’ Life Site News, June 28, 2023 |.
[2] The puzzling phrase, “One white light,” could be taken as a derogatory mention of racial domination or, perhaps, a shattering of the Christian belief that all good and all power comes from the unique God described in the Scriptures.
[3] https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/lutheran-female-minister-leads-congregation-in-pro-lgbt-sparkle-creed/
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What is the message of the book of Job for us today? First, our faith is sure to be tested. Pain may be inevitable, but misery is to an extent optional. We have no control over the weather that surrounds our lives, but we can do something about the climate of our inner life. What happens to us is less important than what happens in us.

As well as being inspired Scripture, the book of Job is one of the literary masterpieces of the world. We don’t know who the author was, but the setting is in the days of the patriarchs.
Job was a wealthy, influential man with a well-deserved reputation for uprightness and integrity: he “feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1). The Accuser (Satan), however, claims that Job serves God only because God protects him and grants him prosperity: “Stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (1:11).
God accepts the challenge, to show that the accusation is false. He allows a series of disasters that result in the loss of everything Job possesses—livestock, servants, and, finally, his own sons and daughters.
Though grief-stricken, Job does not curse or renounce God, as the Accuser had claimed he would. Instead, he bows before God in worship, saying:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21).
Job had withstood the Accuser’s first assault, showing that his worship of God was not governed by self-interest. Though stripped of everything, he still trusted in God.
But the Accuser still doubts that Job’s faith will hold firm under all circumstances: “Stretch out Your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face” (2:5). Again, God permits Satan to afflict Job, this time in body, provided only his life is spared (2:6). Job is afflicted with “loathsome sores” all over (2:7). His wife advises him to “curse God and die” (2:9). But Job gives this magnificent reply: “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (2:10).
Job’s “Comforters”
The second assault had failed. Now the Accuser fades out of the picture, and Job’s three ‘friends’—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—come to mourn with him and comfort him. So wretched is Job’s condition, they barely recognize him. “They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (2:13).
At the end of that time, Job vents his emotions:
“Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire?… For then … I would have been at rest” (3:11–13).
That most mysterious question, ‘Why?’, is now on Job’s lips, as for many since.
His three friends now begin to speak. Three times each in turn addresses Job, who promptly replies, pouring out his agony of spirit. At first, they deal gently with him, expressing surprise that one so noted for his faith and encouragement of others should break down and find God’s treatment of him so discouraging (4:3–5).
As Job continues to answer in defence of his integrity, his friends become increasingly impatient with him. Their main proposition is that all individual suffering is the result of that individual’s sin (4:7–8; 8:4; 11:13–15). Since Job’s suffering is so great, his sin must be very great indeed.
Job agrees that he is not without sin (7:21; 9:2), but wants his day in court, to prove that whatever peccadilloes he may have unwittingly committed in the past, the extent of his suffering is out of all proportion. But in his despair Job doubts that God would even bother to give him a hearing (9:16). Instead, God would overwhelm him with His superior wisdom and power (9:3–4,17–19). Job desperately longs for a mediator—someone who will argue his case and testify to his innocence before God (9:33–34).
Now and then amid his lamentation and agony, Job strikes the note of hope. He expresses an assurance that God Himself will be his Vindicator, if not in this life, then in the life to come:
“I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (19:25–27).
The debate rages back and forth, with neither Job nor his friends prepared to shift position. Eventually they reach a complete impasse. The three friends are silent at last because Job, despite his terrible afflictions, has insisted on his innocence (32:1).
Job’s friends—no doubt exhausted and frustrated—are unable to bring him round to their view and have no more to say. At this point the reader is ready to hear from God Himself. But instead, there is a series of speeches from Elihu (Chapters 32–37).
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God has chosen to build His Kingdom slowly and gradually through families, so we need to lift our eyes above our current circumstances to perceive both the global and multigenerational scope of God’s work.  This will not only redirect our focus to the Gospel and its application to our families but also greatly encourage us as we look past our own dire circumstances to what God has been working on since giving Adam and Eve the Cultural Mandate.  God is building His Church, and He will be successful, so let’s throw ourselves into that work that He has invited us into.

