User:DoulosBen

DoulosBen (b. 1985) is curator of the Worship through Song Project as well as a professional information technologist, local church music leader, Christian Biblicist, & writer born in Pasadena, California, United States, now living in Northern California and contributing to multiple outlets pertaining to technological blogs, marketing information, and Christian theological articles & studies.

Early Life & History
Born in 1985, DoulosBen lived several years in Pasadena, a city in the NE part of Los Angeles, but in 1991, the family left the Southern California area after unmasking the Biblical heresy of the Worldwide Church of God. Moving to New Jersey in 1991 and then south-eastern Oklahoma in 1995, DoulosBen lived 1 and 2 years, subsequently, in the towns of Spiro & Poteau and then the rural community of Gilmore. There, DoulosBen raised Nubian and Saanen goats, Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, Plymouth Rock, and Leghorn chickens, and farmed 5 acres of land, orchard, and crops for 6 years from 1998 - 2004. In 2004, DoulosBen and his family moved to the Pacific Northwest region of the United States where he worked at several jobs in NW Washington state and, later, attended Northwest Baptist Church in Bellingham. Moving alone to Des Moines, Iowa in 2006, he began attending Grandview Park Baptist Church where his Christian faith began to grow deeper. Moving to Los Angeles in 2009, he joined Grace Community Church where his Christian faith materialized into a Complementarian, Biblicist theology with a worldview that was influenced by the Bible as opposed to cultural pressures. In 2012, DoulosBen married a French citizen raised in Paris and, in 2014, he and his wife joined Christ Bible Church, through which, his knowledge and interpretation of Scripture grew exponentially as well. As his relationship with Christ grew, it raised a deeper awareness and action surrounding the 'evangelisation of the lost'. In 2019, after the birth of their first child, they moved to the Northern California area and began attending Free Grace Church in Fresno, California.

Focal Topics
Besides Christian living and beliefs, DoulosBen has worked with and written extensively about business marketing, grocery store branding and real estate, media & culture, vehicle rebadging, logo design, smartphone technology, and Android. Specific topics within these categories include the expansion and subsequent bankruptcy of Haggen in 2016, weather & tornado outbreaks, & the US expansion of LIDL and California expansions of ALDI and Dunkin' Donuts. Other topics include production & TV news music such as produced by Gari or 615 Music, & corporate re-branding & new marketing such as Subway, Taco Bell, 365 by Whole Foods, or the localized 2017 re-brand of Los Angeles' 100.3 FM KSWD to 100.3 KKLQ. One of the more notable focuses in recent years has been the dedication to something termed as lyrical discernment. Although Scripture grounded musical artists and hymnwriters, such as Getty Music, had long been in DoulosBen's library, it had not been exclusive and was bookended by shallow, and often un-Biblical Christian music. Sometime around 2018, the conviction and realization of the need for theologically rich music with Christ exalting and Gospel saturated lyrics came to a head and the Worship through Song Project was founded.

Christian Faith
DoulosBen is a self-described Christian Biblicist and holds strongly to the high views of Scripture known as Biblical inerrancy and Sufficiency of Scripture. He describes these as fundamental tenants of the Christian faith. Adhering to the Biblically grounded 'Doctrines of Grace', cessastionism, young-earth creationism, and the Lordship of Christ in the believer's life, DoulosBen has also written several topics against the prosperity gospel and strongly advocates against Progressive Christianity, Dominionism, Charismaticism, as well as both Christian Reconstructionism and Christian Nationalism.

Stance on Syncretism, Christian Nationalism, & Associated Movements
DoulosBen maintains an adamant stance against any syncretism that amalgamates Christianity with any extra-Biblical school of thought, culture, politics, or religion. This includes Christian nationalism and the Christian Reconstructionist movement. In particular, he condemns the advocation of political sentiments and agendas from the pulpit and agrees with John MacArthur when he says that it,  'flatly contradicts what Jesus Himself said in Matthew 20:25–26 (“the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion….But it shall not be so among you.”) It also conflicts with the pattern of ministry in the New Testament church.'

