The priest who gave the homily at Gerald Ford’s national funeral talked about the former president’s love for the Episcopal Church and how he didn’t see why the church’s blessing of same-sex marriages or gay bishops should be divisive.

Watching this on television, I recalled saving an online article from Christianity Today that reported how leaders of the Episcopal Church USA were promoting pagan rites to pagan deities.

“The Episcopal Church USA, though its Office of Women's Ministries, is actually promoting the worship of idols specifically condemned in Scripture,” reads the Oct., 2004 report. "A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" is taken almost completely (without attribution) from a rite from Tuatha de Brighid, "a Clan of modern Druids … who believe in the interconnectedness of all faiths." But who cares where it's from? Look at what it says. Here's how it begins. ‘We gather around a low table, covered with a woven cloth or shawl. A candle, a bowl or vase of flowers, a large shallow bowl filled with salted water, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk mixed with honey, and a plate of raisin cakes are placed on the table.’ ”

*****

A few years ago, a longtime Independent Baptist preacher in North Carolina learned from Jordan’s cable TV show about how to study the Bible dispensationally. As a result, he decided to drop his association with the Baptist denomination.

He called Jordan up, saying, “You know, I need to figure out how to do the paperwork on this name change because we’re not under the Baptists anymore. Do we need to go to the IRS and get our name changed? Is there somebody we can go get under?”

Jordan said he told him, “No, you weren’t in the denomination before. You were an independent church; you’re still an independent church. All you got to do is change your name.”

People have the idea denominations control things and that’s what religion is about. Even when you just carry the name of a denomination you’re under the yoke of it.

Jordan explains, “You know when you get free from that, and it’s just you, well, that’s almost an inexplicable thing in religion. It’s so different to the ears of the world out there.”

*****

Jordan says he caught a radio show on WYLL in Chicago in which the pastor of a Church of Christ church in a northern suburb participated in a panel discussion among preachers.

“That poor guy didn’t believe anything,” Jordan recalls. “He was trying to explain how Jesus really didn’t mind contradicting the Bible and that He didn’t really believe the Bible!”

When the radio show host asked, “Do you believe Jesus was God?” the preacher’s response was, “Well, I believe that Jesus believed the scriptures of His God.”

By that statement alone, explains Jordan, “It says the guy must believe Jesus had a god, somebody else had a god too and the rest must all be gods.

“That’s liberalism. It’s just unbelief, plain and simple. By the way, most preachers think like that guy. When you come to look at the reality of that, there’s a whole lot of stuff out there in the world for God to set right.

“A guy like that fellow takes that passage (in Luke 21) and says, ‘See, Jesus said that everything is going to be fulfilled and we know that’s 70 A.D. Everything was fulfilled in 70 A.D., therefore there’s no prophecy about vengeance and wrath yet to be fulfilled. See how somebody could do that?’ ”

Jordan said this preacher reasoned that even though Jesus taught the Sabbath law, He determined, “I can heal a man on the Sabbath and that’s more important than keeping what the Bible says.”

“I’m thinking, ‘The six year olds in our kindergarten would be able to answer that better than that!’ ” says Jordan. “And this was a guy they introduced as ‘Dr. somebody.’ You know, the answer he didn’t have is how to ‘rightly divide’ the Word.”