The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

Part One

The Judaizers at Galatia pandered to the Jews in the region.  They wanted to make a “fair show” to their ethnicity and they wished to avoid persecution.  Circumcision was a convenient emphasis over the cross of Christ, even though it nullified grace and the work of Christ became no effect unto them.  The Jews of Galatia didn’t have the same effect on Paul and he tells why in the next to last verse of the entire epistle (6:17):

From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

Persecution was a threat to professing Christians, so a motivating factor to pander (6:12).  Paul, however, wasn’t doing any handwringing  over that possibility.  Anything that they could have done to Paul, he had already experienced.  His body was his biography and an anatomical masterpiece of perseverance.  His kryptonite to Jewish intimidation was the scars of his personal suffering for Jesus.  There was no pain that Paul had not already experienced.  If he was going to fold under pressure, he would have already.

Paul’s marks were actual marks.  He could place an index finger on spots all over himself as the evidence of ugly wounds, each with an accompanying story.  No one could trouble him.

On the other hand, men can be trouble to other men.  You read this all over the Bible.  It was a concern of Solomon about young men in the first chapter of Proverbs.  Sinners would entice.  They would be trouble.  Something they were offering in the short term would look better than what God could give.  It’s never true, but it merited a serious warning from Solomon.  The prospect of missing out on a fun time or not getting to look impressive to the appropriate people seem like enough trouble.  Something far worse wouldn’t be trouble for Paul.

The Galatian churches shouldn’t be trouble for Paul either.  They should have welcomed some marks to match his.  If they were saved, they were, like Paul, crucified to the world.  The cross of Christ was how they received justification before God.  Their salvation came because of the Savior’s suffering, because of His marks.  Paul bore them too. Joining Him outside the camp.  Pandering comes with the proposal of a better time in this world and glory received for a fair showing.  It’s not about the truth, but what will work on a momentary basis.

Doctrines and practices, once believed and lived in churches for over a thousand years, have disappeared like they never existed in a majority of churches today.  They are difficult teachings, unacceptable to this world, although required by the next.  Rather than preach and live those teachings, the majority of churches pander like the Judaizers did.

If the Judaizers really cared about circumcision, they would keep the rest of the law too.  Circumcision was a convenience though.  It would provide the most acceptance at the least possible cost.

For Paul, it was preaching only the cross of Christ.  Today, like then, that message isn’t good enough.  The Judaizers were ancient advocates of contextualization, making the cross more appetizing to their context with a circumcision sugar-coat.  A spoonful of circumcision might make the cross of Christ go down.

Churches today impress a different context, one obsessed with creature comfort.  They have a Jesus who might slide down easier with the right mix of worldly and fleshly entertainment or amusement.  Not only do you make it through unscathed, mark-free, but with a slightly Christianized version of almost everything the world has and does.  That is trouble everywhere in Christianity today.

When even the Apostle Peter pandered to the James gang, as recounted in Galatians 2, Paul, the least of all apostles, confronted him to his face in harsh terms, not uncertain ones.  Peter was becoming an accessory, even if he didn’t accept the perversion himself.  This is the case of a lot of professing Christian leaders today.  They see the damage, but they don’t want to hurt their numbers or coalitions, so they sign-off on the pandering that makes up such a big part of evangelical and fundamentalist churches today.

Other Posts on Pandering from the Past (One, Two, Three, Four, not necessarily in order)

Paul summarizes the issue he has addressed with the Galatian churches in the last little segment of his letter in Galatians 6:11-18.  In the midst of that finale, he writes in verses 12-14:

12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. 13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. 14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

Paul described men who were pandering to achieve short-term, temporal success.  They (1) made “a fair show in the flesh,” (2) “lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ,” and (3) “desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in the flesh.”  They didn’t constrain others to circumcision because they loved God’s law or else they would have kept it all (v. 13).  What motivated their push for circumcision?

The message of the cross of Christ brought persecution from fellow Jews and circumcision was a way to avoid that persecution.  They weaponized circumcision against potential persecution.  They could pull the circumcision card as a sufficient credential of their Jewishness.  Support of the cross of Christ brought castigation, the antidote of which was circumcision.  See, you weren’t giving up Jewishness — you talk about circumcision all the time.

The circumcision message fit the culture of Galatia.  Preaching the cross, you were out.  Preaching circumcision and you were in again.  You could find acceptance in a wider group with circumcision that would be closed to cross of Christ preaching.  Again, it was cultural.  The significance was merely cultural.  Paul says that in verse 15:

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.

