30 January, 2007

Net Finney Guards Families Against the Harmful Effects of Calvinism

LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA

It is a situation that is becoming all too common. An unsuspecting individual begins to innocently search the internet for information on a particular subject and suddenly finds his or herself faced with the perils of Reformed theology.

"I was helping my ten-year-old son do a repo
rt on American Government." Said Kenneth Lyons, a concerned parent. "We were about to research America's election process, so we went to Google and typed in "election." The phone rang and I stepped out for no more than 5 minutes, and when I returned I found Eric reading some article by a guy named R.C. Sproul about believers being "elected" and "predestined" by God for salvation. I just freaked out! I didn't know what to do."

Ly
ons' story is not unique. Families and entire churches are discovering daily the theological risks of surfing the internet.

"We lost our pastor to this mess." Said Olivia Karnes, a member of Lynchburg Church of God. "We had begun to notice that Brother Smith's preaching was changing. He started preaching through Ephesians every Sunday. The next thing he did was he stopped doing altar calls! Then it all came out one Sunday. They found sermons on his computer from all these Calvinist guys and links to blogs like The Pyromaniacs, and Calvinist Gadfly. There was no choice. We had to let him go. Our church is still healing from this crushing blow."

But it was these kinds of stories that prompted a team of students and professors at Liberty University to develop a software that would protect people from accidentally or intentionally being exposed to Calvinism on the internet. Net Finney, named for the famous 19th-century Pelagian evangelist Charles Finney, effectively filters out 99.9% of Calvinist and Reformed literature and media on the internet.

"We think this is a tremendous step in stopping the spread of Reformed materials." Said Dr. Ergun Caner, president of Liberty University's theological seminary. "Now parents can rest easy letting their kids surf the web without the fear that they will turn into Calvinists."

In addition to blocking Calvinist and Reformed media the software will automatically filter any Calvinistic content out of sermons by renowned 19th-century Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon.

"It's an exciting development." Said Pastor James Yeates of New Hope Baptist Church, Lynchburg. "This Calvinism thing is literally infecting our Southern Baptist Churches. I hope this helps put a stop to things."


35 comments:

Shep Shepherd said...

Very funny. You have a talent of being satiric but not offensively sardonic. I will definately be back read your blog. Keep up the good work.

In Christ,
Albert Shepherd
The Aspiring Theologian

A site that will be filtered by Net Finney:
Knight of the Living God

Anonymous said...

Thanks Albert!

I appreciate your comments.

In Christ,
Thomas Slawson

GeneMBridges said...

In addition to blocking Calvinist and Reformed media the software will automatically filter any Calvinistic content out of sermons by renowned 19th-century Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon.

Ahem, I think "Sword of the Lord" has been doing that for quite sometime, haven't they?

Anonymous said...

Very funny. Well done. I especially appreciate the Liberty quip. Thank you for having a sense of humor.

Anonymous said...

Gene,

Yes they have! It's funny how in indyfundy circles they love Spurgeon, but only part of him.

-Thomas

MarieP said...

The producers of Net Finney regret that there are several bugs in the current edition. They hope to have these fixed, but they are leaving the company scratching their heads. "Unfortunately, there are several sites which users should have access too that cannot be accessed," says manager Will King. "Our users can't access Bible Gateway or any other online Bibles. They also can't view any sites dealing with the Sandy Creek Association of Baptists."

Anonymous said...

Mariep,

HA HA Haaaaaaaaaa! That is great!

-Thomas

Arthur Sido said...

How long can it be before some Arminian thinks this is a real product and mails you a check to buy a copy?

Anonymous said...

Arthur,

If they do I'll donate all the money to Phil Johnson's The Spurgeon Archive.

-Tom

Joshua A. Hitchcock said...

I love this blog!

Lance said...

Awesome satire, Tom! You have a number of past blog entries I'd love to read, but most of the links say the article is missing. I hope you make these available again. You've been added to my bookmarks...

Anonymous said...

Hey Lance,

Thanks for the comments. Something appears to be wrong with Blogger this morning. Not sure what's going on. The old posts are supposed to be there. Sometimes these things happen.

