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.

This is an unrelated post related to the one below, but I wanted to draw attention to it here by Victor David Hansen, titled, Camouflaged Elites.  I wish evangelicals would take into consideration, and now fiundamentalists, as they mime the culture.  They should be leading, but they conform.  Sad.

When I attended a Bible college and seminary in the 1980s, the founder and president incessantly talked about its grads going into “full time service” and touted full time service, full time service, and more full time service.  He may have been wrong on his statistics, but I heard him all the time talking about 90 plus percent going into full time service.  The words “full time service” are not in the Bible.  I would contend that every Christian is in full time service for and to the Lord, but I also get what Dr. Cedarholm, as we called him, B. Myron Cedarholm, was talking about.  He wanted the students in full time Christian service, meaning pastors, missionaries, “evangelists,” Christian school teachers, and any other positions like that.

At that time in fundamentalism, at least at Maranatha Baptist Bible College, full time service was normal talk.  I don’t remember any celebrity syndrome, at least in the circles I was in.  At Maranatha, we did have a gold medal wrestling coach, Ben Peterson, who was also a Maranatha seminary graduate, married to a Maranatha graduate.  While I was there, Mike Houk, one of our wrestlers, became the first world champion in United States history for Greco-Roman wrestling.  Even though we had celebrities in that sense, these men were not lauded much for those accomplishments.  You might say they were just regular dudes on campus, no different than anyone else for those accomplishments.

At Maranatha at the time, there was no push at all for people to go out into the world and work a “secular job.”  That’s not what Maranatha was for.  It was to produce full time Christian workers, church workers, and Dr. Cedarholm emphasized that in no uncertain terms.  It was pushed and pushed and pushed.  It wasn’t whether you would go into full time service, but where and how you were going to serve.  I don’t think that whole idea was proven scripturally ever to me, but it had an influence on all of us who there in that era.  I don’t remember, let’s call it, “celebrity-ism” being a problem in fundamentalism at that time, unless I was missing something.

Yes, there were celebrity Christians, in the sense of big-named preachers.  You could become a big fish in a small pond, but there were no “worldly” celebrities that anyone pointed up.  In my consideration, as I remember it, I would have been ashamed of myself if I didn’t go into full time service.

The reasoning for going Christian and not secular, which is how it hashed itself out, was in no given order: time is short, the laborers are few, eternity is long, God is worth it, people are going to hell, nothing is more important, you only have one life, nothing is better, everything else is temporal, the church is the most important and greatest institution, Christians are different, believers judge importance differently, among many other related reasons.  All of these still apply when you start to decide what you will do with your life.

With everything I just said, in my entire Christian school class of around 40 more or less, only two of us are pastors.  I know of at least one other pastor’s wife, I think, and I’m not trying to miss anybody.  I attended Maranatha Baptist Academy in Watertown, WI.

Maranatha had a sports program:  football, basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball, softball, a little bit of track and field and cross country.  I lettered four years in football and basketball and track and field, the latter at the college wasn’t taken seriously.  We didn’t have a track or field.  We just ran.  I didn’t practice the high jump or long jump.  I just jumped at meets to get more points.  But I remember looking over and seeing Dr. Cedarholm standing on the side of the track alone, watching us run.  No one else was there.  It did make an impression at the time.  Dr. Cedarholm was a bit of a celebrity himself.  He was a giant in the history of fundamentalism, had himself participated in the starting of hundreds of churches, but also graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1940, having lettered in football, track, baseball, tennis, and water polo.  We all knew this about him, but he never ever brought it up.  He would mention sports, but I don’t remember him talking about his personal accolades.

Things have changed today, and mostly not for the better, especially related to celebrity.  I think there is evidence for this all over.  I see it with Bob Jones University invitation to Tim Tebow to come to campus there.  In a bigger picture, cultural way, I’m a Tim Tebow fan.  He gets attacked for his faith by the public.  We should defend that aspect of and for him. However, I think it’s a blatant, serious error that BJU is inviting him to campus, promoting him in a fundraiser, because of his celebrity.  Sure, they can raise more money, but there are other ways this will cause serious damage, because it sends the wrong message about what is important.  Tebow himself is a compromiser and contrary to the historic values of fundamentalism and by having him, it really doesn’t matter if someone compromises like him.