In reality, aside from what it meant to a Jewish culture in the world, either circumcision or uncircumcision was nothing.  Paul was crucified to the world, so what mattered in the world, he was crucified to (v. 14).  Circumcision was just cultural, irrelevant as to eternity, so Paul was crucified to it too.  He wasn’t preaching something that was of temporal and only cultural significance.  It had to mean more, and it didn’t.

Because circumcision was acceptable and fashionable in the culture, it was an easy way to “make a fair show in the flesh” (v. 12).  You could get some mileage in the Jewish community by parking on circumcision.  Let that be the subject matter and you could find short term success.  It wasn’t doing anything.  Earlier in the chapter (v. 8a), Paul said, “he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.”  The show had no long term benefit, meaning eternal benefit, like “he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (v. 8b).  Circumcision was working with something that had no shelf-life, which future was corruption.  It would get you a lot in the short term though, which is the nature of pandering — it sacrifices eternal success for the short term variety.

Glorying in the flesh hawks short term benefits.  “Lookee at what you’re doing. . . . wow, it’s working!”  Circumcision at the historical juncture Paul was living in Galatia was targeting racial identity.  As a cause, circumcision surpassed the cross of Christ, the latter a non-starter for the Galatian world.  Worldly mileage was gained with circumcision as a cause, unlike the cross of Christ.  Easily, those mixing the cross with circumcision could view the latter as furthering the former, which was more of a stumbling block.  Circumcision was a gospel tool with a particular ethnic group.

As we zoom forward to the late 20th and early 21st centuries across the western world, especially in the United States, “social justice” issues work the same as circumcision in Paul’s day.  You would do better, the message, at least to mix the two together.  Social justice causes elevate personal stature, especially with certain ethnicity.  If you’ve crucified this world, there won’t be much hope for you, because this one is where you’ve got to aim your attention.

Neither Jesus nor the Apostle Paul at all devoted themselves to causes of social justice.  Neither attempted to stop Roman slavery or gender inequality.  “In Christ Jesus” was none of these, “but a new creature” (v. 15).  The Lord and Paul sowed to the Spirit, reaping life eternal and new creatures.  Life was too short for temporal preoccupations.  They were irrelevant in light of eternity.  However, they succeed as pandering.

The spotlight of churches on racial reconciliation, breaking the glass ceiling, orphans, rebuilding Haiti, or community soup kitchens make “a fair show in the flesh” (v. 12).  Today it is moving toward the inclusion of gender neutrality and same sex marriage.  They neutralize the offense of the cross of Christ and other objectionable aspects of the gospel message.  They put the emphasis right where the world wants it — on its self.  You can justify to your worldly friends the latest cause celeb of your church.  That makes sense.  You’ll make sense.  You’ll feel good about yourself and ward away the disapproval of the world.  You’re more like them than they even thought.

The gospel will make this world better, but it isn’t about making this world better.  Even when we pray for those in authority, the point is the gospel, not giving us better living condition (cf. 1 Tim 2:1-2).  The gospel is about the next world.  The time in this life is so short and the time in the next so long, an emphasis on this world misrepresents what our time in this world is all about.  The world needs to know that it will not save the planet, that God is mad at them, and if they don’t get right with Him, they’re going to be destroyed too, except worse than what will happen to earth.

In 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, Paul argues union with Christ is compatible with any social status:  single, married, widowed, divorced, slave, free, Jew, Gentile, man, or woman.  Live in any kind of society — democracy, total anarchy, a dictatorship, anywhere from America to Cuba to Red China — and actual Christianity works.  The gospel is not an immediate revolutionizing, disorganizing element in society.  When social changes occur as the result of the gospel, it soaks and penetrates society’s roots to modify its trajectory long term, not as a purposeful maneuver.

In one sense, Paul says, don’t worry about riding in the back of the bus.  You’re going to rule with Christ in the kingdom.  I know, that’s easy for me to say.  In reality, it’s harder to say something like that than it is to take on social justice advocacy. Actually, living in California, being a Christian singles me out for bad treatment, when I’m living it like I read in scripture.  Racial reconciliation is an easy message today.  The gospel, the true gospel, is hard.  Circumcision was easy in Galatia.  The cross of Christ wasn’t.

Thirty years ago when I came to California, I spent some time camped out at Golden Gate Seminary library reading the multi-volume complete writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., where by his own testimony, he rejected the fundamentals of the faith, essentials for a true gospel or salvation.  As a child, by his own testimony, he went forward at a church invitation after a sermon by his father, later conceding that he just went along with his sister without really believing it.  Don’t get me wrong, King is a meaningful historical figure in the United States.  Evangelical’s lying to transmogrify him into a saint is a tool in the social justice pandering toolbox.

