Sometimes you want things to work out for someone a certain way, and the appropriate statement seems to have become, “I’ll pray for that to work out in that certain way.”  However, you don’t know if it is God’s will.  You don’t know that you are praying in God’s will.

10 Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith? 11 Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you. 12 And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: 13 To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

If you don’t know what else to say, and you’re losing the argument, claim the high ground of unity and accuse your opponent of division.  Running for president in 2000, George W. Bush famously said in an interview, “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”  Of course.  He was also a compassionate conservative, which contrasts with conservatives who are just conservatives, only without the compassion.  The assumption by Bush was the left’s criticism of conservatives, that they aren’t compassionate.

I believe in unity.  I wrote a book on it.  In A Pure Church, I wrote the sections on unity and I exposed the primary passages on unity in the New Testament.  You can’t understand separation without understanding unity.  Unity has been, however, perverted, and I have found that people aren’t even talking about unity when they say the word.  It’s like the word “love” has been distorted beyond recognition.  It’s mutated into something entirely different than actual love, and the same has been done to unity.  It has occurred incrementally over many years, so that it went undetected, but it has drifted far off the path of truth into perversion.

How it has worked and works has been and is as the following.  There is established truth, doctrine and practice, from scripture and believed and traceable through history.  Let’s say that I believe that.  Someone diverts from that.  I say something.  He says I’m divisive.  I accept his position and it’s now accepted.  I don’t want to be divisive.  He changes further, I say something.  He says I’m divisive.  You see where this is headed.  The divisive one is the one who keeps changing.  He’s claiming the high ground of unity, when he doesn’t have it.  He is the divisive one.  Saying I’m divisive is a strategy or technique, one or the other.  It’s not the truth.  It’s useful for justifying himself and warding off criticism or separation.

When someone is different than what I believe and practice, I don’t just accept it.  It’s different.  There can’t be two right views.  That’s not acceptable.  At the most generous, I ask him to show it to me scripturally.  I await the scriptural support.  I can change if I’m wrong, and I have done that.  Let’s say for this thought experiment, it’s not out of left field, so I ask, when has this been believed and by whom?  If it’s true, I expect it to have history behind it as well.  If it’s new, that’s a lesser problem than not having scripture, but it is a problem.

On the other hand, if he doesn’t have scriptural support, but rhetoric or hypotheticals or excuses, then he’s the one causing division.  He’s departing from scripture.  At that point, if I don’t accept, and he says, you’re divisive, I get what’s happening.  I’m not divisive.  He’s just going to use that.  It’s not true, it’s just a device he’s employing, a kind of lie.  This is normal now.

The typical arguments I get today go after my consistency in application, something to the effect of, “I just don’t think you’re right,” speaking of me, or “I need to study it out more, but what I do know is that I don’t take your position.”  Another one is that I don’t have a right to question, because I’m not some kind of Baptist pope.   Some men are “past arguing.”  They are too busy with success to argue.  They aren’t going to argue.  If I want to cause division over such a doctrine or practice, I can, but they aren’t going to argue.  They’ve got too many more important things.  It’s too bad I’ve got to divide over such a thing, and they wish it weren’t so, but they guess I’ll just have to divide then.  Even if they did have the time to prove me wrong, I wouldn’t accept it anyway, I’m so stubborn, so why even try.  You can’t help a divisive person anyway, so why even respect what he says.

The problem too, as I’ve experienced it, is various forms of psychobabble.  It’s pride, intellectual, spiritual, or whatever kind of pride, where I think I know more than other people.  I’ve got some kind of either insecurity that makes me have to be right all the time.  A very prominent, well known national figure told me, I can’t put my finger on what it is, but there’s something wrong.  I’m not kidding.  His experience told him something was wrong with me, and he didn’t need to tell me because he’s been around the block several times and he just knows these things in an intuitive non-concrete sort of way, so I should just believe him.  He can’t explain, but I should take his hunch seriously.

Very often men play the victim, why do you have to pick on them?  They get criticized all the time, so join the club.  It’s tough enough already and now my criticism in addition.  One man would face his critics with, I’ve got more people in my bathrooms at any given service than you do in the auditorium.  They don’t have to answer, they don’t want to answer, and they won’t answer.

Division is from the truth.  Someone who separates over the truth wants unity.  You can’t have unity without the truth.  You protect the truth by separating.  No truth-no unity, no separation-no truth.

Truth is true.  You can believe it like the dismount in the crunch position in a fall from El Capitan in Yosemite.  There isn’t going to be a nice landing.  It’s true.  It’s not kinda true.  The Bible is true like that, even more so, if it were possible to be more true.  Truth is what Christianity has going for it.  It’s the truth.  If or when Christianity gives that up, it isn’t Christianity anymore.  It might be something called Christianity, but it isn’t actual or true Christianity, and since the truth is what makes Christianity, it isn’t Christianity.  Evangelicalism has given that quality up.  They aren’t claiming that any more.