Maranatha now has its celebrities with Nate Oats coaching Buffalo men’s basketball and Tom Allen coaching Indiana football.  In and of themselves, there’s nothing wrong with having a job in the secular world, and these are high paying jobs, which determines a certain amount of success on their part.  When I was in college, what they’ve done would have been discouraged for all the reasons I gave above.  Dr. Cedarholm would not have emphasized these accomplishments, because it’s not what he wanted.  He wanted full time Christian servants.  You will get more of what you emphasize.  If I was good enough to have “gone on to succeed in the world,” Maranatha would have seen that as a sort of failure and would have mourned the loss.  Instead of preaching, he went for the worldly success is how it would have looked and been framed at the time.  I would have agreed.  I still do.

I don’t think we should promote worldly success.  I think we should be lifting up mainly those who give up their lives to preach and evangelize.  I don’t think we should be pushing our Christian kids in a different direction.   I believe that Jesus had this in mind when He said on various occasions something like, “let the dead bury the dead.”  Unbelievers can bury the dead.  Only believers can do the work of the Lord.  We need more Christian workers.  There is more to what I’m saying than just going on to worldly success.  It includes the temptations for these celebrities that are emulated.  How many of them stay pure in their secular roles?

I would assume that Nate Oats or Tom Allen would have benefited from their time at Maranatha.  I’m sure that the biblical teaching still helps them and comes out in what they do.  However, can they really live all of the Bible and remain in those positions?  Should this not be taken into consideration in what they do?

The #BuffaloBulls head coach Nate Oats has expressed his commitment to LGBTQ inclusion #MarchMadnesshttps://t.co/h9xKvHDeWq pic.twitter.com/Cwk3iL1xiW

— Outsports (@outsports) March 16, 2018

Scripture doesn’t exalt the tentmaking of the Apostle Paul.  When the disciples came back from evangelism in Luke 10 and they talked about the devils being subject to them in Jesus’ name, the Lord said, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”  Even certain good things He did not want them to promote.  Paul’s celebrity he called, “dung.”  Whatever he could glorify in a secular sense, he counted as loss.  None of it was important.

If someone is a hardworking breadwinner, of good character, and a faithful husband and father, celebrity will not come from that.  As churches, we don’t want to emphasize what the world sees as popular or important.  In certain instances, we want to rebuke it or repudiate it.  Celebrity should not stop us from doing that, just because we feel the glow from the celebrity or the knowledge of the celebrity.  It adds nothing to the value of Christ, His life and truth, and His institution.

I include in this essay my own son.  He graduated first in his class from a charter school and was accepted at West Point.  He served in the United States embassy in Poland.  He’s a Captain in the U. S. Army, who has qualified for special forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  What difference does any of that make if he’s not faithful to God?  Is any of that any better than if I reported that he was a local manager at a 7-11 and in his church, evangelizing weekly and living for Jesus Christ?  I don’t believe so.  All of his accomplishments should be nothing but a means to an end.  If it gets in the way of his faithfulness to God, it should not be celebrated.  Like I said above, it should be mourned.  If he can’t and is not going to use it for God, then it is worthless.  It means nothing.  I see the Army as a potential threat of what is eternal and of true importance.  I tell him that all the time.  He assures me he wants to be used of God.  I will be happy if that is the case.  If I say anything on this blog about what he’s doing, it’s because I have people read here who know the family and would want to know what’s happening.

The instinct in evangelicalism and now fundamentalism toward celebrity is a destructive one.  It won’t help.  It could only hurt.  If believers reach celebrity, we should not celebrate the celebrity.  We should rejoice only that their names are written down in heaven.

The two most common observations I read and hear about manhood today are some kind of (1) tortured masculinity and then (2) decreasing masculinity.  Men are either participating in a type of warped manhood or are more effeminate.  The two are related.