Just preaching the gospel will not bring you fame.  It does not guarantee worldly success. At least posing for social justice can and does bring both.  It doesn’t advance the cross of Christ and it won’t even result in justice.  It grandstands for the purpose of at least perceived benefits that won’t last.  It appears enlightened to the deceived and wards away accusations of “structural racism” or institutional racism.  It doesn’t assuage any actual guilt over anything and in addition does not fulfill the scriptural mission of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Judaizers wouldn’t let Galatian believers just preach the cross.  They had to include circumcision.  In particular ethnic communities, you can’t just preach the pie in the sky.  The gospel alone isn’t enough.  Every gospel needed a heaping helping of social justice along with it.  You will suffer if you exclude it.  Your credentials are taken away.

The world has so changed, knit together by a socialized education system and universal social network, that most outside of particular ethnic communities will also benefit from that emphasis.  They’ll at least find acceptance in very wide circles and be included in many bigger opportunities.  Everyone can pander with social justice.

Pandering doesn’t glorify Christ.  It glories in your flesh.  It doesn’t even make you smarter.  You just look that way.  It’s actually foolish.  This is the paradox of the gospel.  The foolishness of preaching glorifies God.  Pandering glorifies you through its show of your flesh.

I don’t know when it was that I first heard the English terminology, “open-minded.”  I searched and found it first in English literature in 1808 in a book titled, Solitude, by Johann Georg Zimmermann originally in Dutch (Über die Einsamkeit) with the following English translation:

How frequently do we observe, even in persons of rank and fortune, who reside continually on their own estates, a haughty manner and arbitrary disposition totally incompatible with that candid conduct that open-minded behaviour, . . . !

It was used a little over a dozen occasions in total up until the 20th century, it was so uncommon.  Now whole books have been authored on open-mindedness, which might be tell-tale. The Economist in 1892 reads:

What is wanted is not a mixed body of advocates, each eager to show the goodness of his own particular case, but a jury of impartial, uncommitted, open-minded men, who have no prejudices one way or the other; who will hear the evidence fully, and who will report upon it on its merits.

The first dictionary in which it arises is The Century Dictionary in 1895.

In regular usage today as an antonym to open-minded is “closed-minded” or at least “narrow-minded,” which are viewed in a negative way by most today.  That I can find, “closed-minded” wasn’t used in English literature until the 20th century and very few times in the first twenty years, one being in The Protectionist in 1914:

In the place of the “popular” minded Mc Kinley, the “quick” minded Roosevelt, the “open” minded Taft, the White House today shelters a “closed” minded President who clings to the views and ways of the lecture room. . . . In particular is Mr. Wilson’s mind closed against any word of advice or helpfulness, however well intentioned that emanates from either of his two living predecessors in the White House or any man who served the Government under them in any capacity. He has a way of freezing out friendly counsel by his unwillingness to be told anything and by his assumption that he knows everything in advance, and that anyone bringing him information is necessarily so prejudiced that if he listens he is likely in some way to lose the right point of observation. 

Maybe you may join me in wondering why this “very important” trait of open-mindedness did not come along until the advent of modernity.  Why is it seen as a positive?  Why would it not be positive?  Don’t closed-minded and narrow-minded sound bad?

In 1987, eminent political philosopher and Chicago University professor, Allan Bloom, published The Closing of the American Mind, which I read then and still think about today.  His thesis confronted modern universities, that unwillingness to believe anything, because of toleration, lead to closing the mind to everything.  Open-mindedness he essentially said lead to believing in something.  I’ve put it this way — open-mindedness requires not just tasting everything, but biting down.  So again, if you are not willing to believe anything, you close your mind to everything. You can’t truly learn then, and this was the concern of Bloom.

If Bloom was right, then apparently open-mindedness is good, depending on how you define it.  Maybe not.  Maybe not?

Moderns started using open-minded.  Premoderns did not.  Why not?  They weren’t using it, so you have to think about, why not.  I’m saying that it was their view of truth.  They didn’t see truth as a “search,” like people do today, where a lot of sampling is involved until finally you bite down.  God is One and so Truth is also One.  You just believe that one truth, which is revealed.  You’re not doing yourself any good by opening your mind.

Premodern Roman Catholics had a similar approach to what I’m describing as premodern Baptists and Protestants — not the same, just similar.  Roman Catholics took the teaching of the church as Divine authority.  It wasn’t.  The Bible is Divine authority, and the church is subject to God’s Word.  However, there was still the idea of absolute authority with God being the key to all knowledge.

The Roman Catholic view was different enough to carry with it a number of problems.  The spread of scripture changed things.  God opens minds; hence, scripture opens minds.  Man doesn’t open minds.  The industrial revolution proceeded from the dispersion of God’s Word.  Without revelation, man is at zero.  He doesn’t get anything.  The premoderns thought that way.  That is the natural law thinking behind the Declaration of Independence that said man’s rights come from God.  “Self-evident” because God revealed it.  Not self-evident because we’ve got a bunch of geniuses on this planet.