-Tom

Anonymous said...

That dang Book of Ephesians! It gets in the way of my Christianity all the time!

-Liberty Student

pilgrim said...

What we really need is something to filter out all the Finneyisms from the Church at large...

Thanks for the laugh...

Joshua A. Hitchcock said...

How much does this software cost? Bill Harrell just came to my church and said alot of these things, about calvinism being unevangelistic, and bloggers saying all kinds of bad things. I would like to send NetFinney to his church, I am sure he would appreciate it, maybe he would get the price cut for all Southern Baptist Pastors to give to their members. I am sure he would like such a product.

Jim Bublitz said...

I'd like to file the following complaint. Do not use this product! I installed it and within a matter of minutes it erased all of the content from the commentaries in my bible software, all of the great hymns, and now my computer won't even let me read anything about Pilgrims. Don't install this Net Finney thing unless you want all of the church history zapped off of your computer's hard drive like a virus would do!

:-)

Bob Cleveland said...

Now, if you can just add "glossolalia" and "unknown" to the filter, you'll REALLY have something......

Anonymous said...

This cracks me up!! Too bad they don't make another version that would filter out the all the Positive thinking spirtual fluff teaching that is out there. That is what we really need!!

Thomas Pryde said...

Ha! That is great...very well done!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the great comments!

-Tom

Anonymous said...

Now we need a "Net-Whitsitt" to filter out all of the Landmarkism that is a part of our Southern Baptist heritage that so many SBCer's ignore and despise.

James Hunt said...

Nice! Loved it!

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!

SelahV said...

Tom: I loved this! It is hysterical! Hey Dawn: If they make another version to filter out positive thinking fluff teaching out there, we'd have to eliminate a bunch of Philippians (i.e. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.) And In all things give thanks. And much of the Psalms which offer hope, consolation and comfort. Wouldn't it? I hate to be optimistic here, but most of the Bible is positive to me. Could you please explain what you mean by "Positive thinking spirtual fluff teaching that is out there."? SelahV

Anonymous said...

Hey Selah V,

Great name BTW! Thanks for th comments.

I have a feeling Dawn is talking about the Robert Schulleresque type of stuff "We're all just good people...look inside yourself...have happy thought." There's a lot of that fluff going around these days. That's my theory, but I'll let Dawn speak for herself.

-Tom

Unknown said...

Thomas, it is good to see that you still have your sense of humor about you. I pray that our Lord is blessing your ministry. In Christ, Win Groseclose

Anonymous said...

Win,

It's good to hear from you brother! It's been a while since the RTS days. Where are you now?

-Tom

Anonymous said...

Hey I thought of a new game we could play. It's really cool. It's called "Swing the Calvinist." First, you decide whether or not your friends are Calvinists. If you have a bunch of friends like that, then you all get together to play. It's awesome. You sit in a circle, and spin a bottle. Whoever it lands on has to quote the Westminster Confession by heart. If he can't do it, then the group ropes him up and swings him around. Boy, the hours of fun we've had doing this!!! It's great!!! You guys should try it.

Anonymous said...

I credit the internet with my "conversion" to Reformed theology. Once I got the basic ideas, I found out that, um, they were in my Bible all along.

Anonymous said...

Web site of possible interest:
Satirical look at churches in America. "Churches ad hoc"
www.efn.org/~hkrieger/church.htm

Anonymous said...

Excllent program which will certainly protect all committed Pelagians from Calvinistic influenes. One additional suggestion -- applied to the Bible it will reduce its size by approximately 50 percent thus making in less expensive for Arminians to hand out God's Word to "whomsoever" will accept it.

Unknown said...

Well, lucky for me, I found open theism before this great software came out. Open theism saved me from calvinism and now I'm a 0-point calvinist!

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness something is being done to counteract the devastating effects of Calvinism!

Now, if only we can convince people to choose to use it. It certainly isn't going to choose them!

Joshua D. Boyce said...

I hope you don't mind, but I mentioned Net Finney in a story of my own and linked to here :)

Keep up the great work

Charlie Waller said...

"There was no choice. We had to let him go."
HaHaHaHaHa