Evangelical churches lack doctrine because they want to attract new members. Mainline churches lack doctrine because they want to hold onto those declining numbers of members they have.

I would be fine with Phil Johnson being right about separation and fine with James White too, if what they believed and practiced was biblical about separation.  I often check the old pyromaniacs twitter feed, because of the interesting links and comments of either Phil Johnson or Dan Phillips.  Through that feed, I’ve noticed the recent issue of some of James White’s associations with various people and institutions.  Phil has been attacked by certain factions for his support of White, finding himself in the position of defending White and himself against certain charges.  A recent effort from Johnson was commentary on the friendship of James White with Michael Brown, the Jewish Charismatic apologist.

Several years ago, I attended the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Francisco, and in particular one session with a panel discussion on the book, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism.  Separation came up in the discussion, because that differentiates all other forms of evangelicalism from fundamentalism.  I asked during the session where one book on biblical separation could be found anywhere in the mammoth book room for the ETS meeting.  In general, evangelicals ignore what scripture says about separation, so when you do read something about it, it’s worth taking note.  How much will evangelicals rely on the Bible for their doctrine and practice?  Is what Phil writes about it true?  Does he represent what the Bible teaches about separation?

The James White and Michael Brown relationship and its interaction provide a case study for biblical separation.  I’m not writing to get personal with Phil Johnson or James White.  I see it as a great opportunity to think on God’s Word about separation.  Separation is found in every New Testament epistle and all over the Old Testament.

Phil Johnson divides his article into main points.  First, he deals with the friendship of James White and Michael Brown.  He is not troubled that James White and Michael Brown are friends, because, he says, Michael Brown needs better, more scriptural friends.  It’s worth considering.  What is the relationship between fellowship and friendship?  How are they different?  Can you be friends and yet not be in fellowship with someone?

At the beginning of his second point, Phil says that he doesn’t tell his friends who they should and shouldn’t be friends with.  Is that the biblical thing to do?  Phil offers no scriptural guidance for his dogmatic statement.  I would deal with friends over whom they’re friends with, because they’re my friends.  Several passages all over the Bible forbid ungodly associations (cf. 2 Sam 13:3; Ps 1:1, 101:3, 139:21-22; Prov 22:24; 1 Cor 15:33; Eph 5:11; James 4:4).  Friendship doesn’t just relate to us, but it also relates to God.   In 1 Corinthians 10:24, Paul writes, “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils.”  What or whom you associate with does matter to God.

Phil says second, “I deplore hyper-separatism almost as much as I hate ecumenism.”  Ecumenism is a technical term with a lot written about it, while hyper-separatism is not.  Both terms need definition.  I’ve found him to provide anecdotes of hyper-separatism, often hypotheticals and straw men.  It would help to know what scripture says about separation and unity (like we have laid out in our book, A Pure Church).  Phil’s first reference to scripture is to justify friendship with sinners from Luke 7:34.  Verses 33-34 say:

For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!

The “ye” of these two verses, the commentators upon John and Jesus, were the Pharisees.  The Pharisees called Jesus a “friend of sinners.”  That doesn’t mean He was a friend of sinners.  If Jesus was a friend of sinners, was He also a glutton, winebibber, and, did John the Baptist also have a devil?  Because Jesus cared for unsaved people and evangelized them, the Pharisees attacked him as being sinner’s friend.  What we know is that He cared for and evangelized sinners.  We don’t have any actual examples of the Lord Jesus being friends with unsaved people.  We should not justify friendship with all manner of doctrinal perversion and unbelievers by what the Pharisees said about Jesus — that is a fallacious application of that passage.  It also clashes with other teaching in the Bible, which cautions believers about their friendships.

If a Pharisee asked me to eat with him, like Jesus, I would, and, like Jesus, with a purpose to evangelize.  That doesn’t make the Pharisee and I friends.  The Apostle Paul distinguishes between who  we should and shouldn’t socialize with in 1 Corinthians 5, treating professing believers different than unbelieving people.  Scripture teaches us that we shouldn’t socialize with everyone.  We should try to help people follow what the Bible says about separation.  1 Corinthians 5 isn’t talking about even friendship, but about socializing with someone.  It matters even who you socialize with, let alone who you are friends with.

According to Phil, “Dr. White stated that critics have been telling him, ‘You have to separate yourself from anybody that you have disagreements with when it comes to theology.'”  I’ve heard James White enough, that I don’t believe him.  He’s striking a straw man as he so often does, and also is treating his criticism like he’s persecuted.  I’ve never heard anyone say what he claims they have in my entire life.  I think you’ve got to be about as gullible as you can be to believe that critics, plural, have been saying that to James White — “anybody that you have disagreements with when it comes to theology.”