The truth about our minds is that we don’t open them.  God opens them.  When we do believe, it’s not because we had amazing mind opening abilities.  We had no ability.  We have no ability.  When we do believe, it’s not because we had an open mind.  The truth is revealed, so by nature is non-discoverable.  So there we go.

I’ve considered myself in the past an open-minded person.  When I talk to Buddhists, I’ve told them, I’m open-minded, that is, I listen to Buddhists like I would believe them if they told me the truth.  I’ve not heard the truth from Buddhists, so I haven’t bitten down, has been the idea I’ve had and communicated.  I’m willing to believe the truth.  Maybe Buddhists are impressed with this a little bit, so it’s a “great strategy.”  I’m listening and everything.  I know nothing else is the truth, so it’s not true.  It’s not something I know because I’ve been open-minded.  I know it because God revealed it to me, because that’s how we know the truth.

Separation occurs for many reasons. Thirteen men pick up ten players to run full court basketball with three left on the sidelines.  Susie is socially awkward so she isn’t invited to the party.  No one asks Dan to sign their yearbook.  Forty seven play, but only five finalists are chosen for the concerto competition.  Less than one percent of applicants are accepted at Stanford.  Jesus said darkness hates light because its deeds are evil.  On the other hand, Paul wrote, have no fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.  One of these is the doctrine of biblical separation.

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

Between truth and hospitality, truth is the priority.  Hospitality is essentially unity.  You are welcoming.  Come on in.  Be with us.  Stay with us.  Cooperate with us.  Associate with us.

You can’t have love without the truth.  Love is the truth.  Love is walking in the truth toward God and other people.  It is fulfilling God’s law toward God and other people.  God couldn’t love us if He was contaminated by falsehood or error.  You can’t bear someone else’s burden before you bear your own.  Before you restore, you consider yourself.  When you consider yourself, you aren’t comparing yourself to others, but to the truth.

Since love wasn’t happening without the truth, the truth was priority.  That meant you couldn’t show acceptance to whom?  As people look at John’s example in 2 John, I’ve noticed that they get very specific at where the lines are drawn.  Is that what John meant for us to do, when we look at all of 2 John and 2 John in the context of Johanine writings?

When you read the first six verses of 2 John, it’s about the truth.  We should assume all the truth, especially when we read what Jesus taught John in John 14-17.  Jesus said all His words, commandments, and sayings.  When Jesus said we were sanctified by the truth, was it just the truth about His nature, that He was God come in the flesh?  No.  That’s also contradictory to many other passages on separation and unity.

Is it only very specific truths that form a boundary line for the limitations John bring in 2 John 7-11?  Here are those verses:

7  For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 8 Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. 9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. 10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: 11 For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.

I don’t know women’s clothing brands, but a friend texted this ad.  The world knows what pants mean, just like Dockers in its “Wear the Pants” campaign in 2009.  The only people who deny that pants mean anything are professing Christians.  Pants are the male symbol, just like the skirt or dress is female.

The ad says, pants are power.  Will we hear evangelicals and fundamentalists attacking the ad?  They should, to be consistent.  They should go after these morons at Ann Taylor.   Pants mean nothing.  Unfortunately, evangelicals and fundamentalists can’t tell us what anything means anymore.  They’ve been neutered on the subject of meaning.  They don’t wear the pants on what anything means. But that would mean that pants mean something, so I take that back.

About the same time as evangelicals (and now fundamentalists) stopped saying they knew what pants meant, they couldn’t tell you what music meant.  All music was amoral.  That they knew.  Only the words mattered.  The world doesn’t care that its music is sexy, so the world says it’s sexy.   The world doesn’t care.

Who is supposed to understand meaning?  Christians.  Not only did Christians in general stop contributing to anything helpful in the world, but they stopped comprehending the meaning of anything, which includes music and dress.  Why should anyone listen to them?  They don’t know anything.  They decided pandering was more important, excusing it as an evangelistic tool, which is worse, but worth it to them to perceive relevance.  Whenever a celebrity comes along and hints at something close to the truth, they spasm and seize into a muscle contraction — second best, a near-to-not-Christian becomes a fourth tier celebrity, the same burning in the bosom experience.

Evangelicals and fundamentalists both know.  They also know that their capitulation is same sex relations and “marriage” today.  They know.  They prefer what they think they have in their churches to representing the truth.  Rather than believe and practice the truth, they reduce it to the least common denominator for fake unity.   Their unity isn’t unity and their love isn’t love.  They offend the God, the only God, the God of truth, who created the sexes.