Stance on Freedom of Religion
DoulosBen also believes that freedom of religion as a concept is unsupported by Biblical teachings for the Christian life. He believes that the Bible is very clear in this by conveying Christ's intolerance towards other religions and teachings. DoulosBen states that when a believer gets caught up in defending so called religious freedom', this becomes a form of idolatry in that the advocacy for other religions comes into play. Again supporting John MacArthur's stance on this same concept, DoulosBen agrees with the noted pastor when he says, '''To say I support religious freedom is to say I support idolatry, it’s to say I support lies, I support hell, I support the kingdom of darkness. You can’t say that. No Christian with half a brain would say, "We support religious freedom." We support the truth!'' '

Stance on Eschatology, Israel, Dispensationalism, and Replacement Theology
DoulosBen is continually refining beliefs and understandings on Biblical eschatology. DoulosBen's Biblical studies have placed him firmly as a Premillennialist but with some clarification. Notably, a clarification would be the common association with premillennial theology and Dispensationalism. Although DoulosBen, like many others with common views, agrees with several key points made in the Dispensational view, he adamantly disagrees with other core Dispensational claims such as the 7 dispensations, 2 kingdoms, more than one New Covenant, more than one way of salvation, discontinuity between the Biblical Old & New Testaments, and so on. These are considered, by DoulosBen, to be wrong and gross misunderstandings of Scripture. Therefore, DoulosBen would not, generally, term himself as a Dispensationalist in order to avoid confusion or misattribution of the many inaccurate views that label espouses.

DoulosBen believes that Scripture teaches of a rapture of all believers which could take place at any time (as there is nothing prophetic in Scripture left to take place before this occurs). After which, the Great Tribulation will take place and then Jesus Christ will return to the earth in His second coming. Then, Satan will be bound for 1,000 years during the millennial kingdom and, at the end, Satan will be released and will lead a rebellion which will be completely crushed by God and the new heaven and the new earth will be set up. At this point, the elect (true Christians who are saved by Christ) will live in eternity with God while all who are not truly saved by Christ will forever be relegated to total & terrifying true separation from God and thus being subjected to the removal of all the restraints of evil giving forth to the most despicable and unimaginable torment and agony on every being placed there by the sovereign God. This is commonly referred to as hell throughout Scripture & culture.

DoulosBen formerly subscribed to the view of Replacement Theology (or Supercessionism) which can be traced back to Augustine in North Africa. It teaches, essentially, that Israel's repeated disobedience and apostasy caused God to replace ancient Israel as God's true Israel and that Christians (including Gentiles) have replaced the biological bloodline of ancient Israelites as the new people of God. Supercessionism, when carried out to its logical conclusions (contextually), portrays God as having broken His Biblical promises & covenants with the Jewish people and, instead, has turned to the Christian church to fulfil and keep all those promises originally destined for the Jewish people. However, after deep research into Scripture and removing preconceived notions found outside Scripture, it became clear that this doctrine is in error and the overwhelming evidence of God's unbroken promise to the people of Israel became clear. Passages throughout Scripture including Zechariah 12 - 14, Ezekiel 36 - 39, Romans 9 - 11, and others removed all possibility that God was finished with Israel or that He broke His covenant with them due to their apostasy (failure to recognise Jesus Christ's first coming). Jeremiah 31:37 speaks directly as if to counter Supercessionism in this rhetorical passage: Thus says Yahweh,

“If the heavens above can be measured

And the foundations of the earth searched out below,

Then I will also reject all the seed of Israel

''For all that they have done,” declares Yahweh. (Jer. 31:37 LSB)'' DoulosBen understood the context of that passage and the rhetorical sentiments of the first portion of verse 37. He concluded, therefore, that God will not reject all the seed of Israel. He also saw that the Old Testament, previously thought as only something with which to interpret the New Testament by is, in fact, far more significant than that. The promises in the Old Testament inform the significance of the New Testament and many other indispensable aspects.