The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”
-Genesis 13:14-17, ESV

When I visited Prague years ago, I was struck by the abundance of beautiful old churches throughout the city—beautiful and empty.  At the time I visited, 80% of Czechs were atheist or agnostic.  It was sadly ironic that a place so central to the pre-Reformation would now be so devoid of the truth of the Gospel, that the church flanking a large statue of Jan Hus and the cathedral entombing the devout King Wenceslas had essentially been reduced to museums.  I couldn’t help but think of a line from Nietzsche’s “The Parable of the Madman”: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”.[1]  That problem is not exclusive to Europe.  During my commute, I drive by some lovely old New England churches, each marked as a tomb by such headstones as a Pride flag, Black Lives Matter banner, or some other indicator if inclusivity.  Churches in America and Europe are dying, particularly the mainline denominations.  Despite this (and in some ways because of it), we should not lose hope but should follow God’s direction to Abram in Genesis 13 and lift up our eyes.  In doing so, we can avoid discouragement by looking above our own circumstances to see how God works both globally and generationally as well as how that applies to our lives today.
Look Up Across the Land
We can draw parallels between our own context and Abraham’s.  In Genesis 12, God first made a promise to Abraham (Abram at the time) in the land of Haran.  From Genesis 11 and 12, we see that after his brother Haran died, Abraham looked after Haran’s son Lot, so when God first speaks to Abraham, Lot was essentially part of his family:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
-Genesis 12:1-3, ESV

Here, God promises to give Abraham a heritage, land, descendants, and immense blessing.  So Abraham and his nephew Lot journey from Haran to Canaan, but by Genesis 13, this promise seems further away.  The limited land they occupied could not support them both, so they separated.  Lot chose what was appealing by earthly wisdom but detrimental spiritually: the fertile yet evil land of Sodom.  Thus, Abram’s family was getting smaller, not larger.  It was in this context that God essentially repeated His promise.  In Genesis 13:14-17, God tells Abram to look all around him because He would give him all of the land he could see.  As Christendom seems to be failing in the West, it is tempting for us to conclude that the Kingdom of God is in retreat rather than advancing.  But if we lift up our eyes and look past the West, we would see that nothing could be further from the truth.  Far from a retreat, Christianity is not only advancing but exploding in Africa and Asia.  F. Lionel Young III recently observed how the increasingly global and ethnically diverse nature of the Church today is so profound that it is making us rethink our paradigm of the “global north” as the spiritual haves and the “global south” as the spiritual have-nots.  In fact, Dr. Gina A. Zurlo observed that in 2020: “A typical Christian today is a non-white woman living in the global South, with lower-than-average levels of societal safety and proper health care. This represents a vastly different typical Christian than that of 100 years ago, who was likely a white, affluent European”.  Two thousand years ago, Jesus gave His disciples a mission to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:19-20).  In that time, Christianity has expanded from 120 people in Jerusalem to the largest religion in the world.  While there have been ups and downs, the Church has been growing and advancing steadily since then, so we have no reason to believe that trend that has lasted two millennia will reverse now.
But even in the West, there is reason for hope.  When we look at the decline of many churches, particularly in mainline denominations, it is right to observe like Nietzsche that the empty churches are tombs and sepulchers, but we must disagree that God is entombed there.  Instead, these empty churches are tombs of a dead religion, a false god that bears little resemblance to the God of the Bible.  By replacing the Gospel with a watered-down version that elevated social change and the values of society above Christ, they lost their first love, so as He did with Ephesus, God has removed their lampstand (Revelation 2:4-5).  Many evangelical churches have also replaced the true Gospel with a false one, emphasizing emotional experiences and watering down the Gospel to make it relevant and palatable for the culture.  The result is a fake man-centered gospel that portrays God as weak and harmless, completely neglecting His sovereignty, justice, and righteousness.  In conforming the church to the culture, they have given up their distinction and thus competitive advantage.
Businesses do the same thing when they abandon their competitive edge to chase the latest fad, as Blackberry did when faced with competition from the iPhone.  As a result, the phone that at one time ruled the business world is no more, replaced by an app on business and government iPhones.[2]  Any business must persistently focus on what sets them apart from their competition, which Jim Collins referred to as “the hedgehog principle” in Good to Great.[3]  Business failure comes when that distinction is abandoned to chase after “shiny objects”.  For the Church, the Gospel is what sets us apart, so sacrificing the Gospel to chase after fads can only be detrimental.  The World will always outdo the Church in concerts, motivational speeches, political action, and everything else but the Gospel just Blackberry could never make a better iPhone than the iPhone.  Only the Gospel is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16), so the Church must focus on the Gospel.
Fortunately, while churches that have abandoned the Gospel to go after the fads of culture are predictably failing, there is steady growth in churches that have maintained their focus on the Gospel.  I have noticed in my lifetime a significant increase in Reformed theology, hunger for depth of Scriptural understanding, and a seriousness to obey Scripture that I did not see in childhood.  This is very positive, verifying that what lies entombed in dying churches is not the true Gospel, which is alive and well, even in the West.  So when we lift up our eyes and look at the growth of true Christianity in the world around us, we have ample reason to hope as Abraham did.
Look Up to Future Generations
Along with the promise of land in Genesis 13:14-17, God also told Abram that He would give him enumerable descendants.  Like the promise of land, this too seemed fleeting.  It was something like two decades between the promise of Genesis 13 and the birth of Isaac in Genesis 21.
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