I want to protect and defend women, but I can’t when they don’t do what I tell them to do (and I’m not talking about something in disobedience to scripture).  If I have to protect my daughters, and I tell one of them not to go somewhere, that means they shouldn’t go where I tell them not to go.  You can’t have it both ways.  If we live in an egalitarian society, women don’t need men’s protection — they can protect themselves.  If they can’t protect themselves, then that’s not egalitarian.  The truth is, women need men’s protection.  Egalitarianism itself has resulted in the abuse of women.  It’s only natural that this has occurred and is occurring.

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.

Paul parks on a very helpful metaphor in his epistle to the Galatians to deal with the problems with the churches there, the slave and the son.  The characteristic distinction between the slave and the son does not above all deal with content or the standard.  Both slave and son have the same requirements of them.  The slave does them because he has a schoolmaster, tutor, or governor over him, making him do it.  The son does them because he wants to do them, out of love.  The slave can’t do them.  The son can do them with the differentiation of faith.

The slave and the son are the same person in Galatians.  The Master and the Father are also the same Person.  It’s a matter of perspective.  Slavery isn’t a goal.  It’s a means to an end, and parents can understand.  You want a child who believes in what the parents are telling him, so that he’ll do it on his own.  He’ll do it out of love because he believes.

The son has a change in nature.  The theology of it is that he is a son because of the work of the Holy Spirit in his life, so that he now has the nature of a son, instead of a slave.  He can keep the requirements now and he wants to keep them now too.  If you don’t see him keeping the requirements, you can question his sonship.  He can’t or won’t fulfill them on his own.

Evangelicalism and new evangelicalism have as a whole spotlighted the content or the standard, which isn’t the issue in Galatians.  Those who focus on the standard do so because they either want to add or take away from the standard, which occurs in one of two ways in Galatians.  However, both are fixating on the standard.

The corruption of Galatians, where the standard is the focus, occurs one of two ways.  The two ways could be reduced to just one.  The false teachers added either circumcision, dietary restrictions, or calendar.  Those three were not even requirements any more and this is where the two ways dovetail.  The other way is not keeping requirements, which is turning liberty into license.  Why circumcision, dietary restrictions, and the calendar?  These were things you could do as a slave, they weren’t hard to practice.  You could easily conform to those standards.

Once you were circumcised, nothing was required, which would have been the occurrence for every Jewish male.  If you were female, no requirement there.  Dietary restrictions were how you grew up eating, if you were a Jew — that was only hard for a Gentile, who wasn’t accustomed to it.  The days were also just how you lived.  What was impossible was fruit of the Spirit and abstaining from works of the flesh.  Those were impossible as a slave.

When you reduce righteousness to the keeping of a few requirements, then you are all set to opt out of other requirements.  Love doesn’t drop requirements.  It does them with a different perspective.  It does even more than if it was just a requirement.  The son, differing from the slave, keeps all of the requirements because he wants to do them, but it is even more.  He’s got a great attitude while he does it, because he can, due to his new nature, and because he really wants to please His Father.

Galatians is a reminder of the story of the prodigal son, because slave and son are both part of the story.  As an unbeliever, a son feels like a slave.  When he chooses sonship, he wants the slavery.  Paul said he was a bondslave, which is a slave, who wants to be a slave.  You get to be one, because you want to be one.  And you can perform as a slave, because you are really a son, with the nature of a son.  Ironic for the prodigal before he returned as a son was that he was a slave in the hog lot of this world, forced into a slave relationship to sin.

Galatians isn’t make room for the lasciviousness of evangelicalism and new evangelicalism.  It isn’t changing the requirements for Christianity, but empowering or allowing the performance, proceeding from faith in Christ and out of love for Him.

The Lord Jesus Christ came in due time, the Pax Romana, koine Greek, and Roman roads. Christianity grew, spread by evangelists, who were welcomed into homes of fellowshiping churches. Following upon true preachers came false ones, posing as true to take advantage of the generosity of church families, including ladies like the one addressed in 2 John.  Hospitality was essential for the furtherance of the gospel.