The Scripture that started DoulosBen on the search to question preconceived notions of Replacement Theology was Romans 11. ' ''Has God rejected His people? May it never be! ' (v1) And again in v 11, ' did [the Jews] stumble so as to fall? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous.' Reading further through Romans 11, DoulosBen saw clear descriptions of what had begun at Christ's 1st coming and continues on to the present, namely that, ' a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved'' ' (v 25, 26). He understood that to believe other core doctrines of grace, the fundamental understanding that God has predestined all things from the beginning of time until the end and nothing happens beyond the absolute control and pre-planning of God. Therefore, to take a position of Supercessionism would necessitate that the writers and readers of the Old Testament would have, in their day, been consuming prophecies, promises, and alliterations that were known, by God, to be untrue (due to His omniscence). Pastor & theologian John MacArthur says it this way,"'This, then, means that the Old Testament can’t be interpreted on its own; that people who are writing it and reading it can’t have any idea what it is that they’re writing and reading. If Old Testament promises were actually for the church, and not for ethnic Jews, ethnic Israel, then those Old Testament promises are meaningless; they are utterly unintelligible, and they are irrelevant to the Old Testament reader. But this is essentially what you’re left with if you take an amillennial view; the New Testament is the starting point for understanding the Old Testament, and what you’ve just done is damage any meaningful interpretation of the Old Testament on its own. And this is basically what leads to what we call spiritualizing the Scripture; spiritualizing the Scripture - that is, taking texts out of their literal sense, spiritualizing them into some other than literal sense. '"Although there are differences between Replacement Theology & Amillennialism and not all who hold to one hold to the other, the groundwork of Amillennialism and Replacement Theology are fundamentally linked. Conversely, the doctrine of predestination and the Doctrines of Grace are fundamentally linked with Premillennialism although, again, some who hold to one seem not to hold to the other.

As a firm advocate of Biblical literalism, after studying Scripture, DoulosBen concluded that Supercessionist theology would make God out as a deceiver since it would necessitate that the writers and readers of the Old Testament would have, in their day, been consuming prophecies, covenants, promises, and alliterations that were known, by God, to be destined for breaking and therefore untrue (due to His omniscience). All these things and countless other Scripture passages monumentally altered DoulosBen's understanding of Israel's place in history and, more specifically, the Jewish people in the future of the world and the end times.

Complementarianism
DoulosBen subscribes to the Biblically described view of marriage roles known as complementarianism. This view essentially states that God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human person-hood, but with different and complementary functions. DoulosBen has particularly written against the anti-Biblical Christian feminist movement and the similar egalitarian movement which essentially deny the inerrancy of the Bible by redefining terms and meanings to support contemporary cultural pressures, agendas, & movements.

Distinction Within the Term: Evangelicalism
In recent years, since the publicizing of an inaccurate definition by American media for the term Evangelicalism, DoulosBen has distanced himself from the commonly misunderstood term although in most term definitions, he adheres to the fundamental meaning and actual principles of Christian evangelicalism, such as the  'belief that the essence of the gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ's atonement.' Splitting with politically charged, media defined Evangelicalism, DoulosBen affirms with fundamentally Biblical evangelicalism and echoes the words of Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in clarifying that confessional Evangelicalism refers to  'that movement of Christian believers who seek a constant convictional continuity with the theological formulas of the Protestant Reformation'. DoulosBen, like others before him such as R.C Sproul, has referenced Imputationalism as a replacement for the, now lexically changed, term, Evangelicalism.

Distinction Within the Term: Reformed
DoulosBen's theology, if termed, falls close to that of the Reformed Baptist denomination. However, when clarifying terms, DoulosBen describes an adament stance on the Biblical truth of the New Covenant (covenant of grace) and, as such, disagrees with traditional Reformed Covenant Theology (one covenant). As evidenced, the term Reformed can be construed in various theological ways. GotQuestions.org clarifies the differences within the theological term:

Broadly speaking, Reformed theology includes any system of belief that traces its roots back to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century.