I would happy for anyone to show me one person who separates over every theological disagreement, even among the mystery group, the “hyper-separatists,” what Phil describes as those “who seem to relish conflict and treat every disagreement as an excuse to fire off anathemas.”  This doesn’t exist as a problem.  The word “seem” probably gives Phil a semi-truck of deniability.  Who in the world treats every disagreement as an excuse to fire off anathemas?  I’ve never met one, except that Phil would probably categorize me as one.  Phil needs to do better than that for this to be a realistic discussion of fellowship and separation.  Anathemas are in the Bible in Galatians 1 or in 1 Corinthians 16 and they are reserved for those who preach a false gospel and those who love not the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whatever type of friendships Phil Johnson has, his own experience can’t serve as a basis for friendship.  Is there any line to be drawn on friendship?  The way Phil talks, there isn’t any.  That is dangerous teaching (which is different than saying anathema to the teaching).  What are the limitations?  Would a modern day Nadab and Abihu, offerers of strange fire, be fine friends?  Cain, post murder of Abel?  You might work with Korah, but should you be friends with him?  At what point are you complicit with someone’s false teaching or conduct?  Maybe you’re not offended with someone as a friend, but is God?  Life is not all about you.  If someone is your friend, couldn’t he influence you, and you don’t even know it?  Are you not also subject to possible deceit?  What does scripture say?

Phil Johnson focuses on a very narrow teaching and application of separation, that is, “we are forbidden by Scripture to partner with or promote someone who comes in Christ’s name and perverts or rewrites the gospel (Galatians 1:8-9; 2 John 7-11)” [underlining his]. The Bible has far more to say about separation than that.  It does teach that, but not in contradiction to the other several teachings about separation in the New Testament.  That’s how Johnson communicates this issue, as if the teaching in those two passages has drained all the Bible says on the subject. Phil knows of 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14:

Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. . . . And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him,, that he may be ashamed.

Among others, why not list those verses and their teaching too?  They apply to White and Brown and separation, and there are other passages too.

Hyper-separation seems to be any separation that is more than Phil’s separation.  For years, I’ve noticed that’s how both Phil and James White roll on separation.  Hyper should be something unscriptural, adding to scripture in some way.  We know God separated from everyone on earth except for Noah and his family.  Is that hyper separation?  The concern should be over biblical separation.  If someone obeys scripture on separation, he is not a hyper-separatist.  If someone is not a biblical separatist, is he an ecumenist?  What matters, what should matter, is that we are obedient to God and His Word.

Since the Holy Spirit is spirit after all, so we can’t see Him, He is easier for men to mold into what they prefer Him to be.  He is Who He is, which is what scripture says about Him.  The Holy Spirit, yes, gives joy, peace, those fruit of the Spirit, which people want.  They want other people to get love, you know, so that they’ll be able to receive their love, because they do want that.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 gives a title to the Holy Spirit, “he who now letteth,” which is katecho, “to hold back,” a modern understanding being, “restrainer.”  In 2 Thessalonians 2, the Holy Spirit restrains from apostasy, restraint without which would be total apostasy.  He holds back the sewage by restraining.

In general, restraint is negative.  People want something and someone stops or impedes what they want.  In the case of the Holy Spirit, He is not giving someone something, but stopping him from having it.

When Jesus talked about the ministry of the Holy Spirit in very important teaching of His disciples before His death (John 16:8), He said that the Holy Spirit “will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”  “Reprove” is to convict, that is, to prove guilty.   He reproves someone for something he has done of which the Holy Spirit does not approve.  He points out wrongdoing with the goal of repentance.

One of the list of the fruit of the Spirit is “temperance.”  Temperance is about doing something you don’t want to do or not doing something you want to do.  The Holy Spirit works toward self-control.

The Holy Spirit is called the Restrainer as a title.  Some might say, “Well, He’s also called ‘the Comforter.'”  Right.  “Comforter” has changed in understanding since the KJV translators gave that translation to the Greek word paraklesis.  The English word comes from the Latin, com, “with,” and forte, “strength,” so the etymology of the English word is “with strength.”

The Holy Spirit is the Strength Giver as a title and the Restrainer as one too.  The Holy Spirit inspired scripture, a lot of which is negative.  As you know, the ten commandments are almost all negative.

Negativity is a trait of the Holy Spirit.  When the Holy Spirit manifests Himself in and through a believer, the believer will be negative too.  Very often, people who are often negative are assumed to be unspiritual.  Spirituality is many times seen almost entirely as chipper and upbeat and high energy.

John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15).  How positive was John the Baptist?  Not very.  He was very often as negative as someone could be.  That manifested the Holy Spirit in Him.

I’m not saying that you should go out of your way to be negative because now you see the Holy Spirit to be negative.  It will just occur in your life if you are regenerated by the Spirit and then filled with the Spirit.  You will see sin or scorning or foolishness and you will say something negative about it.  It’s what the Holy Spirit does.