In this way, DoulosBen has referred to his theology as Reformed. However, going deeper into the matter, when referring to reformed theology, DoulosBen describes his views as aligning with what could be termed as broadly Reformed (in contrast to classically Reformed). For instance, the Reformed doctrinal viewpoints on salvation (soteriology) would align with his understanding of Scripture but not the group's views on the church (ecclesiology). It is for this type of potential confusion that DoulosBen makes a careful distinction between the broadly reformed view of Scripture and certain classically Reformed sects & denominations which use the term 'Reformed' such as Protestant Reformed, RCA, Dutch Reformed, Christian Reformed, and other entities which tend to elevate the Westminster Confession of Faith, albeit an important document of Christian faith that expounds on many truths, to an unwise level. Upon examination, DoulosBen has found that many of these same classically Reformed denominations have erred on the side of extreme legalism (sometimes even blending legalism with progressive Christian worldviews such as ordination of women, acceptance of abortion, homosexuality, and other extra-Biblical errors).

Confessional (Classically) Reformed vs. Non-Confessional (Broadly) Reformed
DoulosBen is adamantly opposed to the view that Scripture interprets itself using external 'keys' or addendums such as confessions or creeds. DoulosBen describes his views as 'non-confessionally reformed ', distancing his views from Confessionally Reformed adherents of the Westminster Confession (or even certain some of stronger adherents of the The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, a document with which DoulosBen would generally agree with much of). While confessions and creeds may be useful in providing succinct terminology or verbiage to describe tenants of faith, he disagrees with any view that would ascribe either canon status or a general consideration of infallibility to any document not part of the canon of Scripture itself. This view bleeds over into DoulosBen's stance on Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura
DoulosBen asserts strongly that Scripture is sufficient for all positions in all things: that the infallible & inerrant Scripture alone, no extra-Biblical texts such as confessions, creeds, bylaws, or other documents produced from a denomination or group, must be able to justify any positions taken in all views. DoulosBen has taken an adamant stance on the doctrine of Sola Scriptura which states that the sufficiency of Scripture is the supreme authority in all spiritual matters for a Biblical Christian believer. This also mandates a total rejection of any other extra-Biblical viewpoint, doctrine, theory, or work to hold the status of infallible. This includes, but is not limited to, the following of the teachings by any man, denomination, doctrine, viewpoint, world view, or interpretation without being able to wholly back up the same views with Scriptural proofs. While any of these categories may contain or promote accurate statements, truths, or insights into Godly living, DoulosBen unequivocally states that the Bible is to be the sole authority in all things and he believes that all views and beliefs must be solidly backed up by Scriptural principles before being adopted.

Music
With a keen interest in music and a connoisseur of such that might be considered rare or uncommon, DoulosBen primarily listens to 3 genres: Christian Music (see 'Distinction from Mainline Christian Music (CCM)' below), Beautiful Music, & Film Scores (Soundtracks) by artists, songwriters, and composers such as Sebastian Demrey, Sovereign Grace Music, Enfield, Keith & Kristyn Getty, Matt Boswell, Ronnie Aldrich, The Living Strings, Nathan Drake (Reawaken Hymns), Paul Pritchard, Hymns of Grace (Hymnology), Johnny Pearson, Pasteur&Compagnie, Chorale Psalmodie, Stuart Townend, Matt Papa, & Carl Davis.

Distinction from Mainline Christian Music (CCM)
DoulosBen has worked to differentiate between what is known as mainline Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and a diametrical sub-genre of the Christian worship format (differentiated primarily by distinctly theological lyric focus which blends hymns, worship music, & Biblically based songs with often contemporary rhythms & instrumentation). The sub-genre, termed as the modern hymn movement, has emerged, primarily in doctrinally reformed circles of certain Presbyterian & Baptist groups as well as more traditional non-denominational branches of Protestant Christianity in recent years. Artists of this sub-genre include well-known groups such as Sovereign Grace Music, Laura Story, Shane & Shane, Stuart Townend, Matt Papa, modern hymn-writers, Keith & Kristyn Getty, Matt Boswell, Enfield (Hymn Sessions), Indelible Grace Music, and Aaron Keyes. The format consists primarily of (but is not limited to nor does it wholly encompass) traditional & modern hymns, roots worship, and anthem worship. The modern hymn worship through song format focuses on distinct teaching & Scripture saturated lyrics which often contain antithetical theology to sentiments heard in the mainline Christian genre. This worship through song format is gaining traction in many churches and other areas in culture as well as being heard across some CCM collections and musical algorithms across internet streaming services.

Distinction Within the Modern Hymn, Roots Worship, and Other Movements and Genres
DoulosBen has voiced a disparity between Biblical worship and some of what has been confused with Christian worship through song. For instance, the groups Porter's Gate & Common Hymnal have been grouped in music platforms (such as Spotify and Pandora) together with theologically sound modern hymnwriters such as Sovereign Grace Music or Matt Boswell. DoulosBen has stated that the primary difficulty in the distinction process between what is ' sound and solid ' has been the blending of the lines of discernment over some doctrinally solid artists who have collaborated with misguided artists who have 'lost sight of true Biblically grounded and God-honouring worship through song '.

Wikipedia Usage Concerns
Although a casual Wikipedia contributor and editor, DoulosBen has been somewhat vocal on the dangers of crowd-sourced data and engines such as Wikipedia, particularly when that data is treated as reliable or trustworthy. This concern primarily results from an imbalance of contributor viewpoints on crowd-sourced projects. These contributors tend to be of certain persuasions on key topics (for instance, the topic of benefits vs. the dangers of crowd-sourcing) and the medium will invariably fall wanting in certain viewpoints, worldviews, and rounded perspectives thus giving way to bias and unreliability.

Church Attendance History

 * Worldwide Church of God, Pasadena CA (1985-1991)
 * Laurelton Park Baptist Church, Brick, NJ (1993-1995)
 * First Baptist Church of Ferndale, Ferndale, WA (2005)
 * Christ the King Community Church. Bellingham, WA (2005)
 * Northwest Baptist Church, Bellingham, WA (2005-2006)
 * Grandview Park Baptist Church, Des Moines, IA (2006-2009)
 * Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, CA (2009-2014)
 * Église Protestante Évangélique de Télégraphe, Paris, France (2013)
 * Église Protestante Évangélique, Avrillé, France (2013)
 * Christ Bible Church, North Hills, CA (2014-2019)
 * Free Grace Church, Fresno, CA (2019-present)

Residencies

 * Los Angeles County, California
 * South Pasadena (1985-1986)
 * Pasadena (1986-1991)
 * United Kingdom (1986, 1989)
 * London
 * Isle of Skye
 * Perthshire
 * Ocean County, New Jersey
 * Lakewood (1991-1995)
 * LeFlore County, Oklahoma
 * Spiro (1995-1996)
 * Poteau (1996-1998)
 * Gilmore (1998-2004)
 * Whatcom County, Washington
 * Blaine (2004-2005)
 * Bellingham (2005-2006)
 * Polk County, Iowa
 * Des Moines (2006-2007, 2009)
 * Ankeny (2007)
 * West Des Moines (2007-2008)
 * Maricopa County, Arizona
 * Tempe (2009)
 * Gilbert (2009)
 * Pays-de-la-Loire, France
 * Angers (2013)
 * Southern California (Greater Los Angeles Area)
 * Tujunga (2009-2010)
 * Newbury Park (2010-2011)
 * Ventura (2011)
 * Calabasas (2011-2012)
 * Canoga Park (2012-2013)
 * Van Nuys (2013-2014)
 * Reseda (2014-2016)
 * Panorama City (2016-2018)
 * Thousand Oaks (2018-2019)
 * Northern California
 * Fresno (2019-present)